In this episode, the gang find themselves transported into the bodies of black people, with the natural expectation of TV tropes being that they’ll learn some lessons along the way about “Walking a mile in someone else’s shoes.” Of course, in Sunny fashion, they turn the trope on its head and continue to fumble through just as racist as ever.

As the gang sings their way through the plot line trying to figure out the “rules,” they stumble upon a janitor played by Scott Bakula, playing a faux version of himself. The gang riffs on him a bit about him trying to steal their “leap” and Scott riffs on himself a bit about missing the “glory days” of 1989, being that he’s now presumably “washed up.”

Of course, the opposite is true, as Bakula continues to be a leading man in television even today. While I loved Bakula in Lord of Illusions and would have very much liked to have seen him in more movies, his television career is quite an achievement, which offer his fans plenty of years of entertainment to enjoy his work.

“Oh boy!”

But, sometimes, something just doesn’t quite add up. You start to wonder if all of these reviews are really carefully considered by people who played the game to completion, focusing just on the merit of the game without unfair comparisons and influence from others already saying the game isn’t very good. It starts to feel like a bandwagon, and perhaps some reviewers are placating to the mainstream more than being honest and saying they enjoyed the game, or are distracted from giving it a chance in the first place.

The biggest thing that the game has going against it, and I would imagine the series always had, is its comparison to the GTA series. Without a doubt, the game is heavily influenced by GTA, of course, but that’s a very high bar of comparison for any game to live up to. The games from the GTA series, deservingly so, are perhaps the highest rated games of all time.

Personally, I’m very good at controlling my expectations, not listening to other opinions until I see for myself, compartmentalizing from comparing to other similar works, and finally, immersing myself into a story, no matter the medium. I’m not a professional reviewer, but I’ve been gaming for 25 years. I’m not a babe in the woods when it comes to identifying a polished, AAA title. And Mafia III is clearly a polished labor of love, with a decent enough budget (being owned by the same parent company, Take-Two, as Rockstar, developer of the GTA series).

Going in with fresh eyes and not even having ever played Mafia or Mafia II, I found that the the story is amazing (your cliché revenge story, sure, but done well); the characters are amazing; the acting is amazing; the location is amazing (New Orleans); the era is amazing (the ’60s); the soundtrack is amazing (Rolling Stones, Beach Boys, Elvis, Johnny Cash, CCR, and many, many others); the graphics are amazing; the driving physics are amazing (weight, sliding, drifting — I played with the Simulation setting on); the stealth is amazing; the gunplay is amazing. Oh yeah, and there are gators, which are also amazing:

All in all, the game is simply well-made and fun. If you can enjoy it on its own merit, it’s a great game. If you compare it to GTA, of course it falls short, like any game would. Outside of being in the giant shadow that GTA casts, some of the main complaints I’m seeing are:

#1: It’s buggy. — That’s true; it is. The game crashed on me at least once every play session I had with it (which is apparently the case with most people who played the game). It would happen after playing for a few hours. Strangely, it didn’t bother me that much. Considering the way games have evolved to auto-save and load quickly, it was never really an issue of losing my progress or having to wait an absurd amount of time to get back into the action. If this were an older game, where much of the difficulty lied in the fact that after you reached a milestone, you had to survive just in order to manually save or else you’d completely lose your progress and have to start all over again, that would indeed, be control-throwingly infuriating. And sure, like any game with the complexity of an open world like this, there were other bugs, but mostly they were fun or funny. Nothing really that ever caused me to fail a mission or die because of poor mechanics or camera angle issues.

#2: It’s repetitive. — Again, that’s true; it is. The missions were very grounded in reality, without anything too wild or imaginative happening. Again, this isn’t GTA. There are no variety of missions involving planes, helicopters, tanks, or aliens. It was just straight, back to basics, gritty, on the ground, hand-to-hand, knife, and gun fighting. I really enjoyed it and it never became repetitive in a tiring way. It was repetitive in a fun, replayability kind of way.

#3: Bad AI. — As long as you play on the hardest setting (which I would recommend for most modern games anyway as they generally make games too easy these days), it was challenging enough, especially when enforcers were called in, who seemed to have their AI or aggressiveness turned all the way up. It seems though that it’s impossible to please the current generation of reviewers these days concerning AI, as they often complain about it not being smart enough, but then when a developer makes the AI really smart and strong, they complain about that too. I feel for developers as this is a “damned if they do, damned if they don’t” situation.

