Forgetting a term for tech elites splitting off from society - help!

October 31, 2020 9:43 PM

I've seen a phrase used on Twitter and in Silicon Valley adjacent discourse about the phenomenon of elites splitting off from society - not in the sense of separatism but in the sense of speciation. Please help me remember this phrase - I believe it's two words, probably three at most - as my brain has completely lost it and it will help with some research.
posted by decathexis to Society & Culture (5 answers total)

Couldn't be sympatric speciation could it?
posted by jamjam at 10:09 PM on October 31, 2020

I recall reading a few years ago about the phenomenon of, when things in society get bad, people who are privileged enough to do so withdrawing into their own little worlds of private pleasures. If that's what you're thinking of, the term was something like "private emigre" but I am utterly failing to find it via search.
posted by rhiannonstone at 12:42 AM on November 1, 2020

Assortative mating is one term related to this. For example: Rich Like Me: How Assortative Mating Is Driving Income Inequality, by Branko Milanovic for Quillette.
posted by mbrubeck at 12:49 AM on November 1, 2020

Eloi and Morlocks?
posted by paper chromatographologist at 7:32 AM on November 1, 2020 [1 favorite]

Could it have been "going Galt", in reference to Ayn Rand's execrable novel?
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 5:31 AM on November 2, 2020