Inside the community of “Bird hunters”, who search for and charge e-scooters for firms like Bird and compare the activity to playing Pokémon Go, but for money
and Occasionally Dangerous—Youth Trend Tweets: Nitasha Tiku / @nitashatiku : must-read dispatch from late capitalism by @TaylorLorenz on the scooter charger labor market http://www.theatlantic.com/... also not enough ppl read Salon's charger piece which gets into the economics a bit http://www.salon.com/... http://twitter.com/... Ian Bogost / @ibogost : Read @TaylorLorenz on the surprisingly lucrative “Bird hunting” scooter retrieval grift (it's not a grift! but my brain!). Soon the only viable jobs will be VC-funded startup business-plan last-mile arbitrage? http://www.theatlantic.com/... Tanay Jaipuria / @tanayj : Bird, like Uber, is a market which needs to manage supply and demand. Makes total sense that they manage supply by allowing people to become bird chargers (with variable pricing based on location of scooters), which @TaylorLorenz has a good piece on: http://www.theatlantic.com/... Mike Dudas / @mdudas : “It's become a big trend at my high school. People are like, ‘Oh are you gonna charge tonight?’ I have friends send me Snapchats like, ‘I just got 18 in one night!’ or, ‘Look where I found this one.’” http://www.theatlantic.com/... Brett Winton / @wintonark : Chargers hoarding scooters, scooters as honey traps for mugging, but also $600 for a night's work and high schoolers taking up gig economy work. Some fascinating anecdotes. http://www.theatlantic.com/... Damir / @damirbecirovic : The most powerful businesses build their own economies. Precisely what Bird is doing. http://www.theatlantic.com/... Parker / @pt : The part of the cycle where startups are entrepreneurial enablers & not evil exploiters of labor is the best part. http://www.theatlantic.com/... Alexandre Mouriec / @mrcalexandre : “Charging scooters for Bird is like Pokémon Go, but when you get paid for finding Pokémon,” says @nickabouzeid, a 21-year-old charger in San Francisco. @TaylorLorenz did a fantastic job explaining the business of charging electric scooters for money http://www.theatlantic.com/... Michael S Galpert / @msg : @basche42 work becomes a game. http://www.theatlantic.com/... “Charging scooters for Bird is like Pokémon Go....” “It's really fun to grab a few scooters, charge them, and in the end it pays for a fancy dinner” “It's like a game and I would do it even if the prices were halved... ~@nickabouzeid