Subliminal Valley leverages a long tradition of humor in tech to address real and important issues in the venture capital industry and the broader tech community. The humor and parody genres hasve always been part of the tech sector as HBO’s Silicon Valley and Internet sensation Startup L. Jackson brilliantly proved.
The latter, often referred to as Silicon Valley’s favorite Twitter persona, was later revealed to be a fictitious character created by Parker Thompson, a VC and partner at AngelList and 500 Startups. Startup L. Jackson left a strong mark on the tech industry. Silicon Valley publication Recode describes the character as someone who is “indiscriminate in his mockery, targeting big corporations, small startups, investors, advisers, common wisdom, clichés and other Silicon Valley topics [while poking] fun at top tech figures”.
Other great examples of parody and satire in tech include Luma Partners founder Terence Kawaja’s parody videos, TechCrunch’s “totally real” conversation between Elon Musk and Marc Zuckerberg, and First Round Capital’s holiday parody videos.
“The Tech community is ripe for satire”, says TechCrunch’s Mike Butcher in a post that highlights how former Twitter CEO Dick Costolo joined Maybe Capital – a new satirical board game about Silicon Valley’s VCs. Much like Subliminal Valley, Maybe Capital uses satire and comedy to address important issues. The game even offers different pricing for men and women to highlight the gender disparity in earning power that prevails in the Valley.
Despite the pervasiveness of comedy in tech, the industry still does not quite know how to deal with humor. Bob alludes to it in one of the last entries of his diary with lines such as “So many VCs look like Bale in Batman, why so serious? If you can’t take a joke, I’ll help you put a smile on that face”.