Good Morning. Hello. How are you? #1392
Rick's three laws of ad-supported products, Walmart and Vizio, Advertising was Silicon Valley's first enshittification victim, not just the means, Chagos Islands cecessation, Kites are fun, Sinead
Good morning, dear friend, hello. How are you? Holding up okay? I do hope so. I hope everything is going swimmingly.
On the way home from school “Kites are Fun” came on and it really might be one of the most glorious, ridiculous songs ever made. Just absolute amazing harmonies, all about the innocent pleasure of flying kites. Is it some kind of adult metaphor I am missing? I don’t think so, I think it’s just a swell song about flying kites, with an amazing three-part harmony on an NNNNN-sound that you really don’t get anywhere else.
Been on a Sinead kick the last week or so, I still miss her. Recently came across two Sinead tracks I hadn’t really heard before. Or, more likely, just didn’t remember existed: her performance at Roger Waters &co’s presentation of The Wall Live in Berlin where she does “Mother” and it made me want to cry it was so great. I forgot that that performance had a film to it. I honestly don’t think I’ve listened to it more than twice since I was in a big Dave-Gilmour-is-the-real-post-Syd-soul-of-Floyd phase back then. I am in that phase again. Though in between I had a Roger Wasters phase. But now I am off of him. Except live he is still pretty awesome live I will always have a soft spot for a guy who puts the words TRUMP IS A PIG in 50 foot high letters to a crowd 35,000 people in Greensboro, NC.
And then there is her two-line part in the Band Aid 30 version of “Do they know it’s Christmas” which is, of course, the best two lines in that particular version. But, you know, not a lot to work with on that one.
Her collaboration with Matt Johnson of The The, “Kingdom of Rain” also came on this morning. Amazing song. Unfortunate use of the word “Spurted” but otherwise a perfect Sinead duet. Her vocal delivery of “this young girrrrl” is just majestic.
This morning we are listening to some band called Yesness. I don’t know why or how it got into my “To Investigate” queue. It is a little jazzy. It is a little postrocky. It has a collaboration with Kishi Bashi on it. It is.. fine. Probably will not warrant a re-listen. But it has a great title: “See You at the Solipsist Convention.”
[edit: there is a real banger of a track toward the end that I quite liked]
Walmart is buying Vizio and I guess that checks out. You guys know how much I love Walmart, but ew. There’s a part of Walmart that dreams of being a Silicon Valley doucheco, and Vizio already is one. Walmart’s had this Silicon Valley innovation hub for… two decades now? It has a giant ad network. It dreams of being Amazon just like Amazon dreams of being Walmart. So, you know, from that perspective, this deal checks out.
But it is insane how you cannot buy a television these days that isn’t riddled with ads and data mining.
(And yes, Vizio injects their own ads into the shit you’re watching. And tracks everything you watch. They got in big trouble for it, but only for one little part that they then slightly tweaked and now the whole thing is just fine by the government).
And I work in adtech! I once dreamed of offering consumers pretty much everything for free in their house, covered in advertising. Who wouldn’t take toilet paper for free if it were covered in ads? But what I did not countenance was enshittification. That Silicon Valley ultimately makes everything worse.
This is a thing that hasn’t really clicked for most people: advertising is not the means of Silicon Valley’s enshittification of the world: it was its first victim. I will die on this hill, though it would make more sense if I could actually finish my book on this topic, which I can’t do cuz I gotta, you know, work in advertising. Advertising was of the first more-or-less-fine things in the world that got chewed up and digested and shat out buy the Valley, in a much worse state than it was in before.
In my mind, if you got a free TV that ads were paying for — which is essentially Vizio’s business model — it would havbe been different. To whit. Rick’s three laws of offering an ad-supported product:
The bargain should be been explicit up front, As in, you knowingly chose to get a TV blanketed in ads and data mining, instead of them pretending otherwise and tricking you, which is the way it is now. People don’t hate ads, they hate the fucking lying and secrecy.
It should be actually free, or at least severely discounted, and not, you know, the same fucking cost as TVs without adware. Key difference.
There should be an alternative. There would still be TVs you could buy that didn’t have this shit on them. There are not anymore! There is no TV you can buy not completely covered in ads.
I love ads, but i like choices and I like explicit deals. The way it is currently implemented is bullshit. Ad-supported products should be opt-in, with real alternatives, and they should actually be fucking free.
Relatedly, friend of mine (hi warren!) wrote in to talk about enshittification, since the Macquarrie dictionary down in Australia made it the word of the year. And I wrote him back:
I was thinking yesterday about my fridge, as I stupidly left the door open. I noticed the thing was engineered to sort of keep a wave of air going straight down, in front of the door, when it was open, to keep the cold air in. I mused about how many decades of engineering go into a modern fridge, how American engineers just kept improving upon the thing for, like, a hundred years.
