Enter the "yettie"

The "young entrepreneurial technocrat" has arrived: Finally, Mouse Jockeys and Nerds Made Good have an acronym of their own.

By Janelle Brown

Nov 7, 2000 | Before I review "A Field Guide to the Yettie" I should first acknowledge that I cannot offer an objective critique. I am, after all, a "young entrepreneurial technocrat" -- a "yettie" -- myself. I write for an online magazine; I own my fair share of midcentury modern furniture, as well as a soundtrack downloaded from the Web that runs heavily to electronica. Most important, I pass the ultimate yettie test: Although I'm not an extreme example of "an employee of an Internet company [who] cannot explain to my mother exactly what it is I do for a living," my grandparents still can't figure out what I do. I carry a cellphone, a Palm Pilot, an MP3 player and a bike messenger bag, drink lattes and shop vintage chic. I know what Unix is.

According to Sam Sifton, author of "A Field Guide" and the latest cultural critic to try to coin a new catchphrase, I fall into a subcategory of yettiedom known as "Mouse Jockey" -- a creative but ultimately sad phylum that holds "a lowly place in the New Economy." And so, my sensitive ego wounded by this callous classification, I am revealing my biases: I am a yettie, but I do not like being called one. This book was bound to sting.

Of course, this isn't the first time I've been classified. Social observers love to sweep cultural movements into a glass jar and carefully sticker their specimens with perky mnemonic labels. "Yettie," however, might last. Like "yuppie," "hippie, "hacker" or "slacker" before it, yettie is a convenient nickname for one of this decade's sweeping trends. Ultimately, however, it's as meaningful as the others -- which is to say, not very.

By Sifton's estimate some 2.5 million yetties currently work on the Internet in some capacity. They range in age from 24 to 50, though most hover around or under 30. They're ambitious, gadget-happy, connected, socially liberal and comparatively affluent and they possess a strong sense of entitlement. They live and breathe the dot-com world to an almost blinkered degree.

Sifton's book posits itself as an encyclopedia and illustrated guide to the various subgroups of yetties, complete with a glossary of yettiespeak (bandwidth junkie, cybersquatting, scalability, etc.) and an acronym guide (DSL, P2P, ROFL, IRL). His offer to his readers -- whom he assumes will be bemused relatives or friends of yetties -- is to provide instruction on how they might Pygmalionize themselves into one of the breed, if they so desire. For those less interested in joining in the fun, his book promises to help breed contempt "in order to cast approbation -- or violent deprecation -- where it is due." "A Field Guide to the Yettie" is a featherweight, humorous commentary with a rather contemptuous punch line.

Sifton loosely categorizes all yetties into three main archetypes: the Nerd Made Good, the Neo-Yuppie Prepster and the Mouse Jockey. The Nerd Made Good sits at the top of the yettie food chain, garnering the most money and respect, and includes such characters as the Codewriting Geek, the Cyberlord CEO, the PornSiter and the H-1B Programmer. These are antisocial creatures whose grasp of technology has made them rich and powerful without improving their social skills one bit. They wear dot-com T-shirts and carry tiny laptops and stay up all night. (Bill Gates, Linus Torvalds, Larry Ellison and Seth Warshavsky would fit neatly into this category.)

Then there's the Neo-Yuppie Prepster, a creature straight from a Banana Republic ad who strives for upper-class normalcy and prides herself on her cultural savvy without actually having much of it. The VC, PR Bunny, Biz-Dev and Marketing Geek all fall into this category, beating their way up the corporate ladder with their expensive accessories, voracious business practices and self-satisfaction, all the while spewing the revolutionary rhetoric of the new economy. They wear designer (Prada, Kate Spade, Gucci) clothes and think deeply about their sex appeal as they wheel their Jettas about town from one sushi lunch to another.

Next Page: Confessions of a Mouse Jockey

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