How Bodega typifies Silicon Valley’s cultural ignorance
engadget.com
engadget.com
You would get awful reviews if you weren't doing a good job of it, but aside from that, why would anyone really be offended?
If you guys were coherent, places like Olive Garden should never exist. And I am not even starting on how much of a shit job Olive Garden is doing of trying to look Italian, because I don't care.
Europe, with such a rich mix of cultures should be a trigger-hell for you Americans.
(I am being sarcastic) How can you really cope with all this?
Edit: to add insult to injury, how should we Italians feel about being always portrayed as "pizza, mafia, gobbledygook mamma mia". It's so far from our reality, we don't care.
Edit2: better phrasing
I bet many people would care, but they would not persistently & vocally voice their discomfort for fear of retribution/confrontation.
> how should we Italians feel about being always portrayed as "pizza, mafia, gobbledygook mamma mia"?
In popular media? Complain to the broadcaster/studio/publisher, support organisations like the Italic Institute of America to do this on your behalf.
Why should you do that? Because you think that the stereotypes unfairly prejudice Italians who may be denied opportunities in those countries.
> I bet many people would care, but they would not persistently & vocally voice their discomfort for fear of retribution/confrontation.
How about: because they have better things to do with their time? The perception of oppression of any group you can name is mostly just manufactured.
> Because you think that the stereotypes unfairly prejudice Italians who may be denied opportunities in those countries.
If this is actually happening, then such a country has a much deeper problem of people being dumb enough to deny opportunities out of petty prejudices. This is not a normal state.
> This is not a normal state.
I think you underestimate how systemically racist most countries are.
Culture is important, you must know yours and others, but I really believe people on certain echo chamber aren't getting their priorities straight.
Or, if you let me, they have life SO good, they have run out of good things to complain about.
But I know I may sound to harsh about this. It's the perception we get from overseas.
This is my perception of things. Or, as I sometimes put it in person, "people haven't experienced a war in a long time so they're going batshit with priorities now".
Also: it's not that we run out of issues to solve, it's that most of the actually important ones - like energy security, climate change, stabilizing agriculture and healthcare, developing - are hard and don't lend themselves into us-vs-them thinking. Even figuring out how one can contribute to that is difficult, and it's easier to find some proxy irrelevant non-issue to bitch about instead. And media only amplifies that.
EDIT:
Also, and this is probably a very controversial opinion: I think that the ongoing talk about a lot of those proxy-issues is strongly, actively harmful. The number one focus of the world right now should be stabilizing what we have. The technological civilization is very fragile, and at the point in which if it collapses, it won't rebuild itself for millennias, because all the easily obtainable high-density energy sources have been used up. And with the death of technological civilization, all the dreams of freedom, equality, long and healthy life, will die too.
Serious: we are definitely not ready.
She was not there, but her roommate, also a prostitute, from Russia (or an alike country I don't remember), with one fake leg, was.
As he was complaining how miserable he was, she starts lecturing him of how Americans people have stopped having real issues, or living in life threatening situations, and so they invents themselves new ones which looks ridiculous for people coming from less developed countries.
For me it's exactly that.
And don't get me wrong, I'm perfectly aware that there are people in deep trouble in America, homeless or not wealthy enough to treat nasty diseases right.
And this is a first world problem you can also witness in some European countries too. Or cities, not necessarily while countries.
It's like we, humans, cannot bare to go through life being just happy.
Secondly, a lot of Americans are behaviorally conditioned by Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and Roger Ailes. They elected our President, but they don't represent America (as I assume you don't support Mussolini's ideals because you're from Italy - also check out "The Brainwashing of my Dad" on Amazon Prime to understand the plight of many young Americans dealing with this insanity)
Some people live off emotional editorials. Not to be confrontational, but how worked up you seem to be upon reading this fluff piece in Italy makes me think you're not that far off from a middle-america pleb.
Our media system has been developed to evoke emotion because emotions sell... don't buy into it unless you want to be pissed off.
