The tech world is sci-fi dorks who completely miss the point of sci-fi
The tech world is sci-fi dorks who completely miss the point of sci-fi
Just when you thought it couldn't get Metaworse: Facebook pistol whips itself. Also: "Succession" similarities, going Gonzo, Doug Stanhope on cops and the military, etc.
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Metaverse chorus verse
The big reveal about Mark Zuckerberg this past week: He’s got all the money in the world yet no one in his life that can say, “Um, maybe you shouldn’t do this.” He’s got billions but not enough sense to hire an actor people already like to spokesperson his “Facebook Papers? What Facebook Papers?” distraction narrative. ScarJo or Channing Tatum would do it for a few million, right? C’mon Zuck, you’ve probably got that in your swear jar.
Instead we’re force-fed a video where robozuck tells us about our lame robot future where we can, um, pick out which clothes we wear? Imagine that!
Let’s just say it didn’t go well. The only way it coulda gotten more blowback is if Zuck closed it by saying, “You can only enter the Metaverse if you admit Hannah Gadsby is not funny.”
And this follow-up vid where he performs “I’m a normal gamer boy” with some gamer lady named Deb is David Brent levels of uncomfortable.
“Arizona Sunshine got me and my friends through the first few months of the pandemic.”
“That’s awesome, Mark!”“Oh man, I love Beat Saber!”
“So do I!”
Poor Deb. It’s bad enough when you have to pretend to laugh at the boss’ jokes and it’s not being filmed. Plus, she’s gotta gloss over how one of the games mentioned is named Pistol Whip. Um, does Mark love Pistol Whip too? Because I’d love to hear him say Pistol Whip over and over: “I love to whip punks with my pistol!” “That’s awesome, Mark!” “Pistol Whip! Bop bop bop!” “OK, Mark. We need you to settle down now.” “But I’m a Pistol Whipper! I crush mad skulls with my big a** barrels. Whippeeee! [Pulls out a machine gun and fires it up in the air like he’s in the Taliban.] I don’t need to go to space. I. Whip. Pistols!!!!! [Knocks himself unconcious.]”
And by the way, does it matter this whole metaverse thing sounds like a dystopian nightmare!? I understand no one under 25 can maintain eye contact anymore, but is the plan to just do away with real human interactions entirely? Theory: Zuck is so bad at social interactions that his goal is to slowly make the rest of us just as terrible at them. That way, he can rule forever; in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man reports stellar Q4 earnings.
But big money and a massive launch campaign doesn’t mean there’s real demand, as we learned from Quibi. Our best hope is the metaverse is just another top down solution in search of a problem that doesn’t really exist. After all, the tech world loves to hype things people don't actually want. (See: Segways, Google Glasses, VR goggles, etc.) The tech-media-industrial-complex funnels these press-releases-disguised-as-news-stories down our throats, but thankfully we don’t have to swallow them (yet).
And who cares about this name change? These rebranding efforts may matter to the C-suite, but the gen pop doesn’t seem to care very much. Hmm, I wonder what percentage of the time this kinda rebranding actually sticks; I know, I’ll go Alphabet it!
The future I see is Facebook pursuing the path of Big Tobacco. They’ll take the hit and clean up their act in America/Europe while continuing to reap profits from the rest of the world. It’s happening already: In 2020, Facebook spent more than 3.2 million employee hours finding, labeling, and taking down information the company concluded was misleading. Only 13% of those hours were spent working on content outside the USA though. So good luck, Myanmars of the world. It’s the American way: We’ll clean up our rivers while dumping sewage on everyone else.
The thing I can’t grok: The tech world is made up entirely of science fiction dorks who somehow managed to learn nothing from reading all that science fiction. Hear that doorbell ringing? It’s the DYSTOPIAN NIGHTMARE FUTURE YOU ORDERED. Did these geeks not get the memo that sci-fi is there to warn us!?
I’m not even a big fan of the genre, but even I know the typical sci-fi scenario serves as a cautionary tale, not a blueprint for the future. Brave New World wasn’t intended as a functional spec for a new SaaS called Soma. Philip K. Dick wasn’t writing instruction manuals for designing the future. You’re not supposed to read Orwell and go, “Great use of language! We should start talking more like that.” You’d think egghead engineers would understand that. But maybe it’s all a bit too meta for them.
Quickies
🌀 Besides the nails, Freddy Krueger has a pretty cool look going on.
🌀 I liked it more when movie villains just wanted money or power. Now they're always pseudo-philosophers who give confusing monologues and I can’t even figure out why they wanna blow up everything because I never read Nietschze.
🌀 The dogs they have at airports now always scare me – but I guess they're sniffing for bombs not bomb ass edibles.
🌀 Pretty cool that weed is medicine now. All these years I thought I was doing drugs. Turns out I'm just a health fanatic!
🌀 TikTok has proven that the most bandwidth-per-second form of communication is dance.
🌀 “Security envelopes” are really big upping themselves. Security? Really? Um, let’s just stick with “not transparent.”
🌀 Twitter constantly demonstrates how much the members of the mainstream media hate each other. So it's mystifying they can't comprehend why the rest of the country hates the mainstream media.
🌀 Now a magical phrase: “I don’t have an opinion on that.”
🌀 When hate is good for business and business is your culture's religion, then you wind up elevating hate into a religion.
Gonzo-ing
My Halloween costume wasn’t too much of a stretch.
“Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming ‘Wow! What a Ride!’”
-Hunter S. Thompson
P.S. I’m gonna go gonzo and talk psychedelics etc at my Misguided Meditation show on 11/11 in NYC. Tickets/info here and you’ll get $5 off with code “breathe” there.
Also, some Boston shows this weekend:
Democracy Brewing - Nov 5, 2021
Zone 3 Comedy (Headlining) - Nov 5, 2021
The Hideout - Nov 6, 2021
Democracy Brewing - Nov 6, 2021
Cambridge Comedy Club - Nov 6, 2021
You gotta support the troops, right?
I was recently watching Too Soon: Comedy After 9/11 and it features a segment on Doug Stanhope, a terrific comedian who flies under the radar. If there’s a pandering norm, Stanhope’s standup will mock it. And he got plenty of blowback for mocking cops after 9/11.
👇👇👇
To read the rest, you need to be a paid subscriber to the Rubesletter ($5/month or $50/year). If you’re not a subscriber, you’ll miss out on the rest of this newsletter which includes:
Stanhope clips discussing cops, the military, and “hero pu**y”
What will happen to comics like Stanhope in the future?
Tina Fey discussing Amy Poehler’s first day at SNL and how she made it clear “she wasn’t there to be cute”
“The D’Amelio Show” and mental health
The phrase “No true Scotsman”
The secret ingredient to bullying: a victim who fights back ineffectively
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