Another banger column from Ryan Broderick at Garbage Day. Paywalled, but this excerpt is worth reading on its own:
Thousands of Starbucks locations in South Korea are closing next week so staff can attend “social sensitivity” training after the company decided to use an AI tool to craft their new “Tank Day” campaign. They named their new reusable tumbler the “tank” and decided to launch it on May 18th, which just so happened to be the anniversary of the Gwangju Uprising, a 1980 massacre where Korean soldiers killed hundreds of students who were protesting the country’s military dictatorship. Not totally clear why Starbucks baristas need the historical training. Seems like this was a big whoopsie localized entirely within the company’s leadership.
This is just one of the many big whoopsies playing out across the world right now as we continue to suffer from a global crisis of taste. Whether it’s institutions relying on AI to do their thinking for them, the algorithmic spread of lowest-common denominator gutter culture, or the more recent rise of “Chudtech,” the amorphous blob of gambling and streaming apps that gamify — and goonerfy — real life, the entire world has just suddenly decided they don’t care about anything anymore. I watched a shirtless guy ride a mechanical bull on the White House lawn this past weekend.
To their credit, Silicon Valley was early in realizing this was going to be a problem. In the same way, I imagine, a drug dealer realizes they need to buy test strips after fentanyl enters the supply chain. For the last year, different venture capitalists and developers have been repeating the same phrase over and over again: “Taste is the moat.” None of them seemingly aware that processing culture through the economic concept of a “moat” basically proves they’ve already lost the battle.