[yellowpencil]

VC got their IPO, thats all that ever mattered.

it was kind of funny to see the PR campaigns ramp up - placement in news articles, podcast interviews with the founder, partnerships with fast food chains.

after the smoke cleared there was never any real demand, just hype. a bunch of people made money, rinse repeat.

[koheripbal]

Social media hype is cheap to purchase these days. That's why we see so many stupid fads and political outrage hypertrends.

[starkd]

But they actually got funding to implement these fads. It took a decade of near-zero interest loans.

[starkd]

That's what you get when you have over a decade of near zero interest rates and easy money. A lot of hyped products and companies that mysteriously don't make any money. We're paying the price now.

[kube-system]

There was also a lot of cool and important shit that was made due to the same conditions. I hope things turn around asap. Cheap money is good for fake progress as much as it is for real progress.

[mindslight]

Or we could just produce less crap to be wasted, and have healthier work-life balances to boot. It takes an especially foolish kind of monetary environment to manufacture perfectly good e-scooters just to dump them into rivers and onto sidewalks, hoping that enough people tripping over them will create a recurring revenue stream from the coins falling out of their pocket. Plus that whole disenfranchisement of individuals further into renters rather than distributed capital owners.