Also, what don't you like about the Olive Garden specifically? While I was in the process of becoming an engineer, I was a OG waiter trying to pay my college bills. Nobody is calling it Italian... It was developed as an American company. I really don't understand the argument. Americans should just eat wheat, corn and chicken? Sounds a lot like cultural appropriation which is the first sign of fascism.
My curries are not Indian, they're American. My Mole isn't Mexican, it's American. My paella isn't Spanish, my fried rice isn't Chinese, my panang curry isn't really Thai, and yeah, I make a grilled cheese macaroni that might blow your mind. Deal with it.
Food is the common denominator between cultures. It doesn't matter where you're from or who you were raised by, if you enjoy food: you love everyone, because we all have our secrets of deliciousness. Please don't try to make it a dividing factor.
To add insult to injury, people from your country came here, incorporated what they loved about your culture with ours and to you they're 'portrayed as "pizza, mafia, gobbledygook mamma mia".' I don't think this way, and I don't believe anyone I know in this country feels that way.
If you want to generalize, I will too which means as an Italian, you're a Mussolini supporting fascist. However, if you're willing to be an empathetic human being, I will too, and maybe you'll understand generalizations are one of the main sources of hatred that you should avoid.
The author here either has an agenda against someone at this company or an issue with gentrification (an issue all major American metropolises are dealing with). Don't assume some wacko's point of view defines America's situation because Silicon Valley was name dropped. Again: Nobody wears google glass in this country aside from the diluted.
I'm online in many ways, and no, I didn't know that.
When writing an article on cultural ignorance, try to be mindful of your own echo chamber as well!
Local mom & pop stores have been under assault by all kinds of well-funded rivals for decades, including CVS, Target Mini-Stores, gas station franchises, and bottling companies working with vending machine distributors. Nevertheless, the little corner stores still keep ticking in many areas thanks to goods and services not offered by these bigger competitors, including specialty food, extended hours, and money transfer services.
However, if Target were to rebrand their mini-stores as "Red Bodegas" or something similar there would be similar outrage. It's one thing to compete, it's another thing to play dirty by usurping the little guy's brand or throwing your weight around too much in a very obvious or threatening way.
If I were McDonald and Rajan, I would use this opportunity to rebrand to something more acceptable, offer a mea culpa, and maybe even figure out some way to work with real bodegas and local stores (shared distribution for certain items to lower costs? Machine learning for real bodegas' inventory? "Local" goods? Spillover sales?)
You can do ok running vending machines, but it isn’t any kind of disruptive business. I wonder what kind of spin they put on Bodega to sell it to investors.
"Imagine if Facebook was vending machine. There are over 7 Billion people in the world today who could potentially use a vending machine! And if we can capture just half that market and convince them to spent just a dollar a day each that's over 1 Trillion Dollars a Year! We will Disrupt the whole vending machine industry by using cutting edge Cloud Technology, Deep Learning, State Of The Art Facial Recognition and Advanced Social Graphs to make sure that each of our vending machines has a uniquely curated selection of the best Locally Produced, Organic products. And of course all of these features will be tightly integrated with our Truly Amazing App. This will be the perfect companion for the Digital Nomad Generation of the Future!"
Putting these inside building lobbies means they can serve far fewer people than a regular vending machine; their costs have to be far better than a regular vending machine for this plan to make sense.
Huh? Lots (probably a vast majority) of vending machines are in building lobbies or otherwise semipublic spaces.
It's any author's task to make their cases in a way so that people pay attention. In this case, this maybe failed. As I mentioned in my other comment: Using terms such as "offensive" when trying to make a serious point to fact- and argument-oriented people (which one typically finds on HN) might not work very well.
It's better to be critical of the author's approach to making the case than to assume that the problem are the readers.
would you think this is a universal response (and therefore problem) or perhaps only among a certain readership? would an author not have to take into account the average response to their phrasing (or that of the audience they address)? if this is not the hn readership, then I would think a word like 'offensive' is comprising a lot of meaning in a concentrated way (ofc you can still disagree with the judgment, that the scenario is truly offensive).
