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Notes -
Trending on Google today is the fact that Gwyneth Paltrow is listing her guest house on Airbnb for one night only for $0. Two guests will also enjoy a home dinner with her and her husband, and should be "ready to get gooped."
See the listing here. Goopy excerpt:
There is plenty of media coverage for this, which of course is the point for both goop (stylized in lowercase) and Airbnb (I wonder if any money exchanged hands, and if so, in which direction). The good ol' CBS, CNN, People, and Forbes cover it straight and read like a moderately paraphrased press release. Insider goes for the edgy angle and titles its coverage "Gwyneth Paltrow is once again being called 'out of touch' for listing her luxurious Montecito guest house on Airbnb to combat widespread 'loneliness'," with the sources of its headline coming from social media, the wonderful fountain of truth.
But I bring this up because none of these articles explain how on earth the guests will be chosen, if it's artificially listed for $0. Is it whoever has the fastest fingers to click book? Is it a completely random lottery? Or is it a managed selection whereby the goop founder's PR team identifies the most photogenic interracial gay couple?
CBS, CNN, People, and Forbes don't mention this at all. Insider at least points out the ambiguity of this, except it does so primarily in the context of social media randoms guessing that the $0 is a placeholder and that its actual price will be out of their price range, which is apparently a sin. Washington Post has a tantalizing headline "Gwyneth Paltrow’s guesthouse is going on Airbnb. We have questions.", more precisely 10 of them, which I read in full, and none of them address this obvious question. Instead, we get edifying gems like, "Will Gwyneth offer you pajamas as cozy as her court wardrobe?", "Will there be candles?", and "Have we been mispronouncing chaise longue this whole time?"
It's not exactly a thesis on par with LK-99 for me to point out that the way these articles all manage to omit, imo, the most important detail suggests that the journalists are idiots and/or they believe their readers are idiots. Or they're just lazy and lack the instinct to think through the contradiction of having a limited, valuable (even if you don't value it, plenty obviously do) product marketed for $0 would work.
/vent
Today you learn what a submarine is.
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