What unites Yelp, Seamless, and Venmo is, in part, their desire to monopolize particular spheres of adult life (“spaces,” in Valleyspeak). They also offer services that diminish the user’s autonomy in a way that — from a certain low angle, in a certain light — reads as patronizing when we’re supposed to be the patrons. We cannot find food on our own, or choose a restaurant, or settle a tiny debt. Where that dependency feels unseemly in the context of independent adult life, it feels appropriate if the user’s position remains childlike, and the childlikeness makes sense when you consider that Yelp depends on us to write reviews, and therefore must, like a fun mom, make chores feel fun too.
I've written and deleted three comments to this piece now. I don't know where to put my anger
The crass commercial world makes me angry. I thought it was going to get a little better when we didn't watch so many commercials on TV.
As I grow older I despise the world we've wroght more and more. I love so many of the people in it.
Like Bill Hicks said "any one here in marketing? Go kill yourself and make the world a better place."
Think I'll slam three beers, take a rarely indulged in hit of grass, drop a tab of morphine to sleep like the dead. It's stupid how under my skin thinking about what a pack of barrow pigs we all are but I don't know where to put my frustration at the constant needless assault.