I love hypothetical moral dilemmas, like “Is it right to redirect a trolley to run over five people?” or “If I strangle a cat, can I seal it in a box so I don’t know whether it’s dead or alive?”
But the greatest moral dilemma of all time is explored in Les Misérables, which Bezos and I caught in London. We ducked out early for a secret Flosstradmous show, but I got the gist of Les Mis. It tells the story of a poor man, Jean Valjean, who gets arrested for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his sister’s starving kids. Some people might argue that Jean should have just paid for that bread by getting an honest job, like creating a killer app that disrupts the North American essential oils market. But as a bleeding-edge moral thinker, I would argue that Jean Valjean is actually a hero!
I’m basically the Jean Valjean of Silicon Valley. Not long ago, I too was down on my luck. Engagements dropped 26% on Birch Please!, my app that uses Uber to deliver your Birchbox to your Airbnb while streaming the whole thing on TikTok. Ad revenue plummeted. Mark Cuban stopped taking my calls. I had to sleep in one of the worst Red Cross tents at Fyre Fest. If I didn’t get a metaphorical loaf of bread, I would starve to death.
Then I found sustenance. It turned out that my users had just left their personal data lying around, like an apple pie cooling on a windowsill. They weren’t even going to eat their data! So what harm was there in mining their data to generate marketable findings, like the fact that Love Is Blind fans are 41% more likely to order Bootea Shake protein powder after hearing a DJ Khaled song? Am I a bad guy for accepting a modest Bitcoin payout for helping Russian operatives identify which Americans most support Confederate statues? It’s a moral dilemma worthy of Victor Hugo himself.
The money I make from selling user data feeds my starving family. True, I don’t have a wife, per se, but I do have an influencer girlfriend who needs startup funds to launch her own line of dog makeup. I don’t have biological children, but I list Sebastian, my official cryotherapist, and Kashton, my unofficial cryptozoologist, as dependents for tax purposes. While none of us are literally starving, it’s been months since we’ve eaten really good foie gras topped with coffee beans that have been digested and excreted by an endangered snow leopard. Your data lets us maintain our modest standard of living. Much like Jean Valjean, who just wanted a simple roof over his head, I just want to fill my minimalist mansion with crystal bathtubs and black-market dinosaur skulls.
I love stories about a hero who triumphs over adversity and injustice. And that hero is me. I sing the music of the people who will not be slaves again. Even better, I released a remixed EDM version of the music of the people who will not be slaves again. If you download it, make sure to indicate what other kinds of music you like, plus your favorite brands, your preferred political candidates, and your most shameful secrets. Or, if you want to buy data about how to market to EDM listeners who drink Full Throttle Blue Agave, love Bill de Blasio, and wet the bed until they were twelve, hit me up. You’ll be putting beluga caviar on a starving man’s imported Calacatta marble table.
