"Leaked minutes from a high-level Nov 2021 meeting to plan this app record that Dave Clark, Amazon’s head of worldwide consumer business, believes that “some people are insane star collectors.”

The audacity of blatantly manipulating people. It's hard to believe this stuff even goes on, but clearly it does. Did the Amazon executives actually sit around and say something like, "Gee, let's see how we can flatter people with a digital nothing like a colorful star instead of paying them living wages and respecting them as human beings?" Wow.

Speaking of the star thing, what's up with that? I use Canva pretty much every day to crop and edit Creative Commons images to illustrate articles, and just the other day as I was downloading a design, I got hit with huge bubble message full of sparklies and balloons, "congratulating" me on creating some arbitrary number of illustrations and telling me I had earned a "ribbon" (a digital nothing with no value or significance) that I could share with friends to show them what an awesome designer I am.

Are they even kidding? Does this work? Does anybody actually care about this kind of nonsense?

I use Canva because it's a sensible choice for doing part of my job. (Not a part I much enjoy. I'm a writer; I do the graphic illustration stuff myself because I have no other choice.) There are no congratulations deserved, there is nothing to share with friends, and the idea I "earned" a ribbon is deeply weird.

Just like Amazon's star collecting idea is deeply weird.