alt Hacker NewsMy guess would be - there is way more primitive explanation than setting an example etc (which is also a good reason, from their point of view). It is just plain ego and pettiness - we see it everywhere, even from a manager who has 3 people reporting to him. Why else would Zuck cheat on a board game, of all things? That too in private?
It might just be as primitive as "I have more money than God, therefore I am better than everyone else, nobody dare to challenge/disrespect me even in the slightest". Blind rage can make people do things that they themselves can't understand
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The story about cheating at Scrabble bears a fairly close resemblance to the episode in the Tintin comic Flight 714 https://tintin.fandom.com/wiki/Flight_714 in which megarich industrialist Laszlo Carreidas cheats at Battleship while flying on his private jet https://www.reddit.com/r/PeterExplainsTheJoke/comments/1i6cv... . If the Scrabble incident really did happen then it's uncomfortable how close it comes to a fictional detail deliberately written to make Carreidas look unscrupulous and a bit ridiculous.
Too similar to Goldfinger cheating at cards and golf to not make me chuckle.
For a bit more context the Belarusian activist built on the anti communist Polish Activist Waldemar "Major" Fydrych who in the 1980’s was arrested by the communist authorities in Poland for handing out female sanitary products.
As he said “The Western World will find out much more about the situation in Poland from hearing that I was put to jail for giving tampons to a woman, than from reading the books and articles written by other people from the opposition.”
Some times its just underling opportunists (which is basically zucks inner circle at this point) defending the empire. Keeping that stupid child emperor on the throne is in their interest.
This applies to Elon's incredibly strange video game cheating scandal too.
It's pathetic and weird.
Maybe it's the same thing with we see with many (but not all) sports stars. Getting fame and fortune at a young age ossifies any kind of personal development that happens in people after that point.
Hallmarks of a sociopath. Trying to rationalize what he does in terms of normal ethics and motivations is a fool's errand.
Or perhaps Zuck didn't cheat on the board game, and the claim that he did is one of the purported falsehoods Meta says the book contains. That would also explain it.
> It is just plain ago and pettiness […] Why else would Zuck cheat on a board game
Recently I felt somewhat enlightened on this point, specifically in regards to Trump cheating at golf and some of his bald-faced lies, but I’d speculate it applies here too. Others pointed out to me that while it might look petty and ridiculous to normal people, it’s a social power move to get away with things, and serves the purpose of testing what can be gotten away with, and practicing or exercising the push dynamic. It may have little to do with winning a board game, and a lot to do with seeing what people will tolerate and what the thresholds are for being called out; it’s a test of one’s intimidation factor. It may be somewhat important that the cheating is visible. It can also be social signaling to see who comes to their defense when called out, which is an effect that has been playing out on the national stage with obvious lies being repeated, defended, or excused. It’s not about what’s true, but about people showing the rule breaker who’s on their side, and giving them the power to break rules.
This, BTW, to me is a depressing and pessimistic view of power and politics and humanity, and I don’t think these kinds of power moves are something to aspire to, nor do they always work. But as a framework I have to admit it has a lot of explanatory power.