Bad Consumer Behaviour

Should The Internet Have A Shop Closing Law?

Another Monday, Another Naive Weekly - Curated stories on Technology and Internet Culture.

Oliver Bruce is an investor actively promoting scooters as a micromobility solution. I enjoyed the discussion that followed his Twitter post about the short lifecycles of scooters.

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In Copenhagen there are scooters everywhere. They divide the waters. Some people are extremely happy with the scooters, while others hate them beyond anything I have seen in a long time.

The discussion of scooters is naturally not a simple discussion, and like almost anything, some regulation is required to keep the balance.

However, one argument annoys me quite a lot when it comes to the scooter debate. People who are opposing the scooters often say that they are annoyed with how the scooters are floating around on the streets. I understand their frustration, but in a town like Copenhagen I fail to see how the floating scooters can be reduced to a problem with the scooters themselves.

Copenhagen is known to house many bikes. People take good care of their bikes, and those bikes who are not taken care of are occasionally removed from the streets by the municipality and the neighborhoods societies who have an interest in keeping their lot clean and ordered.

So why is it different when it comes to scooters? Is it because people own their bike, but short-term lease the scooters? It seems logical that people has a bigger incentive to treat their own property better, but this doesn’t explain why people treat the similar bike-rental solutions perfectly fine.

Unless the scooter companies actively encourage people to put the scooters so they block the pavements and parking lots, then I think the problem of floating scooters primarily boils down to bad-consumer behaviour. At least I fail to see why we treat this new technology different from anything else we rent. Maybe you’ve some insights?

And maybe you want to help Angela and me make a special issue of this newsletter focusing on urban development. It is an experiment, but let’s see what comes out of it. I for one would like to write about Why I Hate Cars.

Five Stories on Technology and Internet Culture

1. Why Women Are Called 'Influencers' and Men 'Creators'

There is no big study behind this article, yet the observation seems to fit with what I know from my own world: women are called influencers, men are called creators, despite them doing the same.

2. Uber Will Now Deactivate Riders With Below Average Ratings

Anyone who has taken an Uber knows that the drivers get rated on a 1-5 scale after the trip. Less people know that if the drivers have a too low average score, then they get banned from the platform. Hardly everyone knows that the drivers also rate the riders on a 1-5 scale. Until now this rating had no significance, but going forward riders will get banned if continuously misbehaving.

3. Novelist Mark Haddon Quit Twitter. Not Because It’s Terrible, But Because It Prevents Him From Being Great

In our questioning of social media, Mark Haddon raises a point for leaving the platforms that I have really seen before: it has reduced the boiler pressure to do the work that actually matter.

My critical opinion on this: Mark’s decision to leave Twitter might be a rather privileged position to be in. Unlike aspiring writers who’d quit social media, Mark will still get the book deals he wants. And unlike person of colour, the issues that matters to Mark are already being discussed.

4. I Miss Blind, Dumb Enthusiasm for New Tech

Martin Bryant who writes the excellent newsletter Big Revolution looks 10 years back with nostalgia to his first article as a paid tech journalist: a story about the launch of Google Wave. However, it is not Google Wave that Martin misses, instead is the enthusiasms we had for new technology ten years ago. This enthusiasm rarely happens today where startups and social media lost its innocence and we have become more cynical when hearing about new projects.

I think nostalgia is having a big wave on the Internet these days, just check the answers to this tweet: What’s your favorite product or service that doesn’t exist anymore, that you miss most?

5. The Weird and Wonderful World of Neighborhood Facebook Groups

I love neighborhood Facebook groups.

Naive Weekly

Hi, I’m Kristoffer and I’m one of the founders of co-matter. You just read Naive Weekly - Curated stories on Technology and Internet Culture.

As always a big thanks to the six Naive Friends who chip in every month or year to support me making time to write this newsletter: Nikolaj, Søren, Dries, Mikkel, Tina & Angela!

And a big thanks to Ana for recommending me in the May edition of Creative Voyage.