04.04.12
BAD 2.0: Innovation
In Paul Fussell’s BAD, the title is defined:
BAD is … something phony, clumsy, witless, untalented, vacant or boring that many Americans can be persuaded is genuine, graceful, bright or fascinating.
That was in 1991. BAD was a thin book. Today it would be a set of encyclopedias.
Just about everything in America is now BAD.
The US military, despite being the largest, most well-equipped and capitalized of any in world history, is BAD. It smashes weakling countries and bombs the guilty as well as the innocent who have nothing in the desperate places of the world, delivering it all with a special brand of American pomposity that tolerates no soul-searching or regret.
It is thought to be led by men deemed the best and the brightest. So best and bright the majority of Americans cannot name one general, admiral, or even the guy who led the force that invaded Iraq a decade ago.
The Republican Party, for example, is irrevocably BAD. It is phony, witless, vacant, clumsy and a whole lot of other things one would never use to describe any group of genuinely good human beings.
iKit from Apple is BAD. In fact, it may be the apotheosis of BAD. It spread American BAD worldwide, like a plague of impetigo, inspiring a cult-like belief in people everywhere that its products are genuine, graceful, beautiful and fascinating when, upon close scrutiny, they are nothing of the kind.
Steve Jobs, among many others, turned “Innovation” into BAD by taking trivial applications in self-gratification and selling them in such pretentious wrapping that Americans are easily convinced they will be incomplete if they do not possess the things.
Another example of BAD is a story from the wires, seeking to show readers that Wal-Mart is seeking to unleash American innovators by opening its shelves to an army of cranks, crackpots and snake oil salesmen.
The company correctly, and cynically, knows how to exploit its audience by working its vulnerability to fads, fraudulent advertising, ripoff disguised as bargain and shit that doesn’t work.
“We know there is a lot of innovation happening all over the country, great ideas that may be flying under the radar,” says Guha Jayachandran, the principal engineer at Wal-Mart’s online research group, Walmart Labs, who came up with the contest …
Four decades ago, Antonio Juarez of Highland, Calif., a believer in home remedies, was having lunch with a balding friend when he had an epiphany—thanks to the salad he happened to be eating.
“I grabbed the vinegar dressing, rubbed the stuff right into his head, and said, ‘Your hair is going to grow now!'” Mr. Juarez recalls.
The friend embraced the treatment, and a year later, his hair came back, Mr. Juarez claims.
Now 73, Mr. Juarez just recently started trying to market his revelatory product, called “Pelo Nuevo,” Spanish for new hair. There is a good reason: “I was broke,” he says.
“But this stuff really works,” adds Mr. Juarez, who says he has been wined and dined by prospective Chinese partners. “You can eat it, too. I don’t put that on the label, but it is true. I will put it against anything on the market right now.”
In fact, the Wal-Mart search for “innovation” is, in and of itself, a potential bait and switch designed to attract people like flies drawn to excrement. A close reading of the story informs Wal-Mart is not at all committed to actually putting any item it deems innovative in its stores.
“If the winner and the company can’t strike a deal on sale terms, the person will be awarded $12,500 instead,” reads the piece.
One must look very hard to find things that are not BAD now.