The Seven Deadly Sins of Consumer Technology

the sector that best captures Sloth in 2022 is gaming. Gaming is a larger industry than fellow Sloth industries like movies and TV combined. And the premise of the metaverse is inherently sloth-like: our bodies remain motionless in the analog world while our minds explore virtual worlds.

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.

“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

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

Instagram disruptors like BeReal, Poparazzi, Dispo, and Locket have promised a more authentic, less curated reality. But even authenticity, over time, becomes performative; “photo dumps” become carefully-crafted compilations of artsy images that show us in a good light (“Look how this blurry photo implies I’m too busy having fun to take non-blurry ... See more

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 🧋 ).

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.

In 2011, Reid Hoffman declared, “Social networks do best when they tap into one of the seven deadly sins.” Ever since, people have built on his framework, often using the same tried-and-true examples: Facebook as Envy, Tinder as Lust, GrubHub as Gluttony. (Hoffman is the founder of LinkedIn, itself a mix of Pride and Greed.)

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.