C71 Masters of Ephemera

Psychopaths are good at goals, bad at priorities.

- Brightside

We’re all psychopaths.

- Darkness

30 SECONDS LATER - Brightside - Navy Barracks

“It’s all marketing. Branding.” I say. “Not just the fashion billionaires. All of them.”

Darkness grabs a beer. Sits. Smiles. “Go on.”

“It’s like Disney buying Marvel and Star Wars and remaking old movies. There’s more money in a big brand than something good. This is known, everybody knows this, even I knew this, but I didn’t realize how far it went.”

Chaos grabs a beer. Sits.

“That’s what all these billion dollar companies have in common. A relatively crappy product that everybody buys because they know it. Facebook, Google, Apple, Amazon, De Beers, Microsoft, General Motors, Samsung, Disney. They all have competitors with better products that they’re crushing because of name recognition.”

Corporal Fashionista staggers over. “Alright. So what?”

“So, Sony sells insurance. It’s where they make most of their profit. They were losing billions on movies and electronics, so they switched to insurance, and now they’re back to being one of the most profitable companies in the world. That’s the plan!”

Silence.

“I don’t get it.” says Corporal Fashionista. “Use more words.”

“We take a struggling company with name recognition, and a struggling company with a superior product, and we Frankenstein them together! We make a monster! AH-HAHAHA!!!

Silence. It feels kinda respectful now. I think I’m getting to them. Maybe.

“This feels like a good time for an example.” says the Darkness.

“Right!” I rub my head. Why am I yelling? “Okay. Google. They make 100 billion a year. 99 billion of that is from ads on their search engine. Which is crazy. Is the rest of Google hungover? Why aren’t they making money? Also, there’s a hundred other search engines. Is Google the best? Of course not, they just had a funny name, that wasn’t as funny as Yahoo, and we all ended up there without discussing it.

“Right. Fuck them. There’s a search engine called Ecosia. They give 80% of their profits to planting trees. Every search removes 1 kg of CO2 from the atmosphere. Let’s all switch to Ecosia and save the planet, one porn search at a time! Just kidding, we’ll never do that, we’ve been googling for years and we hate change. If we’d change to save our future, I wouldn’t eat two bags of potato chips every day. But, I did change once! I installed Adblock! Cause I hate Youtube ads. Only reason. 10% computers have Adblock. It’s a well known brand. I think you see where I’m going.

“Adblock makes a search engine - maybe with Ecosia, maybe on their own - that allows search ads - which are the most profitable, and least annoying ads. We swipe 10 billion a year from Google. Work our way up to 50 billion. Save humanity. Some of it. For a while.”

It’s quiet. They’re thinking.

“Will we use the money to plant trees?” asks Chaos.

“Absolutely not.” says The Darkness. “We form a SuperPAC. Buy politicians. Slapp suits. Spread propaganda. By lobbying, we can turn 10 billion into trillions of other people's money. We can even get our 100 billion back. That’s the correct way to leverage free speech.”

“That was a fun example.” says Captain Chaos cheerily. “Do another.”

“Okay.” I chirp. “Amazon! Totally useless. Their profit model is to steal from their own business partners. We will replace them with Wikipedia. Job done.”

“Arrgh.” growls Corporal Fashionista. “More words!”

“Right, sorry.” I start over. “Amazon is an online marketplace. They connect buyers with sellers and take 15% for their trouble. That’s cool. However, if a seller is really popular, Amazon gets a similar (or exact same) product and sells it themselves for 10% cheaper.

“So, if your online store is struggling, Amazon is happy with 15% of your sales. Which is probably half your profit. But, if you do well, Amazon will undercut you and take all your customers. Which is all your profit. Basically, they burn their business partners to the ground.”

“Harsh.” says Corporal Fashionista.

“Yes. Anyway, Wikipedia could team up with Amazon’s burned partners. They’d have the name recognition, the same products, and cheaper prices - because Wikipedia is nonprofit. They could also ship faster - because Amazon’s Fulfilment Centres are a joke. A cruel, pointless joke.”

“Nice.” says Chaos. “How does this get us billions?”

“We’ll talk Wikipedia into a 2% environmental charge that we’ll spend on bribes.”

“Excellent.” says Chaos. “I’m thoroughly enjoying this. Do another.”

“Let’s make a mash-up of Facebook, Reddit, and Tinder. We’ll keep the good stuff, and fix the stupid stuff. Make everyone anonymous, but crack down on fake accounts. It would probably be easiest to verify unique users by their Netflix account, but there’s other ways. I’d build the entire operation inside the corpse of MySpace. It’s selling for cheap and is ready to be brought back ironically.”

“Got it.” Corporal Fashionista nods. “No need to explain that one.”

“Cool. I could do this all day. Literally every billionaire is peddling overhyped crap. Microsoft and Apple should be replaced by Linux. Android - which is Linux - should also be replaced by Linux. There’s millions of awesome free stories that are better than the timid, scared of their own fans, crap that Disney spews out. Solar power is already cheaper than coal plants. Electric cars are already cheaper than gas cars. Heat pumps are already cheaper than furnaces. Did I forget anything?”

“Porn.” says the Darkness.

“Jesus, porn. What the fuck is wrong with porn?” I wonder aloud. “The advertising on porn is the world’s largest megaphone, and they use it to show more porn. Trying to sell what they’re giving away for free. What the fuck is wrong with these people? Porn sites should ban porn ads. Advertise for Adblock, Wikipedia, MySpace, Solar Power, and Fake Meat. They could be the engine of this entire operation.

“Or, they could just do any of these ideas directly. No reason why Pornhub couldn’t run a search engine, or an online marketplace. Or an adblocker, streaming site, dating site, social media, or fucking anything really. They’ve got the servers. They’ve got the eyeballs. They just need to go for it.”

I sigh, reach for another beer. “Anyway, this is all drunk talk. We could probably stop global warming with these ideas, but we don’t have the resources to get any of them started.”

Captain Chaos smiles. Pulls out her phone. “Hey Lodestone! You hear all that?”

“Aye, Captain.”

A reminder from Project Lodestone pops up on my phone. Apparently, I’m having drinks with the advertising director of Pornhub two days from now.

“Huh.” I turn to Captain Chaos. “You said you got demoted. What are you doing now?”

“I’m red teaming unpopular DARPA projects. I got a rep for making my bosses look bad, so now they transfer me to departments they want shut down. Right now I’m tasked with testing Project Lodestone to destruction. Lodestone’s an A.I. created to reduce logistical fuck-ups for large military manuevers. It searches large populations for people with common goals. Then it tries to remove obstacles to those goals by improving communication between like minded people. I’m to prove it doesn’t work.”

“How’s that going?”

“It’s interesting.”