Upstream #195
gamification 🕹️, the harris-walz 💃🏾🕺, weird sheep 🐑, zombie tv 🧟, dire straits 🎸.
Well. How the hell are you? Been a while. There have been holidays, reading, swimming, running, leaping, heating, looking and Palio-ing. It’s all been lovely. Hope your Summer’s been ace. Back to school now. Sheesh. Right, let’s go.
*please note, in some crap news. Linkedin doesn't allow gifs anymore. If you miss these you can sign up to Substack here → http://bit.ly/3ebZCuj and get it straight into your inbox.
"If the path before you is clear, you're probably on someone else's.”
Joseph Campbell
culture // gamification 🕹️
Phones, like technology and money, are useful servants, but dangerous masters. Tim Harford wrote about the dark side of gamification culture. How toddlers now watch TikTok with the same slack-jawed expression as the slot-machine addicts, while couples interrupt their dates to show some love to their phones. We’re in constant junk flow gamified states. Gamification may be good for language learning or fitness apps, but probably not for trading shares, or sleeping. Or dating which was hi-jacked by gamified pay to play platforms. Now people are sick of it. An anti-phone movement is growing. Ireland is banning them from schools, joining dance clubs like Ibiza’s Pikes, Berghain, and London’s Fold and Fabric. While growing numbers of Gen Z are hiking and taking up meaningful hobbies to avoid addictive gamification. We all need a break.
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brands // the harris-walz 💃🏾🕺
US elections are full tilt, and so far the Harris-Walz campaign is masterclass in comms. It’s supremely confident, which is contagious. Everything is very carefully managed and framed. Their tone is intentionally joyful and hopeful vs negative fearful chaos. And they’re bringing back kindness. They’re using shallow depth-of-field to give their rally streams a more cinematic look vs Trump’s cheap reality TV vibes. Their content is intentionally authentic; almost anti-fake. Walz has been incredibly relatable as a coach and family man. And he morally reframed a pro-choice discussion with a right lens of freedom (“Mind your own damn business"). It all reminds me of the power of signals and the Buddhist phrase, “how you do anything, is how you do everything”. Brands are fragments, strung together. Every single thing matters.
creativity // weird sheep 🐑
We’re mostly all scared shitless. So to stay safe, we conform. A famous study in 1951, found that 75% of people will conform to a group answer, even if they know it’s wrong. But if you only conform, you’ll only be average (see investment strategies). This is the Black Sheep Paradox. The herd feels safe, but long term success requires black sheep thinking (fed with deep and diverse learning, and writing). Which is why we need more weirdos, with “weird” ideas and weird ways to see and appreciate the world. Success needs contrarian views, and a willingness to underperform (or be ridiculed) in the short-term, to succeed long-term. But it’s hard. A recent study found that fewer people want to stand out these days. Don’t forget though, fortune actually does favour the brave.
technology // zombie tv 🧟
Traditional TV is dying. Slowly. Short-form video and streaming platforms are killing it. Warner Bros Discovery just wrote down $9bn in the value of its TV networks (US cable). WBD’s CEO, said the market is being hit by “generational disruption” that requires traditional TV companies to take “bold, necessary steps”. In the US, Youtube is the biggest and most watched streaming service (25% of total streaming time and 10% of TV time - nielsen). It’s the same in the UK, with an accelerated decline of broadcast TV. Ofcom’s recent report showed 1/2 of 16-24s at-home video viewing is on social platforms, while Netflix + Amazon are bigger than all live TV combined. Pivots are possible. But expensive and risky. There’s glimmers of hope, but trends are undeniable. Change is brutal. But attention isn’t sentimental.
five random (ish) things:
watching // dire straits 🎸.
Stumbled onto this last week. What. A. Choon. Iconic. The opening riff. The video. Wow. The history behind it was fascinating. Such happenstance. Went down a Dire Straits hole then, this Soul Music podcast episode on Brothers in Arms is also beautiful. Enjoy!!!