Anyone consistently taking home 30k over a weekend should feel ZERO need to advertise that fact, trebly so if they're in a dubiously legal occupation. They should not want to invite competition, especially from potentially more attractive ladies.
Likewise, such a person would probably not want the attention this could bring to her clients, both for competitive reasons and for their own confidentiality. Its more accepted to do this kind of disclosure either anonymously or as a post-retirement memoir, no?
Conclusion: maybe ONE guy paid her 30k, ONCE, and maybe for some particularly lurid scenario or there were some other expenses involved or whatever. She's using that to set her price negotiations with any future Johns aggressively in her favor.
I'm skeptical of taking MUCH from this about the larger escort scene in SF, although I'm willing to believe, given the gender ratios (to say nothing of sexualities) I've heard predominate out there that any cishet guy with decent Testosterone and hundreds of thousands/millions of tech dollars in his pocket would try to find an outlet.
This article is likely an ad. Not even heavily disguised I'd say.
If the numbers keep going up but everyone is employed wiping the asses of boomers and sexually pleasuring tech AI millionaires, have we really improved society?
There's a valid read on this from the AI/Economic Anxiety perspective though, yes. Tech bros are an ascendant class purely on the backs of very new wealth and the appearance that they'll 'own' the future (maybe not literally) on current trajectories, so their status is likely to keep on rising if they don't get unceremoniously displaced by their own product.
And so the two broad sectors of Western economies that are 'thriving' are anything that directly caters to wealthy boomers (or not-so-wealthy, given how much the government spends on them too), or anything that is closely related to AI development. (Finance is doing fine too, but that's not so interesting).
The up-and-coming generation would not be wrong to notice they can trade in significant amounts of dignity and personal autonomy to siphon some of the wealth those particular beneficiaries without having to actually break through into such classes. But 10-15 years of doing so just for a shot at getting enough financial independence to never have to degrade yourself again is kind of bleak to contemplate from this side of it.
faceh
2d ago
One topic that absolutely CAPTIVATES me is historical figures who were able to wield power wisely, then set it aside willingly rather than cling to it desperately.
Cinncinatus, George Washington, Augusto Pinochet (I know, I know).
Another topic that captivates me is the design of systems such that you don't have to trust the people in 'power' since the system itself incentivizes 'good' behavior by its very structure, or makes it very difficult for bad actors to do damage before they're removed.
Augur was pretty close to achieving that, but alas DApps were a doomed concept.
So whenever I look at systems like this, I really do question the incentives of the ones who control them, and ask whether they TRULY have skin in the game
I think they have and them some. Weren't some platforms literally giving away titles for free to pull away customers? I don't pay that close attention because I rarely play games (especially modern games) anymore.
Yes, I in fact have downloaded and played several of the games Epic gave away.
The storefront they have is simply not a serious enough draw where, given the choice to buy a game on Steam vs. Epic, to really go for Epic instead.
And Steam has not taken a single action that has made me feel mistreated or punished for loyalty. Its their game to lose, as the user numbers tend to show.
EDIT: I hopped on Epic Games to see what free games they were offering. They have Rogue Waters, a pirate roguelike game that looks right up my alley! Epic Game store shows it has a 4.1/5 star rating. Not bad.
But I hop over to Steam and I can IMMEDIATELY see that it has "mostly negative" recent reviews, which indicates a possible problem! I read one recent one and it says:
Abandoned over a year ago with a plathora of gamebreaking bugs and interface issues. It's essentially still an early access game that never got released as one.
That is EXTREMELY relevant information, and if it weren't literally free, I'd probably not buy it based on that review... which Epic wouldn't have shown me.
STEAM IS JUST THE INHERENTLY MORE CONSUMER-FRIENDLY PLATFORM.
WHAT IS STOPPING EPIC FROM IMPLEMENTING THE SAME SYSTEMS?
/edit.
I think your worldview is just plainly wrong.
Love to hear that! If I can improve my worldview its a benefit to me.
Not convinced, though, since this model of things has been extremely predictive of corporate behavior and has actually shaped my own behavior as a consumer to try and 'reward' those companies that actually maintain a standard of NOT treating consumers like cattle.
With basically any product you have a million choices (exceptions were already stared, mainly in government backed monopolies or high barrier to entry markets). I can't really take the "Products are getting enshitified!" meme seriously when I can literally just go on google and find you an equivalent product for basically anything you ask for. Assuming you're in America, that is.
I'm mostly focused on products where they've managed to achieve the 'efficient frontier' on exactly how little quality they can produce such that the average consumer no longer notices or cares, whilst maintaining a similar price point as they've had all along.
