What would Marx have thought about the Slack sneakers?
Terrible content. No good. Just the worst
The fucking Slack sneakers
I’ve already posted some thoughts on the Slack sneakers, but I really want to expand on my seething hatred for these God-forsaken things here.
I’m going to be taking about Marxist materialism in this section, so if that frightens you then feel free to cover your eyes and scroll to the Jeff Bezos rant below.
If you’re not already familiar with Marx’s analysis of commodity fetishism, here’s a quote:
“A commodity appears at first sight an extremely obvious, trivial thing. But its analysis brings out that it is a very strange thing, abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties.”
What Marx is saying here is that under the present economic system, it’s not enough for a thing to simply be a thing. For a product to really succeed in the market, it has to be instilled with mystical qualities and claim to give the consumer something beyond physical when they buy it. An example is how in the 1920s, cigarettes were marketed as “torches of freedom” and sold as a tool of women’s liberation, or how today Nike basically has a monopoly on making you good at sport.
This is a good video on commodity fetishism, which I think is an important topic to understand even if you’re not interested in any of Marx’s other ideas.
Moving on to the Slack sneakers. Slack’s branding is inseparably tied to the idea of productivity. Despite evidence that might show how Slack is actually distracting us and forcing us to stay longer at work, it’s still marketed as a must-have office productivity tool. So when Cole Haan slaps the Slack branding onto some $120 sneakers, they’re not just selling some colorful overpriced fabric. They’re selling people on letting this toxic productivity culture permeate even further into the rest of their lives while claiming to be “writing new rules” for how the world works. And I hate it.
So there you have it. A Marxist materialist take on the Slack sneakers. Feel free to dunk on me on Twitter for this.
Another thing that I hate
The maniacal laughter is what does it for me. My guess is that while he’s clutching his cyborg fists and laughing, he’s actually imagining how far off a bridge he could throw an Amazon warehouse unionist.
As always, Robert Evans offers a valuable perspective.
“Whenever I'm working on something that's not vim related, I want to lick a cheese grater”
Here’s the reddit post.
The comments are split between vim users telling the OP to just write the email in vim and then paste it into the browser, and emacs users telling them to write the email in emacs and use emac’s built-in emailing system to send it. There’s also a comment by a bot that posted the numbers for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline because it thought the OP actually wanted to lick a cheese grater. Normal tech stuff.
The rock post
At least once a week, someone I follow on tech twitter will comment that they hate the latest discourse, and since I’m a masochist I’ll spend an hour searching for what the controversy is this time. It’s like playing “Who’s that Pokemon?”, just that instead of cute monsters it’s rich white tech guys who’ll probably get to decide whether or not you’re allowed to have a paycheck. Anyway, lately the discourse has been on optimal rock sizes.
I get the argument for asking these kind of interview questions. Judging the candidate’s analytical abilities, or whatever. What annoys me is the power imbalance. Tech companies hold so much bargaining power over developers that they’re able to tell us that our work experience and all the projects we’ve built don’t actually matter, and that what they really need to know is if we can calculate optimal rock throwing diameter. And we just have to sit there and take it. And if you ask them about their turnover rate they’ll put a little x near your name and never call you back.
Don’t get me wrong, I used to love these kind of puzzles. I spent a lot of my summers as a kid sitting inside solving riddle books, which I partly blame for my habit of overthinking literally everything. So when I heard that tech interviewers ask these kind of questions, I thought it’d be fun. But now when I think about being asked to list how many ways I could turn off a lightbulb, all I picture is having to sit in a room with a smug unwashed tech dude who’s smirking at me while I try to wax lyrically enough about light switches to be able to afford rent next month. Surely we can do better.
This virtual reality training software lets managers practice firing crying old people
Where do I start with this? I don’t. I’m moving on.
Some actual good posts
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Any typos in the above post are caused by bit flips and are not my fault.