Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, the world’s richest man, wants to cut my hair

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 21/04/2021 (1725 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

In the future, Jeff Bezos will control every business on every street in every city.

Every restaurant will be an Amazon Bistro. All of your clothes will come from Amazon Emporium, with tailoring services by Amazon Stitch. You will travel on Amazon Air and stay at Hotel Amazon, eating meals from Amazon Farms. Then one day you will shuffle off this mortal coil and the funeral service, casket and tombstone will be provided by Amazon Goodbye.

That took a gloomy turn. I think it’s because I glanced out my window on Wednesday morning with disbelief. A tundra of frostbitten tulips and snow-capped birdfeeders in late April? What’s next, Pandemic Gods? Asteroids? Locusts? Another racist dog whistle from Tucker Carlson?

Or maybe I’m in a sour mood because Bezos is getting into styling.

The man does not even have hair and now he’s launching Amazon Salon in London? This new grooming mecca is a swish, 1,500 square-foot follicle shop, where customers will be treated to cutting-edge tech – no pun intended – including “augmented reality hair consultations” and “point-and-learn.” What’s that? No clue. Maybe it means a smart mirror that lets you preview various shades of auburn highlights? Or maybe it means you point at a Bezos hologram and learn from Alexa over the PA system that he now owns your kids and internal organs.

My favourite line in this week’s announcement was: “There are no current plans to open any other Amazon Salon locations.”

Right. You mean, like there was once “no current plans” for Amazon to move beyond books? You can go back in time and find when Amazon had “no current plans” for groceries, cloud storage, gaming, AI, digital content, facial recognition, web hosting or space exploration.

“No Current Plans” could be the title of the first volume of a Bezos biography trilogy.

The next two would be, “Then I Changed My Mind” and “Now It’s All Mine.”

Now, I realize we can’t do much about our hair these days. We’ve been locked in our houses for the past year like we’re on death row and our unwashed locks are the least of it. You should see my bangs. I’m one wooden spoon away from turning into one of my aunts. The other night, as I was falling asleep, I violently swatted at my chin because I thought a spider was crawling across my face. It was my hair! I’m a roadie for a subcontinent ZZ Top tribute band. I am disgusting.

And you know what? I think Bezos knows this.

I think he has figured out this pandemic will be a gold mine for years to come.

Earlier this month, Forbes published its “35th Annual World’s Billionaires List: Facts and Figures 2021.” That’s a wordy way of saying the rest of us mooks are pretty much screwed. Over the past year, as the rest of us were rubbing our shekels together in the hope of having enough to splurge on milk and toilet paper, the world has quietly minted a new billionaire every 17 hours.

Forbes hilariously reports this stuff deadpan, like it’s a traffic report.

Bezos was named the world’s richest man for the fourth year in a row. This novel coronavirus is a bonanza. A year ago, his net worth was $64 billion. Now it’s $177 billion. If he so was inclined, he could probably buy Toronto. And then he’d sell us for parts to China or Saudi Arabia. In the time it has taken me to write this dispatch, he’s earned more in interest than I will make even if I have another 500 years before grieving loved ones click on Amazon Goodbye.

Amazon Salon is a one-off? Give me a break. It’s a test pilot for how Bezos plans to storm bricks-and-mortar while also dominating the community service sector. Amazon Lawn Care. Amazon Car Wash. Amazon Library. Amazon Massage. Amazon Cosmetic Dentistry… It’s all coming, and you’ll only realize it years from now when a barber drone at an Amazon Salon is hovering over your head with whirling blades and telepathic sensors send a push alert to your frontal cortex that you’re running low on dishwasher pods.

By the way, I don’t have a problem with any of this. I don’t. I surrender. People love to hate on Bezos and Amazon. But he has achieved the impossible: a company positioned to be all things to all people. In terms of customer service, Amazon is the greatest retailer in human history. It’s not even close. And that’s why it will never stop invading our lives, especially when this stupid pandemic is mercifully over and we emerge like skittish butterflies from a cocoon.

I guarantee you, there are now secret R&D teams with cryptic code names at Amazon that are figuring out a way to storm health care next. Eventually, Prime Members will get free, one-day shipping on hip replacements. Instead of waiting nine months for an MRI, you’ll make your morning coffee and ask Alexa to schedule you in for a 1 p.m. scan at Amazon Diagnostics. And when you’re in the tube, you’ll get to watch programming from Amazon Studios, including “Goliath” or “Tell Me Your Secrets.”

That’s a good way to think about Jeff Bezos as he gets into hairstyling this week.

He is the Goliath. But there is no David.

And the secret is he will devour all of us.

Vinay Menon is the Star’s pop culture columnist based in Toronto. Follow him on Twitter: @vinaymenon