Author: Aaron Weber

Truism: When you have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.
Application: Gastric bypass surgery.

What gets me about gastric bypass is that it’s a surgical problem to what is most often a psychological or behavioral problem. I’m sure that there are those for whom it is necessary, but it seems, in a lot of cases, that it’s (here’s my personal vendetta again) the easy way out. The solution to the wrong problem. These people have eating disorders, not enlargement of the stomach.

For example, one man’s son says that before the surgery, “All he did was watch videos, [but] now he can do stuff.” At a last-hurrah meal for one couple undergoing the surgery together, the woman ate until she vomited. Of course, she can still do that and lose weight– she’ll be full to sickness after a few bites. There are a lot of personal experience stories out there– blogs and so forth — that suggest a lot of food issues hidden behind the surgery. Look at Basil White’s description of what he ate at his last meal before surgery– or rather, his four or five last meals. It sounds like a junkie trying to kick. Only his last fix included a dozen donuts as an appetizer for a meal of chicken-fried steak, fries, and biscuits.

This FAQ downplays the possibility of becoming malnourished or losing too much weight, but it does point out that people who eat compulsively can gain weight even after gastric bypass, by eating constantly, by bingeing until they throw up again and again, or eventually just stretching their stomachs back out to full size.

Lots of information out there, though: recipe guides and of course suggestions for meal supplement, shakes, given that a diet of normal food would leave you malnourished. Not to mention discussion of different varieties of the surgery. The NIH site on gastric bypass seems pretty informative.

I’m not knocking it– it seems to work for a lot of people. Even proponents recognize that it’s a brute-force way of dealing with obesity, and most places require psychological screening beforehand. Still, I’m concerned that there doesn’t seem to be a lot of acknowledgement of the psychological issues behind the whole thing, at least not in media coverage and celebrity stories.

The Hollywood Stock Exchange has an offshoot in IMX, the interactive music exchange. In both games, you buy and sell the popularity of popular culture products, and then redeem your virtual earnings for real-world promotional goods and logo merchandise. The sponsors behind IMX are MuchMusic, a Canada-based music video channel, who get not only brand recognition but also good market data for their troubles.

They really do have some neat ideas to go with the game: a TV show centered on the IMX game plays the big IMX movers and shakers, both established large-cap and up-and-coming small-cap artists. There’s a dedication service where you can not only request songs, but have the person emailed to let them know you’ve send them a special message– which is often an insult. Plus, it’s a pretty sophisticated market. You can even short-sell artists you think are overplayed, although pump and dump schemes and other market manipulations are punishable by confiscation of your assets, a trading suspension, or permanent banishment from the game.

Needless to say, I’ve been playing a little, but I’m sure they’ve got me in the junk-data pile, since I’ve confessed to not getting the TV station and being over 25. People sometimes complain about targeted advertising or other forms of user profiling but I’m not opposed to it. I mean, if I were still 20 and watched these videos, I probably would want the shirt to go with it, and I’d want bands I liked to get on the show. Since I’m not, and I don’t want the shirt, there’s no reason I should influence the show, even if I influence the game.

See, every data collection process should involve weeding. I’ve seen sales-lead forms at trade shows that ask “are you a student?” meaning, essentially, “should we just circular-file your info right now?” It sounds callous or rude, but it’s not. If you’re a college student, do you want to be contacted by the sales team and persuaded to discuss twenty or thirty grand worth of rackmount blade servers? No. They could almost ask “OK if sales calls you?” but then people would say no, even if they were potential customers. It’s still easy enough to lie and get your info ignored– just say you make no money, watch no tv, never buy CDs, cars, clustered data servers, electrophoresis equipment. Alternately, to win promotional keychains and junk mail, just claim to be part of whatever demographic they’re aiming for. It’s just marketing data. It’s not like it’s your insurance records.