Big Short Vibes and Tech Bubble Bursts in Silicon Valley‘s Season Three Premiere

On its own, that concept doesn’t seem entirely far-fetched. Particularly when you consider that it is very similar to what Snapchat offers its users. But everything about the tone and look of this scene reveals more and more the disconnect that a vast segment of the tech industry has with reality.

In many ways, it was reminiscent of the sitdown that Mark Baum and his crew have with the oily Florida mortgage brokers (played by Max Greenfield and Billy Magnussen) in The Big Short. Leading the charge at Flutterbeam are two bros who rave about the fact that they raised “a shit ton of money” and “are growing fast as balls.” On the wall of their video room is a poster of James Dean. It wasn’t the socially awkward, Red Bull addicts like Richard, Dinesh, and Gilfoyle that ruined the tech industry in the early ‘00s, it was nitwits like these two Flutterbeam dudes who are racing to cash in on some half-assed idea before the bubble bursts a second time.

Unlike The Big Short, this show isn’t overtly trying to get us up in arms about the state of this world that would pour billions of dollars into apps and websites that are going to maximize profits for other companies. Or at least help distract the average consumer with bells and whistles so we don’t worry about how real world problems are being ignored as a result. We’re supposed to laugh at these buffoons and their absurd desires with the same energy we use listening to Erlich rattle off his premium senior citizen zingers at the new CEO of Pied Piper. But a scene like the one at Flutterbeam has that same sour taste that underscores most of Mike Judge’s post-Beavis & Butthead work. It’s that flavor that reminds us how far out of whack our priorities are, as a society. It’s pitch perfect gallows humor that lets us laugh as we watch things slowly crumble around us.