Welcome to the Because Fuck You, That’s Why economy

Last week, Sony announced that it would stop making physical copies of its games in 2027. Lots of people had a problem with this — it’s bad for sharing, for preservation, for libraries, for the concept of ownership, and for retailers. The move saves Sony a little money on production and a bit of money on retailer fees. It’s an ugly and unpopular move.

The day of the announcement, when the outrage was the loudest. Sony’s stock price started going up. Because the outrage doesn’t matter to the shareholders.

It’s been up and down since, but is still up roughly $0.75 — about 5% or so higher than it was before the announcement. (Don’t quote me on those numbers, I need more coffee and I just can’t be bothered to double-check math on something as made up as the stock market.) In the last few days, Sony’s CEO, Chairman, and several other executives made over $10 million from selling off their own stock.

The moral here, though, is that all of the outrage, betrayal, and destruction of trust made a few people a lot of money. Because Fuck You, That’s Why.

Last month, Rockstar Games announced that GTA 6 would be selling for $80 for the base edition and $100 for the Ultimate Edition. The $100 version gets extra missions, story content, and shops. If you want the fullest version of the game, you’ve got to drop that extra $20. Oh, and there’s no physical editions either — if you buy a copy at a retailer, you’ll be getting an empty box with a download code inside. Because Fuck You, That’s Why.

Over the last decade or so, Microsoft’s Xbox Game Studio has bought, sold, closed, and consolidated a dozen or so studios. Meanwhile, Microsoft has spent over $100 billion on its partnership with OpenAI and has committed an additional $190 billion to AI infrastructure over the “coming years.” Xbox this week announced that 3,200 people would be losing their jobs. One of the studios hit hardest by the Xbox layoffs, id Software, just released a DLC for Doom: The Dark Ages that’s sitting at a 9.0 on Metacritic and a “very positive” on Steam. But that studio was punished. Because Fuck You, That’s Why.

According to Gallup polling, 71% of Americans are opposed to building data centers in their area. There are also thousands of proposed data centers. In February, the construction process for a Meta AI data center dumped a rare bacteria into Cheyenne, Wyoming’s water supply — the report only came out this week, by the way. Meanwhile, a pro-AI super PAC called Leading the Future is spending dark money on a fully AI-generated news outlet, paid social media influencers, and political candidates to promote their talking points. Because Fuck You, That’s Why.

The crypto exchange Binance is banned from operating in the UK, might get banned from the EU, and has paid billions of dollars in fines worldwide. Binance’s founder went to prison for money laundering and then was pardoned by President Trump. The Trump family is in negotiation to buy part of Binance. Donald Trump has made over $1 billion from crypto investments in his first year back in office. Reform UK head and far-right asshole Nigel Farage got a £5 million donation from a crypto billionaire that may or may not’ve been full-on illegal (vote Count Binface!). Because Fuck You, That’s Why.

Roughly 95% of Americans say they believe we’re facing an affordability crisis and 57% say the economy is getting worse. But the US economy is bigger than ever. The Dow Jones (whatever that is) has never been higher. Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft are going to spend $700 billion on AI infrastructure this year alone. And both things are true because of our K-shaped economy — basically “the rich get richer while the poor get poorer” on a systemic scale. Because Fuck You, That’s Why.

Google sucks now. Every app you use is spying on you — and your garbage truck might too. Meta’s smart glasses are being used by sexual predators and stalkers. The Wikipedia entry for Criticism of Facebook has more words than the entry for Isaac Newton (or the entries for George Clooney and Brad Pitt combined). You can go to prison for distributing anarchist zines. There’s a diarrhea-causing cyclospora outbreak in 30 states with thousands of people affected — but we don’t know the actual numbers because the CDC stopped mandatory reporting last year. Meta filed a patent for a wearable that tracks your mood by recording your entire day. The Starbucks CEO makes 6,666 times as much as the average Starbucks employee. The average age of first time homebuyers in 2026 is 40, up from about 30 years old just 10 years ago. The world’s richest 12 people possess as much wealth as the poorest 4 billion — and that stat is from before Elon scammed his way into briefly being the planet’s first trillionaire. Uwe Boll is still allowed to make movies. Because Fuck You, That’s Why.

