Hyperbole is a crutch

Posted on November 12, 2014

So do we over use hyperbole? Yes… well sort of… and also maybe not.

I think the over use of hyperbole is very much in the realm of pop culture. An since pop culture is kind of every where these days it can feel like an all encompassing use of bombastic words.

Yet when people talk about books I hear less talk of inabilities to even and more nuanced treatises of not only what is good or bad but what things mean. This isn’t just people in my peer group but also what I see across the booktube fandom on youtube.

So why do people seemingly have such a strong ability to talk about books while when topics of pop culture come up, like say Breaking Bad, can we only extol how it is the BEST EVER or AMAZING?

I think the difference simply comes from how current society is behind the time in critique of pop culture. Many people grow up in schools where a staple of English class is reading books and finding deeper meaning. Even after people graduate from school book clubs around America and the world meet to not just drool over books with overly positive (or negative) reactions but to point to the parts that succeed and fail in their eyes.

Pop culture does not have a class at school that deconstructs it. And approaching most culture in this serious way is seen as a bit silly. Because we don’t have a muscle for talking about culture in that way I think we resort to words with less intellectual umph.

As TV Critics and other pop culture critics gain more prominence and we become more accustom to taking a more serious look at pop culture I think our general ability to talk about will increase. Because while tumblr is the home of people who can’t even it’s also the home of some smart deconstruction of pop culture.

Deeper conversations are coming and I think it will create a feed back loop that will only make pop culture even better.

On a side note I think gaming has the same problem of no real natural wide spread ability to talk intelligently about games. As criticism gets better and more a part of the every day thinking for games it will only make games better just as it has already started to makes other parts of pop culture better.

The Machine Stops

Posted on August 6, 2014

I read The Machine Stops in college and it took a while for me to really get it. It really nails the internet but the trick is it was written in 1909. Also since it’s from 1909 it’s out of copyright but there is no good version of it online so this is my new version of it.

Ligaya Tichy on How Startups Grow

Posted on January 21, 2014

This is pretty spot on to my experiences. I do think there are ways to counteract this risk aversion to some degree. And I think Shutterstock has done a pretty good job of it.

Julie Horvath What were a few of the biggest changes you saw with these companies as they grew? Ligaya Tichy So, in the early stages, I started at yelp it was 10 people and Airbnb was 12ish, and the passion index is high when companies are young because they can’t pay anybody market salaries. So the people who want to work there are people there love these products. And so there is this incredible excited and this sort of energy in these offices. And as the company scales and there is more pressure to prove the product and grow. Then you need operations people. And a sort of hierarchy emerges, and operations emerges are really good at executing and incredibly smart, but they don’t… At this point you you are past series seed and at your series b or something like that. And you can afford salaries. And they are not doing because they love your company so much, they are doing it because it’s a great career opportunity or they like your product and they see some long term potential. And then the company keeps scaling and and you just need work horses. you need people to do jobs. And so you fill those role. and you are growing growing very quickly. And so you just hire people who are good at filling one particular function. They may not necessarily be the sort of crazy creative people at the beginning that like wearing multiple hats. And what happens is that your role changes. before it was really creative and kind of chaotic and some people really like that. And as the company gets larger. Your role gets more and more structured and it gets narrower. And some people like that because they like to focus and other people go like, “Hey wait this isn’t what I signed up for!”. And there is this attrition. There are just new classes of people come in and some people drop out. And as an early person it sucks when the people you love so much leave because they are what galvanized you every day to be there. Because you were building something together. But this is the natural course of things. and you know I think me personally I figured out I am am an early stage person. when the company gets big it’s great but I don’t know what to do in those kinds of environments. I don’t want to be a middle manager. i like the chaos. I like building foundations. i like the unknowns and i like to experiment. And you don’t get to do that. The companies get much less risk averse.