Oh, you made it to the front page of Slideshare, homie? You flexin on these industry hoes with your impressive Keynotes and timely clickbaiting? 

Tell me more about your Skillshare courses. Of course, both the ones you teach and sit for. Hows ‘Living Rent Free in NYC’ workin out for you in that Williamsburg loft wit the antique typewriter and fixie bike decor? How about the course you taught on Digital Strategy In A Time Of Disruption? Very rare insights, bro.

Maker culture, ay…. No, I hadn’t heard about the time you wired your fridge to your stereo so that Black Keys starts to play every time you eat an artisanal pickle. Sounds pretty great!

Oh, you’re into all-green-vegetable juice?! SAME! How crazy is it how commercial farms are totally prohibiting the health of Americans through the suppression of access to valuable and diverse sources of nutrition with complex corn-based constructs swamping our snack options. Did you hear about the new Farm-To-Table joint in East Village? I knoooow, Manhattan is so UGH but the brussel sprouts are crucial.  Anyway, enough chat, better get back to work on that Content Strategy for Oreo!

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZŽŹŻZZZZZZ SORRY JUST FELL ASLEEP ON MY KEYBOARD.

Seriously, I feel you, but let’s collectively agree to put an end to this clusterfuck of alleged success signifiers and embrace the shitty normal things we do that makes us actually interesting people rather than frolicking to General Assembly courses and engaging our communities in social media with stimulating conversation starters and influencer identification (-_-). 

How bout you just do u, boo? Tell me what shitty band you listen to on spotify when you have your headphones on. How about we get inspired by our old highschool friends and their needs and wants rather than making them the butt of our jokes, because to be honest we’re pretty fuckin laughable ourselves. Read a book. Not a Daniel Pink one, just some regular-ass Oprah Book Club trash. Take off your headphones and have a conversation with the guy who sells you coconut water at your Bodega every time you have a whiskey-induced hangover. Admit that you really don’t give a fuck how many fuel points you earned today! Stop lurking entrepreneurs on Quora and go for a walk or something. 

This may seem a little harsh, so let me temper it with some kinda passed-on-via-the-reblogs wisdom; I remember reading something recently about the thing that your mind travels to while you’re procrastinating or tuned out, being the thing you’re really into. For 9/10 of us, I’m going to hazard a guess that it’s not the syllabus of a Skillshare class or the best way to measure banner effectiveness. Get human, bruh! Don’t let Recruiters and Agencies convince you to look like a massive douche by evaluating your self-worth on Slideshare views and Digiday article recall or mentions. Put the PSFK down and just shoot the shit with and about People instead. Do u, boo.

— GG

(Shouts to the ingenious Meaghan Garvey a.k.a @Moneyworth for the title inspiration)

 |   March 26 2013  

discovering a community of teens on instagram dedicated to taking selfies while dipping is mad rewarding, like acing your driver’s test with a case of natty concealed in your mom’s grand caravan.

this could make for an excellent cobranded social media optimization strategy, obviously.

on some taxonomic discoure analysis, there’s a few notable poses.

full-frontal lips / the primary pose. ain’t nothing wrong with putting your cam in reverse and showing the internet how much saturated mulch you can fit in your adolescent jaw.

fetching / in rep your brand and keep it gully by putting the whole tin in your mouth.

the oopty oop / an advanced step in dipping on insta. crush the competition by having your significant other put it in your lip for you.

here’s the top five dipping teenager accounts worth following. 

1. dippin daisy 
2. dippin’ dixie
3. addy lips
4. the daily dip 
5. tin tebow 15 

// - CM

 |   February 26 2013  

fuck your complaints about what’s ‘niche’, ‘hipster’, a perceived untranslatable  bit-too-coolness not relevant to your ‘consumers’ in middle america. stop patronizing my passions then complaining that the ideas you get aren’t edgy enough. stop swooning over your competitors doing something meaningful with a subculture you barely comprehend and then rejecting attempts to take your brand down a similarly brave road. why are you paying us again?

the internet democratizes ‘niche’. even in the middle american towns you interpret as slow-moving cultural black holes, there’s a bunch of awkward chicks freaking out over how real the experiences lena dunham goes through in ‘girls’ - fumbling her way through white-kid aspirational williamsburg - are to their own lives. there’s a bunch of dudes sharing their bullshit and wisdom and life on reddit. there’s social archetypes in every town with the same thirst for new, an unrelenting need to self-express and self-define with habits, clothes, and music that the nervous kids follow a year later. 

 if rihanna is going to do a seapunk video, if american apparel is going to sell ‘hipster’ clothing in an aggressively mainstream way at mass market volumes across the entire country (with a stack of Vice magazines on the counter at each and every one), if justin bieber is going to make references to unsigned chicago drill rap in his tweets, i’m not sure what you think follows - but it’s almost certainly a constant and rapid-moving normalization of everything you think is niche. don’t be nervous.

//- GG

 |   February 26 2013  

effective people glow. they have conviction and opinion and a directness that forces their environment to bend for them. they also have one major commonality: language.

language is an important tool for moving minds. it’s the flint that sparks imagination and the clarity that corrales groups to get on the same page. but when used poorly language can be a means of confusion. and while being unclear doesn’t always equate to lacking smarts, it is evident of lacking hustle. 

someone to admire in the realm of language (amongst many) is mr. rogers. yes, the deceased bro in the cardigan and velcro etonics. dude single handedly saved PBS’ funding while enlightening the minds of a generation, sans acid.

mr. rogers was a sincere and sensible speaker. he used words that balanced eloquence and clarity. he was able to transform complex thoughts without taking away from the imagination.

his way with words was natural, thoughtful and deliberate. never heard dude say “drive engagement by being an authority on fun”.

if more people told stories and explained ideas the way mr. rogers spoke to children we’d all be better for it.

// - CM

 |   February 26 2013