In the elder days of Art
Builders wrought with greatest care
Each minute and unseen part,
For the Gods see everywhere. –Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
In his pithy and spot-on book, On Bullshit, Harry G. Frankfurt writes about the above lines of poetry, “The point of these lines is clear. In the old days, craftsmen did not cut corners… These craftsmen did not relax their thoughtful self-discipline even with respect to work that ordinarily would not be visible… There was no bullshit.”
People working for brands sometimes say with a straight face that they’re craftsmen. I’ve been that guy, but most of us are not craftsmen, not by Longfellow’s standards. We’re more often artful bullshitters than craftsmen, but I digress.
Professor Frankfurt has more to offer us on the subject. He wonders if bullshit has to be the outcome of sloppy thinking or if it can be carefully constructed.
The realms of advertising and public relations, and the nowadays closely related realms of politics, are replete with instances of bullshit so unmitigated that they can serve among the most indisputable and classic paradigms of the concept. And in these realms there are exquisitely sophisticated craftsmen who—with the help of advanced and demanding techniques of market research, of public opinion polling, of psychological testing, and so forth—dedicate themselves tirelessly to getting every word and image they produce exactly right. (page 23)
So bullshit can be carefully constructed.
Like, “Trump Will Fix It.” That’s not sloppy, but it’s utter bullshit.
Challenge “The Dominant Fakeness”
Bullshit is dominant in today’s media, politics, and sadly the business realm is not free of bullshit. For one, there’s way too much digital flotsam from brands that we could all do without. There are too many robocalls. Too many dumb ads. Too much tracking. Too much spam. Too much waste.
Writing in Fast Company,
Generative AI, though superficially impressive, is actively undermining the trust that people once felt towards tech platforms… And so marketers need to change how they reach target audiences. The only option is a return to simplicity, while also empathizing authenticity.
Did you want a “trigger warning” on that word? We don’t provide those here.
Ted Gioia, a prolific and popular writer on Substack, says:
I know people who get angry just from hearing the word authenticity. They insist it doesn’t exist. It never existed. It can’t possibly exist.
This is the flip side of our culture of artificiality. Anything that threatens the dominant fakeness with reality stirs up an intense backlash. The dreamer does not want to awaken from the dream.
THE DOMINANT FAKENESS is a great band name. It’s also something to “threaten with reality.”
The reality is people are bombarded by messages of all sorts, all day, every day. We all know this to be true, but we don’t all know what to do about it.
When a brand contributes to the noise there’s just more noise. Perhaps the smart thing for some brands to do is to quiet the noise they make and find other more grounded ways to connect and serve.
