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Comment by noduerme

2 days ago

Look, I will now defend my lack of a sense of humor. That post was 5 minutes old and I was the first person to respond to it. If the poster had <10 posts I would have assumed it was a troll. As sib @gretch writes, I extended them faith that they were earnest.

I will say that the bit about showing users only the barcode but capturing photos outside that was pretty clever; it's the kind of detail that belongs in a Neal Stephenson novel. But that's exactly the kind of thing that a million startups would do right now. Yea in retrospect it's kinda stupid that someone would admit this and also be proud to get a better set of photos of refrigerators and supermarket aisles.

So, is this a grade-A 2024 version of Andy Kaufman comedy that requires just one dolt in the audience to take it seriously? Hah. I guess if so it wouldn't be funny unless someone like me took the bait. I see the humor. But if you analyze why it was funny, the primary reason would be the fact that it was so possible to take it seriously. Especially with 134 or so upvotes, the user writing had exactly the amount of cachet as someone who had interned at a sleazy startup for 2 months and was proud of something really stupid.