— I’m a little depressed.
– We are all.
It is the death of Marília Mendonça. Or the change of season. Borso, the astral crisis, Mercury retrograde, the lack of money, getting old. And the pandemic. It’s that ex, hormones, neurotransmitters, chocolate, the longing for ___________ [preencher com tua nostalgia favorita]. Have a lot, have a little. And all or none of it.
They say that worse than the fear of dying is the fear of living.
We cannot avoid, as humanoids, the incessant Search for Meaning, always accompanied by its sister Risk analysis. By survival or neurosis, we are machines to seek answers and find problems. Predict, prevent. To imagine. To invent. Solve. To control. Improve. Rinse, repeat, insomnia.
This unstoppable drive to explain and improve everything, of course, brought us here (I, in this case, “cured” from an illness that at this point could have eliminated me from the planet).
It also turned us into specimens ultra-protected from the weather and from the eyes of others, living in crates equipped with everything to heat, cool, bathe, liquefy, entertain and make the driest potatoes in the world with Air Fryer.
And in peculiar animals that hide and decorate their genitals, they develop precocious humps by Whatsappitis and Instagramitis and jump up and down in metallic animals powered by wheels, wings, gears, C12H26, electricityy–yyy, humming Dua Lipa and finding the poetic Edith Piaf’s misery .
All this, accompanied by the uncontrollable lust for words like Comfort, Remote, Ease, Convenience, Speed.
One of 18975489 puppies in this thread: the ghost supermarkets of Barcelona.
When I first heard about them, a short time ago, I was curious because the name sounded like funny.
A kind of “dark store”, these ghost supermarkets are one of the latest trends in q-commerce (for “quick”, quick). And they go even further: same-day delivery à la Amazon is not enough. It has to be now. Now. Hand me the produce that I don’t even know I’ll want in 5 minutes. Guess my thoughts, logs of meodeos.
The Turkish company Getir, which bought Barcelona’s startup Blok and opened 19 points of operation in Spain (13 in Madrid, 6 in Barcelona) in 2021, promises to deliver whatever you want to your doorstep in 10 minutes. Like a “Daki” from here. As he complains, he argues: “Every minute matters”. Let’s not deny it. I’m already clicking, fast.
Phantom supermarkets are nothing more than warehouses for the storage and distribution of products, with decentralized logistics that lower costs and speed up service.
Convenient, no doubt. Getir is open 24/7 until midnight, and Friday and Saturday until 1 am. They promise deliveries within 10 minutes. In case you urgently need that pepperoni pizza or a late-night banana runt (no questions here).
On the one hand, the business model is very attractive and tends to spread quickly, in the wake of other delivery services such as the gigantic Glovo, the biggest fundraiser in the history of startups in Spain, and whose indefectible yellow suitcases today carry even marijuana at home — inadvertently, of course.
On the other hand, there have been conflicts with neighborhoods. As in the residential neighborhood of Les Corts in Barcelona — the launch of a Getir unit on a pedestrian street where there are two schools sparked protests from residents in October.
Note well, it is not that most of these people would not want to have their purchase in minutes at their doorstep. But all feared a considerable increase in traffic of electric motorcycles and bikes of “riders”/deliverers.
After two months of negotiation with the intervention of the city hall, the company committed to transforming the place into a space for training personnel.
It remains to be seen how long the government will take to regulate the activity, before the ghost supermarkets spread like a virus and it’s too late — a problem the tourist city of Barcelona has lived with Airbnb and subsequent real estate speculation.
In the meantime, I’ll reflect on what I might need in 10 minutes. “Think about it, life goes by too quickly”, warns the Getir app. Thanks for the touch. “That’s why we deliver the purchase to you in minutes: so you can invest your time in what really matters.”
Do they deliver hugs?
