Jeff Bezos’ spatial style – The New York Times



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Perhaps the most remarkable thing about it all was that it wasn’t at all remarkable: another Tuesday. Another billionaire businessman paying to catapult himself into space.

Still, the sight of Jeff Bezos, in his beige cowboy hat and blue spacesuit (wearing a custom Omega Speedmaster on the sleeve as if he was Buzz Aldrin), fashionable astronauts and then taking inspiration from the The experience thereafter resonated in the way Richard Branson’s Mad Race did not.

It only took 27 years for Amazon to grow into a $ 1.8 trillion company. According to the swings of the stock market, Mr. Bezos is either the richest man or the second richest man in the world. Yet he became that without attaining a proportionate mystique.

He didn’t, like Tesla CEO Elon Musk, host “Saturday Night Live” and managed to do a surprisingly good job. He hasn’t, like Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, shown Americans the power of a minimalist fake neck. He hasn’t, like Twitter’s Jack Dorsey, spent a pandemic in quarantine with Jay-Z.

All of these guys inspire enmity, especially Mr. Musk and (albeit posthumously) Mr. Jobs. But the lines of their products reveal the emotional connection people have with them. They invented FOMO. Mr. Bezos simply capitalized on it and embodies it.

We watched him go to the gym, build up biceps, and buy motorcycle jackets. The problem has never been the fit. This is because they seemed to be accomplishing the opposite of their goal, which is to telegraph the chic of indifference.

We read the end of his marriage to MacKenzie Scott, a novelist turned mega-philanthropist, and the beginning of his romance with Lauren Sanchez, a former correspondent for the tabloid entertainment show “Extra!”

It looked like a cliché.

We gasped at the intimate text messages he sent her.

They were so clumsy, like he had consulted Siri for sexting advice.

We took a look at photos of his $ 96 million four-story real estate investment in the Flatiron neighborhood.

It felt soulless, like something that would be designed by Marriott if it built its version of an André Balazs hotel.

Yet by being worth around $ 200 billion and having few people who are likely to tell him the truth about, say, what he looks like in a cowboy hat riding his phallic rocket, he has become the Dorian Gray of absurdity, a locus classicus and fun. mirror of the house through which a large contingent of generally white men, approaching middle age and without the appearance of Ryan Gosling, should see themselves, if we become honest enough to admit mistakes to walk our way into choices regrettable stylistics.

There is an onomatopoeic quality in Mr. Bezos’ name.

A dentist with a Lamborghini is a Bezos. The same goes for anyone in commercial real estate who, having just embarked on their first extramarital affair, begins to shave areas of themselves that should not be shaved.

I transformed into Bezos the day I decided to try removing a fanny pack and a pair of Dior bootleg shorts.

Pretending to be an oenophile makes a lot of men a Bezos. The same is true of deciding that accomplishment is not enough to run a financial services company; that what you really need is some side work on weekends as a tropical house DJ and EDM

If you return from your first trip to Burning Man at age 50, you are dangerously approaching Bezos territory.

If you’ve tried to book a singer like Jennifer Lopez, Stevie Wonder, John Legend, Patti LaBelle, or Christina Aguilera to your wedding, birthday party, or children’s church gathering, you are a Bezos.

Bezos are more likely to be rich than poor, but using Affirm at checkout has helped many less fortunate types reach Bezosdom.

It’s difficult, but not impossible, for a movie star to be a Bezos.

Mark Wahlberg, sporting a diamond-encrusted Patek Phillipe sports watch that would be a joke in a Paul Thomas Anderson movie starring Mark Wahlberg, is most definitely a Bezos. The same goes for Ben Affleck every time he takes his shirt off, and we can see the huge phoenix he had permanently engraved on his back.

Bezoses wants to believe that the time spent on Pelotons over the past year is enough to warrant ordering a Speedo on Amazon. Or with a few good years on our knees, we could still get down to skateboarding or soar in a rocket and become a Butch Cassidy for the skies, with a matching hat (and boots).

Here’s the problem: Butch Cassidy became Butch Cassidy while stealing. A Bezos compensates with a credit card.

Shortly after coming down to earth, Mr. Bezos went to a press conference where he said, “I want to thank every Amazon employee and every Amazon customer because you paid for everything. that. Seriously.”

It was a curious admission from a guy whose underlings are protesting against their working conditions and meager delivery wages. But what did everyone expect from a space cowboy in blue satin? It is the biggest Bezo in the world.

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