
A critique of trends in tech - dccoolgai
https://medium.com/@freddiedeboer/the-three-hot-trends-in-silicon-valley-horseshit-95cc5a85e8a4
======
nommm-nommm
This post may only be tangentially related to TFA but these were my thoughts
that came to my mind when reading this article and I'd like to get some
alternative perspective as someone who "doesn't get it."

Dollar Shave Club, apparently, delivers Dorco razor blades once a month. The
exact same ones you can buy straight from Dorco for a fraction of the price,
or if you prefer, Amazon. Razor blades are so small that several months worth
can easily fit in even a dorm room. The CEO apparently believes that he's
adding value​ from the subscription model.

>[Dollar Shave CEO Michael] Dubin said his service offers greater
"convenience." "Are there similar razors out there? Sure. But our goal is to
create value." I pointed out that I can get the Dorco razors delivered
conveniently to my front door, too. "Not once a month," he said... Bottom
line, if people want to buy in bulk, there's a bazillion other places on the
web to do that. Dollar Shave Club offers value beyond just the price of blades
& convenience.(1)

What does HN think about this? Would you pay a markup for the "convenience" of
a subscription? Is this a real thing people find value in?

(Personally I find 'create value' to be a suspect phrase in this context. I
also, personally, find subscriptions to be inconvenient 99% of the time)

(1) [http://lifehacker.com/5903771/forget-dollar-shave-clubbuy-
th...](http://lifehacker.com/5903771/forget-dollar-shave-clubbuy-the-same-
high-quality-razors-for-a-third-of-the-price)

~~~
Domenic_S
A service like DSC that I thought was brilliant is that one that does air
conditioning filters. I forgot its name, but I _always_ forget to change my
filter, and you're only supposed to do it every 6 months. Then because it's
been so long, I invariably forget what size I need, buy the wrong one, have to
go back... Ship me a filter every 6 months? Awesome! THAT'S a company I see as
"adding value".

No affiliation, not even a subscriber -- just had a "duh" moment when I saw
their ad.

~~~
emag
I just let my thermostat alert me, based on run time. It worked with my old
programmable, it works with my Nest (yeah, I know). And since I buy 3-packs of
the filters, when I get down to the last one, I just add "16x20x1 filters" to
my shopping list. When I'm at Wallyworld or Home Despot/Blowes, I'm there for
a reason, open my shopping list, and see the filters listed...

------
bonestamp2
My favorite part of this article is the hypocrisy. It's a huge rant about how
stupid an unattractive people are if they buy into the new hot thing from
Silicon Valley that doesn't do anything new; and then there it is, on line 2
of the page: "This is an automated feed of the blog posts at
[http://fredrikdeboer.com"](http://fredrikdeboer.com").

It seems like he forgot one line item in his list:

2012, Medium: At last, a way to post text on the internet!

~~~
therealdrag0
Well in response to someone saying they worry about him he says, "Don’t. My
life has never been better. Remember it’s a persona."

So take that salt into consideration. Besides he never said every bit of tech
is bad.

------
jstanley
Rents aren't high because fat cats are charging more money. Rents are high
because of supply and demand. That's literally all there is to it. Someone is
going to get the house and someone isn't, and the one who gets it will be the
one offering more money. The only thing the fat cats change is what proportion
of the money goes to which people. The _amount_ of money comes from supply and
demand.

~~~
maxsilver
> Rents are high because of supply and demand. That's literally all there is
> to it.

Except that's _literally not_ all there is to it, that's just one component of
the problem. It turns out housing is just a tiny bit more complicated than
your first day of Econ 101. The half dozen empty skyscrapers lots of us pass
by each day seem to indicate that.

"High Rent is just supply and demand" is the new "I could rebuild that whole
app in one weekend".

~~~
randomdata
_> that's just one component of the problem._

Which components influence the problem here without ending up only being an
influencer on the supply or the demand?

 _> It turns out housing is just a tiny bit more complicated than your first
day of Econ 101. The half dozen empty skyscrapers lots of us pass by each day
seem to indicate that._

I do not see where your example indicates that. In this case, an owner is not
required to make his property, even if vacant, available on the market. That
affects the supply in the market. That still comes down to basic supply and
demand.

