Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2017/11/28/watch-this-interview-with-amaz.html
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Is it me or does Simon seem to be mocking Bezos?
I detected mock as well.
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Definitely mock. Can you imagine them doing an interview with old money billionaires in the same tone? Me neither.
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I third this…or is it fourth?
Definitely mockage.
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of course he’s mocking. bezos was a young tech startup dude, doing things in a way that was not expected! how crazy!
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Oh my god, 350 floppy disks!
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Oh me too, but I don’t get it - $30 billion stock value is nothing to sneer at, and yet, sneering is what Simon is doing! As if it’s just $30 billion in monopoly money, and at any second everyone is going to realize Bezos is just a con-man in the center of Oz, and go back to shopping at Borders as they rightly should. Where are the trappings of power and money? For god’s sake, the man hasn’t even gotten himself a proper desk, much less a top hat and monocle! Obviously a fly-by-night operation, Amazon’ll be gone before you know it. insert contemptuous sniff
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are all the opportunities over? this has inspired me to rethink about changing careers and maybe take a risk…lol.
Fun fact: Bob Simon is now enslaved and chained to a robot in an Amazon warehouse.
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I wonder how his regret minimization framework is doing today? I dont think his being the richest man in the world will play much into this.
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And now Bob Simon’s dead. Coincidence?
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Well in fairness, if you were sneeringly dismissive of a hot-shit dotcom startup in 1999, you probably had about an 80% chance of being vindicated two years later. For that matter, Amazon’s stock lost over 90% of its value between late '99 and late 2001. Rebounded nicely eventually, obviously.
Still, seeing him laugh out loud at the very suggestion that these “nerds” might pose a threat to the mighty Sears was pretty hilarious with the benefit of hindsight.
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I think the only sure bet would be on the absolute laziness of the American populous, coupled with our capitalistic need to pay as little as possible. Hell Ebay would still be worth something if it was ever setup to be a real auction site.
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Is Ebay not worth anything these days? I suppose alibaba is eating their lunch a lot now…used to be “Hey, I wonder if I can get $weird_offbeat_thing off ebay”, now I’m a lot more likely to see it there.
It’s too bad he’s mocking the poor tax evader and thus thief while he was honing his labor exploitative practices.
Honestly, Amazon is a role model for the future neoliberal dystopia with the haves screwing the have-nots, and Bezos taking the lead.
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well everybody dies sometime, and everybody mocks Bezos sometime - so no.
He’s not mocking Bezos for being a robber-baron. He’s mocking him for being painfully visibly aspie. As HFA, though I’m more able to pass, I don’t find this anymore amusing than mocking someone for a physical disability, regardless of how terrible a human being they are. You’ll notice Simon sarcastically refers to Bezos as a “titan of our time”, the clear implication being that a wealthy tycoon is laudable but an aspie doesn’t live up the reputation. Like many in our wealth-worshiping culture, Simon has his priorities ass-backwards.
TL;DR - It’s possible for someone ridiculing someone deserving of ridicule to be doing it for the wrong reasons in the wrong way and therefore themselves deserving of the snark apparent here in this thread.
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Dead or, as @Heraclito says, enslaved to a robot in an amazon warehouse…
toiling away deep in the bowels of that vast complex…
folding box after box…
forever…
OK, point completely taken. The truth is, Amazon’s predatory practices are so abhorrent to me that I find nothing to like about the enterprise or the man behind it at all - however, yes, let’s criticize him for the right reasons.
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