Values: Masturbatory Marketing

 Greed is not a financial issue. It's a heart issue.

— Andy Stanley

Spotify's unconscionable decision to keep Joe Rogan and drop Neil Young proves what I've long thought about tech corporations' self-professed "values."

They're pure, unadulterated snake oil.

Spotify's video on values includes a Latino marketing manager claiming "we do not approve any sort of campaign that we don't believe in."

How's that for masturbatory marketing?

Obviously, her statement is bullshit—or, worse, Spotify believes in Joe Rogan's relentless antivaxxer messaging.

Let's stop the "values" marketing malarkey and get back to basics. It may play to Millennials, but it's bullshit.

The hard truth is: Spotify believes in one thing and one thing only.

Profit.

Pure and simple.

HAT TIP: Neil Young deserves everyone's thanks for spotlighting Spotify's horrendous hypocrisy. Thank you, Mr. Young.

POSTSCRIPT, JANUARY 29: Since Neil Young's ultimatum to Spotify, his greatest hits album has rocketed into the Top 5 on Apple Music, and Spotify has lost $4 billion in market value."

POSTSCRIPT, FEBRUARY 3: Neil Young has been joined in his boycott of Spotify by Crosby, Stills and Nash.

POSTSCRIPT, FEBRUARY 7: Spotify's CEO confirmed the company won't "silence Joe," even though he spouts the N-word as well as disinformation.

Cracked

The older I get, the more I realize how fallible I am.

— Roxane Gay

What failing do flat-earthers, antivaxxers and "big lie" believers share in common?

They all lack what psychologists call intellectual humility, the ability to admit you're fallible.

Just this week, I have heard a flat-earther insist Earth couldn't be round, else we'd see it curve when we climbed a hill; an antivaxxer insist Covid-19 can't be defeated, because it's invisible; and a "big lie" believer insist big data indisputably prove Trump won.

Duh.

While it's tempting to dismiss these kooks as childish, uniformed, or just stupid, psychologists would have us look deeper.

People who lack intellectual humility, psychologists have discovered through seven decades of research, usually also have a screw or two loose.

People who lack intellectual humility may also lack the abilities to evaluate evidence, enjoy learning, tolerate ambiguity, brook disagreement, appreciate expertise, or recognize the boundaries between reality and their egos.

In other words, they're cracked.

People with intellectual humility—the majority of us—realize they're fallible, according to the research. 

They spend more time contemplating their beliefs, questioning their assumptions, and seeking out proof than those who lack intellectual humility.

People with intellectual humility in general are curious, inquisitive, tolerant, empathetic, forgiving, and cerebral.

People who lack intellectual humility, on the other hand, are self-absorbed, judgmental, dogmatic, over-confident, arrogant, combative, and carnal.

They're also—as we well know—less able to distinguish truth from hoax.

Fortunately, although lack of intellectual humility is partly inherited, psychologists say there's hope for sufferers through cognitive behavioral therapy, which seeks to undo the bad influence of parents and teachers.

But can the rest of us wait for that?

And what about the influence of world events on those who lack intellectual humility?

Sadly, psychologists have discovered that lack of intellectual humility worsens in the face of economic downturns, pandemics, wars, terrorist threats, and mass migrations.

Fasten your seatbelts, ladies and gentlemen.

More and more crackpots are heading your way!

Start with You

When you are deciding what to leave out, begin with the author.

— John McPhee

Far too many writers inject themselves into otherwise interesting pieces.

If you're one of the culprits, please, get over yourself. 

We don't care that you struggled to start your piece; thought about it for days on end; wrote about the same topic in the past; wrote on a tablet; wrote with your cat in your lap; wrote while suffering anguish about the state of the world; wrote late into the night; absolutely adore your subject; absolutely loathe your subject; are uncertain you've done your subject justice; or are delighted with your final product.

We. Don't. Care.

We care about the world outside your ego. 

Readers, if nothing else, are avid. 

They're searching for news, opinions, and new ideas.

Your ego provides none of that.

The masterful writer John McPhee put it succinctly:

"Let the reader have the experience. Leave judgment in the eye of the beholder. When you are deciding what to leave out, begin with the author. If you see yourself prancing around between subject and reader, get lost. Give elbow room to the creative reader."

To the extent that your piece is "all about you"—your process, insecurities, devotion, or judgements—your editorial job is crystal clear.

Cut the crap.

