This post really crystallized my feelings on the whole "you all ignored this and now you're paying the price" rhetoric that's been bothering me for a bit. (Obviously this post is not that bad, it just happened to make things clear.) Because specifically Real Genius did NOT get ignored.
Real Genius is part of the foundation of my character that led to me telling Facebook recruiters to stop contacting me until Facebook had a reputation as a force for good in the world. And obviously Facebook got on just fine without me, but I did absorb the message of Real Genius...
and have consistently tried to live my life consistently with those values. The fact that we are living in a world largely inconsistent with those values doesn't mean it got ignored; it might mean that a lot of people are willing to sacrifice their values for convenience or profit...
or it might mean that some people who are very powerful and do not share those values have used that power to work terrible evils in the world. The United States's catastrophic plunge into fascism doesn't mean that 1984 was ignored, it means that there is a built-in leverage imbalance...
where using power to do good or to create is simply less effective than using power to do evil or to destroy, in part because evil can distribute its costs to people who did not consent to absorb them. It sucks, but it doesn't mean no one was listening.