Rohit Bhargava's Blog, page 69
July 18, 2018
Can Hyperlocal Apps Actually Make Us Interact With Our Neighbors?
The idea that neighbors might want the food you won’t eat might seem far fetched depending on where you live. Yet the hyperlocal food sharing app called Olio just picked up another $6 million in funding and has already expanded to over 40 countries with rapid growth. More than 400,000 food items have been shared since the app started with everyone from students to local shops raving about the experience. It turns out people hate to throw away perfectly good food – and stories like the user wh...
July 15, 2018
How The Backlash Of Superfans Might Ruin Entertainment For The Rest Of Us
Logan director James Mangold is worried that “the fear of upsetting an eager mob” of online fans might drive smart, creative people out of creating great art. For years comedians have been avoiding college campuses because of the inability for easily outraged youth to take a joke. Have we become so uptight that we are unable to find joy in entertainment anymore? The real problem may not be the emotion itself, but the many ways today that outrage can be amplified. The loudest voices become the...
July 12, 2018
Pokemon Go Isn’t Dead … It’s Quietly Dominating
A little over two years ago, Pokemon Go was everywhere. People walked down the street glued to their phones. And then one day it all seemed to stop. Yet as this article from WIRED explores, the game is still dominating. Who is still playing? As writer Brian Barrett notes: “The game attracts proportionally more older people and more women than its peers—and in fact can credit much of its initial success to enthusiasts who otherwise wouldn’t be playing anything at all.” The entire story is a pe...
July 9, 2018
Cadbury Is The First Brand To Get Banned From Advertising To Kids
For years unscrupulous marketers pushing unhealthy foods or unbelievable marketing claims have dragged down the credibility of all marketers. Now under a new rule from the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), junk food ads are not allowed in media where under-16s make up 25% or more of the audience. While Cadbury has become the first symbolic advertiser to have ads banned, the real target won’t be brands that make candy (which is obviously not a substitute for a meal), but rather the brands...
July 5, 2018
Masculinity Evolving: What Does It Mean To Be A Man Today?
What do men think it means to be a man today in the era of #metoo? This is a question that has been receiving a lot of attention recently. Data analytics site FiveThirtyEight.com commissioned a study that found plenty of fascinating conclusions, including that more than 75% of men don’t believe there are any advantages today to being a man at work, and they are “fractured” about their role in society. As a recent piece in The Atlantic about the stifling double standard of masculinity noted, b...
July 3, 2018
The Rise of Passive Job Seeking
Loyalty, on some level, means being happy with what you have.
This week there was another story of a new platform getting funded which offers “passive job hunting.” The idea is that you can anonymously enter details about the sorts of roles you might be interested in, as well as the triggers that might lure you away from your current job, and a bot goes off to search the web for your next role. In a world where everyone is constantly bombarded with examples of how the grass is greener somewhe...
June 30, 2018
5 Dangerously Futuristic Features Facebook Is Quietly Testing
Facebook is fond of running experiments, even though in the past this hasn’t gone so well. Yet these missteps haven’t stopped them from trying. Over the past several weeks, there has been reports of several new innovative features that they are testing which may soon have a significant impact on your online life and behavior.
To help with the challenge of finding balance between our online selves and offline lives, they are testing a feature that allows you to track how long you spend on FB a...
June 29, 2018
How Hot Dog Water Became The Hottest New Health Drink In America
Hot Dog Water officially launched this week and you can have some for just $38 a bottle. Before you roll your eyes in disgust, would it change your mind to learn that it helps restore the body’s homeostasis after an electrolyte imbalance? It is only if you read till the end of the small print that you would have seen the most important line: “Hot Dog Water in its absurdity hopes to encourage critical thinking related to product marketing.”
Today the ridiculousness of marketing is all around u...
June 26, 2018
Why Our Economy Supports (And Sometimes Needs) Bullsh*t Jobs
“A titanic amount of our economy is presently bullshit, and we’re working crazy hours to ensure that all the bullshit gets done.”
This review of the newly released book Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber looks at some of the themes from the research of the author and why there are so many people doing jobs like “guarding” an empty room at a museum or doing meaningless data entry. One reason stems from the necessity of senior leaders to have many people reporting to them to inflate their salaries...
June 25, 2018
The Passive Future Of Learning: How To Learn Piano In An Hour
Imagine learning a new skill such as playing the piano or reading braille in as little as an hour. That may soon be a reality according to this story which introduces a concept called “passive haptic learning” where people were taught the finger patterns to play a song on the piano simply by wearing a glove that vibrated in a set pattern. During experiments, each person who used it was able to actually play the piano after an hour of wearing a special glove without any other instruction, even...
