In fact, WeWork had no proprietary technology to speak of and its first CTO was a teenage boy known as “Joey Cables”. And yet despite the vast gulf that existed between Neumann’s breathless rhetoric and reality, his bullshit secured billions of dollars for the company. Employees attributed an aura or “reality distortion field” to Neumann that only stopped working when WeWork filed for an IPO, exposing his mythmaking to public scrutiny.  The IPO was withdrawn, and Neumann was dethroned shortly afterwards. 

Yet although the WeWork CEO was an outstanding purveyor of Silicon Valley waffle, it must be said that he had tough competition. 

Elizabeth Holmes — currently serving nine years in prison in Bryan, Texas — is the most notorious of Neumann’s peers. Her Theranos home blood test kits never worked and were actively dangerous, and yet everyone from Rupert Murdoch to former US Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos lobbed millions at her rubbish boxes. 

Meanwhile other, much more ordinary products were also engulfed in mystification. In 2017, Peloton, which described itself as “the largest interactive fitness platform in the world”, achieved unicorn status, even though it was obviously just a fancy exercise bike. Similarly, Beyond Meat, which was also once valued in the billions, liked to describe its ersatz chicken tenders as a “plant-based chicken platform”. 

Other massively hyped “disruptive technologies” have turned out to be disappointing, too — even when not entirely vaporware. Streaming is now as expensive and confusing as cable; Uber is as expensive as a taxi; Airbnb is frequently more expensive than a hotel. The world was not changed: some things became a little bit more convenient, while others became a little bit worse. Everything has disrupted itself back to its origins. 

The impending bankruptcy of WeWork, then, serves as a nice capstone for an era of hype and blather. Years from now the era of venture capital-fueled “disruption” that preceded the pandemic will be regarded in the same light as Tulip mania, or the Beanie Babies craze of the Nineties, only instead of middle-aged women lining up to buy brightly coloured soft toys, it was bankers and MBAs racing to incinerate ever larger piles of money on a quest for un-enlightenment. 

That said, the game is not quite over yet. Last year it was reported that Adam Neumann, who exited WeWork with $1.7 billion in hand, received $350 million in funding from Andreessen Horowitz for a company called Flow that promises to disrupt the residential rental market in a vague, undefined fashion. It’s already valued at $1 billion and it doesn’t even have a website yet. A reality distortion field indeed.

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Daniel Kalder is an author based in Texas. Previously, he spent ten years living in the former Soviet bloc. His latest book, Dictator Literature, is published by Oneworld. He also writes on Substack: Thus Spake Daniel Kalder.

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