Background: I live in Munich, Germany which grew from ~1.3m to 1.5m people in my lifetime. I've never lived in the city center, and never outside. Just in "normal" neighborhoods, as I'd call them. And the same discussion about "brick and mortar book stores" and their downfall and people lamenting their demise and now this same thing. I've only ever had one of those "corner stores" near where I lived and it was basically a small supermarket. You went there in emergencies (shops here are only open from 7:00 to 20:00 at most, mind you) because there wasn't much stuff. I guess a few people went there exclusively but the selection was really limited.
TLDR: How can I live in a big city and still have never have experienced any upside to this? I'm not saying corner stores are bad at all, but I really don't get the fuss.
Lets be honest here - they're just vending machines. Sure, Bodega is a very bad choice of name, but it was the FastCompany article that said they want to kill mom and pop stores and rob their familities, not the founders.
Of course, I'm not from America (australia) so I'm definitely out of touch with the cultural part of the situation, but that's just what it looks like from here
If people do it, maybe it's because they don't feel this family thing ? So does it matter after all ?
Not supporting the vending machines here, just interrogating you :-)
If my nearest corner store closed down tomorrow it would probably take me 6 month to notice.
Our corner stores provide items on credit for local residents when money stretches thin before the paycheck arrives, they deliver for free to the poor old lady who can't leave her home, or they hold your home keys if you needed to give them to someone when you were away. In exchange, we buy some stuff from them, even if it's a bit more expensive.
Plus, some have relationships with local farmers and other small scale producers, and so can get some genuinely better products than supermarkets. I always bought national fruits and bread from them.
It's my understanding that bodegas (gas stations in car towns) make their money from "unsavory" things: nicotine, alcohol, and lottery tickets.
Unless Bodega is planning on stocking vending machines with this stuff (they can't; it's generally illegal), corner stores will be fine.
Obviously this is just one gas station in one small town, but then that's probably all there is to this discussion.
If bodegas/corner stores whatever are worth it, people will continue to buy from there and Bodega nor any other “shiny” startup will stand a chance against them.
My guess is she doesn’t believe in freemarket and thinks that someone can simply kill corner stores by throwing money at a startup.
even just the startup's name "Bodega" told us locals and natives -- the involuntary first-wave recipients of Silicon Valley's fucked up experiments with our lives -- all we needed to know.
FIRST wave? You think this is first? The fact the battle is over branding at all is the biggest sign the war is already over regarding "Silicon Valley's fucked up experiments with our lives."
---
There is nothing new about saying the Valley's products are out of touch, or positioned to change the physical landscape of society in a destructive way, or replacing personal interaction with web forms and call trees, or do damage to user's psyche just to maximize engagement and ARPU. Likewise there is nothing new about "internet threatens mom & pop business model." And in the grand scheme of things, bodeags are of the category "mom and pop".
Has everyone become this accustomed and propagandized to the inevitability of business models crushing unnecessary positive aspects of the end user's experience/culture in the name of profit? Where the "we'll do it cheaper, so just forget everything you loose in the process" idea is so ingrained that the only thing that can light up anyone's brain anymore is crossing into the hot political topic of appropriation?
Also has some very valid sounding criticism of their entire business model.
Therefore expanding the scope of "offensiveness" more and more is, in my eyes, a problematic trend.
This is similar to what Nassim Taleb described in his essay "The Dictatorship of the small Minority". Essentially, the most easily offended person will win, as everyone is expected to adhere to his/her requirements (as most people would, despite disagreeing with the claim, still feel morally forced to oblige, as they don't like to hurt someone else's feelings - so all power is concentrated on the person with the offended "feelings" - the more sensible he/she is, the more everyone else needs to comply. If this person cannot handle any kind of different point of viewpoint or idea, everyone else would have to avoid expressing viewpoints and ideas. This is the extreme scenario of course, but what's stopping us to end up there?) https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dict...
