alt Hacker NewsI know you edited your post, but I'm actually taken aback by people trying to argue it's a blog, not "journalism". I see no real difference between this and some of the most celebrated pieces of gonzo journalism.
However, this cuts both ways. This format is how we get some of the most interesting pieces of reporting about culture and counterculture. It's someone who went to some parties or worked for some companies. What you refer to as laziness is what makes it valuable: it recounts specific experiences instead of trying to speak in generalities. And it's descriptive rather than moralizing.
In the same vein, some of the most powerful exposes about neo-Nazi movements are just raw accounts of what's going on inside, without the author constantly repeating "and by the way, Nazism is bad, these people are all bad, and here are some statistics".
The SF Bay Area culture is probably not a thing, but there are some pretty awful subcultures within it, and many of them revolve around performance-enhancing drugs and rationalism-as-a-justification-for-bad-things (Zizians, longtermism, etc). I think we should own it.
> The SF Bay Area culture is probably not a thing
Exactly. Even if we restrict it down to the million or so people who live and/or work in SF, there are so many different cultures and subcultures that it's impossible to generalize down to any specific culture. This is true of any medium- or large-sized city.
> but there are some pretty awful subcultures within it [...] I think we should own it.
Sure, but again, the same can be said of any medium- or large-sized city. I don't say that to minimize the shitty subcultures you mention, or to suggest we shouldn't own it. But this is just... how society works, for better and for worse.