Overshare

How to read Milo Yiannopoulos’ essay “Don’t believe the hype: Here’s what’s wrong with the ‘sharing economy’”

• Step one: Drink a LOT.
• Step two: Read article.

There's one good point at the start of the article - namely that the “sharing economy” is really simply a feel-good way of talking about “Renting.” Or, if you’d rather be really hip about it, “Peer-to-peer renting.” (Well, sometimes, anyway.)

There's one good point at the end of the article - namely that it’s good to maintain some private space in the name of mental health.

It's the middle, which is a fear-driven (and seemingly alcohol-fueled) screed against some insidious guilt-ridden socialist plot to take all of our private stuff away from us, that's suspect. Because, I guess, it must not be like participation in “the sharing economy” is voluntary or anything. That black helicopter? It’s coming to make sure that you list your home on AirBnB every time you're away for the weekend. Or else. Because, you know, the New World Order and Big Brother feel that everything must be shared.

As with many things like this, a point-by-point takedown is simply a waste of time. Suffice it to say, as also with many things like this, Yiannopoulos takes the world that he want to live in, and extrapolates that out to a moral imperative that everyone should subscribe to, so much so that rejection, or even questioning, of it becomes a moral crime that must be attacked and stamped out, lest it spread like a cancer.

(But I do want to take down this one point that Yiannopoulos makes. Actually, I don’t have to be a surfer to borrow a surfboard. I can take pictures of one with someone posing with it, or just stand there and look at it without any skill at using it. Just so you know.)