Yes, Elon Musk finally released his flame throwers to the consumer market … and people promptly began using them in totally inappropriate ways. It is a predictable side effect of our culture of Everyday Stardom that consumers behave badly … just because they can. This week, there were plenty of examples that maybe we don’t deserve all the nice things and technology that we have access to.
In France, students will be banned from using mobile phones in school. In China, one city created a slow walking “zombie lane” for oblivious people who walk slowly and text. To curb the rampant gaming of their Kindle Unlimited system, Amazon finally shut down a notorious scammer who was racking up his earnings by manipulating Amazon’s algorithms. And the retail industry as a whole is launching a crack down on “chronic returners” of products.
The theme in all these stories is consumers behaving badly – and it flies in the face of the old adage that the “customer is always right.” Ironically in some cases, the customer is actually a lying, manipulating, or immature simpleton that has little self control and even less self awareness. You know, exactly the sort of person you probably shouldn’t listen to.
