Premium mediocre

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“premium mediocrity is creating an aura of exclusivity without actually excluding anyone.”

Today, you’re either above the API or below the API (the phrase “below the API” appears to have been coined by Peter Reinhardt in 2015). You either tell robots what to do, or are told by robots what to do. To crash through the API, and into what I previously termed the Jeffersonian middle class, is to go from being predator to prey in the locust economy.

A gold star to the relentlessly imaginative Venkatesh Rao for this piece of genius: The premium mediocre life of Maya Millennial

It is a long read, but well worth it. So much quotable stuff.

“Premium mediocrity is not clueless, tasteless consumption of mediocrity under the mistaken impression that it is actual luxury consumption. Maya Millennial is aware that what she is consuming is mediocre at its core, and only “premium” in some peripheral (and importantly, cheap, such as French-for-no-reason branding) ways. But she consumes it anyway. She is aware that her consumption is tasteless, yet she pretends it is tasteful anyway.”

“There lies the terrifying structural boundary of our times — the API. Today, you’re either above the API or below the API. You either tell robots what to do, or are told by robots what to do.”

See also

• The premium mediocre life of Maya Millennial — just read it.