Google is Walmart

Why hipsters are kidding themselves

So I saw Idiocracy a little while ago. Yeah you know Idiocracy that little movie about a future America where one giant CostCo or Walmart like corporation controls the world and humans are reduced to fat objects that consume food and other assorted consumer shit — and sit around all day watching lowest common denominator TV. (trailer is here)

How accurate Mike Judge’s dystopian future vision will come to be is not the subject of this post. Neither is the irony of what Walmart already is today.

Instead I’m curious about the way that the hipster enclaves in SF/LA/NYC look down their noses at the people in flyover states that shop at big box stores/drive gas guzzling pickups.

It’s easy to throw darts at socially misplaced innovation like Google Glass or the general #firstworldproblem attitude of many Silicon Valley high valuation darlings— but I’m particularly concerned about the automation of all social activities.

Because Idiocracy.

And it’s death by a thousand cuts. Google Helpouts is innocent enough on its own, Google Now is passably useful from time to time, Google Shopping Express looks like a lifesaver if your schedule is slammed.

But if the point of all this technological automation was to free us humans from the yoke of work and the mundanity of daily chores so we can focus on play/life/love/the ocean/the forest/the mountain etc. — that would be one thing.

That’s not what’s happening. The technological automation is allowing humans to spend more time instagramming/facebooking/snapchatting. Even the small amount of social contact involved in saying hello and asking people for directions/help/advice has disappeared.

Going to a grocery store and running into friends. Why bother with the hassle? Google Shopping Express has you covered. And oh look — your friend checked in to the same service. How cute — you both used the same robot automaton service within a few minutes of each other.

You should totally, like, date or something.

Ouch.

My point being — Walmart and CostCo are attempting to provide a one-stop shop solution for the entire life of their target market (electronics, toiletries, food, insurance, opticians, medicine, house mortgage, divorce). And the joke in Idiocracy is that the end result of that particular rabbithole is a scary future with toilets embedded into sofas.

But the joke is on us — because Google is doing the same thing — and anthropomorphically — the two groups are converging.

People in glass houses ‘n’ shit.

Your phone is a tool. Not a life.

(my first medium post)