It's like someone highly involved in church talks to non-religious people on the street in the same way as to members of the church, assuming that they by definition have the same context & associations. This assumption then could be considered a sign of ignorance from the church representative, who seemingly isn't even aware of what he/she is doing.
"Bodega isn't just an offensive idea, it's an idea so bad and obviously worthless it's maddening."
I can (academically) understand how Bodega's rollout was offensive but I don't see how it's a worthless idea. Unlike the author, not everybody has 24-hour convenience stores just down the street.
If they had one of these in my building I'd use it every week.
You literally cannot buy marketing this effective.
To be clear, unemployment like that isn't great but I'm not sure why this is a special case.
On the whole this is an informative and well written explanation of the reaction to Bodega, but I don't think commentary like this is helpful.
To me, the commentary helps call out how insincere and non-genuine the quoted text is.
Who would this "bank details" comment help, and how, and why does someone's point of view affect whether it's helpful?
> To me, the commentary helps call out how insincere and non-genuine the quoted text is.
There's plenty to discuss on the branding, commercial model, and social implications without attempting to smear them with vague implications of either technical incompetence/negligence or some kind of fraud/ethical risk.
Perhaps I've misunderstood it and there's an interpretation of this "bank details" line that's grounded in some evidence rather than being an unnecessary smear.
Take it as a 'I don't consider your question as stated to be meaningful'.
The question I asked you was a literal question, not an empathy exercise. By all means suggest a way that anyone might be helped by this apparently-unevidenced smear.
It may comfort people to read things that support their worldview, but I don't agree that it helps them.
[Edit: changed questions to question as I only asked one]
> Could you imagine the point-of-view of someone who did find this helpful?
I felt that your response didn't try to answer it, and thus I thought you cannot imagine such a person & see things from their point-of-view.
Yep, and I've explained at length now that your question needs clarifying before any kind of answer can be meaningful.
You asked me to empathise with the views of people helped by the author's apparent smear. I'm sincerely asking you; who are these people you're asking me to empathise with, and how have they been helped?
Without that this is all drearily hypothetical and meaningless.
Also: people publishing these articles are - like always - fast to write about how the tech culture is perceived, but also stubbornly refuse to take the responsibility for the fact that they're who create that perception in the first place. Juicero and Bodega are one but thousands of startups in SV. Yet they define the tech culture through them... because writing about those gives them most outrage-driven clicks, in a self-reinforcing loop of caricature.
I defer to SSC for the much saner critique of SV: http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/11/silicon-valley-a-realit...
This article could easily be retitled: "How This Article Typifies Urban Cultural Ignorance of the World Beyond the City Walls."
The $2.5MM funding for a bad vending machine which will only work in cities, in the face of extreme income inequality.
Gutting of small towns is done with multi-year business strategies decided in the boardrooms & committees of giant corporations for shareholder benefit: also bad, but less offensive.
How can these two be so tone deaf and insensitive to how people will react to this?
This sounds cruel and bad just from the phrasing of the headline. It’s like they didn’t use any common sense and have no heart for local businesses.
I just don’t understand why a decent amount of these Silicon Valley techies are so time deaf? Did they grow up with silver spoons in their mouths?
How can you be so smart technically yet so culturally tone deaf at the same time? I would have thought sharp critical thinking and common sense would apply to more than just technical problems...
You can complain about how people are overreacting and perhaps you have a point but that doesn’t change the fact that people will overreact.
Why are so many upper middle class and rich people so disconnected from the poor and middle class?
I’m fairly well off now but I still remember what it was like when my family was poor when my parents first immigrated from Malaysia (we were racial and religious minorities and Malaysia’s government discriminates against racial/religious minorities so my parents left) back in the mid 90s...
and we had to go to food banks in Michigan to get some food when my dad’s two menial jobs didn’t make enough.
And I also remember when my family was middle class (about 60K) back in Idaho. The middle class life was much better than when we were poor (no food security issues and we had a nice house) and we got a smartphone back when I was in high school. (Only one smartphone for the family, more than one was too expensive, they let me have it because I was the oldest).