#4: No online mode. — I actually don’t recall anyone complaining about this, but just for good measure, I’ll cover it anyway. Honestly, breath of fresh air. Games have become too focused on online play, and I was really needing a fix of some strictly story-based gameplay. There are also 3 upcoming story DLCs that I’m looking forward to, especially the third and final DLC, titled “Sign of the Times,” which focuses on the Charlie Manson cult aspect of the late ’60s that I had in the back of my mind and was wondering if anything like that would make an appearance in the game while I was playing, as it was such a crucial part of the history of the late ’60s. So, that answers my question on that.

Bottom Line

The game clearly got off to a rocky start, which needed some patches and a few more to come I’m sure. But, I sincerely hope that people can look past those issues and the bad reviews and give it a try, because I simply don’t think they were significant enough to take away from the otherwise great game that’s there to be enjoyed. Perhaps that will scare most people away from a brand new purchase, but hopefully not from a discounted or used purchase at least, which is just around the corner I’m sure.

UPDATE — The Applause Button has been retired and I’ve built my own Facebook Like button replacement.

Facebook is constantly in the news these days for one scandal or another, though for most of us, this is very old news. From the very beginning back in 2004, Mark Zuckerberg made it clear what he thinks of users freely giving up their personal data to him, and that’s that they’re “dumb fucks.”

But even among the non-tech-savvy, Facebook has become a household name synonymous with creepy data collection, to the point where they’ve now had to rebrand as Meta (a name only slightly less awkward than simply calling it Data). At least it’s an honest name, in that that is indeed their primary purpose, collecting your meta data.

The Like button, first introduced in 2009, was a new and genius way for Facebook to profile their users even more, not just onsite, but as a clever way to install trackers all over the web. There’s really nothing else like it. Other social media platforms, not even Twitter, ever introduced a Like button that you could embed on your own website, in apps, on posts, and other types of content.

I personally searched far and wide to find an open source, not-so-creepy alternative. I finally found it in the Applause Button, created by Colin Eberhardt.

Give it a try:

I’ve already begun replacing the Facebook Like buttons I was using on various projects with the Applause Button, as well as personally backing the project, and creating two WordPress plugins powered by the Applause Button to help make it more easily accessible to people:

Applause ButtonLove Button

There are so many applications for the button and so many different ways to customize it. You can use whatever icon you like, the count can represent a clap, like, love, vote, upvote, recommend, or whatever you need it to be for your project. I’m sure there are even more creative applications for the project that I haven’t thought of.

Whatever the case, I’m all in. This is the one to back as the definitive replacement for the Facebook Like button. If you need a like button, but without the creepy tracking, consider donating to the project.

Why Do People Hate Gatekeepers?

It’s simple. People don’t like being told they’re wrong, they don’t like being told what to do, they don’t like being inconvenienced, they don’t like being rejected, and they don’t like being punished, all of which are the job of a gatekeeper. What’s not the job of a gatekeeper, is to take things personally and be rude.

What is a Gatekeeper?

Anyone that stands between you and something you need or want to do. For example: cops, judges, landlords, bosses, managers, parents, teachers, customer support reps, forum mods, and don’t forget literal gatekeepers like: guards, TSA, parking attendants, toll booth operators, etc.

These types of positions are all extremely necessary, but they also receive a lot of hate, naturally. Some of these people grow a thick skin and are able to handle people that get angry with compassion, but a more common kind of gatekeeper, begins to hate the people they control right back and after being worn down, have a terrible bedside manner, and are no longer capable of treating people with a sense of decency or degree. Rather, everyone is an asshole and moron, and they gain a disposition to treat everyone that way, across the board.

As much as you hate going to the DMV and standing in line, trust me, many of those workers behind their desks hate you too and to blow off steam, probably make fun of you on their break. This is all natural, psychology 101 kind of stuff here. We’re all just human beings after all. No one can ever be completely professional, polite, and objective, 100% of the time. But, as is the case with humans everywhere, there are good ones and bad ones; there are good gatekeepers and there are bad gatekeepers.

Who Should be a Gatekeeper?