Its been done with movies, with cars (although there are of course luxury brands if you DEMAND quality!), with food, and its ubiquitous with tech.
Shrinkflation is a known tactic used here as well.
I mostly blame the fact that people have very short memories so even if they notice that the quality of something is kind of poor, they won't realize that anything has been lost since they can't remember the before times. And they won't readily recall the poor quality when it comes time to buy new.
Me, I have an extremely sticky memory. I hold grudges, I remember details about people's behavior at critical moments, I remember when government officials did things that betrayed their constituents. So I'm just particularly sensitive to the tactics at work in the corporate world.. But on the flip side, if a company (Valve) consistently treats me 'well' I am happy to reward them with loyalty.
Amazon and google were not profitable for like a decade because they just kept reinventing their revenue.
...
Who was the primary owner of Amazon shares for the duration of that unprofitable period?
Do yah think the fact that the original founder maintained centralized control for the majority of the company's lifespan might have helped its overall approach to long-term investment? Is that possible?
This is precisely and exactly my argument.
Amazon is, however, an example of an enshittified corporation by now. At least their website is. Lots of knockoff products with relatively poor quality control, and the search is less functional, the return policies are less friendly. The review system is manipulated, both by the site and by scammers. I accept this may be due to customer abuse, of course.
I have not had a Prime membership for about two years because They introduced ads into the 'free' tier of Prime Video. Yes. I am that petty. Their logistical empire remains unmatched, I do admit.
Steam has of course never done that to me. The search function works marvelously, they give you a great review system to judge the quality of products, and has the nicest refund policy in the business.
Google is arguably a true pioneer of the enshittification process, which DOES leverage its nigh-monopoly status to engage in anti-consumer practices.
Again, if you have a specific metric that we can apply that might capture the phenomena, I'm happy to examine and discuss it.
Do you have any examples offhand of a company that was becoming horribly mismanaged and driven into the ground that managed to make a massive turnaround WITHOUT it being taken private by interested parties?
faceh
3d ago
If they aren't resolving markets at least somewhat accurately doesn't that threaten the value of the platform, and of their tokens if users stop trading?
If Steam makes a shitty product people will jump ship because there are tons of other options. That's the center of all of this that you don't seem to acknowledge.
Not if Steam is simply the least shitty of the options! My point is that Steam is far and away the best product, so if Gaben wanted to make some money by milking his customers some more he could probably extract quite a bit from them before the Epic Games store looked like a real improvement.
There's a qualitative difference between "consumers pinch their nose and choose your product because the alternatives are worse" and "consumers happily fork over money and consider your product the standard to which all others should aspire."
While I'm not quite saying "Steam is indifferent to competitive pressure due to their position," I am saying the Gabe can make decisions without worrying about the next quarter's earnings report. And he's consistently made decisions (including the decision to NOT change certain things) that make the users happier.
Can you explain why other existing players, which are also multi-billion dollar corporations, haven't just gone ahead and copied Valve's model for the Steam store as closely as possible? Why is there no Pepsi to Valve's Coca-Cola in this situation?
Lets discuss what sort of 'economic data' would capture the phenomena we're talking about. What is an economic term for 'enshittification' or whatever phenomena, and what metrics capture it? Consumer sentiment?
Of course, my point that "public companies will happily capture consumer surplus to maximize profits" is fairly standard economic logic, since private companies can have much larger time horizons and consider costumer retention through brand reputation and 'fair' pricing a more important factor. Similar incentive issues as public companies exist with Private Equity.
Thing is, I can probably point out a solid few dozen companies that are notorious for producing high-quality products or services in a particular niche, at reasonable prices, and are beloved specifically because they don't treat customers like cattle to be milked dry at every transaction.
One that I often come back to:
Privately owned by the same dude/family for 30-something years, and they have resisted raising the price above 99 cents a can despite the beverage industry as a class exploding in size and revenue.
Read that story about the owner and it is clear that its his personal philosophy that's holding the competitive pressures at bay, less so than pure economic sense. And they obviously don't have 'market dominance' so casting monopoly accusations at them would be absurd. The owner is, like Gabe, focused on keeping the quality of the product high, responding to consumer demands, and avoiding abrupt price hikes.
Obviously this guy could sell out to PepsiCo TOMORROW if he wanted, but his willingness to just... not, is only possible because he has no shareholders to appease. And a multi-billion dollar net worth.
And every time one of those drinks sells for a Dollar to somebody who would have paid $2 for it, that's $1 of consumer surplus in the buyer's pocket.
Some other similar companies:
Chik-Fil-A. with their NOTORIOUSLY amazing service and high quality.
Yeungling Brewing. A favorite of mine.