~~~
spdionis
> Which components influence the problem here without ending up only being an
> influencer on the supply or the demand?

If all the relevant components "just" affect supply and demand then it's
useless to analyze supply and demand. Take a step back and analyze those
components.

~~~
randomdata
The only analysis I see in the original comment is what determines price, and
the answer truly is supply and demand. I may be interesting to look at why the
supply and the demand are what they are, but that seems to be outside of the
scope of this discussion.

From a practical perspective, I'm not sure further analysis is necessary
either. Price, as determined by basic supply and demand principles, is a
useful signalling mechanism even without understanding the underlying reasons.

------
rm_-rf_slash
Back in the 90s there were real utopian dreams that the Internet could free us
and form a world "more humane and fair than the world your governments made
before" (Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace, 1996).

Instead, over the past 20 years, Silicon Valley went from being a land of
dreams to an accelerator of the conditions that make middle class life so
precarious in the developed world.

Nobody in the valley seems to care. Many, including those on this thread, seem
to be ignorant of the fact that over the last 10 years, Silicon Valley has
transformed, in people's minds, from a place that makes the future better to a
place that makes the future worse, yet slightly more entertaining.

~~~
lovich
I am aware, but even if silicon valley was how it used to be described it was
never an option. Maybe its because I am younger, but in my age group everyone
went to college and got massive student loans because that's what every adult
in your life told you to do.

How were you supposed to travel to the valley and work on something that
didn't make you a lot of money when you had large, non dis chargeable loans
tied to you for decades? The only people who had that option were rich kids,
or the few who took the "bad" choice of not going to college and ended up
lucking out.

Seeing people reminisce about how silicon valley used to be always reminds me
of older people complaining that the youth are no longer treating college as a
place to learn. Well no shit. We are, on average, much poorer than we used to
be and everyone has to eat. All those old ideals are nice, but they matter
much less when you end up having to work yourself to death or decide between
medicine or making rent that month

------
jaboutboul
This is the most hilarious (and sadly true) thing I've read in the last few
months.

~~~
CoolGuySteve
> "add a touch screen manufactured by Chinese tweens, call it “Smart,” and
> sell it to schlubby dads too indebted to buy a midlife crisis car and too
> unattractive to have an affair."

As someone who spends hours pondering the same NYC subway ads, this captures
what I'm seeing better than I could ever put it.

------
fullshark
I appreciate the righteous anger in this piece but I enjoyed this medium take
down a bit more:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13400562](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13400562)

------
andybak
> and sell it to schlubby dads too indebted to buy a midlife crisis car and
> too unattractive to have an affair.

Whilst that was amusing in a bitchy kind of way, it rather meant I stopped
listening to anything said after that point.

We're not dealing with a someone capable of great insight - or at least we're
not dealing with someone who values insight over snark.

EDIT - I read it to the end and I'm slightly more forgiving. I came to
understand the intent a bit more. I initially came to it expecting something
less literary/stand up comedy and took it in the wrong context.

~~~
Apocryphon
Some alternative writings (for all HN readers) with the same sentiment but in
different tones than snark:

Melancholic wistfulness
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11370776](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11370776)

Kafka by way of Mike Judge [https://www.metafilter.com/122529/Welcome-to-San-
Francisco-N...](https://www.metafilter.com/122529/Welcome-to-San-Francisco-
Now-what-the-hell-are-you-doing-here#4716703)

~~~
ragazzina
>Kafka by way of Mike Judge [https://www.metafilter.com/122529/Welcome-to-San-
Francisco-N...](https://www.metafilter.com/122529/Welcome-to-San-
Francisco-N..).

This was written by someone who doesn't know how human interaction works. I
have been in this situation twice.

2 years ago, I have lived in the same building as 20 other colleagues for 4
months. Now I am living in another city, but where most of the people I know
and interact with in my free time are from work.

Both of the time, me and my coworkers played football/basketball together,
barbecued in the woods, went to the lake/beach, met for pizza-and-movie,
partied almost every week and even planned trips out of the country together.
We almost never talk about work, and surely not more than I talk about work
with other friends.

------
draw_down
Pretty good! That ad about "doers" is particularly ghoulish. And just
generally I feel like I see the ideology of overworking as right and good all
the time now. Things are not great.

