Planting seeds of discontent
You cannot critique something well unless you love it. Once something is in your veins, like marketing and finance and education and the internet are in mine, passion for the possible feeds a holy discontent. One worth fighting for.
FWD EDITION 97
I've come to a conclusion after a deluge of recent evidence: Critique is reserved for true believers. To challenge something truthfully, you have to love it. CultureCraft and our work (and my sometimes sharp-toothed writing) is a love letter to the industries I love.
The Internet: I critique tech, and particularly Internet companies because I LOVE the Internet. I can still feel the anticipation of a dial-up modem and the ding of "You've got mail," in my bones. I've been a blogger, a podcaster, a social media denizen, and a webmaster. From when I was a very lonely 10-year-old kid this crazy thing called the Internet opened up an entire world to me outside of my suffocating small town and its staff of bullies and gossips. The Internet has been my primary tool for finding my people and building relationships that have transformed my professional life. But in 2024 it mostly sucks, a manufactured armored plate of data-thieving platforms cosplaying as the consumer-obsessed.
Wealth Managers: I've spent my career pushing investment professionals to do better than their self-aggrandizing platitudes. As the gatekeepers between the obscene wealth of Wall Street and the real lives of Americans left to weave their own financial safety nets, wealth advisors hold a public trust that almost no one else has, and often the industry doesn't deserve. I'm passionate about the power to transfer the economic opportunity trapped in capitalism to as many people as possible, and outside of entrepreneurship, nothing is more impactful to that flow of opportunity than wealth management. It's a fire that pushes me to challenge the circled wagons, cliquing self-protectionism, and anachronistic business practices of so many in the space.
Marketers: I challenge marketers to step off from their Stockholm Syndrome-induced bullshit and take ownership of their work. Stop whining that in 2015 martech and the internet overlords nearly turned your jobs into bean-counting plate lickers of Google and Facebook. Sure it was scary there for a bit. And sometimes it's scary now. But no one is coming to save you.
Marketing is the last, best gateway for inspiration, creativity, humanity, and wonder to backdoor into businesses. When done well it awakens every leader and department to a future they cannot see. So forgive me if I'm unsympathetic that no one appreciates you or that LinkedIn changed the algorithm. You are masters of transfiguration who turn dry orgs into opportunity engines of imagination. Wake up.
Higher Education: I'm an unapologetic believer in college. The data is incontrovertible, and despite what your favorite internet troll or venture capitalist says, going to college consistently changes lives. The college debt crisis is real. We don't solve it by saying that college is a waste of money. It's not. But most colleges are stuck in a doom loop of self-pity powered by leaders who are trying to litigate 2003 problems in a 2024 media environment. The industry is overrun by turf protectors who are so afraid to risk tell a compelling story about their cultural impact that they end up dancing around the edges of issues that desperately need the considered thinking of the academy.
You cannot critique something well unless you love it. Once something is in your veins, like marketing and finance and education and the internet are in mine, passion for the possible feeds a holy discontent. One worth fighting for.
What ties all of these disparate spaces together is they all need a better story. The need to face the world with a clearer voice. And they need better mirrors to clear all that self-immolating mud off their face. If they could learn a better story then they could address the decades of well-deserved cynicism that has built up against their work, and earn that greatest of all addictions: Trust.
As a matter of Trust, I promise you with each FWD five damns to give. So on the theme of critiquing what you love, here are this week's five:
YES to Kara Swisher.
Speaking of loving the Internet and hating what it's become, no one stands on this holy ground better than Kara Swisher. Her recently released memoir is not a revelation (all of it has been said before) but her passionate voice is a tour-de-force of unapologetic critical passion for an industry that will either make us or break us in the next twenty years.
NO to bad analysis from people who should know better.
Fidelity's annual "Advisor Survey" is always choc-full of insights. But if the Internet has taught us anything, the existence of data says nothing about the quality of its interpretation. As my college statistics professor said, "100% of violent criminals have eaten bread in their lifetimes, therefore bread is a dangerous substance."
I do an end-to-end takedown of Fidelity's bad analysis of their own report here, further cementing why reasonable parties accuse the big custodians of endless self-dealing and monopoly manufacturing.
MAYBE slow your AI rollout.
New industries always get higher ranks from early adopters than the masses, but outright resistance from a global majority is a real problem. AI companies have botched the rollout so hard, tying their outcomes to ecological waste, destroying intellectual property, and unemploying half the workforce. So it's no surprise that a recent study shows the general population is turning against AI. Maybe the vox populi can be trusted? Remember when Google's motto was "don't be evil?" Funny how we haven't heard about that in a while.
SERIOUSLY, only critique what you love.
Jimmy Kimmel's slow decline as an Oscar host hit rock bottom last night as he struggled through an unresponsive audience, visibility irritated Robert Downey Jr., and an endless "hey is this thing on?" style routine. The recurring gag was how long and boring the Oscars are which is a weird take when you're the one who is supposed to make them fun and fast-moving.
If you hate movies and the Oscars, then maybe stop taking their checks to host the gig.
Michael Boyle
NOW, go with Martha Graham.
I returned last week to a quote that has been oxygen to me so many times in my past. And it came back to me with a freshness I didn't think possible. It's the logical exclamation point to this week's Forward, a reminder that the creative impulse, the drive to make, to dream, to do, and to believe is the seed of discontent. And that is a good thing.
"You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.”
― Martha Graham
