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Pelotron guilty of.... #whitegaze
[NBC] Like many people in quarantine, every day I find some time to hide from my children and hop on to my Peloton, the stationary exercise bike with built-in internet-enabled spin classes that has become a must-have for some people during this time away from, well, everything.I love my Peloton, which (despite the hefty price tag) has more than paid for itself in burned calories and much-needed zen. And I am clearly not alone. Peloton isn't the problem: What holiday outrage over a stationary bike says about American society Indeed, despite a very wobbly IPO back in September, Peloton's stock has surged to record highs during the pandemic — almost doubling its price — valuing the company at more than $10 billion. (Comcast, the parent company of NBC Universal, is a shareholder.) And whereas Peloton was losing luster before the COVID-19 crisis, it now reports both a backlog of bike orders and 2.6 million members logging on to their classes each month. The bike is so coveted, wrote The New York Times this month, that even as millions lose their jobs, thousands of others are "panic buying" Peloton bikes to keep in shape while gyms remain closed. But the more I use my Peloton bicycle, the more I don’t feel so good about the company behind it. Because just as their now-infamous holiday-season ad last year convinced many people that the company had an unacknowledged gender problem, their video and music programming suggests to me — as an African American — that they also have an unrecognized race problem. Posted by: Besoeker 2020-05-20 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=572040 |