‘In this light, a large portion of Pinterest's content starts to look largely like the great, white, suburban dreamscape of the 1950s pathologized, now crowd-sourced to showcase today's insecurity with the messier, dirtier, and much less wealthy lives we actually lead. It's an extension of the pleasure machines we've been trained to be: we please the perceived tastes of others with images of things that have little or no relation to who we actually are or what we do — most of which images are of things that are, in themselves, about creating pleasure for others — with hopes of little more than to continue being pleasing.’

‘Hence, fanboy: a derogatory term that means someone who is blindly and irrationally devoted to a product that I believe is inferior to what I bought when faced with a similar choice, and whose opinions and arguments can therefore be completely disregarded.’

‘Thanksgiving is a one of our better ideas. We, theoretically, reflect on how fortunate we are to have what we have. The day after Thanksgiving would be a great day to start thinking how we might start addressing wrongs perpetuated on anybody trampled in the process of putting together the comfort and security we are so thankful for. Instead, we’ve turned it into a symbolic date for acquiring shinier objects in anticipation of how we can best miss the point of our next major holiday. Perhaps worse, it infects Thanksgiving itself, turning the holiday into, effectively, a paean to culinary gluttony in preparation for commercial gluttony.’

‘The reaction to Jobs' death-- his full transformation into one of the era's most prominent secular deities-- reveals that we want more than anything to believe in the benevolent, progressive, and humane powers of technology.’

Copying a successful business plan is safe, and tons of companies are copying Groupon. The differentiating strategies of the more successful copycats are interesting, as is the arms-race and recursion of deal aggregators. I find it fascinating that people sign up for this stuff, because I find it wasteful.

This is insane: “In just over two years, Groupon has accumulated 60 million subscribers, more than $1 billion in venture capital and $760 million in annual revenue to become the fastest-growing Web company ever. In December, it declined a $6 billion buyout offer from Google.”

Is Forever 21’s Chang family capitalist geniuses or just exploitative and plagiaristic?

“Sometimes I just NEED things because I LIKE them. And I LIKE the color of these PLATES.”

What to stop buying and what to replace those things with. A nice list.

"I’m afraid of what the systematic harnessing of communities will result in." Specifically, he's afraid that it will result in a) fans wasting their time and money and b) the artist being relegated to the sidelines while context and 'engagement' take over. Valid fears if you ask me, and exactly the sort of the thing that Matt LeMay outlines in the MBV post 'Living in the Age of Art vs Content' (http://www.mbvmusic.com/2010/10/19/living-in-the-age-of-art-vs-content/26911).

"'I do not see any socially redeeming purpose being served by these beverages. At the end of the day, they’re aimed at a young, inexperienced market for the purpose of enabling them to become rapidly intoxicated.'"

It takes time and a lot of guts, but you'll save money. "It really works... but it works only if you truly are willing to walk away... and then refuse to bend when they try to put you off or change the terms. Stay civil, do not let any emotion in."

"Companies that sell stuff have spent huge sums training us to think stuff is still valuable. But it would be closer to the truth to treat stuff as worthless."

Contemporary American industry, disaster, and culture and consumerism as art.