71–80 of 84 posts
You literally cannot buy marketing this effective.
This is basically a fancy vending machine, so I'm not really clear on why this got funded, but on the other hand vending machines are a thing. They don't actually seem to be trying to displacement bodegas from the get go, but rather putting their machines in upscale places like lobbies and gyms, but I'm still a bit confused by this whole thing, is the premise that these places are more likely to accept a pretty vendi…
I don't know, I can think of several times in the last week I would have been very happy to have a vending machine with toilet paper and coffee creamer in the lobby of my building. The only corner store nearby went out of business a few months ago.
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.
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?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't know, I can think of several times in the last week I would have been very happy to have a vending machine with toilet paper and coffee creamer in the lobby of my building. The only corner store nearby went out of business a few months ago.
Sure, everyone wants convenient things, but why do they need fancy tech development (they're planning to use computer vision), and what makes them think they will be able to make the economics work? 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.
"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.
> Two Ex-Googlers Want To Make Bodegas And Mom-And-Pop Corner Stores Obsolete 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.
Actually, and this might be different where you live, but it's my understanding that shops don't really make any profit on cigarettes/alcohol/lottery tickets, and that they are only sold to entice you to buy other things (ie. if they didn't stock them, people would shop elsewhere).
Obviously this is just one gas station in one small town, but then that's probably all there is to this discussion.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's a empathy exercise, not a question? You implicitly asked, "who would this statement about bank accounts be helpful for?", and I suggest that you try to think of someone.
> It's a empathy exercise, not a question? You implicitly asked, "who would this statement about bank accounts be helpful for?", and I suggest that you try to think of someone. 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…
> 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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It's a empathy exercise, not a question? You implicitly asked, "who would this statement about bank accounts be helpful for?", and I suggest that you try to think of someone. 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…
I was talking about the question I asked you: > 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.
Not many people here seem to have read the article, or read so quickly to misinterpret it. This is not a rant about 'appropriation' or naming choices - that's only one of the facets of ignorance by the founders discussed in the piece. More importantly, the author makes their case that some ideas, in particular that of a vending machine, are so disconnected from the daily lives of what the author might call 'normal pe…
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's the idea that "offensiveness" even is a reasonable critical descriptor of a startup idea that i see as a problem. This is such a fluid term which lacks any clear, objective boundaries. Everybody has their own view on what's offensive (apart from some areas in which somewhat of a consensus exists about offensiveness, mostly regarding pejorative expressions). Some people have a thick skin and find nothing offensiv…
The waste of money on a stupid idea is offending the author in light of the increasing issue of wealth discrepancy and homelessness in SF. This may not be offensive to all, but is not inappropriate usage.
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.