On a recent episode of Ed Zitron’s Better Offline podcast, author Cal Newport used the phrase “doom trolling” to describe the way that Big Tech is fearmongering about rapidly accelerating technology while also accelerating that same technology. And it’s a brilliant phrase because it highlights the Because Fuck You, That’s Why economy for what it is — one long troll by the world’s saddest, most useless bullies.

The goal of a troll is to wear you down through emotional provocation. When they annoy you enough or finally make you angry enough to snap, they’ve won and you’re that much weaker for it. Doom trolling wants the same thing. The Because Fuck You, That’s Why economy wants to beat you down until you can’t imagine anything better. It wants you to think that everything that’s being done to you is inevitable and unavoidable. It wants you to think those 12 richest people in the world did something to deserve the wealth they possess. They want you to throw up your hands in frustration knowing that that’s the way it is.

Because Fuck You, That’s Why.

What are you going to do, stop eating ice cream just because it punishes speaking out against genocide? Stop drinking coffee because of union busting? Give up two-day shipping because of human rights violations? Not play the biggest new game because of crunch culture and union busting and a gender pay gap? Not shop someplace that changes prices depending on where you are in the store? Not get a new console because the manufacturer enables genocide? Not listen to music because the streaming app platforms propaganda and misinformation while also abusing artists? Stop going to the movies or enjoying Shark Week because it’s owned by propagandists and Zionists?

The reality of the Because Fuck You, That’s Why economy is that all of these thin​gs — every necessity and every distraction we all need to get through the relentless days — are tied up with the same corporations and people making the world so bad we need a little treat to get through it. It’s manufactured complicity. It's desperation-driven compliance. It’s one big, “What are you going to do about it?”

The doom trolling and constant barrage of abuses eats away at your ability to imagine something better. The erosion of the moral high ground makes it harder to make a stand.

Throughout (Western) society, we have both myths and science to back up the belief that humans — and all animals — are inherently greedy and one step from chaos. We are told that we are all Lord of the Flies in waiting, that this is just the way of things.

Except it’s demonstrably not true. It was fiction written by a depressed alcoholic. Fifteen years after William Golding made up Lord of the Flies, a real group of boys — six boys from a Tongan boarding school on a fishing trip — really did end up shipwrecked on a deserted island with no grown ups.

When they were rescued fifteen months later, the boat’s captain wrote, “the boys had set up a small commune with food garden, hollowed-out tree trunks to store rainwater, a gymnasium with curious weights, a badminton court, chicken pens and a permanent fire.” They shared resources, worked together, and cared for each other when they got hurt. No one died. They remained friends for the rest of their lives.

Our (Western, capitalist) popular mythology says we’ll turn on each other the first chance we get. Reality says people help each other. Even all of that science misses the point — they’re all about power. What the Robbers Cave study, the Stanford Prison Experiment, the Milgram experiment, and the Third Wave experiment all show is not that humans are inherently evil. They show that hierarchies of power can be manipulated into making humans turn on each other.

And it doesn’t take much. Sometimes, it’s as simple as discomfort and friction. So much of the Because Fuck You, That’s Why economy is built on comfort and complacency. There’s friction in giving up a treat or even in finding a different diversion. But that’s the point. It’s supposed to be uncomfortable. Finding a different coffee shop is not as uncomfortable as fighting every day for a living wage. Buying your second favorite ice cream is not as uncomfortable as watching a country be turned into rubble.

Back when we started Rogue, I wrote about finding your own personal moral line.

Having a moral stance is all well and good, but it's just as important to educate yourself and others about why you decided to draw your personal line where it is. Both the conversation and the context matter, even if your line is arbitrary. Don’t deny yourself everything while waiting for the perfectly acceptable product, but by all means, boycott anything that crosses your line and find allies who share the same line as you. Just make sure you always save some of your energy and vitriol for the larger fights against systemic issues and injustices.

I stand by that. You shouldn’t deny yourself everything, but you can and should deny yourself some things. Even if you only draw the line at the most egregious. Over the last year, I’ve found myself becoming less forgiving as more and more of the Because Fuck You, That’s Why economy crosses my line and I'm even more filled with vitriol for the large injustices.

And my line is shifting. Because I choose humans over money. I choose people over power. I choose to not only believe in, but demand something better.

Because fuck them, that’s why.