‘Absolute piece of sh-t.’ Is this why Garry Tan blocked you on Twitter?

Is this why Garry Tan blocked you on Twitter?

‘Absolute piece of sh-t.’ Is this why Garry Tan blocked you on Twitter?
you are probably blocked, too

by Gil Duran

The Point: The mystery of why Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan blocked you on Twitter may have finally been solved. Please stop reading now if you are easily offended (and skip the backstory if you already know it and head straight to The Reveal).

The Backstory: For years, people in San Francisco (and across the nation) have pondered one of the great questions of the Twitter age: Why did Garry Tan block preemptively block almost everyone on the platform?

I first heard of Tan sometime in 2021, before I had even finished moving to San Francisco. While scrolling my feed, I came across someone marveling at the fact that Tan had blocked them. 

As I recall, they had never even heard of Tan and were quite amused to find that he had taken such drastic action. Curious, I looked up Tan, only to find that I was also blocked – even though I had never heard him, either. This seemed weird, but it also didn’t seem to matter.

This was before Tan became a main character in San Francisco politics, creating his persona as a toxic troll known for firing off vicious tweets aimed at local elected officials … a practice he continued until recently, when his tweet reign became a cautionary tale about the edgelord who went over the edge.

Theories abound as to why Tan has blocked large swaths of society. Some say he uses a special app to mass-block potentially stressful accounts. Tan, for his part, has publicly insisted that he “hand blocks” accounts, but he’s surely joking. 

Back in September of 2022, the San Francisco Examiner delved into the grand enigma:

“Manually blocking tens of thousands of Twitter users would take some time, but apps like Block Party can speed that up considerably.The app allows you to identify a ‘bad tweet,’ and block all accounts who liked or retweeted it with one click. That would allow you to block large groups of people who share a political opinion. You can also upload lists of Twitter users and block them 100 at a time, and allow helpers to block users for you.”

Some speculate that Tan specifically seeks to block progressive or leftist accounts, but Tan’s little dragnet also catches a lot of unsuspecting people. This has spawned a minor genre of X-Twitter posts in which people discover they are also blocked by Tan for no reason.

A few typical posts: 


The Reveal: But has the mystery of Tan’s itchy block finger been hiding in plain sight? On August 31, 2022, a Tan ally named Steven Buss appeared to let the cat out of the bag in a tragically under-appreciated tweet.

“Proudly not blocked by @garrytan because I’m not an absolute piece of shit,” wrote Buss.

Now, Buss is not some rando tweeting a dumb theory. He is a co-founder of GrowSF, one of the main tech-funded political groups that has sprung up in recent years to push for regressive, right-leaning policies on addiction, crime and poverty. Tan sits on GrowSF’s board, and Buss regularly acts as a spokesperson for the group.

And so, in the words of one of Tan’s top political lackeys – a guy who is literally directing his main political org – anyone blocked by Tan qualifies as an “absolute piece of shit.” The tweet got around 90 likes at the time, mostly from other GrowSF types.

Why it matters: Tan and his ilk have succeeded in getting the media to brand them as “moderate,” but the term is a bad fit. In a later piece, I’ll explain why it’s a bad fit for their ideology and politics. (I touch on some of these arguments in my recent interview on KQED’s Political Breakdown.)

But let’s talk about tone for a second. Branding tens of thousands (if not millions) of people as human excrement is quite extreme behavior. This is especially true when many of the people blocked by Tan have never even heard of him.

When you work for an organization that’s trying to build a political consensus, this behavior is not just extreme – it’s also extremely stupid. Tan appears to have blocked much of San Francisco. How many of these blocked accounts belong to voters who would be surprised to find out that they qualify as “absolute POS” under Buss’ definition?

Attacking voters is a self-destructive political strategy, and Tan made the same mistake in his "slow death" tweet rampage. While his perceived death threat targeting seven progressive supervisors got all the attention, he also directed his wrath at their supporters:

"And if you are down with Peskin Preston Walton Melgar Ronen Safai Chan as a crew, then fuck you too."

That's a big middle finger to the San Francisco voters who recently elected the majority of the Board of Supervisors. These are voters whose support Tan and Buss will need to pull off their takeover of City Hall.

Moderates are supposed to be people who avoid extremes. Merriam-Webster lists "calm," "temperate," and "not violent, severe or intense" as aspects of being "moderate."

Now, I'm just a guy who spent 15 years in politics, advising some of California's top politicians, so please take my advice with a grain of salt. But, "fuck you, you absolute piece of shit," is not a winning message to send to voters.

And such language and tactics are inarguably the hallmarks of extremism rather than moderation.