This is Rhizome Today for Thursday, January 15, 2015. This post will be deleted on January 16.
Monday morning, I awoke to a familiar exhortation. Subject line: Meet me at City Hall. This was distressing as I had, over the past few years, assiduously rid my inbox of all emails Obama for America, MoveOn.org, DCCC, etc. And then I noticed the sender: Airbnb.
Hey there, Zachary -
On January 20th, the New York City Council will hold a hearing about Airbnb. They want to know: What does Airbnb mean for New Yorkers? Stand with us on the steps of City Hall that morning and tell the City Councilmembers you think Airbnb is great for NYC.
RSVP to show your support for Airbnb at City Hall on January 20th
Thank you for being such an awesome Airbnb guest. See you at City Hall later this month. RSVP Now Max Pomeranc Airbnb Public Policy P.S. We'll be passing out AirbnbNYC shirts to those that respond early.
If you've ever received an email from any of the aforementioned (explicitly) political bodies, you'll recognize the intimacy, the argot, the pace, the linkage, the aesthetic. (Ah, the flat, blandly-colored, Facebook-ready infographica of the political set.) Airbnb is taking up the Blue State Digital online organizing strategy: an A/B-tested look, feel, and sound that unites unreconstructed middle-brow taste, intuitive nudges to action, and the vernacular of righteous, low-impact protest, producing the Safe Insurgent.
That the company has embraced this does make some strategic sense. Airbnb faces meaningful regulatory oversight in New York City, which represents one of the gig economy's most promising territories. Play-acting the insurgent role has worked for the American tech industry broadly.
But as tech companies have branched out into logistics—that is, using tech to rework the real world—the aesthetics of the Safe Insurgent have been used to conceal the deleterious effects that these new services have on cities and their labor forces. Rob Horning, during the CBIC reading group a few months back, noted that we should understand Airbnb (and Uber and other similiar labor-space-transit "solutions") as mechanisms primarily developed to evade regulatory oversight. Playing on the long-standing digital dualist fallacy (It's not a hotel service! It's just a website!), Airbnb looks the part.
RSVP early to get the t-shirt with the tasteful logo and stand with the little guy. Will you be on the right side of history?