Many people will analyze this from a tech perspective. I urge you not to. This isn't about whether the technology is good or bad. The real reason they succeeded is their mastery of marketing, particularly TikTok and influencer marketing. Understanding distribution is far more important than knowing how to build something, and this is truer now than ever before. I know it stings but its the truth.
I didn't analyze this for either: rahter what is what is the typical outcome for young humans who achieve a high degree of success/fame before their prefrontal cortex is fully formed.
As we understand more about brain development in kids, I think and under studied aspect are kids who got access to a lot more money than normal typical kids have, and the results such wealth brings.
> I think and under studied aspect are kids who got access to a lot more money than normal typical kids have, and the results such wealth brings.
As opposed to the kids born on planets without atmospheric oxygen, of course. Those kids don't stand a chance.
There's always some advantage others have. Money, good looks, distribution, connections, right place right time.
"Wealth inequality" isn't going to disappear overnight, and lamenting about it won't get us closer to success.
We're all dropped into the Darwinian gradient landscape. Some of us have better starting positions. While we sit and wait for policy decisions to make things easier, our job remains to find gradients that aren't too steep, aren't over-explored by the masses, and that give us some modicum of joy to spend our lives upon.
The minnows and gazelles have it much worse than us. Praying mantises, anglerfish, and the hosts for the parasitoid wasps are practically living in a daily Kafkaesque horror. Meanwhile we're in our own dopamine drip Disneyland with near-infinite degrees of freedom and plenty of years on the clock (for most of us).
I apologize. I didn't provide additional context, and unfortunately you made an flawed conclusion about my premise wasting your time with an irrelevant argument.
I'm not lamenting wealth inequality, nor discussing other advantages (real or perceived).
I think that achieving success and wealth (e.g. not simply being born with it) has an impact on the development of a human brain, based in large part the behavior of rich/famous/successful young adults, AND what their personalities ultimately become once the have fully formed brains (~27 years old).
Specific to these teenagers, how will effectively becoming "rich" and successful at such a young age change the final formation of their brains, and ultimately shape their behavior?
I think you missed the part about "[achieving] a high degree of success", in particular the achievement. They are referring to young people who make a successful business rather than those who are born to parents who made a successful business.
The point of looking at this from a technical perspective though is that the underlying tech doesn't actually work, and it's just a smoke and mirrors game built on marketing.
Like Theranos. And Nikola. And Fyre Festival. Etc.
Age is irrelevant, unless we're trying to tell youngsters that fraud is an acceptable means to get ahead in life. But then again given our current political environment maybe that is what we're trying to tell the next generation.
EDIT: the app now also just reads nutrition labels as a backstop. Nutrition labels already include the calorie data, so the app isn't doing anything there.
> But then again given our current political environment maybe that is what we're trying to tell the next generation.
There's no trying.
The US has played "Just grift your way to money" as a standard means of operating since at least the dotcom boom. A reason so many young and poorly educated people jump at obvious MLM type scams and other scams is because they feel that everything is a scam, so surely they can get in on it too, right?
And everything IS a scam. Coke doubled in price in the past 5 years. I promise you their costs did not double. Their costs are Labor (highly automated), water (they almost always have sweetheart deals for dirt cheap water, cheaper than you pay), and one of the most subsidized commodities available, HFCS, or alternatively, a sprinkle of dirt cheap chemicals for their diet sodas.
People feel that, even when they don't understand or even recognize it.
People recognize that the US has been a scammy free for all for decades now. Everyone for themselves, fuck you, got mine.
We are on like the third generation raised this way. The people who took "Greed is good" to heart had kids, and raised them with it as a core principle.
Jordan Belfort, the guy who Wolf Of Wall Street is based on and spent time in prison for scamming his clients in basically the same way modern crypto pump and dumps work, now sells out auditoriums as a motivational speaker for fucks sake.
