Wish away tech billionaires’ obsessions with home-grown demonic spells
“No, love, yer can’t park there, it’s private”
Their fantasy has turned to madness and all my goodness has turned to badness… as 80s electro-poppers Animotion almost sang nearly 40 years ago.
I am, of course, talking about obsession.
Many of us are at its whims at some point in our lives, whether rich or poor – although the more money you have, the less sordid your obsession appears. For example, if you stock your mansion with repeated, identical, frivolous purchases, you are “a collector” and people take that as a sign of culture. If you stuff your council flat with similarly useless tat, though, you are “a hoarder” and people worry about the signs of culture spreading whenever you open the fridge.
Most obsessions begin as simple fixed ideas that creep into our heads and fester there, but eventually evaporate as soon as you realise you’re being a tit. This is what we call “character”.
Tech billionaires are especially obsessional, partly because they’re on the spectrum, as it were, but they tend to get stuck with their obsessions long after the rest of us have grown out of them. I imagine this is because there’s nobody willing to tell a tech billionaire to their face that they’re being a tit, and also because tech billionaires are so up their own fucking arses, it would never occur to them spontaneously. Tech billionaires lack the aforementioned “character”.
Talking about people who can’t tell their arses from their tits, I came home from a long trip the other day to find someone had parked their little blue car directly in front of my house like this:
Given that street parking space usually comes at a premium, you might agree this was a tad inconsiderate: a generous stretch of kerb that could easily accommodate two family saloons, instead taken up by a poorly positioned Matchbox toy.
But it’s not what you think. This wasn’t thoughtless or incompetent parking. It was obsession.
There is plenty of street parking space in our street. But no matter how much free space there is up and down the road, someone will always park their car directly in front of my house. No matter how other vehicles have been stationed, someone absolutely must park in this precise spot, not an inch further forward or back. It’s classic obsessional behaviour.
Me, when I saw this, I just parked my car by the block of flats further down the road. There’s always loads of space there. But here’s the thing: the owner of the blue car lives in those flats. She had made the decision not to park in the free space where she lives so that she could park, inconveniently for her, directly in front of my house instead.
It’s not her fault. If she hadn’t parked in this spot, someone else would have; they always do. Why my house? Nobody knows. You cannot easily explain mass obsessional behaviour. Even if motorised transport didn’t exist, someone would invent the car just so they could park one in front of my house.
I wonder if this is the kind of obsession that plagues tech billionaires in their domestic life. Take Mark Zukerberg, for example, and his irrational obsession with the metaverse. I say “irrational” because nobody else gives a shit about his wanky little Second Life rip-off, yet still Mr Z perseveres with it. He has pissed away several fortunes on the project now, with virtually no revenue to show for it, and yet nothing and no-one can persuade him that metaverses are not simply the most brilliant thing, ever.
You might say he is metaphorically obsessed with parking his analogous metaverse in front of my figurative metahouse.
Or what about Elon Musk and his lob-on for the letter “X”? I mean, “X” as a visual symbol is kind of cool when you’re 12 years old but then I guess Elon never grew up. ”X” here, “X” there, a giant glowing “X” on a rooftop that has to be dismantled, an “X” as the new name for a social media platform whose solitary character does not even feature in its own web address. Another fortune gets pissed away over a man-child’s obsession with something that really doesn’t matter to anybody but himself.
I’m even getting a little concerned over Tim Cook’s obsession with VR, a tech concept that rears its ugly arsecrack once every decade. Maybe Apple Vision Pro will be the product that finally breaks through so that VR takes over the hearts and minds of the developed world. But it probably won’t. Again.
Not that Tim is bothered. Apple just sent out a missive talking about how brilliant some calendar app is running on Vision Pro.
So hang on, let me get this right: you think people want to put on $3,500 goggles in order to look at a calendar? No, really, what the fucking fuck? I’m looking out the window right now to see if Tim Cook is about to roll up in a translucent white space car (albeit with a cable running back to a trailer where the battery is) to park in front of my house.
You can’t blame him, mind: he inherited some of that obsessive behaviour from his predecessor. Anyone remember Steve Job’s insane mania for all things cubed? Jobs was mad for cubes even when – especially when – they didn’t make any practical sense. I assumed it was a little in-joke when he worked at NeXT, along the lines of “Let’s make this new workstation look as stupid as possible to upset John Sculley who won’t have a clue what it is” but apparently it was deeper rooted. Back at Apple, Jobs wanted everything to be cube-style, whether anyone bought it or not.
Some of us remember the woeful Mac Cube, whose touch-sensitive power button was on top of the unit next to the heat vents, thereby randomly and spontaneously switching off the unit while you were working on it. The cube obsession even continued after Steve Jobs left us: just visit the Apple Store on Fifth Avenue.
Ah, Mme D has just returned home bearing an enigmatic expression. I know this one: she has cast another banishing spell.
Noting the neighbours’ obsession with parking in front of our house a few weeks ago, Mme D cursed the car that did it most frequently. I didn’t hear the precise magic spell but I did observe the magical flourish that accompanied it. Well, when I say “flourish” it was more of a “kick of the tyres”. Still, just days later, we saw the car parked further up the road, and it appeared partly crushed as if King Kong had picked it up from in front of our house and then chucked it away.
Nobody explained what happened but we know.
Anyway, I think word has got out. I’ve just seen the owner of the little blue car come sprinting down the street, jump in to her car and drive it away in haste… only to park it outside her own flat.
If there was an aura of obsession around that spot in front of our house, it seems Mme D has exorcised it, or should I say de-exorcised it, possibly by filling it with fresh demons. For the last few days, nobody has even tried to park in front of my house. I believe everyone is now scared of parking there.
I really must find a way for Mme D to meet some tech billionaires.
Alistair Dabbs is a freelance technology tart, juggling IT journalism, editorial training and digital publishing. He used to be obsessional about 1980s electronic musical instruments but couldn’t afford a Fairlight and lacked space for a Simmons SDSV. He still owns a fretless bass but very rarely plays it.
I, too, have had recurring issues with the neighbors parking in front of my house. Plain and simple fact is that it's illegal to park in front of my house as it's a one-way street and the direction of the one-way means that cars must park on the opposing side of the street. At the time this was happening most frequently, none of the neighbors on the opposite side of the street had vehicles, so it was always possible to safely and legally park properly. However, the bastards always insisted on not following the law. For a stretch of time, I resorted to leaving my trash bin permanently on the street in front.
For the most part, the problem has been resolved (now 6 years later) except for when the neighbors have company over. There are extra spots around the corner that the city built specifically for this purpose, yet no one uses them. It is indeed frustrating.
[shakes head] Mr Dabbs, Mr Dabbs.[/shakes head]
I am surprised you have not come to understand the French psyche.
Here's how it works:
If there are two ways of doing something, with exactly the same outcome for your neighbour, the French way is to always chose the way that will **** over someone else. Always.
It adds to the charm of living in France.