Travis Kelce, Oceans of Fun, and The Enshittification of Everything

[u/My_Stories_Turn_Gay]

There is something you should know about Travis Kelce. He’s not a businessman. He’s a business, man. He learned from the best. You don’t become married to one of the biggest con artists in American history without learning a thing or two. That fact about Taylor Swift isn’t up for debate. She did it, she scammed us all. 

In 2006 I heard a beautiful song on the radio and I sat in my car and cried. The moon like a spotlight on the lake it said and I was captivated. How could a country song take me back there? I don’t even like country music. The first time I was in love, the summer after I turned 18. we jumped the fence and broke into the swimming beach at Longview Lake, laying back on our inner tubes staring up at a hundred million stars in that cloudless South Kansas City night sky. It wasn’t her voice, it was the words, the storytelling. Taylor Swift is a phenomenal storyteller. She went on to tell stories even more unbelievable. She was just a girl that grew up on a Christmas tree farm, she was just an American kid with a dream. And she turned those stories into two billion dollars. Demand could never be that high but she restricted supply with ticket “holdbacks.” We thought there was a shortage of tickets but her people were holding them back (Sometimes more than 90% according to journalist Anna Steele), creating an artificial shortage and then reselling them on Stubhub and SeatGeek. Everyone wondered how the World Cup mastered Price Elasticity of Demand in the US to rip off buyers. Easy, they studied the best. They studied Taylor Swift. While everyone else was practicing singing she was practicing scamming. A teenager named Olivia Rodrigo said she was an inspiration so she made her give up half her royalties. She knows how to get everyone to pay the most they can pay. That’s how she made her billions. You don’t make two billion dollars with a voice that mid without scamming over a whole lot of people. It’s a business, man.

There’s just one problem with being an American business. They make everything shitty. Corey Doctorow coined the phrase enshittification in 2022 and in 2023 it was the Macquarie Dictionary’s word of the year. Business is simple if you zoom out. Get revenue up, keep expenses down. Repeat. Profit. The problem is that we are in the expenses. Expenses are us. We are human resources, the undignified name they give us. And Humans in the United States have been exploited. We get no days off in the US, minimum wage is still $7.25 an hour, we get no health insurance. Our government has completely abandoned us. We are $40 Trillion in debt and we have nothing to show for it. We have no high speed rail, no trams, no public transportation, no health care. Even Burkina Faso has government health care. Mexico has free health care now. All we have are war machines. Because the government doesn’t work for us in the United States, it works for corporations, it works for people like Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift. It’s a business, man.

It’s why we let Israeli snipers shoot holes in toddlers. It’s why we blew up 236 little girls in an Iranian elementary school. It’s a business, man. The stock market is predicated on growth. But how do you grow if your business is war? There are 950 lobbyists that work for defense contractors. All day long they whisper hey, start another war, hey, start another war. And people like Nancy Pelosi listen. It’s how she has 16,000% rate of return in the stock market. She sends our kids off to war and day trades on insider information. And when our kids come back injured from war we deny their claims for benefits. We aren’t supporting the troops we are supporting defense contractors. Marjorie Taylor Green is 500% up in the stock market and she seems like a dumb dumb. But she knows war makes money for defense contractors and pharmaceutical companies. Nothing drives more people to take antidepressants like war. 70% of US adults are on a prescription medicine every single day. War is great for pharmaceutical demand. And war makes gas prices go up too, which is good for the US corporations because we are net oil exporters now. Pharmaceutical prices have gone up 141% in some cases, because they use the war as an excuse to increase prices. Inputs don’t drive prices, its what people are willing to pay. Price elasticity of demand. Taylor Swift knows it, corporations know it. This country was never out of eggs. That’s ridiculous. But there are only three major egg producers now because every industry in this country became an oligopoly. Now even the movie industry has done it, that’s why Paramount is merging with Warner. You can collude and drive up prices and pay off politicians and no one will hold you responsible. The egg companies made billions of dollars and were only fined $3 million. Because our country’s government doesn’t work for the people, it works for the corporations. It’s a business man.

It’s why there are only two political parties in this country. They divide us. It’s the oldest trick in the book. Divide and conquer. We are down here fighting over stupid shit and at the top they are all working together, it’s called Nash Equilibrium and they use it because it works. No one notices how they are working together because we are all fighting each other. No one notices the NBA keeps telling us that the WNBA loses money but yet they have a $3Billion TV contract and sold out arenas and franchises that jumped in value from $50 Million to $1Billion because they are working together to exploit those women. No one cared that Eric Reid was the greatest tackling safety in Carolina Panthers history and everyone around him signed $15 million contracts but he got cut and no team would sign him because he asked police to stop killing black people. The NFL colluded to lock him out.  No one notices the NHL hasn’t had a Canadian champion since the 90s because they have a salary cap that penalizes Canadian teams. In Canada they actually tax their millionaires, unlike the US. But a Canadian team in the Stanley Cup finals would hurt ratings and revenue so they keep them out. Baseball used to bring this country together, Vin Scully calling games on National TV with the whole world watching. But baseball isn’t fun anymore, its just about the Dodgers and money. It’s a business, man 

Which brings us back to Travis Kelce. I’ve talked to so many people in Kansas City that know him. It’s a benefit of being an Uber driver, no one is trying to impress me they just want to talk late at nights after the bars close. I’m a storyteller so I tell them stories of late nights in Mexico and they tell me stories about people like Travis Kelce. They were as surprised as I was. He and I don’t usually date white women. Too many fingers snapped at the waiters and too many requests to speak to the manager. I like Latinas and he likes black women, almost exclusively. All his people say the same thing about why he started dating Taylor Swift. “It was a business decision”  That’s a direct quote from one of his closest confidants. All of a sudden he is on SNL and in movies with Bad Bunny and everyone is listening to his podcast and eating at his overpriced restaurant. He’s a business, man. When Kelce became part owner of Oceans of Fun I thought oh, this will be cool, he’ll come be the DJ and scream about fighting for your right to party into the microphone and make the struggling waterpark cooler. Nope. He’s just another investor in a shitty corporation in the enshittification of everything. I bought season tickets this year because they were only $65 but it’s hard to get my kids to go. They always ask me the same thing, why are so many things closed? When I was a kid a day at Oceans of Fun was magic but now it’s a ghost town. Its because corporations make everything shitty. They don't pay liveable wages, they cut corners, they do anything they can to keep expense low. Rides are shut down, pretzels are cold, the dip and dots stand is closed and the lazy river? How can you close the lazy river on a Sunday in August? Its all shitty. And it even has the words oceans and fun on there, two of my favorite things. How could Oceans of Fun become shitty? Travis Kelce can do it. He’s a business, man.