Featured in this episode of Chaos Lever
Another day, another ridiculous investment by Softbank that completely falls apart. IRL (yes, that is their actual name), a messaging startup that was backed by the bank that nobody should be banking on, has folded.
Why did it fold? Well, it turned out that just like literally all of social media, 95% of IRL’s users were bots. IRL, indeed. It’s amazing to me that this kind of thing still surprises people- I mean, just look at Twitter.
There are legit businesses out there that do nothing but sell pretend people to follow you so your follower number is up. And that’s just the legit ones. Do people seriously think that 140 million people give a shit what Elon Musk has to say? Spoiler alert: they do not.
Another Soft Bank failure should not come as a super surprise, considering the fund lost an amazing $32 billion dollars last year, and CEO Masayoshi Son has admitted he has been taking advice from ChatGPT. What’s the worst that could happen, some might ask? Well… this.