In business as in the movies, it's the same thing. Instead of men with brains and passion, able to walk, think and act for themselves, the industry is being taken over by pubescent vampires who believe that a reflection is the same thing as the object being reflected. These lovers of nothing literally do not have the conviction of their own lives, and exist only to acquire by stealth — or stealing — what others obtain honestly. They suck ideals as greedily as they do ideas from the marrow of those who actually idealize ideas, and build Potemkin companies in place of brick and mortar edifices that can withstand the shake and rattle of an economic downturn.
What I love best about these boneless wonders is not only the fact that they have no bones to speak of, but how they bitch and whine at the slightest disparagement of their bullshit business-models. Nothing is as amusing — in a sick way — as when they take to the boards like swarms of emasculated tsetse flies (picture that!) to defend the indefensible. Pre-checked cross-sales, for instance: Talk about a ball-less way to make a living!
I have immeasurably more respect for the lowliest street-hooker on the planet than I do for the parasites who trick their way into solvency by hoodwinking people who are actually pulling out their cards online to spend with them — the same people who would snatch and swindle as much money from that card as they can get their filthy lousy hands on. Who would do such a thing and then actually have the gall to defend the practice in public as reasonable? Because scammers in the mainstream do it? Because, if you don't do it someone else will? These are excuses? They're actually confessions.
Unfortunately, this is the level to which we have sunk, but the picture gets even worse. The very institutions within the industry that are positioned to do, or at least say, something about the descent into petty corruption, are fatally silent and in many cases complicit with a behavioral trend that is bringing the industry to its knees. It's nothing short of scandalous, but even that is exaggerating the potency of the bleating sheep who now aspire to porn mogul status. Nothing but little boys with wet dreams, if you ask me: Sullen scavengers of the soul, and not what the industry needs as it struggles to once again find itself.
If this is its future, anyone with a modicum of guts has got to be depressed. I like to think that in its heyday, the industry was populated by people who actually could look you in the face, who stood behind their decisions and who actually believed in something, even if it was a perverted something. Perversion, after all, is the antithesis of skullduggery.
Sometimes I feel like Travis Bickle driving my cab through the scum-soaked streets of the city.
