Have you ever had the desire to see Sam Altman and Palmer Luckey face off in a moderately suspenseful card game? If so, you’re in luck.
Silicon Valley leaders are rushing to adopt the media power for the purposes of marketing and political capital. Now, in a sign of the times, Founders Fund, the venture capital firm co-founded by Peter Thiel, has launched its own game show.
“MAFIA the GAME” will apparently be an ongoing affair, where prominent tech luminaries gather and face off in a card game (the show is named after the party game favorite).
The show is moderated by Pirate Wires editor Mike Solana (who is also chief marketing officer at Founders Fund). The debut episode includes a who’s who of players: Sam Altman; Palmer Luckey; Bryan Johnson, the famous biohacker who (according to him) will live forever; and Moxie Marlinspike, founder of encrypted chat app Signal.
“I’m fucking bored of VC content,” Solana he said to the newcomerwho originally reported on the existence of the program. “There has to be a more interesting way to meet someone, and I think this is a much more interesting way to meet someone.”
TechCrunch reached out to Founders Fund to learn more about the program.
In many ways, having a reality show-like platform is good business these days. The Internet has turned the world into a population of chronic media consumers, with the average American spending about 2.5 hours a day on social media. Much of that time was spent scrolling through an endless avalanche of memes and ad-filled videos.
In the modern era, the road to power and influence is paved with infotainment.
Companies and executives have sought to take advantage of this new reality in different ways. OpenAI recently attracted attention when acquired TBPN, the lively podcast run by its founders. Meanwhile, several of technology’s most prominent players have used virality to their advantage. Johnson, for example, has managed to increase his number of followers through a very active (and rather strange) presence on social media. Meanwhile, Elon Musk has also managed to leverage his public persona to go viral (although one could argue that his online presence has sometimes hurt rather than helped his businesses).
This trend has also spread to the starting spacewhere people like Cluely CEO Chungin “Roy” Lee have demonstrated the The power of being a one-man viral advertising machine.
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