Is 'Blade Runner-y' a word?

If anyone can appreciate the importance
distinguishing a people from its leaders it's us.

I suppose two of my stronger prejudices would have to be Russia and start-ups. Russia because it's run by a homophobic ex-K.G.B. thug who rigged our election and start-ups because I have all kinds of dumb ideas and not once has some venture capitalist showered me with money to make them real. I mention these hang-ups because I need you to understand my vitriolic reaction to-oh, but first I should clarify that when I bag on Russia, I mean Russia the country, not the Russian people. Most of them are probably cool.

Anyway, where was I? Right, the vitriol. If you clicked on that link, and I know you didn't, you'd have read about a Russian start-up called, ugh, StartRocket, which plans to launch micro satellite billboards into space in an effort to make sure the human race never again knows a moments freedom from the relentless oppression of commerce.

Since the dawn of time, humankind has looked
up at the stars and thought: Your Ad Here. 

"Bo-ring."

-The worst humans

That queasy sensation your feeing right now? That's the realization that maybe the increasing likelihood of our extinction isn't such a bad thing. Here, this is from the StartRocket website:

"Space has to be beautiful. With the best brands our sky will amaze us every night."

-The StartRocket marketing team, which I can 

only assume is made up of the worst humans

"I had a bead on that rogue asteroid
 but then a Del Taco ad came on so,
I don't know, Nebraska somewhere?
Guess we'll just have to wait and see." 

Can you just-I mean, can you just imaging being the kind of person who looks up at night and sees not the incomprehensibly vast majesty of the universe but wasted ad space? Well you don't have to, because StartRocket CEO Vladilen Sitnikov already did. When confronted with criticism about his plan to turn the sky into a goddamn jumbo-tron by astronomers who point out how this will make ground-based astronomy impossible, Sitnikov points out that the orbital speed of his satellites would make the ads visible for only a few minutes at a time.

"You can do peeing or making your coffee. So it's a break for you, it's like we help them."

-Sitnikov on how his ads offer 

the world a bathroom break

Oh, cool, so by co-opting the timeless canopy of the sky in the name of crass commercialism from which there is no escape, he's actually doing us a solid, because now we can go take a leak if we don't want to sit through his orbital commercials. Which, and I'm not like a marketing person, but is telling people to take a break instead of watching your dumb space billboard really the way to attract clients?

"Dah! And also I invent floating toilet billboard. You never have to miss ad!"

-Vladilen Sitnikov,

innovator 

I think I just solved the Fermi Paradox.
I mean, would you visit a house with a
bunch of shit strewn all over the yard?

In case you were wondering how these things work, the plan is to launch a number of small tissue-box sized micro-satellites into low orbit. These CubeSats-which I assume is the proprietary trademark-able term, will fly in formation and then unfurl thirty-foot mylar panels that will reflect sunlight. These panels will then arrange themselves to spell out those brands that will 'amaze us every night.' So, yes, in addition to being an inescapable eyesore, Sitnikov's satellites will also add to the increasingly impenetrable shield of space garbage already orbiting our planet.

If all goes to StartRocket's plan, we should plan on taking frequent stargazing breaks as early as July of 2021, that is assuming Sitnikov actually works out the technology involved. According to Wired, he's just a start-up guy, not an engineer. So if he wasn't trying to sully the night sky he'd probably be hawking an app or gentrifying something. But it sounds like space ads are inevitable one way or another and are sending us ever further down a grim and Blade Runner-y path to the future.

Is it me or does it seem like the advertisement-soaked dystopic
urban hellscapes of sci-fi movies like Blade Runner and Ghost
in the Shell actually undersold the reality of living in 2019?