~~~
MaxfordAndSons
Yea, I loathe those fiverr ads. When I end up in a subway car filled with them
it really sours my mood. I used to have no feelings about fiverr but now I
absolutely would never use it.

------
altcognito
tl;dr; marketing adds a glossy veneer so people will overspend on useless
crap, companies will screw you if it means margins are greater. So much of
what society produces is meaningless nonsense.

SV doesn't have that world cornered by any means.

counterpoint: Capitalism sucks, but it seems to work better than most things
we've tried thus far.

------
ashark
> Are you the kind of person who is so worn down by the numbing drudgery of
> late capitalism that you can’t summon the energy to drag a 2 ounce
> toothbrush across your gums for 90 seconds a day? Well, the electric
> toothbrush has been a thing for a long time.

OK. OK. Not defending other practices in the article, but as someone who long
thought electric toothbrushes were a silly gimmick but finally got (a fairly
cheap) one a couple months back: they are. not. a. gimmick. Oh man. Life
changing. First time I used it it felt like I'd had a professional cleaning.
No amount of brushing with an ordinary one had ever done that. I could never
go back. Even when I'm lazy and only do half the cycle it gets my teeth _much_
cleaner than a manual brush could. The difference is dramatic and they're not
really that expensive as long as you don't go for a bunch of stupid features.

~~~
_Adam
Which model did you get?

~~~
ashark
Some oral b Braun. One without the Bluetooth connectivity(!!!) that even mid-
range models seem to have now. I think it's just whatever sweethome
recommended at the time. Might just be the 1000. Only feature it has is that
it vibrates when you should switch quarters and vibrates differently when you
should stop, in case you can't count.

[edit] yeah, confirmed, it's the "pro 1000"

------
dustingetz
Free trade is voluntary, we choose to participate in trade because it benefits
both parties. I'm interested in seeing arguments that attack SV/society but
start from this principle?

~~~
justanotherbot
I'm not an economist, but I'll give it a shot: the vast influx of VC money
allows for the creation of unsustainable businesses designed to "disrupt"
(read: eliminate) traditional players. Buyers are happy to participate because
they are getting a "deal" in the short term. Those who have been "disrupted"
out of a job are often left to work for those same companies.

Meanwhile, the startup is trying to capture enough market share so that it can
then raise rates and lower wages with less competition down the road. In other
words, the traditional free trade model can be distorted by the effects of VCs
who can operate with extraordinary scale of time and geography.

~~~
banku_brougham
This is interesting. Anti-trust laws prevent dominant market players from
tanking prices until competitors fold and are aquired. However these SV
funding models allow new players to perform the same role on behalf of the
owners of capital. My question: "is it the same owners, or different ones?"

I'll posit: the answer tells us whether we live in a competetive marketplace
or monopolistic hell-zone.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
Well the government mostly hasn't been _enforcing_ competition laws for a few
decades now, so yeah, VCs can fund startup companies to play loss-leader for a
monopoly position. Hell, Peter Thiel put that strategy in his book.

------
johan_larson
Why am I hearing so much about "late capitalism" suddenly? I'm sure I'd never
heard the term five years ago. Now it's in all sorts of articles.

~~~
droopyEyelids
The idea is that we're entering the late stage capitalism phase of our
civilization. Like, we went though antiquity and modernity and post modernity.
There was a colonial period and a reconstruction. Pre and post ww2.

They're all hard to define and poorly scoped, but there is something to each
of the ideas, or people wouldn't talk about them.

Anything I could say to define 'late capitalism' would detract from the point
though, because any tech person can find a million nits to pick on any point
made about even relatively precise subjects, and late capitalism refers to
trends in something as diverse as global society.

Just try and think for yourself, "If we are living through such a thing as
late era capitalism, what characteristics of our world are relevant to that
label?"

------
devrandomguy
For those who are being pushed off their land by the rent-seekers, I offer a
ray of light to brighten your day:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9WWzbzevTA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9WWzbzevTA)

The most desirable, and most physically constrained cities, are mostly
coastal. Could something like this work in a place like Vancouver, Seattle, or
SF? There is always the threat of bureaucracy or regulations getting in the
way, but the incredible pressure of the housing crisis might be enough to
encourage open-mindedness on the part of the relevant local leaders.

For the endangered artist community, I could see this working better than it
does for someone who works in a specific building. Certainly not a small
undertaking, though.

For those who don't like YT links, this is a short professional
documentary/interview about a couple who built their home from scratch, on the
ocean. Most materials are salvaged, and everything was built by hand. It is
beautiful. For a Canadian bureaucrat, the whole thing probably doesn't even
compute.

------
bjornlouser
"the three hot trends in Silicon Valley horseshit... An industry that never
stops lauding itself for its creativity and innovation has built its own
success mythology by endlessly repackaging the same banal functions that have
existed for about as long as the Web"

Pretty funny coming from an academic who would gladly make a living pushing
standardized testing at the undergraduate level.