Someone who’s intelligent, mature, secure, has experience, empathy, patience, and can remain calm when people get upset (which is inevitable). On the other hand, this is a tough one, much tougher than who shouldn’t be a gatekeeper. I’ll give you a hypothetical example as to why…

Think about the world’s best brain surgeon. Say they’re so good that only they can do X, Y, and Z, making them perhaps one of the most exceptional gatekeepers, and an irreplaceable asset. They alone, have saved more lives than all the other brain surgeons in the country, combined.

There’s just one problem, they’re an arrogant prick and outside of serving their own ego to save the physical lives of patients, they don’t actually give a fuck about those patients’ emotions. They have terrible bedside manner and make their patients cry with their indifference.

Should they be fired? Probably not; they’re not expendable. That’s an extreme example of course. I think in most gatekeeper positions though, your ability to have empathy, to treat people with respect should be mandatory, or get the fuck out.

Who Shouldn’t be a Gatekeeper?

I think at some point, everyone gets the chance to be a gatekeeper, and if that person was bullied or had a controlling parent or feels weak or insecure, it might be the perfect storm for them to take advantage of and abuse the power and control they have as a gatekeeper. Of course, in an entirely different person, those same circumstances might be the very reason they make a concerted effort to NOT be an asshole, because they know what it’s like on the receiving end.

Both The Milgram Experiment and The Stanford Prison Experiment are useful reads to learn about how easy it is for people to both follow orders blindly and behave badly when put into hierarchical chains of command.

I Try Not to be an Asshole

I have a boatload of experience being a gatekeeper, nearly 20 years! And I’ll admit, while I’ll never be perfect, I was much worse in the beginning. Even in the very beginning when I was much younger and more immature, I still tried to be kind and positive, but if someone said “Fuck you!” I didn’t have the discipline to not say it back. I do have that discipline now and more life experience and a better understanding of psychology, but there’s always room for improvement.

For many years now though, while I’m sure that plenty of people have still hated me for the mere fact of my being in the role of a gatekeeper between them and something they wanted, I can happily say it hasn’t been for intentionally being rude, or sarcastic, or publicly shaming them, or making them feel stupid, or punishing them in retaliation. I do my best to help them AND not make them feel bad.

Ultimately, the problem is that many gatekeepers out there (I’m sure you’ve come across them) think that their only job is to keep the gate, but the secret is that they need to be nice while they’re doing it too or one day, even if they think they’re irreplaceable, they just might be.

Conclusion

Fuck gatekeepers, yes, but also they’re simply unavoidable. Even if you’re the richest person in the world, you still can’t avoid gatekeepers. It’s a necessary part of civil society. In my experience, the ratio of rude people to nice people is the same for both gatekeepers and the people they’re dealing with, 3:1.

Whatever side you’re on, you cannot control the other side; you can only control your own. Whatever side I’m on, I do my best to be polite and professional. Unfortunately, it’s not mandatory; it’s merely a choice. Only the people above the gatekeepers, the policy makers, have the ability to enforce their gatekeepers to behave. The problem is that they usually don’t, and those gatekeepers go unchecked.

At the core of the movie, we have our 5 brat pack teenagers from wildly different cliques, the brain, the athlete, the basketcase, the princess, and the criminal, who would otherwise never socialize with one-another, forced to spend a Saturday detention together. Out of sheer boredom, and with a common authoritarian foe, they begin to interact with each other, eventually, over the course of the day, breaking down the barriers of fear, hatred, prejudice, and ignorance they first walked in with to learn that their similarities actually far outweigh their differences.

At first glance, one might see all their grief as mere teenage angst, but that’s bullshit. Most people, fundamentally, at least morally, become who they’re going to be for the rest of their lives pretty early on. What some might consider childish, immature, bratty behavior or teenage drama, I witness from the average adult every single day. No matter what age, these same boundaries of classism, racism, sexism, ageism, and prejudice exist in each of us, at least to some extent.

With that said, I believe the messages in The Breakfast Club hold a certain universality. We all have a certain shell or facade, that once gotten past, you’ll usually find just another person who’s insecure, struggling, and that generally wants all the same things in life that we all want: happiness, love, respect, financial security, and so on. If we could only stop judging each other so harshly all the time and concern ourselves more with improving our own selves instead of the defense mechanism that is putting each other down. If we could just be locked in a room together more often to be forced to get to the root of what our perceived differences are really all about.

