The Seven Deadly Sins of Consumer Technology

The second additional sin—“the 9th sin”—is Acedia, a word which has faded from our vocabulary. Acedia is effectively apathy or listlessness, “not caring or not being concerned with one's position or condition in the world.” It’s the sin which I think most succinctly sums up Gen Z nihilism. Acedia is evident in the gallows humor, the 💀 emojis, the ... See more

perhaps the best example of Vanity is Lightricks, the maker of the editing app Facetune. What Facetune did is allow anyone to harness the power of professional-grade photoshopping, a decades-old practice in advertising and magazines, all from a smartphone.

“OnlyFans commoditized intimacy. It’s a tale as old as time—people are willing to pay for things they need, and they need intimacy and connection now more than ever. It seems capitalism slowly works its way up Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, and we’ve hit the Love & Belonging rung of the ladder with dating apps, paid communities, and fan subscript... See more

But beyond dating apps, there’s a new entrant in Lust: OnlyFans. OnlyFans exploded during the pandemic by cutting out the middleman of pornography, allowing creators to directly share content (usually NSFW) with their subscribers.

Tinder is the canonical example of Lust. The company built its name on looks-based dating, with rapid swiping based only on a photo.

Snackpass is a social takeout app that lets you order ahead and pick up food—sort of like the Starbucks app, but for every restaurant. Snackpass gamifies food by letting you earn reward points and then gift free things to friends (for example, you can send your crush a boba tea 🧋 ).

Today, everything is investable. We can invest in sports cards with Alt. We can invest in fine art with Masterworks. We can invest in people with Rally and we can invest in collectibles with a different startup called Rally. Everything is being financialized.

A decade ago, Greed was signified by the rise of investing apps. Coinbase let us buy and sell crypto, minting thousands of Bitcoin millionaires. Fast forward to 2021, and 48% of Americans invested in crypto, with 63% saying the primary reason for doing so was to make money.

What’s a 2022 company built on Envy? The NFT hype of the past 18 months was derived from FOMO (fear of missing out), a close cousin of Envy. People who bought expensive digital assets wanted a place to show those off, turning to places like the virtual world of Decentraland.