Does anyone remember what happened to Radio Shack?
They started out selling niche electronics supplies. Capacitors and transformers and shit. This was never the most popular thing, but they had an audience, one that they had a real lock on. No one else was doing that, so all the electronics geeks had to go to them, back in the days before online ordering. They branched out into other electronics too, but kept doing the electronic components.
Eventually they realize that they are making more money selling cell phones and remote control cars than they were with those electronic components. After all, everyone needs a cellphone and some electronic toys, but how many people need a multimeter and some resistors?
So they pivoted, and started only selling that stuff. All cellphones, all remote control cars, stop wasting store space on this niche shit.
And then Walmart and Target and Circuit City and Best Buy ate their lunch. Those companies were already running big stores that sold cellphones and remote control cars, and they had more leverage to get lower prices and selling more stuff meant they had more reasons to go in there, and they couldn’t compete. Without the niche electronics stuff that had been their core brand, there was no reason to go to their stores. Everything they sold, you could get elsewhere, and almost always for cheaper, and probably you could buy 5 other things you needed while you were there, stuff Radio Shack didn’t sell.
And Radio Shack is gone now. They had a small but loyal customer base that they were never going to lose, but they decided to switch to a bigger but more fickle customer base, one that would go somewhere else for convenience or a bargain. Rather than stick with what they were great at (and only they could do), they switched to something they were only okay at… putting them in a bigger pond with a lot of bigger fish who promptly out-competed them.
If Radio Shack had stayed with their core audience, who knows what would have happened? Maybe they wouldn’t have made a billion dollars, but maybe they would still be around, still serving that community, still getting by. They may have had a small audience, but they had basically no competition for that audience. But yeah, we only know for sure what would happen if they decided to attempt to go more mainstream: They fail and die. We know for sure because that’s what they did.
I don’t know why I keep thinking about the story of what happened to Radio Shack. It just keeps feeling relevant for some reason.
Back in 1066 if you were out of cash you could just go to a castle by the sea and pretend to have washed up and say to the lady when she finds you in the morning “verily was my vessel thrashed uponne y rockes, and was I threwn theroute, and nighly drownèd, but spied I a maiden seated on a cresting waive, and she spoke unto me thus, Thou shalt upon a new land happen, and the Ladie who ruleth there will do good unto thee, and robeth thou in the coloures of her house, and take thy hand in marriage upon y dethe of her Lord, and then that sea-maid sung an a daulphin issued me from y tempest to this gentle cove” and she would just believe you. And then when her husband died the next day of “stomach upset” she would marry you and you’d be fine. It happened so often
also “ough life-saving essential medical equipment uses so much plastic” in this country you can purchase an artificial ballsack for your pickup truck
“ough watching a show uses so much electricity” on road sides there are giant electrified billboards that do nothing but show you ads
Exactly! Stop asking me what MY carbon footprint is when Hershey used 5,829 million litres of water in 2021, Disneyland uses over a billion kWhs per year, Keystone spilled 2,226,000 litres of oil in 2022, Bob Iger’s old house had 7 fucking bathrooms and I guarantee he doesn’t recycle or use energy efficient lightbulbs in his fuckin million dollar jet.
Reblogging again because I got an anon last week whining cause they did this to one of my unfinished series and the bot killed Y/N so now they want ME to give them a happy ending. Like. No. Suffer, bitch.
AI is the death of creativity. Anyone who does this to my stories and is stupid enough to brag about it will be blocked from ever reading my work again, AND I’ll let everyone on tumblr know that you do this. We’ll see how much fic you get to enjoy when every author blocks you forever.
Fic is a gift. I’ve said it before. Don’t shit all over your lovingly handcrafted gifts, m'kay? This should be fucking obvious, but apparently for some of you it’s not.
THIS GOES FOR AI ART AS WELL.
I know this doesn’t really apply to my content because I make one off headcannons, but DO NOT PUT OTHER AUTHORS/ARTISTS WORKS INTO AI! If you do you’ll be blocked from my page. It’s incredibly disrespectful to the people who work so hard to make amazing content. Don’t do it.
