2026-01-18 18:03:00
Celebrity gossip, fortune-telling and superstitions are the original forms of fake news, but now it’s increasingly widespread. In every field from science to world affairs, it’s troubling to see. People who are familiar with reality can’t understand why it’s popular–in a low-trust world, why would people engage with made-up noise disguised as information?
The irony is that it’s easier to trust fake news. It’s consistent, simplified, coherent and predictable, all the things that humans look for when we’re seeking solace.
The challenge for all of us is that while it’s easier to trust in the short run, it ultimately disappoints.
The trust we earn with complex and consistent analyses of reality takes more effort, but it’s worth more in the long run.
What sort of trust are you selling? And what are we buying?
2026-01-17 18:03:00
Until you look at the system.
Kevin Wilson wrote a great short story about the workers who have to sort the tiles that go into a Scrabble box. The hero is responsible for searching through the pile for the letter ‘q’. All day. On commission.
At this absurd level, it’s clear that the game isn’t made this way. They’d never produce all 26 letters, mix them up and then sort them. It pays to be thoughtful about the production process, so you simply make what you need in the first place.
But now, particularly with digital output, we’re doing it backwards. Making lots of stuff and then sorting it later. There’s very little cost to making more, and it’s getting more and more time-consuming to find what we’re looking for.
We’re replacing the magic of Google’s ability to sort through the miscellaneous with a new system based on simply making more, on demand.
Trust and attention remain the building blocks of brands and culture. We ignore this at our peril. There are no good shortcuts.
2026-01-16 18:03:00
Once a company hits a plateau in its market share, the pressure begins to mount.
Investors want more of a return, shareholders want the stock price to go up. Managers pay attention to the metrics they’re held to, and the squeeze begins.
At first, the squeeze focuses on efficiency. Cut obvious costs without diminishing customer delight or the conditions that the employees work under.
That doesn’t pay off forever, particularly in competitive markets.
At this point, there are two options:
The first is to reengage with the market. Innovate. Create opportunities for customers to find more opportunities and value. Use the resources you have to make something better.
The other, which is far more common, is to squeeze people–imagining that they might not notice, and then, with full knowledge that they do, but betting that they don’t have much of a choice.
Diminish the quality of life for employees. Demand more, offer less. Increase stress and forget what the original focus of the organization might have been.
Raise prices but lower quality and portion size and service at the same time.
Fedex decided that answering the phone on the first ring, happily honoring their guarantee and bringing extraordinary service to customers wasn’t as important as increasing their bottom line. Phone trees, unattended email boxes and plenty of fine print all exist to squeeze a few more dollars out of their existing sales.
JP Morgan Chase actively chooses to maximize short-term profit, betting that customers are too entrenched to switch. They’ll invest in coal, amplify credit card debt and outsource whatever they can to increase their margins.
If you use either of these companies, or any of their peers, can you honestly say that they care more and deliver more value than they used to?
Cory Doctorow describes the monopolistic dead ends built into most corporate financing schemes. Enshittification isn’t the decay that comes from neglect. It’s the active squeeze, trading the path of better for the short-term goal of making a few more pennies.
When an organization races to the top, they’re very clear about what they’re doing. They’ll engage their team and the market in a mutual dance toward possibility and improvement.
But when an organization is focused on the squeeze, they know precisely what they’re doing, but will obfuscate and deny instead of admitting it.
That should tell you something.
2026-01-15 18:03:00
Pop culture is spiralling.
I had no idea what “mad magazine autostereogram, cutecore” meant, but it was enough for Midjourney to create this:
Older generations have always been left out of the codewords and trends of the makers of pop culture, but the gatekeepers and lack of shelf space kept pop, popular. There are only 40 songs in the Top 40, only a few hit network TV shows.
Three things have changed:
The end result is that pop is not popular anymore. It may never be again. The center was a moment in time, but the edges are now everywhere.
We should plan accordingly.
2026-01-14 18:03:00
Nothing important is for everyone.
When we encounter a thoughtful critic, we need to quickly understand who is speaking to us.
If the work we made was intended for someone just like this, and they don’t like it, we need to do a better job next time. The criticism will help us understand how to improve.
But if the work we made wasn’t for someone with the hopes, needs and expectations of the person we’re hearing from, we can forgive ourselves (and them) by acknowledging who it’s for and why.
2026-01-13 18:03:00
This is the first rule of safe driving. Don’t hurtle your car into a jam where you have no options.
But the first rule of management and human interaction is to leave other people an out.
When you give people a chance to take action that helps them get to where they’re going, they’ll often seek to go there.