Personally, as someone that never belonged to any clique, I always had a unique perspective, from day one. While I’ve certainly been a loner throughout different times in my life and certainly always a weirdo, in school, I was actually friends with pretty much everyone. It didn’t matter, goth kids, jocks, musicians, skaters, nerds, whatever. I probably didn’t understand it in the deeper psychological way I might analyze it now, but it just made sense to me. If I like this person and they’re fun and they’re nice to me, I want to hang out with them. What do I care how they dress, what music they like, etc.?

But, we’re certainly not going to get out of this article without first discussing just how cruel school can be too. I’ve been bullied and I’m also guilty of having been a bully. It’s all just fear and everyone’s feeling it, even the cool kids. But, to the unfortunate poor few that get it the worst, that never make it out because they kill themselves, it’s just so stupid. I wish I could talk to them and let them know it’s not the end of the world, if they only knew that everyone in high school is an asshole and that it gets better. I mean, most people are still assholes the rest of their lives, but the difference is, you grow out of caring, out of giving weak people the power to put you down. In the end, everything is pretty much okay.

That’s the deeper meaning I take away from the film. It’s almost an examination of the basic id, ego, and super-ego in all of us. That, and The Breakfast Club also has a pretty cool theme song:

Nowadays, every startup, especially in tech, follows the exact same boilerplate, using all the same buzzwords, all the same marketing, all the same tools, and all the same methodologies. And whether they intend to or not, every “new” thing they add back into the structure of the company, is just another bar on the cage of the cubicle that they’re putting us back into.

Hiring

Job Listings

We Work Remotely has become one of the most popular go-tos for posting tech jobs. Luckily, this at least ensures that jobs really will be remote, as opposed to companies that only wish to appear innovative and flexible, but actually pull a bait-and-switch along the lines of “Oh sure, the job can be done remotely, but you still need to be local to our city.”

The problem starts with the actual listings, where they all use the same kind of job titles and outline language. Titles like: “Developer Ninja” or “Design Rockstar” or “Customer Happiness Engineer” . Outlines include language like: “We need someone who wakes up with a smile everyday, and doesn’t look at problems as something that holds them back, but challenges they’re excited to conquer!” or they try to be hip and funny “Bob’s our senior developer, but don’t ask him questions too early in the morning before he’s had his coffee… unless you have a cat gif ready to go. He sure likes his cat gifs.”

Most job listings read like the person who wrote them just looked at all the other listings to see what they said, as opposed to actually having something original of substance to say, based on a company that really has true freedom and values to talk about. They all talk about how cool they are, what a great culture it is, the flexibility they offer, and make the same “we’re a fun and friendly place to work” cat jokes.

Job Applications

They then send you to a third-party form to apply, one of several commonly used like Workable, because modern startups have an unhealthy addiction to adding yet another app, service, or piece of software to handle some menial task (more on that later). The application itself usually has all the same questions: “Where do you see yourself in 5 years?,” “What’s an exceptionally tough problem you had with a customer and how did you overcome it?,” “Why do you want to work here?,” or “What salary are you looking for?”

And look, not all clichés are bad; sometimes there’s a good reason that something is a cliché, because it’s useful, but there are always a few questions on these applications that are rude or pointless, meaning they’re only asking it because they’ve seen that it was asked on other forms, not because they have some deep, psychological analysis that they’re doing.

I’d confidently put money on the fact that they quickly skim over some of those answers because it doesn’t actually mean anything to them or whether they’ll hire you or not, because they themselves were only trying to appear “smarter” or “professional” to someone above them by padding the listing and asking what other popular companies ask.

The Test

Next up, you’ll receive a follow-up email after about a week (after sorting through the often hundreds of applicants), letting you know whether they’re interested or passing. In my case, they’re almost always interested because I generally only apply for gigs that I’m perfectly suited for, if not over-qualified for in the first place.

I would only be guessing on this part, but I think the fact that I don’t care whether they hire me or not (I’m usually just taking a flyer on something to see if it’s a good fit and somewhere I might actually enjoy working), helps in terms of confidence, as opposed to the desperate “I’ll jump through any hoop.” mentality of a normal candidate.

At this phase in the process, they’ll typically give you one final test before getting to the true interview. The test is usually designed to give them an idea of your skills or common sense. In other words, they’re weeding out the dumb-dumbs that lied about their experience.

