Posted by harold at October 27th, 2007

Hi. My name is Harold. I live in Sudan. Or maybe not. It doesn’t really matter all that much. What does matter is that far too many stupid companies with stupid ideas are getting far too much funding today from stupid people with access to altogether far too much money. Again. And again. And that, dear readers, is where I come in: to stop the insanity. To shatter the inanity.

I’ll admit, I’m no outsider to venture capital deals—or the valley itself, for that matter (um, the Nile river valley, of course…). But the pharaohs of my day somehow seemed wiser. Ok, maybe “wise” isn’t the best way to describe a VC. Nonetheless, today there abounds a very special breed of stupidity that just wasn’t around twenty years ago. Let’s be blunt about: it’s called Web 2.0, and it’s written that way because in the end, it’s a big fat zero.

My big concern is that all this “Web 2.0″ nonsense is merely a shell game. Sure, the pea is in there alright, but it’s a lot smaller and more shriveled up than all the effort being poured in to pursue it would suggest. I would definitely be the first to admit that it can be amusing at times to stuff a pea up your nose—well worth the trip to the emergency room—but that little pea is still lacking in the critical vitamins and nutrients that you might get buy shoving, say, a whole steak up your nose.

The same is true in technology. For example, consider that wonderful little gem known as justin.tv. If you have any vestiges of intelligence, you’ve never heard of it, so I’ll tell you what it is: it’s a site where people who have no life broadcast their lives over the internet, so people with even less of a life can live vicariously through them. Kind of entertaining maybe for 5 seconds, until the site starts making noise while I’m sitting in the library. But honestly folks, it’s a waste of effort. And a waste of Y Combinator’s funding… not to mention, a disgrace to the theory of fixed points!

We could go on, but let’s not waste any more time today. It’s going to take some careful analysis and tenacious exposition to route this Web 2.0 scourge. They don’t call me a rebel for nothing. After all, my truck does have a confederate flag bumper sticker left over from the previous owners. But hey, at least it’s not pastel with rounded corners.