So even though I’m upper middle class now here in Silicon Valley, I still remember those harder times.
And I want Silicon Valley to make startups to help those poor and middle class people, instead of trying to displace or hurt those people.
All the machine learning they use in Bodega they could have instead sold that as a service to local Bodegas to empower their businesses by giving the local Bodegas a way to know what to stock up on.
And I believe that would have still been profitable but also community conscious.
Ugh the level of liberal snobby-ness and elitism that you see on Silicon Valley
Makes me super bummed sometimes when I think about Silicon Valley
When I see the immense income inequality which I didn’t see as much back in Idaho.
Now I’m partially a hypocrite since I love my upper middle class tech job here at a top company which I would not have found in Idaho.
I won’t kid. This is the best standard of living and quality of life I’ve ever experienced so far. I’m very grateful for that.
But the income inequality here reminds me somewhat of what I saw in India when I visited there for the first time last year.
Like it looked like 1/3 of the population has a gesta upper middle class or rich life with great stuff.
But 2/3 in like abject poverty.
Now California isn’t as bad as that but out of all the States I’ve lived in or visited,
It’s the closest to that and perhaps that’s partly due to the fact that our education system doesn’t prepare Americans for these well paying tech jobs....
But if that’s the case then we need to fix that or we’ll turn into India if we don’t change or fix our current problems here in the US.
I didn’t vote for Trump but I understood why many of my friends back in Idaho did because hey feel hopeless in this new changing economy and their education system didn’t prepare them for it.
Anyway I refuse to believe that it’s impossible to come up with profitable startup ideas that also empower local communities and businesses.
Sorry I don’t mean to put anyone here down btw this was just a general rant on Silicon Valley.
I’m really sorry if I came off as rude.
I normally don’t comment on hacker news this is my second comment ever.
Pardon my typos I typed all this on my smartphone.
But as someone who has somewhat extensively studied American history and government back in the day.
(I’ve read the Constitution, Federalist Papers, works by Thomas Paine, John Locke, Thomas Jefferson, and Ben Franklin, many of the majority opinions in many landmark Supreme Court cases, etc etc)
And there is actually a significant amount of misinformation and paranoia about America and the American government.
Now some of it regarding foreign policy is rightly justified given the actions by the CIA or military.
But on domestic policy, there is some misinformation every once in a while by someone’s comments.
Now while I usually prefer to talk about math and engineering stuff,
I feel most folks here already know that stuff and usually someone usually replies with the correction on Math or engineering issues/topics.
So I’ll limit most of my comments to perhaps pointing out what in my opinion are half-truths or falsehoods on American domestic policy or legal issues based on the limited knowledge I have on whatever is being discussed.
Ok no more rants from me for a long while. Apologies!
But then got distracted along the way.
Are we trying to put corner stores out of business?
Definitely not. Challenging the urban corner store is not
and has never been our goal.
Corner stores have been fixtures of their neighborhoods for
generations. They stock thousands of items, far more than we
could ever fit on a few shelves. Their owners know what
products to carry and in many cases who buys what. And
they’re run by people who in addition to selling everything
from toilet paper to milk also offer an integral human
connection to their patrons that our automated storefronts
never will.
1) They've explicitly said they aren't trying to do.
2) Given their product, would be a ridiculous thing to try to do in the first place.
It's a lie.
Are you arguing against the linked FastCompany article?
> People who shop at the same Bay Area corner stores that Bodega wants to eliminate, like me, aren't worried about any problem the startup wants to solve.
You said:
> the linked FastCompany article?
Did the link change? Right now it's to an inflammatory engadget article that slurs tech workers as subhuman "things":
> "It's almost like someone said "Siri, show me why everyone hates and fears the things wearing human suits known as techies."
"Eventually, centralized shopping locations won't be necessary, because there will be 100,000 Bodegas spread out, with one always 100 feet away from you."
Whether it's possible or not, it was their aim, according to this statement anyway.