[706f6f70]

> the socially anxious and introverted demographic with moderate to high levels of disposable income

I've began wondering if Silicon Valley is intentionally growing this demographic. If your customers need you because they are mentally unable to order food without you . . . well that's even better than a lifetime prescription of your medication or selling cigarettes.

It's twice as good if I can slowly train my customers to develop social anxiety by removing transactional interactions with minimum wage earners. That sort of interaction would traditionally service as a stepping stone in developing and maintaining social skills.

Add in social media which constantly has self-condemning memes about social anxiety, embarrassing moments, and so on; and you've got an extremely fertile ground for social anxiety.

[dannyw]

I don’t know where this whole idea of minimum wage interactions being a stepping stone in developing social skills came from, because I don’t think these sort of rote, algorithmic interactions help anyone develop anything.

[michaelt]

Football players train by dodging around predictable, stationary obstacles, even though on the field they'll need to dodge around unpredictable, moving obstacles.

Just because you need to use 6 skills at the same time in a real game, doesn't mean there's no value in an exercise that only develops 3 of the skills.

[r00fus]

I don't think it's intentional. I think it's due to aggressive hill-climbing optimization engine driving to the local minima of "increased engagement" of the hyper-engaged subset of populace - combined with the intensely myopic view of investors (as viewed from the incubated startup within a startup which it is).

[CamperBob2]

I thought Black Mirror was supposed to be a cautionary tale, not a business plan.