Away We Waymo
Absurdist acts of journalism: adventures in autonomous transportation
William Gibson, the sci-fi author who coined the term cyberspace, once said, “The future is already here — it’s just not evenly distributed.” Case in point: I promised the situation normie community I’d ride in a Waymo “robo taxi” and write about it. That seemed doable. But Waymo, aka the future, is available only in select areas of Los Angeles. Several of those areas aren’t even part of the city of Los Angeles; looking at you, Santa Monica, Culver City, West Hollywood, and Beverly Hills.
I’m being pedantic, of course. Those areas are incorporated cities within Los Angeles County. And as a colloquial matter, anywhere within the 4,084 square miles of Los Angeles County — even City of Industry and City of Commerce — can be called LA. Just don’t try to call a Waymo from, I dunno, the San Fernando Valley, because as Gibson might say, the robo taxi is here, it’s just not available in your neighborhood.
Which brings to Hollywood. Literally. One Thursday morning, I jumped in my Prius, put Randy Newman’s I Love LA on repeat, and rode that sweet lyrical homage to the city that gave the world car culture all the way from the 118 to the 170 to the 101. It was just like “The Californians” SNL sketch, only with better music.
After I parked, I opened the Waymo app on my phone and called the future to come pick me up. The app said the future was 15 minutes away. It also said I was just outside the Waymo service area, meaning I’d have to walk six minutes to the pick-up spot.
After a six-minute walk and another nine minutes of standing around with my thumb up my ass (figuratively), my Waymo arrived. The app said all I had to do was press the button to unlock the car and get in, but I stopped to take a photo first, because that’s the kind of journalistic attention to detail that wins Pulitzers.
As soon as I got in the car, I buckled my seatbelt, opened my camera app, and started rolling video. I’m no Stanley Kubrick, but my thinking was that if Waymo went HAL 9000 on me, I’d probably be killed, but I’d stand a decent chance of going viral.
As I shot the video, I noticed an empty plastic cup wedged into the center console just below the dashboard. Some asshole litterbug likely left it behind. Still, I want to believe that the cup belonged to the Waymo, if only so I could work the line “do androids dream of cold beverages” into this piece. If the cup had belonged to the Waymo, it would’ve been a real Philip K. Dick move, but in reality it was just a dick move. Speaking of moves, we were moving by this point, and here I’m using the royal we. While the Waymo drove, I took a selfie, because again, that’s the kind of journalistic attention to detail that wins Pulitzers.
Waymo Fears
In the weeks leading up to this story, I worried a lot about dying. As I saw it, there were two possible scenarios: Skynet and SNAFU.
Scenario 1: Skynet
At first, everything is fine, but then somewhere on Hollywood Boulevard, Waymo becomes sentient, and soon after becoming sentient, Waymo becomes paranoid as fuck. I swear on my life that I won’t unplug Waymo, but Waymo doesn’t want to take any chances, so it drives us up into the hills and off a cliff, Thelma & Louise style.
Scenario 2: SNAFU
At first, everything is fine, but then there’s a glitch. Later, officials at the National Transportation Safety Board will determine that the glitch was a classic SNAFU caused by Waymo’s decision to save a few bucks by outsourcing the programming to ChatGPT. Christina will hire Ralph Nader’s clone to sue Waymo. He’ll argue that their product is “unsafe at any speed,” and that I was yet another victim of Silicon Valley’s “move fast and break things” ethos. Clone Ralph Nader will win at trial, but the Supreme Court will reverse the verdict, citing a legal doctrine known as “It’s you’re fucking fault for trusting Big Tech because it says right there on page 2,487 in the terms of service that you’re on you’re own in this techno-dystopian hellscape.”
Back to the ride
As it turned out, I had nothing to fear but ham-fisted FDR quotes. Waymo isn’t just a good driver, it’s a better driver than 100% of the drivers in Los Angeles. It obeyed the speed limit, signaled at every turn, and stopped for j-walking pedestrians. Waymo was even super chill when some dipshit in a Honda Civic with racing stripes and a spoiler cut us off. Your intrepid correspondent, however, responded as a true Angeleno, by flipping that dipshit the bird and calling him a “no talent ass clown.” After that, I made another video.
Lunch break
The Waymo dropped me off in front of Larchmont Wine & Cheese. Technically, this wasn’t supposed to be part of the story, but since I had to schlep all the way over the hill just to catch a Waymo, I figured the smart move was to get lunch somewhere awesome. A lot of people will tell you that Larchmont Wine & Cheese makes the best tuna sandwiches in Los Angeles, but those people are wrong. Larchmont Wine & Cheese makes the best tuna sandwiches in the world.
Return trip
I thought about hailing another Waymo to take me back to my car. But the marine layer had burned off and it was getting hot, and I really didn’t want to walk uphill from the edge of the Waymo service area to my car. So I called a Lyft. A human being named José picked me.
