So there is this one dude whose writing I like. A copywriter,
To protect all those involved, I will not mention names.
Let’s just call him Chris, if need be.
I discovered him through a podcast about branding, marketing, and design.
What set his writing apart was the artistry involved in his approach. His devotion to the old masters.
Hemingway. F. Scott Fitzgerald. The whole nine yards.
What’s not to like? Easy day. Have my email for your list, my man.
A different way of doing things.
The stuff he wrote went against all the conventions of copy and by all accounts, he seems to do alright for himself, so it must be working for him.
One could say Chris was even willfully antagonistic to the principles of sound copywriting sometimes.
He has written a book on the subject, and I may need to buy it to know exactly what he does.
But I digress…
A subtle shift
For the last several months, I began to notice a change.
If I had to describe the new focus of his writing, I would say “unilaterally deputized against low-effort Linkedin hacks.” Which, I mean…I get it.
But also, I would not have advised going down that path in a million years…
Descending into the void of petty
I’m a creature of habit, I confess.
On an intellectual level, I know I am supposed to push myself out of my comfort zone.
But the older I get, the bigger that pain in the ass proposition becomes.
Anyways, back to Chris.
After his emails took this direction for a while, I started to get annoyed. Not enough to unsubscribe. But a bit.
See.
The subject of “the Linkedin charlatan” and “the completely-unqualified side-hustle” bro was, well, most of what I saw from him in my feeds and inbox.
And after a while, I started to feel frustrated when I would open his emails.
The curse of anonymous advice: nobody cares.
There isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell I would be able to share my opinion and have it not be taken the wrong way.
This can be explained by 3 principles of advice that were recently published on Seth Godin’s blog.
1. The advice might not be good, or it doesn’t appear to be valid. It’s hard to tell good advice from the not-so-good, so it may pay to simply ignore it.
2. The advice might be good for “someone,” but it’s easy to imagine that it doesn’t apply to us. After all, the advice giver hardly knows us, we’re a special case and this is a special situation. Not to mention that good advice is often conservative and intended to maintain the status quo, which isn’t apparently helpful for someone who wants to make a ruckus.
3. The person who needs advice might not actually want advice. They might simply want reassurance. Reassurance that their instincts are right, that they and they alone are the ones that can make a difference. Of course, reassurance is futile (because it needs constant replenishment) but that doesn’t keep this from being the biggest of the three categories.
Plus I am an unknown quantity to Chris. A mere reader of his work.
Still…
What I would have loved to have shared is that it’s a complete waste of time because you can never change the universal force that is Pareto’s Principle.
To put it simply:
80% of everyone and everything everywhere will always suck, now and forever more.
To pay even 5 minutes of mental energy to their folly is a detriment to yourself, at no cost to the root problem.
And if you do want to effect the sort of change that leads to a better environment for creatives, creators, businesses, and people writ large…
The best you can do is improve your own immediate world and work to virally propagate the good by trying to inspire those around you to work for the common good as well.
Back to reality…
When I open my email today, I saw a curiously-titled email.
“I’m hanging up the gloves.”
Next, my eyes drifted to the send.
It was Chris.
My first thought:
Oh shit, the trolls got to him and now he is quitting the internet altogether.
Then I clicked…
I was greeted with “I WILL NOT BE MEAN TO STRANGERS ONLINE.”
Several times over.
It turns out…
Chris realized something I learned halfway through the pandemic (I think? Time’s fucky during that whole time period.)
The entire enterprise of being extremely online and constantly out for the blood of evildoers isn’t good for anyone.
And I am maybe putting it a lot more strongly than he did, which is my own bias peeking through based on some of my own experiences with this sort of thing.
Because like I said in the beginning…
I fucking get it…
There are a LOT of bad actors across the internet.
But much like constantly picking low-intensity skirmishes with guerilla fighters, farmers, and insurgents will DEFINITELY work for American military strategy THIS TIME GUYS, unlike EVERY OTHER TIME…
When addressing the deluge of utter shit on your platform, and the internet writ large…
You gotta find a way to do it without letting it destroy who were, to begin with.
Anyways…that’s all got for you today.
Always be kind.
Memento mori.
Con amor.
Papi.