The Interview

If you make it past the Indiana Jones like booby traps, you can now set a day and time through yet another third-party app (something like Calendly) before moving onto the final boss, which is the inevitable video interview (which is almost always done through Zoom) with the big man himself, which is often the CEO (on a side note, can we stop with all these archaic, overblown titles — I’ve started many businesses and I’ve never once called myself the “CEO” of it).

A Word About Zoom

This should really be its own article, but seriously, fuck Zoom; we need to talk about this. Would you install a mandatory keylogger on your computer imposed by a company? No? Then why in the hell would you ever install Zoom, a far worse form of malware. Zoom records your “private” meetings. That means video and audio of you, and everything you’re doing and saying, and outright using and selling that data. This is common knowledge and most people in general heard about it in 2020 during the massive uprise in its popularity due to the virus, which came with much more scrutiny of its weak security (Zoom is not end-to-end encrypted) and its even weaker company policies.

I can understand how a lot of organizations like companies in non-tech industries, schools, churches, etc. continue using the software because they may not know any better, but tech companies who definitely do know better, also continue to force their employees to use this software. I’m really not sure how that’s legal to endanger your people’s right to privacy like that, but I’m no lawyer. I’m not a fan of this style of communication for all my own reasons anyway, but there are always safer alternatives.

The problem, as is usually the case when it comes to privacy issues, is complacency. People don’t care about their own privacy, let alone other people’s. It’s also harder. I’m not perfect; there are many ways I could improve upon my own bad habits, but acknowledging the problem is at least better than nothing, and it’s never too late to improve, even if it’s a slow process.

One of the best parts of working on a remote team was getting to work at home, rolling out of bed, not worrying about how you look or your stinky cat walking around in the background, playing in your unmade bed. But now, in this new move to devolve remote teams back into “the office experience” as much as possible, we’re forced to stick a camera in our face to do our work? It’s just creepy and I refuse.

And we’re back.

Aside from the technology being creepy, I can at least understand that the main point of this step is that they want to “meet” you, see your face, hear your voice (though for my own privacy, I’d rather they not). While I personally don’t give a shit about this (when I hire someone all I care about is that they can do the work and have a good work ethic), I’m not a complete monster; I get it. It really is just the tech that makes it creepy.

Imagine going into a real, physical office to have an interview. Sure, you might be nervous, but it’s a fairly innocuous experience overall. But, now imagine that there’s some lady standing in the corner with a camera on a tripod recording you, while she also takes notes. This is going to be pretty awkward and you’re definitely going to ask.

You: “This is being recorded?”

Them: “Yes.”

You: “Why?”

Them: “Oh don’t worry about it. We record all of ABC Inc.’s meetings.”

You: “Do you work here? Is this for training purposes or something?”

Them: “No, we don’t work here. ABC Inc. has just given us permission to record all their meetings.”

You: “For what purpose?”

Them: “For marketing and research purposes. By entering this room, you too have agreed to these terms.”

You get the idea. It’s definitely not okay. Not to mention that the company you’re working for itself is likely keeping a copy of the recordings (they legally have to disclose this by the way — that doesn’t necessarily mean they will though), and storing it forever for reasons that benefit you in no way whatsoever, including for potential legal purposes to be used against you later if there’s a dispute.

Another big purpose of the video interview is as a precursor to the unwritten policy of…

Company Culture

Because of discrimination and harassment laws, they can’t come right out and say it, but another common theme in this new startup boilerplate model is culture. That is, more or less, you need to be able to be friends with your co-workers in order to be accepted onto the team. Rather than being something that occurs naturally among co-workers if it’s going to happen or not, which is fine too, it’s now kind of a requirement.

If like me, you’d rather just keep your head down, get your work done, and keep your personal and work life separate, it could honestly mean you’re not getting hired or you might not last there very long.

Retreats

A major new fad for startups, but an age-old staple of the corporate world is the retreat. Flying the team out for a week-long work vacation to some domestic or exotic tourist destination. There are a lot of things at play here. Most likely, the boss has read about how team-building exercises out in the wild can improve productivity in the “office.”

