Introversion

When a trailer looks that mediocre, knowing that trailers are often assembled from the best a film can offer, you know it’ll suck.

Duh.

On iOS, I use and love Paprika.

Why? To make workers fearful. Fearful people are less likely to protest or unionize.

Will it be how Ukraine should be left to die, how the Palestinians need to be exterminated, how unions are bad for the American dream, or how Biden is senile?

Yes.

Not any good parenting, anyway.

I know, right? Coulda been $420, or $42069. It’s like they’re not even trying!

Adios, puddin’ fingers!

Remember: The cruelty is the point.

Many Americans worry too, Canada.

It’s better than no drop.

Well, points for being transparent, I guess? 🤷‍♂️

We can only hope. 👍

tiny violin playing

press conference

So, free publicity for his campaign I guess?

Totally. But Adam Neumann wasn’t going to settle for “low-margin”, nosirree! Low margins don’t buy you jets and mansions.

In the beginning, WeWork definitely was about renting to smaller companies (or individuals) at reasonable prices, providing decent (if not upscale) accomodations. That’s probably a decent little business.

But their CEO had (or at least, promoted) delusions about WeWork providing a fundamentally different experience. Some of those delusions were IIRC software projects he claimed would allow renters to automate and improve their network and electricity use. He sold this bullshit on talk shows, and gave this as a reason that WeWork wasn’t just another renter of office space. In reality, they didn’t have the expertise to do anything like he claimed, and it all came to nought.

Maybe if he hadn’t been spending money like a fleet of drunken sailors, much of it on himself or vanity projects, they might’ve not cratered as badly, or at least as quickly.

If you’re interested in some of the gory WeWork details, I can recommend either reading The Cult of We: WeWork, Adam Neumann, and the Great Startup Delusion, or (if you have an Apple+ subscription) watching We Crashed.

I frankly don’t understand how so many people didn’t quickly peg Adam Neumann as a charlatan. I guess everyone was more worried about Fear Of Missing Out than Fear Of Losing All My Money, and it drove some really dumb investments in WeWork.

In the era of low interest rates, a lot of stupidly-high valuations happened in tech. Many of those idiotic valuations were predicated on the idea that companies could afford to lose money for a long time in pursuit of “market share”, and then pivot to profitability when they wanted that. Never mind that if your business model is fundamentally about being the cheaper alternative while losing money — waving at Uber — the only path to being profitable goes through gaining monopoly powers and hiking prices to much higher levels that consumers will hate — waving at Uber again.

The truly dumb thing about WeWork’s valuation was that it was being valued as if it were a tech stock. It was a renter of office space, period. All of its “secret tech sauce” was a combination of lies and aspirational bullshit from its bullshit-artist CEO.