The simplest explanation is that the Earth and everyone on it has gone utterly and irrevocably insane. It’s stupider than Juicero. Is it being done on a bet? A dare? It’s a ritual whose stupidity is meant to ward off the end of the world? Or is it some alchemical errand where they are hoping that by doing something this stupid, no further stupid will be left for the rest of us, and we’ll be all forced into wisdom?
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It’s basically the Apocalypse Now of postindustrial ‘lifestyle’ products:
Sinister, hallucinatory, inexorable spiral toward the abyss where the formerly best and brightest, their ideas, their methods, become unsound, prop themselves up as gods on the adulation of the VCs and superstitious digital natives.
It’ll make a great miniseries exclusive to whatever streaming service not tied to the ‘ecosystem’ you have pledged fealty to.
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I have many product/business ideas all the time.
Then I make some back of the envelope analysis and conclude they are just impractical and no one would fund such thing.
Apparently I’ve been wrong all the time.
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The one benefit I can see, over bottled beverages, is that it is much more efficient to distribute flavorings and sweeteners in concentrated form and mix with water at the point of consumption. But this technology already exists in the form of soda fountains (and the even-more-efficient microdispensed concentrate in those fancy Coke fountains), without the pointless wasteful plastic pods or overpriced proprietary “vessel”…
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Anybody notice the Juicero building in the title sequence of the new Silicon Valley opening?
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Is it connected to the internet?
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Looks like buji kool-aid to me.
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Stuff gets normalized.
Look at our industry - people think it makes perfect sense for the root of a filesystem to be named by a single character which is also used for the folder/subfolder delimiter.
The fact that’s completely mad is lost on people. It’s just how it is.
Fresh milk used to be delivered at the door every morning from an electric van, and people were happily and gainfully employed moving it. And now the milk comes from far away and you have to go fetch it and the milkman has to go on welfare so that his children don’t starve, so you still pay the milkman via taxation only you strip him and his children of their dignity at the same time by making them a lower social class. Completely mad, yes, but that’s how it is, so that a sociopathic boardroom class gets more minks. It’s normalized.
Pepsi’s just working the system. K-cups are already normalized, although obviously completely mad, so Juiceros are clearly the next step…
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Yepper, and frustratingly- soda fountains are being relegated to the ‘only cheap fast food’ part of cuisine in favor of more and more bottle waste.
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I bet you I could pop the pod on my own and drink it out of a glass like a lady. The real trick would be not choking on the chia-goji-pumpkin desperation of where the future went.
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Oh come on. To be fair this is the first time I have seen concentrated single serving juice. I don’t know if the pod uses less plastic than a plastic bottle but it is probably not more. At worst this is just as bad as those single serving juice bottles that are now ubiquitous at high end food stores. And likely with lower environmental shipping costs.
#Capitalist-Innovation
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Yes, we are, but am I misunderstanding or is this basically buying juice from concentrate (albeit overpriced and in tiny quantities)? In most contexts that would mean less waste than buying normal juice. With tea and coffee, the traditional method is less wasteful, but it isn’t like most people are currently juicing their own fruit.
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It really literally does have to do with… late stage capitalism. Our (shitty) system rewards public companies for growth. If a company feels their existing products have reached full market penetration, the only option is, new products. Except for a juice company, well, there’s only so much room left to innovate. So their “innovations” are… stupid, and basically throwing shit at the wall and seeing if anything sticks.
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Solutions looking for a problem.
Someone almost always eventually blames the victims and brings up this ECON101 tier lecture about how market pressures produce the goods and services that consumers demand, but that isn’t how it works anymore, and hasn’t been for ages.
Companies come up with ideas for new products, because capitalism is based on never ending growth, then test market them, not to see if people want them, to see if they can make people want them.
Stouffer’s has flavored paper out on the market now, because sprinkling on some seasoning is just too hard. It’s the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard.
“Oh no, I can’t bake cookies on that parchment paper, because that one is flavored like Italian herbs.”
Next to nobody would buy that if it weren’t for all of the commercials suggesting that it somehow helps you bond with your kids.
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QFT
But… I explicitly buy parchment paper because I do not want it to interact with my food in any way whatsoever. That’s what the damned thing is for. The last thing I want is for it to leech God-knows-what into my food.
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Your consumer credit rating has been dropped by 3 points due to this comment. Thank you, and please come again!
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Yes, but the drink powders have Spinach!! and Broccoli!! and Chia seed!! and LEMONGRASS fer crissake!!
And all the people drinking in the video are young, and Hip Looking!!!
Why, oh why, is this not loved???
They’re non-recyclable for all intents and purposes. They have a BS mail-in program that in reality no one will use. I think the whole point here is that this serves absolutely no need that anyone ever had. From their FAQs:
Are the pods recyclable?
Absolutely! When you place your order, check the Loop™ Mailback Envelope option on the checkout page. Collect your used pods, fill the envelope to the recommended amount, and drop it in the mail. Loop™ receives the pods, and helps us recycle them.
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@NickyG, @anon81133038, normally when someone trots out “late stage capitalism” I roll my eyes, but this time I think you’ve nailed it.
