Revue 2: This Letter I Got From Time Warner Cable

March 2014 Dear Valued Customer: Recently, Time Warner Cable announced plans to merge with Comcast, forming an industry-leading technology and media company dedicated to delivering great customer experiences. Above all, this merger will benefit you, our customers. Our two companies have been behind many of the innovative services that you enjoy every day—digital cable TV, high-speed Internet, DVRs, Video On Demand and WiFi in the home and on-the-go—to name just a few. The combined company will innovate faster and deploy even better products and features, including a superior video guide, faster Broadband Internet speeds and even more WiFi access points so you can access the Internet wherever you go. We expect the merger to close around the end of 2014. In the meantime, all of us at Time Warner Cable remain committed to providing you with great TV, ultra-fast Internet, rock solid phone service and innovative home security and monitoring. And we will continue to make significant investments to improve reliability and to enhance our customer service. We are very excited about the promise of this combination for you, our customers. We’ll keep you posted as things evolve in the coming months. As always, thank you for choosing Time Warner Cable. Sincerely,

Robert D. Marcus Chairman and Chief Executive Officer WHOA, SNAPDRAGONS! This is some kind of awesome story! Firstly, let me say that, despite its brevity, this story is exactly as long as it needs to be. A story doesn't have to be a whole 5,800 words to tell a tale! And this story succeeds resoundingly at this humble length! There is a story about Hemingway winning a bet that he couldn't tell a story in only six words. He answered with "For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn." This has the remarkable quality of evoking emotion and interest in the audience, because it allows the them to extrapolate the various details of the story themselves, while still conveying a lot of information, making it not only a complete story, but also a very personal experience. The coolest way to say, "Now leave me the hell alone," probably ever. Source: http://www.americanlegends.com/authors/images/hemingway.jpg Likewise, "This Letter I Got From Time Warner Cable" succeeds on similar levels, conjuring images and details without explicitly stating them. The reader can almost see the bags under the eyes of the Robert D. Marcus character as he sits alone, his chair leather and brand new and his computer screen blindingly bright in the darkened room. He plunks at the keys with fingers made fat and soft from easy living, knowing exactly what he has to say, but feeling a piece of his soul ripped out with each word he types. A man who has been brought up being told exactly what success means, and that success equates to happiness. Why then, does he feel so... empty? He has lied to his "valued" customers before. Hell, he's done it with a smile on his face! "That's what it takes to be successful," he'd thought. "That's what it takes to be happy." He pours another glass of twenty year old scotch, hoping the smokey taste will drive these introspective demons from his mind. The last line, "As always, thank you for choosing Time Warner Cable," cuts into you. You can almost feel the Robert D. Marcus character sob hopelessly as "thank you" appears on the screen. So many lies. So many. Had it been worth the price? Where was his promised reward? Perhaps in the inevitable movie, he could be played by this man. I feel like the hair suits the character. He has the outward, "sincere" smile under the dead, soulless eyes down pat. Source: http://ir.timewarnercable.com/files/Rob%20Marcus_w.%20jacket.jpg I admit to having a certain love of epistolary stories. That is, stories written as documents, letters, newspaper clippings, etc. Stories such as Stephen King's Carrie, or Saul Bellow's Herzog are examples of the style. Although letters are not as big a part of modern life as they once were, they still feel real to us in a way that traditional narration never can. Perhaps it is the physicality of letters. Regardless, the format seems to... connect stories to the real world. It grounds them, if you will. Here, we have an example of a surprising and wonderful use of the format! The unique nature of the contents, though they strain incredulity to the extreme (Comcast / Time Warner have "great customer experiences," "remain committed to providing you with great TV, ultra-fast Internet, rock solid phone service and innovative home security and monitoring," and other such nonsense) are actually brought down to the level of "willing suspension of disbelief" by the grounding nature of this letter format, which allows the true tale to shine through the fantastical haze. And it is brilliantly written, with an absolutely riveting cold opening: "Recently, Time Warner Cable announced plans to merge with Comcast." It immediately conveys an atmosphere of grim despair over the whole piece, as we are forced to imagine as a world highly reliant on the Internet is forced to watch in horror as the two largest providers merge into the country's largest and most sinister monopoly, now free of even the most feeble reason to provide a service at a reasonable cost and with anything resembling customer service or reliability. It'd be worse than the $70 Internet that I have from Time Warner costing between $12.50 and $25 in the UK from Virgin... except 20Mbps faster AND it includes phone. Now that'd be a nightmare. To be ripped off and fucked over that badly? It'd be friggin' criminal! Man, fiction is scary sometimes. Imagine if Time Warner were free to just name their price! Source: http://store.virginmedia.com/broadband.html Let's think about that bleak scenario for a moment. Like Orwell's 1984, here fiction allows us to contemplate an utterly horrific world from a thankfully distant viewpoint. Imagine if Comcast and Time Warner Cable, two companies already far too large and far too monopolistic in many regions of the United States were to merge... what would there be for them to compete with? Google Fiber? I guess? If you live in Kansas City? Mobile Broadband? I guess? If you want to strain a system that cannot physically handle a high total data load? DSL or dial-up? If you don't need your business to compete in a worldwide market? Bleak stuff. Evocative. The author is perhaps even a bit too dramatic and heavy-handed in their portrayal of a dark future here, but it does work. Then... moving on from that... it's just lie after lie, told through the soul-wrenching fingers of our Roebrt D. Marcus character, a man who has it all, and still wants more... and doesn't... cannot understand why he is dead inside. My God, it is just such well-realized fiction. ...I'm sorry?  What? WHAT? WHAT. What do you mean, this isn't fiction?! Impossible! T-This would make a bigger monopoly than Standard Oil! The United States would fall into laughably uncompetitive telecom obsolescence! WE WOULD PAY EVEN MORE FOR SLOW INTERNET! WHAT DO YOU FRIGGIN' MEAN ROBERT D. MARCUS IS A REAL GUY?! AND HE'S GETTING EIGHTY MILLION DOLLARS FOR THIS?! My God. This world is disgusting. ... ... ... /cue laugh track?