Canva. (compare to fucking adobe.)
Wawa. (compare to 7/11)
Craigslist.
And many such companies that are primarily regional presences.
Note I'm not claiming such companies rarely/never take anti-consumer actions, but more that they optimize for a higher quality/price ratio (they resist enshittification) than comparable public companies, and are able to resist the trends that public corporations follow to the customer's detriment.
And I'm claiming that any of the above-named companies, if they went public, would rapidly see the introduction of more consumer-unfriendly practices and rising prices/slashing of quality to quickly squeeze out more profitability.
faceh
5d ago
All of those are publicly traded and subject to different incentives/pressures.
Namely, the incentive to gobble up 100% of any consumer surplus that might exist in a product.
Gabe could maybe double his own net worth if he was willing to be less consumer-friendly. There's certainly ways he could exploit the access the Steam platform gives him to various valuable demographics.
At a bare minimum, they could serve targeted ads (for things other than Vidya) on the platform.
But he has no legal obligation to do so since 'shareholder value' is not his primary concern.
Just take a quick assessment of ANY other comparable industry and see if there's any exceptions to the general rule that publicly-traded companies enshittify their product once they've achieved market dominance.
faceh
5d ago
The average home price in Argentina is apparently $130,000.
Point is its a high enough number that people will note it and be curious about the buyer.
Same reason people care about Gabe Newell's Yacht even though its "only" like 5% of his net worth.
Also I really have to object to scaling a purchase by a .0001% outlier to the purchasing power of an average American.
The average American will never even achieve a net worth of 12 million over their entire lifetimes (sans hyperinflation) Especially if you account for the fact that guys like Thiel drag that average up.
The median is even worse.
faceh
6d ago
Buying a $12 million dollar mansion is tantamount to a public announcement insofar as the attention it brings, given there are methods of doing that without getting much attention to the specific owner.
He has not made a specific statement that I can see, though, so motives are purely speculative.
faceh
6d ago
I don't think the petrodollar going away is worth worrying about, insofar as there is simply no competitor to replace it to our detriment.
And the U.S. is energy independent for all pursuits and purposes, and thus can weather most economic storms in a way few other countries can.
The social chaos that might result if social programs can't be sustained would not be fun, though.
faceh
6d ago
Argentina is also on the short list of countries that will probably be 'fine' in the event of de-globalization. So establishing an existing presence there is good as a hedge even if you generally expect things to be fine.
However, I am more concerned with how much of his time he actually shifts to spending in Argentina vs. merely relocating. Theil has been mucking with U.S. politics for a while and as ever, I want our elites to have skin in the game.
If he actually believes things are going to turn sour and he pre-emptively situates himself as far from the fallout as he can feasibly get, and stays out, I would take that as a very bad sign.
Note, I don't judge the guy if he's trying to keep his kids safer or whatever, but he should be willing to face down the consequences of his political machinations along with the rest of us.
Considering he easily has the resources to make this move more surreptitiously if he wishes, I would say that him making it so public belies it being a move motivated by fear.
faceh
6d ago
"Security through complexity" was definitely an option.
Seems untenable now that AI coding is a thing.
faceh
7d ago
It seems to be standard corporate operating procedure. Do the thing, if there's enough blowback then walk it back/undo it, but depend on the apathy/laziness of the consumer to let you get away with 4/5 of what you want to do.
faceh
7d ago
I'm just saying. If Gabe ever sells, we're seeing $100-$120 games being standard, DRM out the wazoo, and a complete lockdown on the user review system. Just to start.
Hence why I would like Steam to add a little button at checkout to let you donate to Gaben's immortality fund.
faceh
7d ago
There's something nice about having one canon,
Agreed, but then we end up having to watch said canon crash and burn when someone without any love for the IP grabs hold of it and inserts their own vision, and then mocks the people who are suddenly alienated because har har I peed all over your stuff now I own it. A fandom should, in such cases, be able to organize and just pay some other person to continue from where things left off and go on their merry way. This could happen in the current era, but in practice, coordination problems mean you can't outbid Corporations for the rights.
I think books in particular are amenable to a 'flexible' canon. Most long-running series have entries that fans would rather forget/ignore. Oh, and many where the endings rather suck. So if another author wants to come in and rewrite, say book 6 of a series, or just change a single character arc or 'fix' an ending, well, let them publish it, stick it on the shelf next to the originals, and let people choose.
I ALSO support the idea of authors going back over their own works and adjusting things based on their increased experience and feedback... so long as they're very transparent about doing so and keep the previous versions available.
This doesn't always play out well (Kirkman is making some changes from the Invincible comic to the TV show that I find baffling) but I think it is healthy.
