As America slowly tugs itself into pieces and divides itself based on how evil we assume people with opposing views to be, there’s one thing sorely missing: grace. Because we don’t have enough division and angst in this country, there are always people out there actively scouring social media and other digital records looking for anything various people may have written or posted that would warrant cancelling them from culture. And I’m not just talking about people who are still alive. We are looking through historical records and judging all people, past and present, against the cultural “norms” of…
Top seven stressors
My friend, who’s a mindfulness professional, was telling me that one of her resource books list the top seven sources of stress as (in no particular order): Getting married or divorced Chronic or serious illness Moving Changing or losing a job Going to prison Death of a loved one Significant financial obligations It struck me that one of these stands out from the others: prison. Unlike the others, going to prison equals a loss of freedom. Unlike the others, you don’t get much say in going to prison (after you made the decision to do whatever it is that…
The devil I know is content
There’s an old saying: “Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t.” It speaks to the advantages of working or dealing with a person you don’t like but know well versus someone who is unknown and unpredictable. I think it is this kind of thinking that is largely responsible for the state of the United States today. People are so risk-averse and so afraid of being challenged or uncomfortable that they’d rather just suck it up and deal with what’s happening to them rather than putting their energy toward finding something better. Sitting and suffering is the…
Mask protection conversion
Our local grocery store recently changed it’s mask policy. If you have been vaccinated, you don’t need to wear a mask. I am not vaccinated, nor will I be. So naturally, I was excited to get back to entering the grocery store with no mask on. The residents of the Pacific Northwest did not disappoint. I’ve been in that grocery store five times since they changed their policy. Each time, I was the only person in the store without a mask on. There’s no way to know this, but given the anecdotal evidence and sensibilities (such as they are)…
The racism of audience targeting
You can’t see a television show, streaming series, commercial, or nearly any cultural event without noticing how overtly everyone is trying to make up for their own racism. You can’t swing a dead cat without seeing an over-representation of black people in nearly everything you see in media. Movies. Television shows. Tik Tok clips. Award shows. Hallmark specials. Commercials. Advertising. No matter where you turn, you’d think America was 75% black people, based on current casting practices. Which is fine. If the content of the story or the successful sale is the point, who cares whether it’s a man,…
Short term thinking in a long term business
A friend of mine just traveled to Hawaii only to find that, along with all of the expected pains in the ass presented by COVID, he had no rental car waiting for him after reserving it two months earlier. Meanwhile, it is nearly impossible to rent a car at one airport if you’re hoping to drop it off and fly out of a different airport. It’s a fairly well-known and universal travel problem right now that car rental companies have no inventory. Why do they have no inventory? Because when COVID hit, they thought the best idea out there…
Sperm bank promotion
In a recent conversation about Mormon’s, the conversation naturally turned to sperm banks. We were talking about having many kids with many wives, and we thought a sperm bank may be easier than juggling all of the personalities. Being marketers, the direction of the conversation evolved to how to encourage more men to donate to the sperm bank. Obviously, hiring prostitutes would be a great draw to get men to stop by. But in nearly all areas of the country, hiring prostitutes, and calling them prostitutes, would be illegal (although that’s not entirely clear, since you wouldn’t be paying…
Things you shouldn’t do on social media
It’s no secret historians are going to identify social media as the key catalyst for the downfall of humanity (unless, of course, the historians are simply social media employees). One of the many reasons they’ll draw this conclusion is because social media has leveled the playing field between important friends and barely acquaintances. Similarly, our usage of social media has equated the death of a loved one with a poorly-photographed plate of food. People take to social media for to share thoughts or news ranging from waking up to a plate of eggs to the birth of a first…
From duty to privilege to punishment
When COVID-19 first hit, and everyone was trying to figure out what to do, some started advocating for wearing masks. The idea varied from protecting the wearer to protecting everyone else, but we were told it was our civic duty. We were taking one for the team. This evolved in a privilege. As people started trying to find studies and precedent for the effectiveness of mass mask-wearing as protection against viruses, they started learning that all of the mask touching and breathing in of our own discarded, toxin-filled, carbon dioxide wasn’t necessarily healthy, either. The marketing changed accordingly and…
Excuses vs reasons why
Last week, I was in a meeting in which one of the participants was particularly terse toward me. After the meeting, I learned from another participant that it was probably because I hadn’t responded to an email he had written earlier that week that ended with a plea to “respond today so I can sleep tonight.” The problem was that I had never seen the email. It turns out, it was written as a response to a meeting invite. My settings for meeting invites is that I get an email notification each time someone accepts or declines the meeting….