Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey's birthday meditation in Myanmar is co cringeworthy we can't even

Dorsey, with a net worth of some $ 4.5 billion, felt the righteous wrath of the monster he co-founded after sharing the details of his birthday present to himself – a meditation trip to Myanmar – with his 4.12 million followers.

Dorsey described his humbling “experience” in Myanmar in painstaking detail in a series of tweets on Sunday. In one of the tweets, he dwelled upon how uncomfortable it was to sit on a bare concrete floor “cross-legged for an hour without moving.”

“Pain arises in the legs in about 30-45 minutes. One’s natural reaction is to change posture to avoid the pain. What if, instead of moving, one observed the pain and decided to remain still through it?” the now-enlightened Dorsey tweeted.

Documenting his journey, Dorsey shared that vipassana, a Buddhist meditation technique, is “extremely painful and demanding physical and mental work.”

“I wasn’t expecting any of that my first time last year. Even tougher this year as I went deeper.”

Dorsey’s description of his self-inflicted (and paid for) suffering, however, did not go over well on Twitter, with comments pointing out how many people have similar “experiences”, minus the choice to opt out.

Dorsey also tweeted a picture of his “basic”, charity-provided room in Myanmar and listed the strict rules imposed on him, such as “no devices, reading, writing, physical exercise, music, intoxicants, meat, talking, or even eye contact with others.”

The Twitter CEO couldn’t resist the temptation to bring a couple gadgets, though – because who meditates without a pulse tracker in 2018?

“I also wore my Apple Watch and Oura ring, both in airplane mode. My best meditations always had the least variation in heart rate.”

The admission sparked another wave of ridicule, with one user calling it “the most tech billionaire thing ever.”

Things didn’t get better for Dorsey after he shared a picture of himself meditating in a cave, where he said he was “bit 117 times by mosquitoes” in the first 10 minutes.

While some admired his counting skills, others branded the whole stunt “ridiculous to the point of parody.” 

Dorsey’s descriptions and pictures were so unbelievably stereotypical, they triggered comparisons with the main antagonist of HBO’s Silicon Valley Gavin Belson, also a filthy rich and self-obsessed tech executive who took a pseudo-spiritual journey to Tibet.

On top of showing off his tech billionaire privilege, Dorsey was called ‘tone deaf’ for choosing Myanmar as the backdrop to frame his serene pilgrimage. The country is the scene for ongoing persecution of Rohingya, a Muslim ethnic minority. Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya have fled Myanmar to Bangladesh in what is described by the UN as the fastest-growing refugee crisis.

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