Tippets by Taps - Issue #120
This week we remember Kobe Bryant, explore Dubsmash v. TikTok, explain Chipotle’s most recent workplace violation, try to understand the ‘what’ of Coronavirus, and more. Enjoy!
Kobe
I never got to meet Kobe Bryant. I only watched him play live twice. Yet, news of his death in a helicopter crash last Sunday, along with his daughter and eight other passengers, landed like a haymaker to the gut - a devastating blow on so many levels, and a tragic reminder of life’s fragility. These were my thoughts from the day, as a life-long Kobe fan.
How Dubsmash revived itself as #2 to TikTok
TikTok has taken seemingly taken over social media, with teens fighting to become TikTok famous and turning into overnight celebrities. That said, it’s well worth it for you to learn about Dubsmash, a less well-known but equally viral app with 27% market share, second only to TikTok. It has found an incredibly loyal audience amongst young African Americans, an increasingly sought after demographic with major cultural influence, threatening TikTok’s position as the cultural driver for the next generation.
TikTok has already taken notice. Shown in a leak of its moderation guidelines from Netzpolitik, the company’s policy is to downrank the visibility of any video referencing or including a watermark from direct competitors, including Dubsmash, Triller, Lasso, Snapchat and WhatsApp. That keeps Dubsmash videos, which you can save to your camera roll, from going viral on TikTok and luring users away.
TikTok also continues to aggressively buy users via ads on competing apps like Facebook thanks to the billions in funding raked in by its parent ByteDance. In contrast…Dubsmash has never spent a dollar on user acquisition, influencer marketing or any other source of growth. That makes it achieving even half to a third of as many installs as TikTok in the U.S. an impressive fete.
Chipotle cited with 13,253 child labor law violations in Massachusetts
Chipotle can’t seem to get out of its own way. Only a few weeks after announcing some industry leading worker policies, Chipotle agreed to pay a $1.3 million fine for more than 13,000 child labor violations at several of its Massachusetts locations.
The three-year investigation followed a 2016 complaint from a parent telling the office that their kid worked “well past midnight” at one Chipotle location. The office’s findings revealed that the company permitted dozens of 16 and 17-year-old employees to work later than the law allows. Chipotle also allowed children to work more than the state’s nine-hour daily limit and the 48-hour weekly limit.
Chipotle is also accused of violating other Massachusetts labor laws, including failing to provide proper timesheets and failing to pay workers within six days of the end of a pay period, the attorney general’s office said.
Not a good look. That said, NYU Professor Scott Galloway made an interesting point this week on his Pivot podcast with Kara Swisher (I highly recommend this podcast btw, very entertaining). He argued Chipotle should respond to the crisis by making a very public commitment and investment in youth employment, and give young people an opportunity to earn some extra money while learning the power of work. It also seems to me that Chipotle needs some better software to help manage this stuff, so if any of you know someone at the company please give them my information! I’d be more than happy to chat with them about how to solve their workforce management issues :)
Everything you need to know about coronavirus, the deadly illness alarming the world
The Coronavirus (not to be associated with or confused with Corona beers…seriously…) has infected over 15,000 people with over 300 confirmed deaths. This explainer (along with this one from the NYT) can help you get up to speed.
At Auschwitz, Holocaust Survivors Plead ‘Never Forget’
This past Monday was the 75th anniversary of the of the liberation of the Nazi concentration and death camp, Auschwitz. As more time passes between the tragedy of WWII and the present, the number of survivors slowly starts to dwindle. 1,500 attended the event 15 years ago, while this year only 200 made it.
As those who can testify to the monstrous crimes of the Holocaust dwindle in number, there is growing concern about the efforts by political leaders to bend the historical narrative of World War II to suit their own ends.
“People would love to forget the hard truths and that’s why we need to keep coming back here to refresh our memories and keep the world from acquiring amnesia,” said Mr. Lesser, founder of Zachor, a foundation dedicated to ensuring the remembrance of the Holocaust. “Unfortunately, we can’t live forever. What happens after we are gone, I don’t know.”
History repeats itself because we forget our history. Hopefully the tragedy of Auschwitz, and how we got to that point, is never forgotten.
Rediscovering the Lost Power of Reading Aloud
A read about the power of reading aloud. For most of human history, stories were transmitted using the spoken word. The idea of “silent reading of the sort we practice with our books and laptops and cellphones was once considered outlandish, a mark of eccentricity.”
Once upon a time, none of these stories had yet been fixed on a page (or a clay tablet), but were carried in the physical bodies of the people who committed them to memory. Long before Johannes Gutenberg and his printing press, and 1,000 years before cloistered monks and their illuminated manuscripts, the principal storage facility for history, poetry, and folktales was the human head. And the chief means of transmitting that cultural wealth, from generation to generation, was the human voice.
In ancient Greece, the voices belonged to rhapsodes; in ancient India, to charioteer bards called sutas. Elsewhere were skalds (Nordic history poets) and rakugoka (Japanese storytellers), along with the jongleurs, minstrels, and troubadours of medieval Europe. Shamans passed on the stories of tribal people native to North America. In West Africa there was, and is, an itinerant class of griots, the traveling tale-tellers and musicians who have been called living archives.
As someone who has spent quite a bit of time reading out loud of late (and reading the same stories over and over and over again) I do admit to enjoying the differences a story can take with a change in intonation here, or an accelerated pace there. Granted, “Honk when the dump truck, coming through, I’ve got big important things to do…” isn’t quite the same as The Odyssey but so be it!
Quote I’m thinking about: “"Life” does not mean something vague, but something very real and concrete, just as life’s tasks are also very real and concrete. They form man’s destiny, which is different and unique for each individual. No man and no destiny can be compared with any other man or any other destiny.“ - Viktor Frankl