Maybe he is, but he spreads his message and communicates in the absolute worst way for anyone to actually listen to him or take him seriously. Which is really a shame.
Is he? To me he comes off as the quintessential rich Silicon Valley outsider nerd. His path has been so singular and so rewarding that he gives the impression of someone who doesn't need to be the least bit concerned about how he expresses himself.
From a street hobo, that gets you instantly dismissed, but there's a counter-intuitive aspect where if you're a Jaron Lanier, it just further underscores that you're Jaron Lanier and can do as you like. Because he is not trying to maximize trust in any way, he comes off as plausible even when expressing stuff that's unusual.
For instance, his reaction to 'how do you define a BUMMER platform?'. He essentially said, "I know Russian Intelligence made special effort to control this, this and this platforms, so define it as those!"
I'd not heard about the specific agencies he cited, but I've personally seen all sorts of sketchiness going down in every platform he listed, and it clicked. I stuck 'em all in a folder with each other, and they do seem to belong together.
I can think of people who're purportedly much more trustworthy, that I would not accept their statements on things like that without investigation. But I've heard from Jaron before and he's always (a) speaking out about something with NO concern for how his statements will come across, and (b) citing stuff that he's deeply familiar with. There are times I've looked into his details and found them interesting and all he said they were, so it only underscores the impression of him as the Cassandra truth-teller, privy to important things that are typically overlooked.
Maybe he consciously adopts that manner for that very purpose. In marketing it's always best if you can brand yourself using the core truths of yourself: then you can't get it wrong, or slip up and reveal inconsistency. He may take pains to seem the raving prophet.
>From a street hobo, that gets you instantly dismissed, but there's a counter-intuitive aspect where if you're a Jaron Lanier, it just further underscores that you're Jaron Lanier and can do as you like. Because he is not trying to maximize trust in any way, he comes off as plausible even when expressing stuff that's unusual.