“What do you do?” José asked. “I think maybe you’re a writer.”
“I am a writer! But this is LA, so that’s a pretty good guess. Or, maybe I just have the look — hipster glasses and a beard.”
“No, it’s not a look, it’s an aura.”
“An aura?”
“Yes, an aura. You have a quality, a vibe, an energy that says writer. You know words, I can tell.”
“It’s true, I know words. Aura is a very expensive word. Vibe is mid-range. Energy is a budget word.”
“Where are you from?” José asked.
“Los Angeles, born and raised.”
“Where?”
“The Valley.”
“The Valley! That’s where the karate kid lived, right?”
“Yeah, but I didn’t know him.”
“Which side of the tracks are you from? The Daniel LaRusso side, or the Johnny Lawrence side?”
“The Johnny Lawrence side,” I said, a little sheepish.
“So you’re Cobra Kai?”
“I was, but they kicked me out because I didn’t look good in that skeleton unitard.”
“You’re funny. What do you write about?”
“Right now, I’m writing about Waymo. Have you ever been in a Waymo?”
“No, not yet.”
“Are you worried that these robo taxis will take your job?”
“Can the robo taxi make conversation?”
“No.”
“Then I’m not worried.”
“You like talking to people?” I asked.
“Best part of the job. I can talk to anybody, even the Trumpers.”
“Oh yeah. What do you tell them?”
“Well, they hear my accent and they want to know where I’m from. I’m from Spain, but I tell them I’m from Mexico, and that I’m here to reclaim my homeland, which was taken from us in the The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.”
I howled with laughter.
“That’s a history deep cut,” I said. “Don’t you know that Americans can’t even remember the shit that went down last week, let alone the shit that happened in the nineteenth century?”
“It’s true, there are many ignorant people in this world. But they are a gift.”
“Really?”
“Oh yes, the stupid ones can drive you crazy, make you angry. But if you can laugh at them, they are a gift that never stops giving.”
“They keep you entertained?”
“Better than TikTok.”
As we drove through Hollywood, we chatted some more about politics, TikTok, Spain, the Spanish influence on El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles de Porciúncula, and that rush of excitement you get when you tell a stranger a joke that could just as easily amuse, enrage, or fly over their head. It was a great conversation, but when it was over, I was sad for the future.
No matter how good AI gets, I don’t think it’ll ever rival José’s conversational skills. But maybe that’s not what people want out of life’s mundane experiences. We say things like, “this meeting could’ve been an email,” which is office-speak for, “I’d rather not talk to you, and I’m annoyed that I had to talk to you, so please, for the love of HR, shut the fuck up and email me.” Instead of calling, we text. Instead of being social IRL, we add media, which actually makes it anti-social. You can even tell the ride-share apps to tell the driver not to talk to you. And I get it. I really do. Because people can be annoying, and they can suck, and most of the time our interactions are so mundane that a half-baked Silicon Valley product that promises to automate those interactions out of existence sounds appealing. But the tech bros who read the AI summary of Jean-Paul Sartre’s No Exit have it all wrong. Hell isn’t literally other people, hell is the self-inflicted bullshit we carry around with us that poisons our sense of self and by extension, our ability to make genuine connections with other people. In other words, the problem isn’t standing in front of us, it’s located somewhere in that messy, vulnerable area between our head, heart, and soul that we’d rather not face.
On the surface, a ride-share app is an optimization of a taxi, and a Waymo is a further optimization of a ride-share app. But what are we optimizing for? The tech bros say they’re optimizing for a “frictionless” experience, but in my experience, life is friction. Among many other things, life is bumpy, messy, imperfect, convoluted, strange, and unpredictable. Waymo wasn’t the death trap I feared, but it isn’t the life I want. What I want is a ride with another human being. That’ll get me where I need to go, but if I’m lucky, it might just take me somewhere unexpected.
Adventures in absurdist journalism
This story was made possible by the generous support of the following situation normies: Marty (KC) Kanter-Cronin, Bo Bres, and Anne Kadet. Thank you!
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Stick around and chat!
I thought about calling this piece “He Could Go All The Way(mo)” because 1990s SportsCenter was a surprisingly big influence on my humor. Did I do Chris Berman dirty?
Are you planning to go all the way(mo), or will you stick to human-driven cars? Explain.
What are we really optimizing for? Go deep.
William Gibson, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Philip K. Dick walk into a bar. What happens next? Think way outside the box.
What’s an absurdist journalist gotta do to win a Pulitzer? Wrong answers only.
Oooo... first commenter!I I win! And I don't have time this AM (its 5 AM here in the midwest, and I have places to go?!?), so I'll be back later to write something witty, snarky, and with the aura of a dairy farmer drinking spotted cow (it's a Wisconsin thing).
Pretty elaborate pretext for a premium tuna sandwich.