I’m not going to argue the pros and cons of this. Certainly, there may be benefits for a certain kind of company, but tech teams really don’t work shoulder to shoulder together where those benefits would be most useful. In a tech company, everything is extremely compartmentalized, and everyone is doing work that’s highly specific and tedious to just them. The only communication really needed is just to let each team member or department know your ETA for X or if you’re having issues with Y.

In any case, I don’t care what the benefits might be, I’m not into it. And even if the retreat isn’t mandatory (it often is outright stated that it is in fact mandatory), going back to culture, it really just is. If you don’t “fit in,” you might find yourself being pushed out or just quitting because you’re tired of being forced to have play dates with your co-workers.

There’s a reason I work remotely in the first place. Having to leave home, travel to the airport, get on a plane, and then spend a week in a house or hotel with what are essentially strangers is the absolute antithesis to the joy of working from home. I’d rather they just took that couple grand they spent on each of us for a retreat, and give us half as a bonus, gaining happier employees and saving money at the same time.

The Work

This is what it was all about, the work; the joy of the project. But, being able to do that work with complete autonomy and time flexibility. Not being micromanaged; not being fixed to any kind of 9-5 like window; just being able to work in your own way, using the tools you like to use, and in your own time. It didn’t matter where you were in the world, what your sleep schedule was like, as long you got your work done within every 24-hour period, and as long as you checked in every now and then and obviously respond to any direct communications to you.

Autonomy

The freedom to keep it simple and use the tools you want to use.

Startups no longer build their own tools or methodologies to keep it all sane and less convoluted. They all just use the same obligatory third-party services:

• Google Workspace
• Slack
• Basecamp
• Zoom
• Help Scout

I’m not saying that I don’t also use some of these tools, or that there’s inherently anything wrong with them, but the point is all about how every startup now is just a carbon copy of one-another, instead of doing things in a smarter, simpler, more minimalistic way. To stop doing things like the corporate dinosaurs of the past.

Flexibility

The freedom to wake up at whatever time you wake up wherever you are in the world, whether that be 7am, noon, midnight, or whenever.

And it didn’t matter because you got your work done within the 24-hour work cycle. You don’t need to commute anywhere, you work with people all around the world with all their own varying schedules, so it just didn’t matter. That’s how time management is supposed to work.

Now, the modern startup keeps chipping away at those freedoms to return to the traditional corporate regime of being available between 9-5 in whatever timezone they decide to designate (usually where the boss lives) and to attend incessant meetings, that have been proven to not increase productivity, and in fact, just waste time.

Conclusion

What the hell happened, why, and can anything be done to stop it?

What?

Whenever there is some kind of anarchy or push back against the ways of old, those systems eventually catch-up and find a way to appear as the new thing, while still implementing their control to serve their bottom line. It happens with all things, from cable to streaming, from books to audiobooks, from radio to podcasts, and from corporations to startups.

In the end, the old always finds a way to get its claws into the new.

Why?

I think the fact that being a nerd has become cool plays a big part in this. There’s Nerd Classic and then there’s the new class of nerds, who are often just Jocks 2.0. Originally, the Jobs and Wozniak dynamic was common among tech companies, but for a short while the Wozniaks took over, and everyone on the team was a Wozniak.

Where rebelling and quitting your day job to revolt and go into business for yourself, to show the dinosaurs in suits that you could do it better, with less bullshit and red tape used to be what a startup was all about, but the suits and conmen caught on and now they play the part of a Wozniak and call their corporations startups for the trendiness of it.

But, while no one’s looking, they keep peeling back the ideals of a true startup, and still touting the claims about being open, fair, free, autonomous, flexible, original, and innovative, are sneaking all the old ways in through the backdoor. The reason for this I think comes from two places, money and ego.

Money

There have been a lot of innovations in business, mainly what a waste of money it is to lease office space. If they can cut costs on all that, but also keep tabs on you with tools like Zoom (the modern equivalent of taking a stroll through the office and watching people work over their shoulder), win-win. Save money, but also keep control? Sure sounds good for the bottom line.

Ego

Admittedly, we might have taken the whole “everyone is equal, no one has a job title” thing in the beginning of the revolution a little too far. I think there has to be some kind of hierarchy to keep the train moving, but there’s definitely a balance. On the opposite spectrum, we see people starting very small independent projects and giving themselves the title of CEO.