~~~
iamatworknow
In what world do you think academics _like_ standardized testing? Every
teacher or professor I've ever met loathes the idea of having to "teach to the
test". They didn't set the standards, but they're forced to follow them.

~~~
bjornlouser
[https://static.newamerica.org/attachments/12843-standardized...](https://static.newamerica.org/attachments/12843-standardized-
assessments-of-college-learning/Assessment-White-
Paper.72b9bbb2cf0447b4aacaabe6e6ea1824.pdf)

~~~
dwaltrip
You should have put that in your original post. I made the same mistake as my
sibling and thought you were just swiping at academics in general.

------
theprop
While rising rents in SF/Bay Area are due to more & richer tech people,
overall costs are declining thanks to tech companies. The cost and reliability
of taxis is much much better with Uber than it was previously. The cost of
many goods that one has access to is lower via Amazon for so many people. A
lot of local businesses are probably more profitable working with Google than
they were previously with the Yellow Pages.

Yes, there will be spectacular failures, but right now 3 of the 5 most
valuable companies in the U.S. did not exist ~21 years ago (Google, Facebook,
Amazon), and 1 of the 5 was a tech company which many had written off (Apple).

It's easy to laugh at the failures, but the real entrepreneurs just don't
care. I don't think Larry Page or Jeff Bezos minds if you want to laugh at
them over Google Knol or the Amazon Fire phone. For their 100 failures, their
one big win was with no doubt worth it e.g. AWS or Android.

~~~
zepto
Android makes almost no profit for google and isn't a 'win'. All it does is
protect the search monopoly from competition from Microsoft and Apple.

------
enraged_camel
The irony is that the overwhelming majority of marketers who come up with
those nonsense "Doer" posters and the like have never had to stay up all night
and "eat coffee" in order to meet deadlines.

~~~
jaggederest
I'm reasonably certain that advertising has a pretty big reputation as a
stress-driven hellscape, at least in the classic Madison avenue format. Lots
of deadlines and all-nighters

------
nnfy
The article is a swipe at evil silicon valley corporations who hide their
products' lack of value behind fancy advertisements; but are consumers with
freedom to choose not responsible for their choices?

~~~
CPUstring
The morality of the consumer vs. the morality of the supplier an interesting
problem. On one extreme, we have the drug dealer relationship. The supplier is
obviously more morally duplicitous, and the consumer is often pitied (at least
in liberal, anti-drug war circles). At the opposite side of the spectrum, you
have suppliers making entirely ok or even ok things selling them to bad
people. Are fertilizer providers to blame for consumers turning their products
into bombs? Obviously not (actually, I'm not sure legally, but common sense
says no).

In the middle, you have a wide array of relationships. Is Coca-Cola to blame
for the obesity epidemic? Are gun companies to blame for suicides or mass
shootings? Is Juicero to blame for customers being dumb shits?

I think when you answer different examples, you get a pattern: when a supplier
is selling a negative/zero value product but induces demand by playing off
human weakness, then they're doing something wrong.

Juicero is playing off human weakness (the wealthy tech nerds' desire to be
"hip" and "fit") just like a a fashion company plays off human weakness (by
creating unrealistic representations that it goads its customers into trying
to reach).

~~~
nnfy
I wouldn't go so far as to call desire to fit in or display wealth/success a
weakness, considering it is a sexual strategy which is basic human nature and
continues to be generally successful today. In this sense juicero arguably
provides a service, although an obviously subpar one given alternatives.

