A View from The Mad Attic
I want to talk a little bit about “the new world of work.” For me, it looks like this:
This is where I work.
I consider myself deeply fortunate in that we have a house where I could carve out a place to work, wholly separate from the rest of the place. I’m also fortunate in that I work for a company that supports (and, like a lot of us during the talent crunch, probably even relies on) remote work.
But I’m also blessed in one, little-discussed, all-important way: This is absolutely, positively the only way to “bring your whole self to work” and not have that notion be a nauseating, HR-driven cliche. Difficult to imagine getting away with the above in pretty much any other scenario, though I do admit that I have often come close in a forgiveness-versus-permission fashion.
Companies are struggling to figure out how they can amortize their expensive leases across butts-in-chairs now that very few people want to come back to corporate-accounts-payable-Nina. Many will attempt to dragoon people into some completely unenforceable “three-days-in-two-days-out” nonsense, as if managers have the capacity to police which absences are due to business travel or “just” working from home. A lot of places are talking about hotel’ing, basically taking the lowest-level WeWork “hotdesk” membership and making it less fun. Many employees are going back to the office just to sit in Zoom calls all day.
As Harlan Ellison would say, this is just so much staring through the hole and never seeing the donut. It amazes me that the discussion of modern workplace norms had become so moribund that it took a global pandemic — with all of its tragedies — to give it a serious rethink. Managers who resisted the notion of working from home came out the other end of the worst of the shutdown and… things were fine. Employees were even more productive. Many of them happier. Sure, a few managers deeply misunderstood to whom those hours clawed back from a commute belonged, and still others thought themselves generous for instituting “Zoom-free Fridays,” but those are teething issues in the grand scheme of things. Work will never be the same. I welcome it.
Mad Attic Mailbag
Ask a question by emailing my [firstname][dot][lastname]+penny@gmail.com. Your anonymity will be preserved.
In our inaugural question, “OldTimer” writes in with:
Web3 is all the rage, but the people I see promoting it the most are people that were big in social but for self-promotion, not actually doing anything. That makes me think that while Web3 should be something that we care about, it's going to be ruined by the self promoters.
Not sure whom you could possibly be talking about.
Success and advancement in the marketing services industry works a lot like success and advancement in the U.S. Air Force, that is, it’s strongly correlated to one’s perceived alignment with the latest and greatest (weapon system) technology or trend. One person’s F-35 is another’s dunk-in-the-dark. So it goes.
The emergence of Web 2.0 — the “social media age” — brought with it a certain breed of insufferable “expert,” such as the type lampooned in this video.
This breed of influencer needs to latch on to The Next Big Thing in order to advance or maintain their position within their organization, to say nothing of cultivating a public profile. So here comes “Web3” and, with it, the rush by agencies to “get there firstest with the brownest nose” as the great William S. Burroughs would have it.
(Yeah, I know this probably sounds quite rich coming from someone with my career history. I know much has been made of the whole “PR’s first blogger” thing and the fact that I was the first “social media hire” at Edelman. Difference is that my work actually moved industries at the intersection of corporations and communities and I saw silly fads for what they were. I say this not to pat myself on the back, but to point out that wasn’t one of those mere conferencecritters that briefly took over our trade during the social media craze.)
Here’s what the new breed of “marketing influencers” are not telling you, OldTimer, about Web3.
First, the requirement of self-custody for your ID represents a huge shift in consumer behavior. Today’s user is more accustomed to punching the “Forgot Password” button when credentials are misplaced or forgotten, because those credentials are managed by Facebook, Twitter, and so on.
But this is a world of “not your keys, not your {coins,NFTs,whatever}. You’ve probably read the stories of people who have lost their private keys, costing them millions.
Or you have instances like this:
Suffice it to say, the world has a long way to go.
Now, within the Web3 world, we have “Non-Fungible Tokens” or NFTs, best thought of as “digital collectibles.” This, too, is widely misunderstood by a lot of marketers, which is why I frequently point people to this piece by Dan Kahan of The Defiant:
While the token portion of NFTs are fundamentally decentralized, the storage method for the metadata and media that an NFT hashes to is determined by the platform or artist who mints it. So depending on the chosen storage method, the media aspect of many NFTs may hinge entirely on companies maintaining centralized servers.
This is a problem for collectors who want to be sure that they still own their NFT even if the centralized company that minted it stops operating.
Short version? In many (but not all) cases, that NFT is a kind of deed to an asset available at a URL. If the host of that asset goes out of business — or changes the asset available at that URL into something unsavory — you could find out exactly how much you didn’t own that NFT.
Considering marketing agencies frequently sell pop-up “microsites” to clients, only to neglect them long after the campaign ends and the awards have been won, I don’t have a lot of confidence in their ability to think about NFTs over the long term.
As I say often, money was merely involved in the Web 2.0 explosion. With Web3, we’re too often talking about money itself. In that context, I wonder about the seriousness of these Web 2.0 influencers who are seeking to remake themselves. Time will tell.
Recommendations & Ridicule
Recommendations
PR: “Neurodiversity In PR: From Kryptonite To Superpower,” PRovoke Media: I’ve often commented that public relations (and agency life in particular) was one of those trades where ADHD could be a coping mechanism to be exercised almost as much as a condition to be managed. I once had a client who described his dyslexia as the key to his success, pointing out that one’s problem-solving skills get pretty sharp when absolutely everything must be approached as a puzzle. So much of this article also reflects what Fifth Column co-host Matt Welch refers to as “Weird Man’s Burden,” or the notion that someone deemed “weird” must work that much harder to achieve acceptance or success.
History: “American Hippopotamus,” The Atavist: This is a wild ride. Perfect Sunday-morning, curl-up-on-the-couch, longread material. Two mercenaries — sworn enemies, no less — from Africa’s second Boer War are thrown together back in the U.S. to help solve a postwar meat shortage (and a bayou invasion of water hyacinths) with… yup. It’s in the title. Enjoy.
History: “The Forgotten City Hall Riot,” New York Magazine: This happened during my freshman year of college — not that long ago, guys — and I knew nothing about it before this week. “This was the beginning of an outburst of violence that, for various reasons, has been all but scrubbed from New York’s historical memory. It not only involved Mayor Dinkins but was a formative experience for two future mayors and the city’s likely next mayor — who back then was a 32-year-old transit-police officer.”
Business: “The Theranos fiasco shows how much startup advisory boards matter,” TechCrunch: It must be said that I am absolutely obsessed with this case. I listened to the audiobook, subscribed to the podcast, and have read almost every article I can get my hands on. (Yes. Even this one.) But this brings up the question I keep asking: Were people so bowled over by Theranos’s all-star board that no one asked about the lack of medical experience among its members? Affinity fraud to the nth degree.
TV: The X-Files, “Pusher” (S3E17) / “Kitsunegari” (S5E8): Daughter wanted to watch “something scary.” I figure she wasn’t ready for the original Candyman or (my personal favorite) Hellraiser. So I went for these two X-Files episodes. (“Is this ‘90s stuff?”) While not the best episodes, I do think that the “Pusher” diptych is a good intro to the series. Also watched “Soft Light,” starring the excellent Tony Shalhoub. Streaming on Hulu.
Ridicule
TV: La Brea, NBC: I spent one year, seven months, three weeks, and two days in Los Angeles. I watched the first episode. I rooted for the sinkhole. It may get hate-watched from here on out.
Parting Shot
If Tom Morello and Ted Nugent can get along, what the hell is your excuse?