It’s just a little much. I think there are people who start projects that already have delusions of grandeur and then sometimes, a Wozniak becomes a Jobs type character after making a lot of money. Money changes people, and they suddenly feel self-important. I think there’s a certain make-believe aspect to it. To appear cooler, more sexy, I think a lot of these people like to play the role and be seen as aggressive, business-savvy operators.

Stop?

Can it be stopped? I don’t see how. That said, I’m sure there are still rare gems out there that really are a joy to work for and truly offer freedom instead of a corporate repackaging of it where all the same buzzwords are used, without any of the actual freedoms.

Of course, history repeats itself over and over and over. At first, innovations like tiny houses, nomadic van life, and startups say “Fuck you and fuck your rules; we’re going to do it our way.” But eventually, the monster catches you and eats you and the revolution is now just the new norm, and it too, will need to be rebelled against.

All I can say is that whenever I hire someone, I do my best to get the hell out of their way. That’s my idea of win-win.

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We’ve probably all heard the quote:

“Those who cannot learn from the past, are doomed to repeat it.”

— Paraphrased from George Santayana

In some variant, in some piece of fiction: book, movie, TV show, and is usually words of caution shared to a group of people by a wise elder, often as a remark to warn against events like Nazi Germany from happening again.

I always assumed there was something to it beyond it just sounding like a cool line for an eccentric character to say, but I’d never actually experienced it myself. I imagine you have to live long enough before you can experience it first-hand because it generally takes 10, 20, 30 years for a cycle to make a full circle.

In the past decade alone, I’ve seen startups, streaming services, and digital currencies all essentially come around to just being the same thing they were supposed to disrupt in the first.

Startups

The entire point of the modern startup, was to break away from the shackles, limitations, and dinosaur ways of the old corporate formula.

For a solid 5 years, I think it was a success. We did away with the physical office space and the overhead that went along with it; we did away with the commute, being able to work remotely from home; we did away with limiting the talent you could reach from your geographical area and instead, being able to work with a team of people from all around the world.

Sure, that’s all still there, but we’ve lost all the most important parts of why we really did it to begin with, the philosophy. It wasn’t just about convenience or reach, it was about freedom, autonomy, and creativity. You were free to keep your own schedule as long as you got your work done, had the control to manage your own time and focus on doing what you were good at, and being able to create your own methods and use your own favorite tools to get it done.

Everyone was their own boss and morale was naturally high; people actually enjoyed working on the project. But, it didn’t last long. Any time something new and popular comes along, it doesn’t take long before the suits come along and take something that was natural and beautiful and put it through the machine to make something more formulaic for efficiency.

Every startup seems to be a clone of one-another now, without their own imagination or philosophies. We Work Remotely is a great site for finding remote jobs at startups, but if you apply for enough gigs there, you’ll soon realize, that none of these companies are trailblazers; none of them have the heart of the original intent of the modern startup.

There’s an unwritten handbook that they all seem to be following, and a lot of it is just about getting back to the corporate restrictions we wanted to get away from, now wrapped in a cuter package.

Here’s the same formula, I see over and over again:

• You must work 8-4 or 9-5 in a specific timezone (usually wherever the boss lives) and sometimes even need to clock-in
• You have to use an absurd amount of apps that defeat the whole purpose of simplifying: Zoom, Slack, etc.
• You’re hammered with a bunch of extraneous tasks that distract from your main area of expertise (imagine a programmer making sure to put time aside each day to clean toilets and you get my point — corporate wants to maximize every possible minute of time that you’re being paid for)
• You’re forced (of course, it’s “optional,” but the kind of optional that’ll get you fired, so not really optional) into a yearly retreat for “team-building”

Basically, all the best parts that made the new age startup so appealing in the first place, are being forced back into a corporate mold.

What I think really happened is the traditional business person caught on to all the savings of the modern startup, so they exploited those, but then started to slowly remove the freedoms that benefited the human, but not the bottom line.

We got rid of the stuffy office and the boardroom where 90% of the meetings were pointless, and brought that back with Zoom. So innovative. Now we can simulate the time-wasting and redundancy of the classic meeting from the comfort of our own home!

We got rid of the archaic structure of the 9-5 and hourly pay, so that we could all make sure to get enough sleep and focus on our tasks with clear minds and for only as long we needed to, not a long, drawn out 8 hours just to appease the higher-ups who are more concerned over quantity than quality.

