{"id":6724,"date":"2013-03-08T09:20:36","date_gmt":"2013-03-08T17:20:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/?p=6724"},"modified":"2013-03-08T09:25:17","modified_gmt":"2013-03-08T17:25:17","slug":"the-yahoo-kerfuffle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/2013\/03\/08\/the-yahoo-kerfuffle\/","title":{"rendered":"The Yahoo Kerfuffle"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s a failing enterprise.<\/p>\n<p>But that didn&#8217;t keep legions of know-it-alls, moms and corporate experts who don&#8217;t work at Yahoo and probably never visit the site or use any of its tools, from crucifying Marissa Mayer. Saying she&#8217;s too cute, too into designer clothing, and a one percenter who built a private nursery for her newborn child adjacent to her office.<\/p>\n<p>Ain&#8217;t that America. A bunch of blowhards weighing in on other people&#8217;s business. We&#8217;re a nation of gossips. And if you listen to the blowback, if you care what people have to say, you&#8217;re doomed. Because they&#8217;re never satisfied, they won&#8217;t be happy until they drag you down into the hole they&#8217;re in.<\/p>\n<p>Which is why we&#8217;ve become a nation of apologists.<\/p>\n<p>One person gets her knickers in a twist and the offender rushes to the media to say they didn&#8217;t mean it. It&#8217;s become laughable. With people going to lying rehab, I never even knew there was such a thing. But in a nation where no one can sacrifice, where no one can lose their job, where no one can suffer whatsoever, that&#8217;s what we end up with.<\/p>\n<p>You can&#8217;t raise taxes.<\/p>\n<p>You can&#8217;t reduce entitlements.<\/p>\n<p>You can&#8217;t change a damn thing because someone&#8217;s gonna get the short end of the stick.<\/p>\n<p>Shared sacrifice is out the window. Thinking of the greater good is history. America is all about I&#8217;ve got mine, SCREW YOU!<\/p>\n<p>But unlike the challenged Tim Cook, Marissa Mayer had the true story leaked. And now everybody&#8217;s shut up, moved on to the next meaningless debate that fascinates our populace as the rich rape and pillage.<\/p>\n<p>Bottom line?<\/p>\n<p>This was about 200 people. Who were working from home. Many of whom were not doing their work. Some of whom had begun their own start-ups on the side.<\/p>\n<p>How did Marissa know?<\/p>\n<p>THE DATA! She checked the VPN logs and found out the truth!<\/p>\n<p>But no one&#8217;s interested in the truth in America. They&#8217;d rather wrangle perception. Try to skew things their way when it&#8217;s far from reality. We&#8217;ve been hearing forever that piracy has decimated the music business and must be stopped. First by suing users, second by having ISPs send notices to offenders.<\/p>\n<p>What a bunch of b.s.<\/p>\n<p>The NPD report said there was a 26% decline in illegally downloaded music last year. Why, BECAUSE OF LEGAL SERVICES!<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><a title=\"Recorded Music Industry Posts First Revenue Growth in 13 Years\" href=\"http:\/\/bit.ly\/XXVjoG\" target=\"_blank\">Recorded Music Industry Posts First Revenue Growth in 13 Years<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Do you understand?<\/p>\n<p>Progress can&#8217;t be stopped, and if you want to win, you&#8217;ve got to swallow the pill and change too.<\/p>\n<p>But people would rather see you fail than tolerate your changing.<\/p>\n<p>And you&#8217;re going to get shouted down by record store owners and everybody else who was plowed under by the future.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s insane.<\/p>\n<p>Stop listening to the rabble-rousers. They know not of what they speak.<\/p>\n<p>Kind of like the Amanda Palmer kerfuffle. It wasn&#8217;t her fans complaining, but interlopers wanting to make a point who understood nothing about her business.<\/p>\n<p>Life is hard. If you live it the way everybody else wants you to, it&#8217;s nigh near impossible.<\/p>\n<p>As for Marissa Mayer utilizing data to make decisions&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Creativity is not about data.<\/p>\n<p>But success is.<\/p>\n<p>We measure it in tracks sold, YouTube videos watched&#8230; If your numbers are not high and growing, it&#8217;s a sign to take another direction. Yahoo already made it. You didn&#8217;t. You think you can create success through smoke and mirrors. But that paradigm is passe.<\/p>\n<p>But screw the music business.<\/p>\n<p>I just hate it that everybody&#8217;s such an expert about everybody&#8217;s business. That ignorance rules the land. That truth won&#8217;t be swallowed, even when it&#8217;s proven by facts.<\/p>\n<p>We live in a land of emotion.<\/p>\n<p>But emotion only works when it&#8217;s in art.<\/p>\n<p>And that&#8217;s why today&#8217;s art is lacking. It&#8217;s got no soul. It&#8217;s just wannabes who want to compete with Marissa Mayer and the other educated people who earned their place at the top of corporate America by hard work and smarts.<\/p>\n<p>You don&#8217;t win by accident.<\/p>\n<p>But what we&#8217;ve got to do is create more winners. Lift our brothers and sisters from ignorance and poverty to a better life.<\/p>\n<p>Instead, we feed them TV trials and misinformation.<\/p>\n<p>Oh, what a wonderful world we live in.<\/p>\n<p>P.S. Credit Kara Swisher for getting the story rolling in AllThingsD<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><a title=\"CFO Goldman Says Mayer Regime Has Been Improving \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Quality of Life\u00e2\u20ac\u009d at Yahoo\" href=\"http:\/\/dthin.gs\/13l4hBB\" target=\"_blank\">CFO Goldman Says Mayer Regime Has Been Improving \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Quality of Life\u00e2\u20ac\u009d at Yahoo<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Then the Business Insider amplified the story:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><a title=\"How Marissa Mayer Figured Out Work-At-Home Yahoos Were Slacking Off\" href=\"http:\/\/read.bi\/YJozil\" target=\"_blank\">How Marissa Mayer Figured Out Work-At-Home Yahoos Were Slacking Off<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Ultimately, the &#8220;New York Times&#8221; wrote the definitive statement:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><a title=\"Yahoo Says New Policy Is Meant to Raise Morale\" href=\"http:\/\/nyti.ms\/WJgaKh\" target=\"_blank\">Yahoo Says New Policy Is Meant to Raise Morale<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>How many know the truth? Probably few, since the correction never has the impact of the initial event. And everyone&#8217;s moved on, what do you think, is Jodi Arias guilty?<\/p>\n<p><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s a failing enterprise. But that didn&#8217;t keep legions of know-it-alls, moms and corporate experts who don&#8217;t work at Yahoo and probably never visit the site or use any of its tools, from crucifying Marissa Mayer. Saying she&#8217;s too cute, too into designer clothing, and a one percenter who built a private nursery for her [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2,5,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music-business","category-online","category-technology"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-1Ks","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6724","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6724"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6724\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6727,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6724\/revisions\/6727"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}