Technology is evolving at a speed that we have never experienced before. Sometimes you don't even need a new phone or laptop, because you just bought it. But there is a new one, slightly faster, with a slightly better camera, with slightly more memory space. We also have a lot of new inventions and the most recent one is Chat GPT, which blew everyone’s minds with how natural its speech is and how knowledgeable it is.
But are they actually that revolutionary and will they stand the test of time? Instagram account MBA-ish noticed that some technological advancements were so hyped and everyone wanted a part of them, but they have now ended up in the “next big thing” graveyard. In their own satirical fashion, they explained why the technologies failed and shared their rule of never buying into something that sounds too good to be true.
More info: Instagram
With so many technology advancements, there are bound to be fails and while they seemed like the next big thing then, now it is obvious they won't be
Image credits: WOCinTech Chat (not the actual photo)
The Instagram account MBA-ish has 424k followers and it provides people with their daily dose of work satire, highlighting how pointless some jobs are and how all corporations are the same in the sense that they don’t care about their workers.
They used their talent for satire to comment about some of the things that once were breakthroughs in technology but now aren’t that relevant anymore. These innovations were hyped up and many people got into them just to realize they aren’t that special and don’t hold value in the long run.
Instagram account MBA-ish dedicated to workplace satire explains why some new projects and innovations failed
Image credits: mba_ish
Image credits: mba_ish
MBA-ish put all of those novelties in what they called a “next big thing” graveyard and explained that usually when a tech influencer, a course hustler, a mediocre executive or a hot person is hyping something up and believes in it, then you can be almost certain that it’s a scam or just unprofitable.
The first deceased they remember is Clubhouse, which is “a new type of social network based on voice—where people around the world come together to talk, listen and learn from each other in real-time.”
As Influencer Marketing Club explains, “You can use the app to listen in and participate in different conversations on different topics—sometimes with celebrities like Oprah, Kevin Hart, Jared Leto, and others.”
It was released in 2020 and it was truly something new that it made other social media platforms compete, which is why Facebook created Live Audio rooms, Spotify created Greenroom, etc.
But MBA-ish considers it dead and it was because the content in the room dedicated to specific topics wasn’t relatable enough for people to continue caring, although Demand Sage reports that it still has 10 million users.
The reasons vary from the projects not being relevant or useful to being not worth it financially
Image credits: mba_ish
Image credits: mba_ish
The next tomb is dedicated to NFTs or non-fungible tokens, which “are assets that have been tokenized via a blockchain.” It can be actually anything as long as it is digital, but the most common form is art, like drawings or music.
The market for them went crazy as some of the art pieces were sold for millions of dollars, but as MBA-ish points out, you don’t need to pay for it to be able to download it. The Verge explains that the thing you do get is the “ownership of the work (though the artist can still retain the copyright and reproduction rights, just like with physical artwork). To put it in terms of physical art collecting: anyone can buy a Monet print. But only one person can own the original.”
But it’s clear that while it was interesting while it was new, because celebrities were hyping it up, now sales have slumped and it doesn’t seem that NFTs will be having a comeback soon.
The Instagram account also predicts the next big fail of a hyped product, ChatGPT, which has not stopped fascinating people yet
Image credits: mba_ish
Image credits: mba_ish
The next on the obituary is probably one of the more controversial ones and it is crypto-currency. Kaspersky defines it as “a digital currency using cryptography to secure transactions.” It became really popular because the transactions were safe, anonymous and convenient.
But their value dropped because they don’t actually have value. Brock Pierce, chairman of the Bitcoin Foundation, explained that its value “comes from shared belief, from consensus.” The consensus has changed, for some reason, and a lot of people lost a lot of money and now they are more careful and don’t trust it as much.
Also, the curator of the account shared their rule of never getting into something that is heavily hyped up by influencers or celebrities
Image credits: mba_ish
Another failed project that died not long after being created is Mark Zuckerberg’s Metaverse. He had a new vision for Facebook that he called metaverse and imagined people joining this digital world through a computer-generated character. Instead of writing posts, sharing photos and videos, the characters would interact with each other like in a video game.
The catch is that you can’t just join the metaverse with your phone or laptop, but need a virtual-reality headset manufactured by a company Facebook bought for $US2 billion in 2014 that would allow you to believe you are physically located in that world. Sounds cool and pretty scary, making you think of all the movies where people don’t really understand which of the realities are the original one.
But it didn’t take off and their stock price dropped drastically. MBA-ish contributes the fail to the high price and it actually not being that cool.
It most probably is a scam or it won't bring you the financial benefits it promises
Image credits: mba_ish
The last project we will cry over is WeWork. This is a provider of coworking spaces, both physical and virtual. Basically, WeWork is the landlord that you can rent out a space for working or studying from.
But the business crashed because of an unsustainable business model and the CEO Neumann was known for questionable behavior, which led to the company losing a lot of money and losing investors.
MBA-ish doesn’t even see the point of investing in such a company whose only purpose is to rent out offices.
Although WeWork was the last company that actually failed, there is another tombstone with a name engraved but with no death date. It is placed there for ChatGPT, which took internet users by storm because they were kind of scared but also fascinated with its ability to generate natural language and write school essays for them.
What is special about it is that you can chat with it, ask the same question and get differently formulated answers, it remembers the conversation you had before, it acknowledges mistakes and rejects improper requests.
The Instagram account predicts that it won’t last long and Microsoft will buy it and ruin it for everyone.
Despite all of it, they still believe technology is life-changing, but not when people need convincing to use it
Image credits: mba_ish
Image credits: ThisIsEngineering (not the actual photo)
Do you concur with the causes of death? Have you even heard of the deceased? Maybe you still use some of the services or platforms? Do you see ChatGPT dying like everything else or is it more special and will hold its value? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
The post received varying responses but most of them agreed that the satire was pretty funny
