As an outsider to the "tech" scene, who did a PhD generals field on modern European intellectual history (which included a dollop of recent continental philosophy), it's endlessly fascinating to me how people in tech have fixated upon Girard. While a few of his ilk do come up in standard reading lists, he (generally) doesn't -- he is far more prominent vis-a-vis his peers in this discourse than in his "native" one. I suspect that this owes to path dependency and his metaphysics' compatibility with the industry's participants' socio-intellectual priors (so to speak).
I'd guess it's because anoraks/botanics/intellos/Geeks/geeks are pretty familiar with low-subculture-on-the-totem-pole becoming a unifying scapegoat, so it's an appealing idée fixe. (or is that merely recapitulating what you just said?)
On the other hand, I've been in the tech scene for nearly 4 decades, and this discussion is the first time I've encountered Girard (at least that I remember).
