Amanda Seyfried portrays Elizabeth Holmes in ‘The Dropout.’

Photo: HULU

Has streaming peaked? Netflix stock dropped 37% last week after the company’s loss of subscribers, and CNN+ was dead on arrival. Are viewers finally revolting? Maybe it’s the shows and content. It’s hard to find a movie, series or newscast that doesn’t push a social or political agenda, from “Bridgerton” to “Squid Game” and “The Handmaid’s Tale.” Even formerly family friendly Disney is getting too preachy. Elon Musk calls this the “woke mind virus.”

The agenda list is too long, so I’ll focus on the current rash of shows about entrepreneurs: Showtime’s “Super Pumped” on Travis Kalanick and Uber; Apple TV’s “WeCrashed” on Adam and Rebekah Neumann and WeWork ; and Hulu’s “The Dropout” on Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos. Their debuts curiously coincided with the Netflix’s “Inventing Anna” about the con artist Anna Sorokin. Hollywood seems to equate entrepreneurs with scammers, almost as if filmmakers have a vendetta against success.

As I watched these entertaining series, I mostly laughed instead of cried, knowing this is how many people will think about entrepreneurs going forward. It’s a shame the entertainment industry is bent on destroying the reputation of Silicon Valley, which is keeping Hollywood alive.

Watching these series was fascinating but also a bit spooky, because I’ve known or met many characters in these shows. So it was fun to compare their real-life looks and personalities with the portrayals. Most weren’t even close. The opening line of each episode of “Inventing Anna” could apply to all the series: “This whole story is completely true. Except for all the parts that are totally made up.”

Here is the common thread: Silicon Valley entrepreneurs are misogynistic, adolescent, narcissistic tech bros running cults—even Ms. Holmes with her black turtlenecks and deepened voice. They consume only tequila, mysterious green juice or kombucha. Every company party has a bounce house. Bankers are idiots, and venture capitalists can be manipulated easily. Board members are rubber-stamping cretins. Every startup founder travels on private planes. (Note to venture capitalists: If a startup uses a company jet, then you’ve invested too much money and have lost control.) Finally, everyone’s motivation is the same: “We’re saving the world” or “making the world a better place,” a generational delusion. While there’s always a smidgen of truth to tropes, these are all clichés.

Anna Sorokin was a con woman. Mr. Kalanick, on the other hand, was a hard-driving founder who was clueless about how to move to the next level. Ms. Holmes started with good intentions but was too stubborn to fail and pivot. Mr. Neumann was a huckster who eventually believed his own BS. WeWork, with its goal to “elevate the world’s consciousness,” hid losses behind “community adjusted” earnings. The jokes almost write themselves—which is why there was such rich fodder for HBO’s fictional 2014-19 series “Silicon Valley.”

The root of the problem is that these companies were given way too much capital to spend. It’s as if these founders had stolen grandma’s checkbook or had a seat in Congress. SoftBank told Uber and WeWork to “spend to grow” and “grow or die.” SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son once told Bloomberg Businessweek that no one “wants to pick a fight with a crazy guy” and famously told Mr. Neumann and his co-founder that they were “not crazy enough.” Turns out they were—for trusting Mr. Son to keep funneling good money after bad.

And it wasn’t only Uber, Theranos and WeWork. So many companies were given long runways facilitated by the Federal Reserve’s decadelong zero-interest-rate policy, which made capital practically free. Valuations boomed and founders were in control. Some reached cruising altitude; most didn’t. Why? Because what’s known in Silicon Valley as blitzscaling—becoming the biggest first—works only with high-margin, zero-marginal-cost cloud businesses such as Google and Facebook. When the rubber meets the road—or office, or blood test—friction with the real world slows growth.

And hey, where is the series about Quibi, the mobile-video disaster that burned through $1.4 billion and was live for only six months? It won’t happen. Founder Jeffrey Katzenberg

is one of Hollywood’s own.

Like fictional series such as “Billions” and “Succession,” which always seem to conclude that every capitalist is a criminal, I’m offended by the jaundiced view of Silicon Valley because we should celebrate success, the products and services that contribute to society way more than the delusional “change the world” mantra. I even think we should celebrate those who (legally) fail, though I get that might not make for six to eight hours of entertainment. Silicon Valley is a meritocracy, but it goes through periods of loose money when venture capitalists let their guard down and wannabe visionaries sneak in.

“WeWork is not a business, it’s a feeling,” says TV Rebekah Neumann, played by Anne Hathaway. Same for Hollywood, which needs to act more like a business, killing the mind virus and pleasing viewers rather than preaching to them.

Write to kessler@wsj.com.