Hey HN! I want to hear the arguments as to why this is or isn't a positive development for society. Not whether or not it's the right business decision, or whether or not they should have the right to do it.
Any thoughts?
Any thoughts?
Its good for Instagram, and its good for the economy. Society? More data needed. I worry its going to turn into Tinder for purchasing, and it simply greases the pipeline of purchasing things you don't need with money you don't have in the name of social status ("We buy things we don't need with money we don't have to impress people we don't like.”) [++].
[+] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-tyranny-of-ch...
[+] https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/oct/21/choice-...
[+] https://www.fastcompany.com/3031364/the-future-of-work/why-h...
[++] http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/25775-we-buy-things-we-don-t...
I think you can work up a good lather of doomsaying from just that quote, but it's all been said before -- so it's not really a new development. It reminds me indirectly of David Foster Wallace's essay E unibus pluram: television and U.S. Fiction:
It's true that there's something sad about the fact that young lion David Leavitt's sole descriptions of certain story characters is that their T-shirts have certain brand names on them. But the fact is that, for most of the educated young readership for whom Leavitt writes, members of a generation raised and nourished on messages equating what one consumes with who one is, Leavitt's descriptions do the job. In our post-'50, inseparable-from-TV association pool, brand loyalty is synecdochic of identity, character.