Against my better judgment… FUCK LUXOR
Welcome friends: a rant, a catharsis, first delivered by tweetstorm, and then an attempt to figure out mobile publishing. Look out! I have no idea what I’m doing!
1. I’m writing this on Medium on my iPhone. I never compose long form content on my phone. I wield two devices: my phone on the go, my laptop at work/in serious play (i.e. blogging?).
Writing on my phone makes me vulnerable: it’s unfamiliar territory, prone to error. But my laptop’s at work away from me, and mobile is how people will compose in the future, and and and Slack Posts 2.0, and Facebook Notes, and Medium’s $57M, and it’s clear that the future is all mobile all the time. And I can’t get left behind.
So this is a phone post. Fuck it.
2. Tonight, riding to a friend’s potluck in my partner’s Lyft Line I saw this bumper sticker on a Luxor cab:
Here, let me enhance that:
Uber/Lyft, finally jobs for registered sex offenders
Rarely do I get hotheaded on Twitter. Only when a) I’ve been drinking and/or b) something really pisses me off will I get belligerent on social media. Both were in play tonight. So, buzzed, I let rip:
https://twitter.com/chrismessina/status/649416901840510976
https://twitter.com/chrismessina/status/649418531109363713
Surprisingly, @Luxor_SF responded — defending their safety record, saying that they support that people have a choice in the service they use, and repeatedly insinuating that Uber/Lyft are less safe because they don’t perform DOJ background checks and you’ll probably be attacked if you use their service.
Fine. They’re entitled to their branded opinion. But to let stand that Uber and Lyft employ sex offenders? As though that’s the predominant characteristic that defines these drivers? No. That’s fucked up. That’s not okay.
Separately, sex offender law is all kinds of fucked up. It paints all offenders with the same discolored pigment of prejudgment (regardless of context, consent, and more), and embodies the fear-mongered conservative/xenophobic attitudes that we see pervading and disabling our governing bodies. It’s condemnation without context (but with permanent and lasting consequences). It’s short-sighted and ignorant. It’s Donald Trump bottled as after shave. Shit stinks, but makes the wearer feel invincible, and like his bigotry is self-evident. Like everyone agrees with him because logic bends to his ego.
Just Like the bullshit bumper sticker on the Luxor cab.
3. Maybe this is just a typical social media spat between some hothead that’s had too much to drink (me) and some poor intern brand rep on Twitter. Maybe it’s overblown, but doesn’t matter. Maybe I’m misplacing my energy, and blah blah who cares, but no, it’s not, it’s this thing, and Luxor’s response makes me mostly, if anything, sad.
@anildash called me a “tech triumphalist”; @maura (who I don’t know) said I was a “tech bro”. This minimalism in thought. All pre-judging and talking past one another.
It’s in the air now.
@caterina described it today: the return of the cockroach is upon us. Judgment day is upon us. Preceding the fall, there’s hubris, arrogance, ignorance, economic distancing, class war, apprehension, misunderstanding, malignant ignorance, finger-pointing, and douchiness all around us. It wasn’t this bad 2005–2009. It is now. There’s a lot of new blood out here now, and a lot of free money. Things get shitty when the pace of money flows outstrip the pace of new culture sedimentation. Money causes cultural erosion. It’s happening.
I can’t even tell if I can assert a strong opinion anymore without worrying about being too masculine or aggressive. Here, I have a strong, informed, opinionated perspective! But by expressing it, do I risk people ignoring it? It being too strong to bear, to intense to give space to?
Too late. If I were worried I wouldn’t have the booze to help me overcome.
4. Why am I sad? Sad for Luxor; for their brethren?
Because they give me no reason to care for them as they die. I don’t care if everyone doesn’t like me when I die (took ~33 years to get to that place but I got there/am getting there), but I hope someone does (based on merit). With these cab companies, no one’s going to care. And it’s sad that people have worked in these companies (and others like them) for so long and no one is going to shed a tear. There are some companies in the world that I’d really be sad to see go; cab companies like Luxor aren’t among them.
. . .
6–7 years ago, do you know how hard it was to get a cab? You’d wait 40–50 minutes to get picked up anywhere in San Francisco. These cab companies were never there when you needed them. Their attitudes of entitlement and importance were reinforced by the regulations that protected them, with enshrined importance through the false scarcity with the medallion system (like patents, copyrights, or trademarks: government-granted monopolies intended to benefit the public good), preventing citizens from getting adequate service from a regulated industry. And now that there’s competition, they’re crying wolf or something (though the wolf is real this time) expecting anyone to give a shit as they die out of consumers’ consciousness.
Fuck you, Luxor. Fuck what you represent. Fuck complacency. Fuck not listening and responding to customers, fuck the laws that protected you, fuck your intolerance, fuck your business model, fuck your DOJ background checks; fuck you. FUCK. YOU!
Oh look: I tried to download your app like you said. Which one is it?
Then you sent me the link to the iOS app. I looked for reviews, to see what people thought of your service… but no one’s reviewed your app since January 2015:
And then your brand: “computerized dispatch”?
A joke.
5. Gah! So why am I so angry?
Sigh.
I expect to be embarrassed by this post. It’s not well-thought out or polite. I’m sure it makes me look bad. Or not great. BUT, I relish the idea that I’ll regret this tomorrow morning. I never write shit like this — anymore. I used to. Back when I didn’t think the stakes were so high and I didn’t think people were reading. Back when I didn’t give a fuck and said whatever was on my mind. Back when I wrote for me and my four readers.
But I miss that. So I’m not censoring this; I’m writing me. Fuck me for taking so long to do this, and worrying so much in the meantime. There are enough fucks to go around. Fuck me too.
Anyway, *here’s* why I’m mad: while Luxor holds on to the “safety” tropes that they think make them different and “better”, a new breed is coming up (Uber/Lyft, etc) that reconsiders fundamentals of the business they’re in, and steals what’s left from them. And even as their customers complain and warn them, they hold on to outdated ideas, and defend them.
And then go on to claim that their young competitors only employ sex offenders, because they can’t/won’t/don’t offer a better product (not to mention suddenly they’re the moral police? The fuck?) In reality, any time you get in _anyone_ else’s car, you’re at risk. Background checks are fine (and Uber & Lyft do them too, natch), but they’re not foolproof (for anyone), and are a weak shield for Luxor to hide behind while their business suffers as a result of not even bothering to compete.
I’m mad because the people writing and talking and carrying on about robots and the Internet of things and drones are fixated on the future. The Googles and Alphabets and Apples and Elons and Snowdens are all forecasting the future and competing to define it. They’re racing to share/create/build/realize what they see. They’re making it happen. Without fear. They don’t hide behind xenophobia or ignorance or incompetence and bumper stickers or the state or whatever other convenient excuses exist. They’re doing and making and building and are the kids with the LEGOs and the future in their hands and fuck you Luxor for not showing up and being something that anyone should give a shit about. What a waste. What a sad reality. It’s just a matter of time before you’re one more link that doesn’t resolve on the web of temporarily relevant thoughts.