I'm not sure I follow your fashion industry example. Assuming youre referring
to weight, the so called unrealistic representations manufactured by the
fashion industry do not cause customers to spend extra money on clothing,
since customers simply won't fit into unreasonable sizes. And here, similarly,
fashion companies provide a service of status signalling.

In any case, these are both examples of consumers failing to personally choose
not to follow the herd. Additionally, corporations do not set standards in a
vacuum, consumers create demand and vote with their wallets.

------
thetruthseeker1
I understand the point the author is trying to make, but I do want to point
out, that if you lived in another country unlike USA, it would be hard to even
come up with a product like the quip or the juicer (however useless you may
think it is). You would have funding barriers, you may find it hard to find
people who have the engineering skill set to come up with a product that works
the way it does etc, or worse you may not even have a local market for your
product initially.

~~~
FridgeSeal
Oh no, what a pity.

It's harder to make pointless, bullshit companies that add literally nothing
and instead contribute to degrading conditions and pay.

I have zero sympathy for someone not being able to spin up a useless, zero-
effort company. Put some effort in and come up with something worthwhile that
contributes instead.

~~~
thetruthseeker1
If people had a choice to live in a country where it is hard to start
"meaningful" companies vs living in a country where it is so easy to start
companies that you can even start stupid companies, I would think most people
here will choose #2.

Now regarding degrading conditions and pay, that was not what I was commenting
about....

Also, one thing to remember is small 'stupid' companies (like juicer) will be
"taken care off" by free market economics. Over a period of years, if it does
well, then it is fair game. Else it might go bust. It is unlikely that is not
the outcome here.

~~~
FridgeSeal
> Also, one thing to remember is small 'stupid' companies (like juicer) will
> be "taken care off" by free market economics.

If I think there's one thing we've learnt from the last several years, it's
that the magical free market, doesn't do even half the things it's supposed to
do, and really isn't a good solution.

------
thesmallestcat
I'd like to add that the MTA allows the most manipulative, screaming-at-you
ads (depicted in this post). It's the least pleasant part of using the subway
in my opinion.

~~~
iamatworknow
I would say my least favorite part is seeing that empty car and not realizing
the reason why it's empty is because of the smell inside until the train's
already left the stop.

~~~
sotojuan
Yeah, there's way worse things that can happen in the subway than staring at a
picture with text.

------
radarsat1
Concerning RentBerry, it's the first I've heard of it and I know nothing about
California bylaws, but isn't it illegal to just put the price of rent up in an
unrestricted auction?

~~~
haltingthoughts
I sure hope not.

~~~
radarsat1
Why? It is in many places, it's very common which is why I asked. Leads to
frustration for property owners sure, but it helps balance the market, gives
some power to tenants, to enable a decent cost of living.

Ok I looked it up for SF:
[https://www.sftu.org/rentcontrol/](https://www.sftu.org/rentcontrol/)

Indeed, there is a control of only a few percent per year. So how is RentBerry
legal?

"If the owner re-rents before the 5-year period is up, the residential
property must be offered at the same rent that the former tenant was paying
(plus annual allowable increases.)" [https://www.sftu.org/are-you-paying-too-
much-rent/](https://www.sftu.org/are-you-paying-too-much-rent/)

------
simplehuman
2014, Medium: At last, a way to post blogs on the internet!

------
jstewartmobile
God bless you Fredrik deBoer!

------
_jal
My next startup will be RentColosseum. Screw this bidding with money thing,
renting an apartment really should be survival of the fittest.

We won't need a cut of the winner's rent (but can probably take it anyway),
because we'll televise it and profit on the ads.

Did I miss anything? Opaque, exploitive finance on proprietary weapons for
contestants, maybe?

~~~
rm_-rf_slash
Pivot idea: pay for admittance to a unit or building, and if you can throw the
existing tenants out the window, the place is yours.

Then you pay the landlord each month for the right to keep your door locked.
If a prospective tenant can outbid your month's rent, man the battle stations.

~~~
Hortinstein
I can't wait until I hear about a Young Adult novel with this as a primary
plot device. I will know where the idea came from.

~~~
rm_-rf_slash
If I make the protagonist a vampire I'll probably get a movie deal.

