It's no surprise that it had lots of bugs because it rewrote lots of components. But the power of storytelling (and remembering via most-upvoted Reddit comment) has turned it into the perfect release.
I'm not sure it was a misfire — I remember those ads as being pretty popular and having big mindshare. But that was certainly just my small perspective of the times.
I remember eyebrows being raised even at the time over the Chaplin ads, but I suppose they're memorable enough even today that they couldn't have been all that off the mark. Certainly wasn't the worst of the missteps around the PCjr (and I'd forgotten they ran the same flavor of ads for the PC AT, which was a fine machine!)
Externally, it was universally praised. I was selling PC gray market at the time, and it was highly effective. The only people that I knew that had a problem with it was certain IBMers that felt it didn't rep the Blue Channel (corporate sales) and our corporate PCs. However, as the IBM sales took off, I met anybody inside of IBM when I eventually got there that said, "Well that stupid campaign we had...."
The best theory I can come up with is that we had no immunity to someone who is just utterly shameless and never even considers apologizing. Every scandalous story helps him because it makes people forget about the one from a few days ago. Turns out that’s a superpower in early 21st century America.
That's not an explanation, though. Why are the American people so weak to someone so uniquely awful, evil, mentally disabled and morally degenerate? Is it replicable? Can the next gigabastard just not care too, and the Americans will fall in line? Or does it die with him? What is it about Trump and what it is about Americans?
It's hard for me as a foreign admirer of the USA not to conclude that a small majority of Americans are fundamentally quite venal and nasty. To think that I used to believe that shit Reagan said about the US being a city on a hill! Crazy.
Your first paragraph is exactly right in it's questions. Depending on how successful Trump ultimately is, will his successor be able to continue.
Your 2nd paragraph is hard for me, a US citizen, to see. Reagan was in fact a complete faker and a liar. US religious leaders are also fakers and liars.
The difference now is that prior politicians had at least some interest in actually governing the country. That limited just how viciously they could engage with their political opponents. There was never any golden age of collegiality, to be sure, but even people like Newt Gingrich wanted to at least try running the country in between political campaigns.
And yet there's no immediately apparent runner-up gigabastard. All of the politicians, even Trump's most dedicated sycophants, are still hampered by the notion of wanting to actually run the nation. It doesn't work without a 100% commitment to smashing your enemies. If you let the conversation drift to figuring out valid policies, people lose attention, and realize that you're an idiot.
None of the other tech-bros seem to have it, either. If Musk or Zuckerberg or Bezos run for office, they're going to discover that people don't actually like them. They're smart enough to think that they can actually talk about policy, and nobody really likes policy. They want simplistic, vacuous solutions. Musk has the requisite cruelty to distract people from that, but he's not enough of a buffoon to really entertain the far right.
I can think of several reasons why the US public finds Trump more appealing. Trump is a US national born and bred, whilst Musk was born in South Africa and holds Canadian as well as US citizenship. Trump absolutely nails populist rhetoric, whilst Musk is nerdy and aloof. Trump describes himself as chosen by God and vows to bring religion back to America, whilst Musk is nuanced and cagey about religion. Trump has celeb certification with his appearances on The Apprentice and WWE, whilst Musk tends to avoid mainstream media.
The letter doesn't exist. And if it does exist, the signature of Donald J. Trump on the letter, which looks identical to my signature, isn't my signature. And if it is my signature, I didn't put it there. And if I did put it there, the Democrats forced me to. I can't even write! This is very unfair, this is a hoax. I'm an FBI informant. I'm the President, so I can be creepy if I want to be. I can do anything I want. This is so unfair.
Democratic super delegates overrode the nomination
This literally didn't happen. This sort of conspiracy-theorizing nonsense is akin to Trump's about the 2020 election and has lead to a bunch of low-info voters making bad decisions.
Because for at least half of the 72-hour workweek, most employee will mentally checkout
Management seeing this and doing the calculation: “if they’re gonna be checked out half the time, we’re really only getting 36 hours of the 40 we’ve been promised.”
That’s sadly the reality of the push to 996. When Google added early breakfast and late dinner, it was the same reasoning: if people stay “in the zone” longer, you end up squeezing out a bit more.
I get the feeling the push to 996 is in part due to the social media epidemic - everyone spends so much time doomscrolling, might as well keep people in the office much longer to account for that extra wasted time too.
I'm not on Facebook, but, from what I can tell, this has arguably already happened for still images on it. (If defining "better" as "more appealing to/likely to be re-shared by frequent users of Facebook.")
It's no surprise that it had lots of bugs because it rewrote lots of components. But the power of storytelling (and remembering via most-upvoted Reddit comment) has turned it into the perfect release.
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