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Two ingenious tech bros want to replace bodegas with new app, but FOH

bodega September 13, 2017
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A pair of former Googlers want to end the local bodega by replacing it with a box full of random shit and a corresponding app to access it… they’re calling their creation ‘Bodega.’

This offensively terrible idea seems like parody, but Bodega’s founders are oh so serious about their box of random shit.

Paul McDonald and cofounder Ashwath Rajan have come up with this Orwellian joke of an idea, described here by Fast Company,

“Bodega sets up five-foot-wide pantry boxes filled with non-perishable items you might pick up at a convenience store. An app will allow you to unlock the box and cameras powered with computer vision will register what you’ve picked up, automatically charging your credit card. The entire process happens without a person actually manning the ‘store.'”

That is a technologically advanced vending machine. That’s pretty much it. There is actually nothing at all interesting about this invention besides the appropriation of the bodega name and culture being specifically used in order to make local bodegas obsolete.

McDonald and Rajan have even appropriated the bodega cat as the logo of Bodega. I’m currently slamming my head against my computer as I type this.

This may be one of the most tone deaf and useless ideas to come out of Silicon Valley, but it’s also actively malicious.

https://twitter.com/MorganJerkins/status/907970056012881920

Bodegas in New York City and Los Angeles are mostly run by immigrant families, this active appropriation of the Spanish word ‘Bodega,’ by these tech bros as they actively try to get rid of bodegas themselves is just the worst thing.

When Fast Company asked McDonald about the blatant cultural insensitivity of his stupid invention he said some dumb shit about surveys blah blah,

“’I’m not particularly concerned about it… We did surveys in the Latin American community to understand if they felt the name was a misappropriation of that term or had negative connotations, and 97% said ‘no’. It’s a simple name and I think it works.'”

Nah, it doesn’t work because you’ve made a glorified vending machine and are naming it Bodega.

I have a headache.

Thankfully Twitter flamed the shit out of these losers and their little box of perishable goods, because even if we are living in an Orwellian dystopia, at least we can laugh about it.

You shall be launched into the sun

I don’t think the dudes at Bodega are familiar with what people actually buy at bodegas…

https://twitter.com/RealLifeKaz/status/907990984553885698

LONG LIVE BODEGAS

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