Piñatas and Two-Steppin’: Companies Dodge Responsibility, Festively

When you do something wrong, what's your move? To accept responsibility, or to create a dirty little simulacrum who takes the blame while you cavort?

If you're an American company, you might go with the Mini-Me approach.

Today, we're telling two tales of bankruptcy. In the first, Cyber Ninjas is shutting down. They couldn't assassinate the will of the voters in Arizona, so they are attempting to vanish into the night, having at least pushed The Big Lie of voter fraud a little further toward this year's midterm elections. 

(Not great that faith in honest elections is running pretty low right now.)

The judge called Cyber Ninjas a "piñata," which got Brandon & Stephen thinking about Johnson & Johnson's own festive atmosphere of dodging responsibility. J&J, responsible for tens of thousands of cases of cancer related to its talc products, is attempting a legal maneuver called a Texas Two-Step: split the company into two entities, and push all the legal blame on that new company. Then, declare bankruptcy and you're home free.

From here, it's a riff on companies as a kind of emergent intelligence dedicated not to human ethics, but to survival at all costs. It's a Paperclip Apocalypse, y'all, which is much less festive.

Grab your hittin' stick and lace up your cowboy boots for this fiesta of malfeasance.