I, BOB

There was a gold rush going on. Bob had been there, shoulder to shoulder with the other 49ers at the sandbar, crunching code, panning for stock options. Having them in your account was like Pop Rocks in Coke. VCs and investment banks hyped them like Gap Khakis to an insatiable market of Moms and Pops, playing the market like Reno without leaving the comfort of their own homes. For the first time. Everything was for the first time, everything was being reinvented, reimagineered. Bob was perfect. Bob was 20. 25 is a fucking dinosaur, Bob’s boss said. That 25 is Rip Van fucking Winkle. Good morning, it’s the 21st century; get some coffee, get online, get a clue. Bob didn’t waste his time in college. Bob was Sketchers, Diesel, Pirate Surf, Moby, Aphex Twin -- bowling shoes with skateboard soles, surfer chic and a single-shoulder courier bag stuffed with wireless I-Book and the latest copies of Wired and Fast Company, The Economist and Seventeen. His apartment looked like the newsstand at the Oklahoma City Federal Building . Bob was the future. Bob transcended lifestyle branding. Bob surfed the media wave. He was a medium, a channel of the new retail-information economy. He sucked in every bit and datum, every image and icon in sight; he had not so much a personality as an event horizon. Plus he didn’t live with his parents. He was old for 20. Management pulled him out of the code-crunching pit after two weeks and made him VP/Marketing. Bold move. Bold times.