I don't take anyone seriously who casually calls something like Bodega an "offensive idea", as if this is the most natural thing to do. A name choice ca be bad without the whole idea "being offensive". Lazy labels are bad for discourse.
How Bodega typifies Silicon Valley’s cultural ignorance
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Re: How Bodega typifies Silicon Valley’s cultural ignorance
#22Let's check in with what the actual founders of this company said: 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 w…
Did you read the article? That very statement by the founders is discussed and contextualized within. Where's the lie?
Re: How Bodega typifies Silicon Valley’s cultural ignorance
#23How is this "situation" with Bodega any different than the destruction of small town shops (and small towns in general) over the last 50 years? This article could easily be retitled: "How This Article Typifies Urban Cultural Ignorance of the World Beyond the City Walls."
> How is this "situation" with Bodega any different than the destruction of small town shops?
The $2.5MM funding for a bad vending machine which will only work in cities, in the face of extreme income inequality.
Re: How Bodega typifies Silicon Valley’s cultural ignorance
#24Let's check in with what the actual founders of this company said: 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 w…
This quote is in the article, where it makes it clear that the founders only said it after the backlash had begun.
Re: How Bodega typifies Silicon Valley’s cultural ignorance
#25A lot of new innovations put someone else out of work. How is this any different from Buggy Whip Makers or (in the near future) Lorry Drivers being unemployed?
To be clear, unemployment like that isn't great but I'm not sure why this is a special case.
Re: How Bodega typifies Silicon Valley’s cultural ignorance
#26Let's check in with what the actual founders of this company said: 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 w…
Did you read the article? That very statement by the founders is discussed and contextualized within. Where's the lie?
When you say that a company is trying to do something that:
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.
Re: How Bodega typifies Silicon Valley’s cultural ignorance
#27I don't take anyone seriously who casually calls something like Bodega an "offensive idea", as if this is the most natural thing to do. A name choice ca be bad without the whole idea "being offensive". Lazy labels are bad for discourse.
The article is not centered around the choice of name, it's an example. The offensiveness, to the author, comes from more than that.
Re: How Bodega typifies Silicon Valley’s cultural ignorance
#28Let's check in with what the actual founders of this company said: 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 w…
This quote is in the article, where it makes it clear that the founders only said it after the backlash had begun.
It doesn't matter when they said it. It should be self evident to anyone that it's true. You can't replace a store with ~1000 products with a vending machine that stocks ~30.
Re: How Bodega typifies Silicon Valley’s cultural ignorance
#29That was an unnecessarily angry article. A much more measured one (though still very cutting) one is here: https://www.eater.com/2017/9/13/16302386/bodega-startup-corn...
Also has some very valid sounding criticism of their entire business model.
Re: How Bodega typifies Silicon Valley’s cultural ignorance
#30I don't want to always sound critic of the USA, but if here in Italy you opened an activity with real or supposed insert your favourite heritage here style, no one would ever care. 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…
Rightly or wrongly, there are people here in the US that make it a hobby to become offended and make a big deal of how offensive it is. Obviously it would do everyone some good to use discernment with their actions, but everyone should also not try to look for how you can spin something that was probably tongue in cheek into something offensive. Is bodega a great idea? Probably not, but I don't know what the entire offering was, maybe the idea got funded because they were interested in a specific part of the whole idea. I would like to see people in the US realize that someone is going to do something they don't like and there is an option to ignore the behavior.