------
dsacco
I'm normally not critical of mod behavior, so I don't make this point lightly:

1\. The title was changed from something admittedly sensationalist, to
something that is _clearly_ antithetical to the point of the original title.
"Trends in tech" completely lacks the tone of the original title. If you don't
want to use a title with "horseshit" in it, fine, but change it to something
that matches the intention of the author at least. "Trends in tech" could be
anything from a VC thinkpiece, to technical language choices in startups, to
what the author actually wrote. How do I know if it's worth my time or aligns
with my interests if I'm a passing reader?

This title manages to completely neutralize the author's point by robbing it
of _any_ interesting lead-in. If a mod did this, it's what I would call
disingenuous curation of front page content. It's insidious because while
clickbait titles get more attention than they should, and unfairly so,
uninteresting titles receive proportionally less attention than they should.

2\. This post has 92 points in less than an hour and is _just barely_ on the
front page (as of this writing). It will probably slip off imminently. The top
post has less than 80 points and is over an hour old. Why? I understand there
are algorithm nuances, but that utterly lacks transparency.

I make these points because it raises an interesting juxtaposition between
what the community wants and what is beneficial to Y Combinator. Some of the
article could be interpreted as attacking Y Combinator's business model which
provides a potential incentive for what I noted above. But that does not make
it illegitimate given that it satisfies "intellectual curiosity" according to
HN guidelines and is very well-upvoted. It appears suspicious to me that it is
not higher up, and this is from someone who doesn't normally engage in this
sort of criticism.

~~~
dang
I can't find much to disagree with here, so have updated the title to add "A
critique", removed the moderation penalty from it, and rolled back the clock
on the story so it has more time on the front page.

If I have time, I'll come back and add a fuller explanation of what happened,
but the bottom line is: HN moderation is driven by trying to keep the
community happy while staying within the mandate of the site (which is
intellectual curiosity and civil, substantive discussion). That's the problem
we're trying to solve, not anything directly to do with YC's business. A happy
HN is worth more to YC than any other kind of HN, so it would be dumb to
optimize for anything else.

I'm marking this subthread offtopic now, which makes it fall to the bottom of
the thread, because otherwise the meta conversation will dominate the
discussion rather than the points raised by the article.

~~~
dsacco
I appreciate the transparency, dang. Thanks for coming out to respond. What's
more, I find that title agreeable without veering off in either direction.

Cheers!

------
antisthenes
> And yes. It probably is like libertarianism. I am a libertarian, and I don't
> take that as an insult.

Yes, that explains the economic illiteracy. What you describe as individuals
interacting with each other is really organizations interacting with
individuals, or 2 entities interacting with each other with big power
differentials in a market with low elasticity.

If you ever decide to learn economics past 101, look into what those terms
mean and what might happen in those markets.

~~~
dang
Personal swipes are not welcome in comments here. We've warned you before, so
if you want to continue commenting here, it's time to fix this.

That includes avoiding snark tropes like "you do realize, right?"
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14213226](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14213226))

We detached this subthread from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14212866](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14212866)
and marked it off-topic.

------
yequalsx
Swindling shouldn't be a crime? Doing a con shouldn't be a crime?

Society is a mirage? It clearly isn't as you are living in one and benefitting
from it. You may not want it to exist but clearly societies do exist. It's
obvious that libertarianism doesn't work at scale. Especially in a world with
so mmany people. Societies can be a failure too but there are plenty of
examples of success. There no examples of libertarian success at scale. Once
density reaches a critical mass libertarianism fails.

Clearly you don't care or haven't thought about society's role in moderating
exploitation and inequality in power.

~~~
dang
> _Clearly you don 't care or haven't thought_

That's unduly personal. Users here aren't allowed to address each other that
way, first because it's uncivil, and second because arguments get stronger
when such bits are edited out.