NOTE: Here's an example of "it's all about me" writing.

The Lonely Sailor

Privilege implies exclusion from privilege.

— Robert Anton Wilson

Call me a libtard: I don't care much for unbridled privilege.

My closest encounter with it came in the National Gallery of Art on on a March evening in 1998, when I spotted a frantic Bill Gates.

It was Sunday, around 7 pm, and the building was officially closed to the art-viewing public. All the galleries were dark and cordoned off.

I was standing with a friend in the hallway in a long line for an after-hours chamber recital when Gates and his wife walked up alongside us.

They paused at the door of one of the galleries and Gates said, "That's it," pointing at a huge Winslow Homer seascape inside the darkened room. Without thought, he unhitched the velvet rope that blocked the door and shooed his wife in.

A young Black security guard appeared suddenly and said, "Sir, sir, the gallery's closed." "We just want to look at the painting," Gates snapped and stepped into the gallery. The guard repeated his warning to no avail, shrugged his shoulders, and wandered off for reinforcements. Gates and his wife spent five minutes inside the room examining the Homer, then left. The reinforcements never arrived.

The following morning, Gates' DC visit made the headlines of The Washington Post. He was in town to testify on Capitol Hill about Microsoft's monopoly over Internet access.

Two months later, Gates made the headlines again, this time for buying a Winslow Homer seascape for $36 million—in 1998, the greatest price ever paid for an American artist's painting.

Lost on the Grand Banks, the last major Homer seascape in private hands, was believed at the time to be destined for the National Gallery's permanent collection. But Gates got his hands on it first. (He still owns it today.)

I realized why he'd been so keen to examine Homer's seascape in the National Gallery that Sunday evening in March. 

He was planning to buy one of his own.

The thing that galled me (and still does) wasn't Gates' ability to buy a $36 million Winslow Homer, but the notion that he was entitled to let himself into an art gallery—the National Art Gallery—after hours, as if it were his living room.

But, to his mind, it is. After all, he's a man of privilege.

Privilege entered English in the 12th century, derived from the Latin privilegium.

According to the Laws of the Twelve Tables—the source of Ancient Roman law—a privilegium was a right conferred by the emperor on one man, a "law for an individual."

The Romans called the privilegium precisely for what it was: favoritism.

To have privilege today is to be favored, entitled, endowed, advantaged, exempt, immune, or just plain special.

You know, like Bill Gates.

Gates grew up in a privileged household, so his sense of entitlement was strong to begin with. But his runaway success in business no doubt supersized it.

Business success often goes to people's heads, you've probably noticed. Successful business leaders frequently feel they're superior—distinguished from others in their ability and willingness to do endless battle against chill winds and harsh seas. They, the lonely sailors, have singlehandedly brought the boats home. Everyone else is just ballast.

And so we like to say, "It's lonely at the top." One art critic, in fact, has suggested that Bill Gates had to acquire Lost on the Grand Banks because he feels so alone.

"In his bunkered isolation from the rest of us," the critic writes, "the image of the solo sailor is paramount."  

Above: Lost on the Grand Banks by Winslow Homer. 1885. Oil on canvas. 32 x 50 inches. Collection of Bill Gates.

Screwed. Again.

A team of eminent bean counters at the National Bureau of Economic Research has concluded 2020's $800 billion Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) was "highly regressive" and that Trump screwed middle- and working-class Americans.

A whopping 75% of the PPP funds went to the top 20% of US households. Most received cash they didn't need.

Only 25% of the funds went into the pockets of Americans who would have lost their jobs otherwise.

The PPP bailout exceeded by $100 billion that which followed the Great Recession, when Lehman Brothers, AIG, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac imploded.

Economists have since determined that the 2009 bailout—known as the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP)—while failing to correct the causes underlying the financial system's collapse, made Wall Street executives richer than ever.

Ironically, the public's bitter memories of TARP's injustice propelled Trump into the White House in 2016.

Four years later, Trump sent billions of PPP dollars to people like Joe Farrrell, a billionaire developer and Trump fundraiser; Kanye West, wealthy rapper and Trump toady; Jeff Koons, a pop artist who holds the world record for the most expensive work ever sold by a living artist ($91.1 million); Tal Tsfany, CEO of the right-wing Ayn Rand Institute; Elaine Chao, Trump's billionaire Secretary of Transportation; and his vile and venal family members, Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump.

And the little people?

We were screwed. Again.