Then I thought about Silicon Valley inventing something and spending a hundred years improving upon it instead of turning it into extractive, exploitative shit and I literally, actually laughed out loud at the idea of Silicon Valley actually caring about their inventions enough to work to improve them for the consumer.
We are so fucked if the Silicon Valley mindset expands to appliances, cars, trains. It already is, and it’s gonna get worse as more industries become like the auto industry right now and take inspiration from Silicon Valley and — I kid you not, this is really happening — try and charge you monthly for functionality like heated seats in your car.
Yesterday as I thought about Walmart buying Vizio I was thinking about how, back when I was a shit-hot NYC VC, I would get pitches from tech bros all the time trying to disrupt some entrenched industry, because the entrenched industry was ossified and not doing anything interesting. And then yesterday, upon hearing the news about Vizio, I thought:
https://bsky.app/profile/rickwebb.net/post/3lcgppbywjc2o(Hrm not sure if that is going to paste in but we will just have faith.)
But of course it is absolutely laughable now, the concept of Silicon Valley making a better version of a product than old-school engineering America. Can you imagine for a hot second buying a fridge made by a Silicon Valley company? God no. It would crash constantly. The idea of them making a simple, awesome, great TV with no data mining? Inconceivable.
And, of course, their dogma of enshittification is spreading and you can’t actually trust any one else to make a TV consumers actually want anymore. It is just going to get worse. Cars without buttons, cars charging subscriptions for heated seats, toothbrushes leaking chemicals into the ground water, my god the whole thing is so stinkin absurd.
Anyway. Before I go full Zitron we will just stop and use my new GMHHAY catchphrase: this coulda been a think piece.™
News update: The United Kingdom is giving up its fight and consenting to cede to Mauritius the Chagos Islands, home to America’s super-secret Indian Ocean base, Diago Garcia, the one we use to bomb assorted parts of Asia and stage Bin-Laden-killing missions. I personally think Mauritius’ claim is ethnically and morally tenuous AF, but it is pretty legally sound, and in any case, the UK and US have hardly been great stewards of the islands, kicking all the Chagossians off of Diego Garcia so we could make a base. But hey, Mauritius is giving the US a 99-year (to start) lease on all of Diego Garcia and the Chagossians get to go back to the Chagos Islands but not Diego Garcia, so, you know, not a whole lot of improvement there.
Anyway, important news you probably didn’t get since the newspapers in America have to put six stories on the front page about Joe’s pardon of his son.
…which I suppose I gotta have an opinion on now because the media seems to think it matters. My opinion is that it does not matter anymore, those norms have been changed, and in any case if you are a parent who does not put being a parent first you are a sociopath and of course Hunter Biden should be left the fuck alone. Even writing about it is them winning and it is studid and of course you should pardon your own fucking kid. If you don’t like it take the pardon power away, fine by me, but also if he does not pardon all of death row this month he can go screw.
This morning I said to Jane “hey I know you like being early to school how about we go quick today and see how far up in the line we can get?” Like it was a brand new idea, and a fun game instead of a life lesson and boom. Bob’s your uncle. We’re so far up in line, it’s ridiculous. Woulda been even further up, too, if it weren’t for that one pesky slow car. But still. She was very excited. Only the third time this year she gets to perform the early-kids-only ritual of gate-licing the front door awaiting its unlocking to all funnel in. Special treat, and so nice to see her, you know, process cause and effect.
Shoegaze playlist for you today. Been working through the To Investigate list. God. It is 62 hours long, and I would like to get through it before the end of the year, but the end-of-the-year best-ofs are coming in and the thing is ballooning even as I try and cut albums. Might bleed into January. I wish no one would start their best-of shit till January. If there is ever a constitutional convention, I’m gonna be there pushing for an amendment saying as much.
Anyway this is all new stuff I think? Oh Ariel Love Feed is old, though new to me — my friend Ashley set me right on that one. I am obsessed with this new Red Hot compilation, Transa. I got through all eight discs of it yesterday and there isn’t a bad song in the batch. I know that Arthur Baker and Pharoah Sanders collaborating does not scream out “shoegaze” but it’s a great piece and after thinking on it long and hard, I am convinced it belongs here. Rick Webb, Shoegaze Supreme Court. This is a power bestowed upon me by being in a shoegaze band at exactly the time it was least popular.
All right. See you tomorrow. In Manaus. For lunch.
—
Thanks for reading.
And hey! Maybe buy one of my books!
Good Morning, Hello, How Are You vol 1.
so what i'm hearing is that i eliminated a TV form my life just in time (FOMO slayed)!