Stupefy: Peloton - Time Crisis

Peloton is much more interesting than just an expensive home gym machine with a silly ad campaign. Like Twitch before it, Peloton may go overlooked, misunderstood and mocked until it's obvious that it's a media behemoth. First let's start with the current perception of Peloton. The expensive at-home stationary bike and instructor video company is often criticized for being expensive. The tablet-equipped bikes cost over $2,000 and the tablet-equipped treadmills cost over $4,000 - in a product category (home gyms) long considered a luxury or even a complete waste. The ad campaigns portray an out-of-reach lifestyle to a degree that has become a running joke. But all this obscures the reality that Peloton is an interactive community-building media company that has colonized a previously unaccounted for segment of people's time - and it's got huge potential to grow this new type of media. What do I mean by interactive and community-building in the case of Peloton? From this excellent write-up of Peloton by Michelle Ruiz

At the front of the room, [instructor] Robin Arzon is shouting out riders by their usernames. There’s UncleCranky (“How we doin’?”), Momof3intheD (“Well done, queen!”), and a handle that makes Robin crack up and do a double take: SayonaraSpanx, who is celebrating her 300th ride. “It felt like the ultimate reward,” SayonaraSpanx told me by phone a few days later.

“I never feel alone,” she says. Though [SayonaraSpanx] has never met Robin or any of the other Peloton instructors she’s a fan of, she swears they are bonding, one class at a time, through the bike’s 22-inch tablet. “They’re my friends. They’re a second family.”

The ability for one member to video chat into another member’s ride from their phone — even if they’re not riding themselves — is coming soon.

Interactivity. Community. Curing loneliness. This is the real benefit of Peloton and why it reminds me so much of Twitch. In a piece for Ad Age last year about Twitch, I wrote:

Users get more than gaming. It's connection. It's the chat, the scrolling conversation and close-knit group of loyal viewers that makes Twitch users feel so connected to each other. It's fast-paced. And it never turns off. In this way, Twitch reflects the reality of 21st-century relationships: dispersed geographically, virtual and always on.

Sometimes it feels like gaming is beside the point. Making the host say something just to you, or do something because of something you said, is deeply satisfying and addicting. What users do on Twitch is interact. They take part in the stream. They try, hope and nearly beg to influence the stream.

All this comes as Peloton is positioned to colonize a virgin segment of people's time. For Twitch, it was easy: young people have loads of free time. Twitch took time that teens and young adults may have already been wasting on the Internet, chatting with friends or usually both. But for Peloton, the exercise media moment basically didn't exist or was taken by cable at the gym and podcasts and music in the ears. One force that created that moment was wellness. The other is burnout. Adults became busier and busier and more and more crunched for time just as the social imperatives of looking and feeling good started to push down on them. The collision - too burned out to get to the gym, too pressured not to look good - created a time window for Peloton to become an innovative media company that sells $39 monthly subscriptions for its content. Making Peloton even more exciting is that users don't even need to own a machine: thanks to Peloton Digital, the app, you can do yoga or HIIT even if you're a pleb who can't afford to plunk down a few grand. Of course, Peloton is not the only company capitalizing on this new media need.

Mirror is a literal mirror that mounts on your wall and livestreams classes. Both Mirror and Peloton are streaming services first, exercise hardware second. But what makes them both exciting is the same reason that made Twitch one of the most ubiquitous cultural forces in the world right now: they make you feel less alone.

Let humans recommend music

Every once in a while I'm reminded of how much I miss music being recommended to me by people whose taste I trust. I was driving through idyllic upstate New York with my wife. Sick of the stuff in my Recently Added tab on Apple Music. Hadn't enjoyed an algorithm playlist ever. Just wanted songs picked by someone with good taste: a long time ago this would have been a DJ, a guy behind the counter at the CD store, a friend's older brother, anyone. So I put on a bunch of playlists curated by Time Crisis, the internet radio show hosted by Ezra Koenig of Vampire Weekend. While the show itself broadcasts bi-weekly on Apple Music, that app's insanely difficult and counter-intuitive interface makes the actual show basically impossible to find and listen to. But the playlists put together by Koenig and his co-host Jake Longstreth are easy to find and single-handedly reminded me how fun it is to let someone with great taste guide you. I'm not going to turn this into Lefsetz Letter and go on and on about how much I loved hearing Warren Zevon, Big Star and Ween.

But if any of your friends who you think have good music taste ever post anything or text you anything, or you follow anyone on who you think has good music taste who shares stuff, or you ever come across a Soundcloud mix or a Mixcloud mix or a handpicked playlist, definitely listen to it. It's always better. Salute to all those people.

There are 6.4 PR people for every 1 journalist. (Bloomberg)

A few years ago the trailer for The Mummy was accidentally uploaded with most of its sound missing. People went nuts for it. Now? A new version of the trailer for Sony's latest MiB movie was leaked with same error "by mistake." People are calling bullshit. (A.V. Club)

“It sounds less like a charity single and more like a theme to a downmarket Disney clone made explicitly to launder money for an offshore criminal enterprise.” Jeremy Larson on Lil' Dicky's terrible song "Earth" (Pitchfork)

A lot of famous, rich celebrities are getting their feelings hurt by criticism. (The Ringer)

Condé Nast has 100 pilots in the works. (TubeFilter)

Rabid internet fandom is shaping the 2020 election. (Buzzfeed News)

The AOC documentary Knock Down The House starts streaming on Netflix Thursday. (Daily Beast)