This also opens them up to being bullied into making changes that are genuinely horrible, but hey.
Yes there's absolutely an 'artistic integrity' argument to be made.
I think the apotheosis of this would be a wikipedia-like site that tracks all versions of a given canon and charts the different paths readers/viewers can take and lets people provide feedback on individual tracks so future readers/viewers can pick the one they expect to like.
faceh
7d ago
I think the overall result, though, is not a proliferation of independent creators protected from corporate overreach, its just an inevitable centralization of all the media to the eternal corporate entities, who then shut down anyone else who might want to spin off the works in question... including the original creator.
The ONLY reason Calvin and Hobbes hasn't burned up its Dragon's hoard of goodwill is because the creator has simply refused to be bought and has become a recluse, the sole holdout of his generation of artists.
But it is certain that once he dies, it too will be sucked up into the corporate vaults and exploited to the max.
faceh
7d ago
I do recall that but... I'm not TOO mad about letting my data get hoovered up to help summon the Silicon demon.
I actually WANT the machine God to have a piece of my personal data in there. I tailor my behavior online to make it easy for the thing to figure out my preferences.
faceh
7d ago
Either bite the bullet and accept the out of pocket cost or take it to the cloud.
Its me, the bullet muncher.
faceh
7d ago
Valve is the single guardrail keeping the entire industry from tumbling head over heels down the slippery slope.
Their ability to sort of 'impose' pro-consumer rules for those who want to use their marketplace is like the one and only place where the incentives are finally aligned towards gamer's preferences.
faceh
7d ago
Amazingly, Dropbox has never betrayed me over the course of 15 years. But the only reason I tolerated it in the first place is because it syncs with a local folder on my own computer so it was added convenience with no additional risk.
Then Microsoft tries to force that same crap on me and I get mad because they're trying to dictate what I keep on my computer.
faceh
7d ago
I assume natural crowd-following instincts (you want to be part of what everyone else is doing, not go off on some random tangent where nobody else cares), backed by the aforementioned IP regime that makes it very sketchy to put too much effort into a product you can't distribute.
But yeah, its like the one Tyler the Creator tweet about cyberbullying. "How the hell is corporate canon real? Just read the fanfiction, don't watch the theatrical releases, and believe whatever you want."
faceh
7d ago
I dream of an era where the "canon" for a given series isn't dictated by the primary IP holder, but instead can be forked off by people where-ever they want, and fans can just form organic consensuses as to what particular canon is 'best,' and pick and choose precisely which parts of it they want to incorporate into their particular experience.
I would absolutely prefer the version of Star Wars where the Darth Jar-Jar theory was true and he turned out to be the evil behind Snoke in the new trilogy. Let me have my canon, and you can have... whatever The Rise of Skywalker was.
Force these massive companies to compete on something resembling quality, rather than Neener neener I own the IP, you have to go through me if you want more content.
faceh
7d ago
Its why I continue to maintain a physical, offline music collection even though it feels increasingly pointless. I've still got a bunch of my old CDs in a box in my closet as a last resort.
I pay 8 bucks and I can stream 95% of the music I want anywhere I am, which is a fair deal. The problem is they've trained me to expect betrayal and removal of songs I enjoy for reasons beyond their control, so archives/backups feel like a necessary step. Music files are small, storage is cheap.
I AM certainly willing to pay to see live performances, the value add there is clear, but digitization of everything has made me very unwilling to hand over money for an ephemeral digital file that I'm technically not allowed to copy.
Yep.
When I was at the age I was most in touch with the song, the "And it's all in my head, and she's touching his chest now, he takes off her dress, now" line mainly resonated with me because there were women I was eyeing and either they were already in relationships or got into one shortly after my feelings arose, so the image of her being intimate with THAT dude, a guy who was now receiving something I dearly want, were constant and unavoidable. The jealousy was the primary feature.
I mostly interpret it in terms of semi-mutual 'rejection' where both the singer and the female subject are aware of the other, but after some casual interaction (it was only a kiss!) the sparks that might have burst into a flame of passion are dying as she goes into some other dude's arms and the singer resolves to move on even as he's wrestling with the surprising emotional weight of the events. I prefer this interpretation because if its just some random chick the guy knows and fancies but has never even talked to, the singer is kind of pathetic.
This is not a song where the guy is openly professing feelings, or making plans to win her over, or going over to her place with romantic intent...
He's mentally checking out of the situation but admits the extent of his emotional distress, although perhaps realizes it will fade out over time.
This fits with infidelity, but that explicit interpretation is easiest to detect if you're viewing it through that specific lens, maybe as you've experienced it yourself.
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