We detached this comment from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14212866](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14212866)
and marked it off-topic.

~~~
yequalsx
I don't think it was personal. I don't have a history of making personal
attacks. It's clear that society in the form of government has a role in
moderating exploitation. Someone who doesn't believe society should exist
either doesn't care about moderating exploitation or hasn't thought about it.

Do you know jstanley personally? Given sonne other comments that I've seen
that have not been flagged I begin to suspect that perhaps some bias is at
play with regard to your decision.

I'm not suggesting that my comment should be restored. Overall it doesn't
matter.

------
DonbunEf7
Don't you wake up in the morning, feeling dead inside, and look in the mirror,
wondering whether you ever were attractive in any way, whether you ever had
something unique and interesting to contribute to society, whether you really
are valued by your boss, whether your SO is attracted to you or to your bank
account, whether the point of life is at all related to what you've done with
your life so far?

This article isn't for you. It's for people who answer my questions with "I
have always been ugly, I have nothing of value to offer society, I don't
understand why I'm still employed, she left two years ago and took my heart,
and maybe nothing I've ever done in life is good."

~~~
mudil
You forgot the big guns: Google and Facebook, who literally exploit small
publishers and individual content creators. They are killing journalism and
content creation, and all for the ever escalating profit.

(I run a med tech website that reports on medical technologies for doctors and
med professionals. I am an MD. We are publishing every day since 2004. News,
interviews and exclusive reports. We have a half a million page views a month
from professional readership, and Google pays us pennies for Adsense. $60/day?
WTF!)

~~~
Kalium
Once upon a time, an executive said “Half the money I spend on advertising is
wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half.” It turns out that once you
can measure very closely, it's often much more than half.

~~~
mudil
In the space of a decade the share of the UK advertising market going to UK
regional and national newspapers has declined from nearly a half to little
more than 10 per cent. Money which had been spent on journalists holding those
in power to account, particularly at a local level, has been transferred to
two US-owned digital platforms which exist purely to exploit content rather
than create it.

~~~
Kalium
Yup. When you can measure how useful marketing spend is, it gets redirected in
more optimal ways for the goals of those with the marketing budgets.

It's of course completely possible that I'm totally wrong in every way, but
I'm under the impression that the primary goals of those with marketing
budgets do not generally include supporting journalists holding those in power
to account.

------
lacampbell
I stopped reading at "late capitalism".

------
peterwwillis
> Our society is a hellish wasteland and I am dying inside.

Settle down there, pampered white guy living in new york city.

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jondubois
We need to push the reset button on Capitalism. The government of each country
should repossess all the assets and money within that country and redistribute
them to everyone within that country based purely on each person's age (so
older people would get more and it won't affect their ability to retire).

~~~
demonshalo
in my book, people like you are very dangerous. I fear people of your ideals
far more than I fear terrorism or anything of that sort.

Let that sink in for a while!

~~~
jondubois
I think it would shake things up and it would be fun for everyone.

Capitalism as it is today is like a Monopoly game where all the properties
have already been bought up and new players are forced to 'play' anyway
(purely for the gratification of those who are already winning); it hasn't
been fun for a very long time. We need to start a fresh game to make things
interesting.

I think that things would be better if everyone saw life as a game rather than
a race to the finish line.

~~~
0xdeadbeefbabe
> I think that things would be better if everyone saw life as a game rather
> than a race to the finish line.

Does it matter what history thinks?

------
arjie
I'm too late to save most of you (or myself), but for the rest: this is a
contentless rant. Don't waste your time.

------
golergka
So, let me get it right: this attack focuses on two vanity products that
people buy from their free will to spend money on bullshit and two
'marketplaces' that nobody is forcing you to use?

The author makes a boring mistake of taking people for irresponsible, stupid
children that should be protected from making bad choices. Thanks, no. I've
bought a lot of bullshit products in my lifetime, paid for a lot of bullshit
subscriptions, and I'm happy to have the freedom to have made all this stupid
mistakes, and a lot more too, that taken not just my money.

~~~
iamatworknow
I don't think that's what the author is saying. If anything, I think the point
is that the "revolutionary" nature of most hip companies (not necessarily from
SV) is really not revolutionary at all. Cutting edge progress in tech doesn't
happen nearly as much as the general public perceives, but they believe it is
because the slick marketing, subscription service for mundane products, adding
an LCD touch screen to an existing product _feels_ like technological
progress, but really isn't. The few real leaps in technology that actually are
unique and applicable outside of selling some product or service aren't
visible to the end user.

When Netflix caught on everyone thought "wow, technology!" Only some of us in
the tech world realize that the _idea_ of streaming movies and TV to your
house isn't the amazing breakthrough they made -- it's the infrastructure
behind making it work, and the layperson doesn't give a shit about that.

