Welp. That's another strike. While I'm not that old, I can fully say that never have I seen a company with such a meteoric rise be so completely and thoroughly decimated by bad press.

There's like five major news items in the hopper at this present moment, and that's on top of the myriad classic issues (the way they treat their drivers, background check/general safety issues, etc). I was listening to an NPR repeat piece from earlier in the day and just laughing to myself thinking that Uber has become the epitome of an "evil corporation." It's almost comical at this point, as if they just said "fuck it...let's be the worst we can be."

And after all of these watershed moments where everybody was fed up and deleted the app, they persist. Uber did it first and they did it best, despite taking the seemingly shittiest of approaches to get there on the backs of downtrodden drivers and clueless consumers. After all, you don't "ride-hail," you call an Uber still. I'm really fascinated to see the moment when they are finally actually done. I've been waiting for Lyft to do it for years but that kind of complete usurping of dominance has yet to occur in my area at least. Maybe it's something that is hard to notice. It still doesn't feel like Lyft can bear that mantle, and there's hundreds of copyrights both local and national waiting to step up and try to do it.

It's a clusterfuck.