Interview: Mike Daisey, the Man Who Hacked Amazon
Posted Fri Feb 9 00:08:50 2001 by orooney |
Former Amazon employee Mike Daisey pissed off a lot of people last week with Rear Entry, a short film he shot secretly while sneaking into Amazon HQ late one afternoon, when no one was around. NetSlaves caught up with Daisey recently to talk about what inspired such antics and get the low-down on his new one-man show, 21 Dog Years.
NETSLAVES: Has Amazon officially commented on "Rear Entry"? Or do you think their dropping the "Derogatory Comments" clause on former employees was comment enough?
MD: No word whatsoever, although if you write to Amazon customer service about it they have an official 'blurb', which are the prewritten texts Amazon uses to answer things--basically they're sticking to the 'no comment' line.
NETSLAVES: How long did you work at Amazon and what did you do there exactly?
MD: I started in Customer Service, answering phone calls and emails, and eventually clawed my way up into Business Development. Basically the bottom and top of the New Economy, which aren't all that different than the Old Economy--confusion, greed and incompetence are the order of the day.
NETSLAVES: In the splash page on your site, you refer to Amazon as a "cult." Why do you feel this way?
MD: Well, if a cult is defined as "Attentive care homage worship... a system of religious belief and worship."(Webster's Unabridged) that pretty much sums up the nearly religious fervor that surrounds the personality of Jeff Bezos. When logic and reason is replaced by hype, buzzwords and greed you get some perverse religions. I should know--I loved and believed in him too.
NETSLAVES: You have a one-man show called 21 Dog Years opening. You call it "more than a simple hatchet job‹it mixes tech culture, hero worship, cat litter, Albanian economics, cave bear skeletons, venture capitalists, pornsniffers and the walking dead into a philosophical inquisition yielding the same kinds of questions one might ask after surviving a bender in Vegas." Please explain.
MD: Basically I'm saying that there's a lot more going on here than a simple shell game--millions upon millions invested in the dot com bubble, and hundreds of thousands are losing their jobs now as they discover that they've invested their worklife into an illusion. I want to explore how that happens, and why we're so eager to believe in any dream that might give us everything we want.
NETSLAVES: Is Jeff Bezos Walt Disney back from the dead?
MD: Walt Disney created something and was a creepy guy, while Jeff creates nothing but is basically a warm, friendly guy--which makes this empire he's created even stranger.
NETSLAVES: What would you say (or do) to Bezos if you were trapped in an elevator with him?
MD: Get him to invest 20 million in mikedaisey.com as a viable exit strategy for Amazon.com--if they could pretend to be in on the joke they might have a better chance of salvaging something before the end.
Note to self: do not accept Amazon stock in lieu of cash.
NETSLAVES: Rear Entry seems like a combination of Michael Moore, Tom Green and that guy who sneaked into a dotcom in NY a few months back. Are these fair comparisons?
MD: Well, I'm a lot smarter than Tom Green, not as quite so savvy as Mike Moore and I've already spent too much time at Amazon to ever pretend to work at another one again, but it's certainly an interesting assessment. It's not bad company to be compared to at all.
NETSLAVES: Are you the next Pud? Are crowds of women and men chasing you down for autographs? Have you used your new-found fame to get laid?
MD: I've been performing solo shows for years, so I'm hoping to keep doing work on subjects I find fascinating--I'm curious to see if I can prove that there's content behind the hype. I have been signing a few autographs, and I hope that I'll get to take the show on the road to different cities.
I'm sleeping with Pud's mom, so I guess that counts as getting laid.
NETSLAVES: Are you working now?
MD: No, and never again.
NETSLAVES: Tell us a little bit about how you filmed Rear Entry. Did you do it on a Saturday?
MD: Actually we walked in on a Friday afternoon and shot the whole thing in an hour. Really easy...I hope that the security guard who waved us through still has a job.
NETSLAVES: What would you say to someone who accuses you of being "just another disgruntled dotcommer"?
MD: I'd urge them to come see the show...there's a lot more going on that griping and bitching. I still love Amazon, but it's a perverse, sick love that I can't seem to shake...and that's what is compelling for me about the story, and everyone else's stories. We wanted to change the world.
NETSLAVES: Aside from Amazon, which other Internet companies would you like to see burn in hell?
MD: That's the funny part--I don't need to wish. They'll all get whatever they have coming to them, and I'll be around to tell stories about the years when everyone lost track of their minds...including me.
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Name: Amarand Agasi
Email: amarand@amarand.org
Date: Fri Feb 9 16:03:22 2001
Comment: The only way you can get people to work 80 hour weeks and sleep at their desks is to make them believe in something. If the dream isn't real, you can make it seem real by turning the company into a cult. I guess you just have to watch who you go to work for, and make sure you ask a lot of questions during the entry interview...especially of regular employees, not just managers and executives. Usually, normal employees lack the power, drive and incentive to lie as much, once you get past the canned and rote messages they've been trained to regurgitate at a moment's notice.
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Name: Chris
Email: zerocard@blarg.net
Date: Fri Feb 9 15:44:25 2001
Comment: And for my fellow Netslaves currently enjoying the Seattle sun, he'll be performing his 21 Dog Years show at the Speakeasy starting Saturday and running into the beginning of March. Tickets are 10 and there's an article about him in the Seattle Times today.
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Name: Tony D
Email: http://tony.dowler.com
Date: Fri Feb 9 10:43:58 2001
Comment: Honestly, I wouldn't buy all this "amazon as cult" talk if I hadn't been recruited by the company just over a year ago. It's true. Amazon runs on pure, unrefined zeal.
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Name: bill
Email: bill@netslaves.com
Date: Fri Feb 9 02:44:32 2001
Comment: http://www.mikedaisey.com/films.html
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Name: guy from north bergan
Email:
Date: Fri Feb 9 02:41:14 2001
Comment: Hey, what happened to the quicktime movie on Mike's site? Where's the link? Perhaps they made him take it down, or he's having an innocent techical problem. Where is it?
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Name:
Email:
Date: Fri Feb 9 02:39:34 2001
Comment: I was interested to learn that Mike "has worked as a security officer, web pornsniffer, high school teacher, blood plasma seller, archivist, roofer, cow innard remover, law firm receptionist, cold-caller, rape counselor, DJ, freelance writer, accountant, night janitor in a home for the violently mentally ill, and dot-com wage slave.
Bottom line - normal guy.
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Name: Kurt Nimmo
Email:
Date: Fri Feb 9 01:34:53 2001
Comment:
We need more exposes like this. Good going, Mike. Gawd, that cube farm looks a lot like the one I worked in. Thankfully, I no longer work in one of those veal pens. That Amazon let you through the door demonstrates their uh-duh character. My fomrer employer suffers from the same fuzziness -I can't even get tax forms out of them!
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