We got rid of commute and stuffy business attire and said fuck it, “For now on, every single day is Casual Friday!” We came up with cool ideas, found people that complimented what we did, and built some cool shit. We made it up as we went along and we naturally created a bond.

But now, that “culture” has become an unwritten rule of the formula of startups. Company retreats aren’t based on a natural desire to get together (something that’s a pain in the ass — there’s a reason we like to work from home), it’s team dating arranged my bosses who saw one too many documentaries on Google or Facebook, and saw that creating a “fun culture” for the team environment helped to improve morale, efficiency, and the quality of work.

The only problem now is that there’s this creepy pressure put on the team to all be friends and develop inside jokes and camaraderie; it’s all just too forced. I’ve never been a team player, but when things were good, I actually did enjoy it. Being exhausted by these new phony innovators who are just traditional companies in disguise has motivated me to work even harder at building my own projects so that I don’t have to get stuck in these new digital cubicles.

Streaming Services

Netflix is king. They were a massive disruption to cable TV and video rental stores; that’s common knowledge now, but as an early adopter of Netflix, I could see the writing on the wall way before most people. I predicted that Netflix was a cable and Blockbuster killer 10 years ago!

With the success of Netflix streaming, a whole slough of new services followed suit, Amazon Prime, Hulu, and most recently, Apple TV+ and Disney+. Also, many of the singular channels like HBO, Showtime, ESPN, etc. broke off with their own streaming services and apps.

But, now that all the channels have gone solo… something interesting is starting to happen. With the annoyance and cost of having to buy all these separate subscriptions for consumers, we’re starting to see bundled services for a better price, like Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+ all bundled together. Hmm, where have we seen this before?

We’re essentially just solving new problems with old solutions, from the days of DISH, DirecTV, and Comcast. One of the reasons these new freedoms were finally given to us, out of the hands of the cable cartels, allowing cable-cutters to cut those cables, was the rise of piracy. With easier access and lower costs, people were willing to “go legit.” But now that things are becoming complicated once again, I suspect that the reformed ex-pirates will once again put on their tricornes, and raise their swords.

Digital Currencies

This is my friend and partner Trent Lapinski‘s arena. I’m one of those people that just simply never “got it.” At the height of the crypto craze, I tried my best to learn. I watched the videos, I read the articles, I listened to Trent’s pleas for me to take it all more seriously because there was money to be made, and I just fell short; my brain turned to mush.

As someone who cares very strongly about security and privacy, I loved that aspect of it and have used Bitcoin a handful of times, but I couldn’t ever get excited about it or have it click how I could make any money in that space. It wasn’t, isn’t, and never will be romantic for me. While I’m definitely a tech nerd and can take a deep-dive on some very eccentric and technical things, my passions are usually more creative and artistic.

I think the biggest hurtle to the adoption of cryptocurrencies is convenience. It’s just really, really hard for the average person to use. And of course, the more convenient you make something, the more you generally have to strip away security and privacy features; that’s always the give and take balance. And as things become more popular and easier to use, comes more regulation, oversight, and reintroducing the very problems that were being solved in the first place.

Conclusion

The greatest irony about this entire article, is probably the fact that someone noticing the cycles and then trying to warn the other village folk about those patterns is itself, also part of the cycle; the older generation tries to pass on wisdom to the new generation, rinse, and repeat. It’s a neverending cycle that I’m not sure can be broken.

And that isn’t to say that all cycles, or even any cycles, are bad; they just are what they are; that’s life. Seasons come and go, fashion, music, and art all go through a cycle every 10-30 years, but pop back up and trend as if they’re new and unique ideas.

It all makes me wonder if there really is any such thing as a revolution at all, or if it’s just a hopeful, romantic word for reset.

While I certainly support everyone’s right to live however the hell they would like to live, I’ve been more keen on the aesthetic nature of all the logos in rainbow colors, which I think look great. I would be remiss if I didn’t make it clear that just as much as a company not sporting the rainbow flag doesn’t mean that they’re anti-LGBT, a company waving those colors doesn’t necessarily mean that they actually are pro-LGBT either.

In other words, some of these companies may simply be following the trend purely for the public relations and marketing nature of it, without really caring otherwise.

Either way, I think it’s cool, so I made a rainbow version of our own logo:

And for fun, I gathered up all the rainbow logos I could find, to share with you in the gallery below: