Welfare Check

Hey Friends,

I keep hearing the same thing over and over from readers lately. Is Mr. The Lorem Ipsum doing okay?

For the last two weeks, I've written articles about leaving politics or complaining about how it feels like we are walking on eggshells, and can't say anything without offending someone. I think it's a reasonable question.

Should I be under supportive observation? Should you send the police to my comments section to do a well check? Am I finally converted from a meat-based writer to an energy consumption maniac made out of a gooey AI substance?

Readers are doing the newsletter equivalent of holding a mirror to my nose to make sure I'm breathing. Just this week, several people upgraded to paid memberships just to see if I was good.

Thank you. I appreciate the concern and the support (you are the only reason I feel genuinely obligated to be on time every week). And if you are a concerned friend who wants to bring me a covered dish while I recover from my illness, please know that I like my turkey tetrazzini with the canned cream of mushroom. (Sorry, I'm a picky eater and sometimes a little nostalgic.)

But thanks for asking. And yes. I am Okay. But also, I'm not that okay.

Life has been better than ever. The economy is rallying (if you can handle a bad jobs report, or otherwise deny it and fire the person who delivered the message), my personal life is a tapestry woven of golden threads, and the marketing business is dancing in a zoot suit like it's the roaring twenties. So in that respect, things are great.

But the front page of the news is occupied by one man.

When it was just the Apprentice, I was kind of amused. Now he's occupied New York, Florida, the blue skies, and every news site from top to bottom. On top of that, he's sued just about all of them, including his otherwise favorite media mogul, Rupert Murdoch, for $1 billion in his case. There's a lot of sameness to write about, and I feel a certain obligation to make sure I'm at least understanding the story before I crack jokes about it, but some weeks, I have better things to read about. If every joke is a repeated pun, I may as well just cover this whole newsletter in concrete. I mean, that's what he did with the Rose Garden.

A good publication can't get sucked into being a profile of one person's drama. When you control the most powerful newsletter in the world, you want to make sure you deliver value, variety, and quality, and I feel that way, too.

Which Brings Me to My Next Point.

I've never been a coke addict, but I've considered it. I've long had a hunch about two things. The first is that snorting white powder into your nose is a desperate act, but everyone who does it seems really cool and rich, so I'm open to being sold on the idea. The other is that consuming the news, in the days of instant news cycles, is probably just as addictive, and just as dangerous.

Reels Melt Your Brain.

To a large degree, people get their news from short, vertical videos that live in a continuous feed of one video after the other. Every social media platform has added vertical video, and many news sites are doing the same. It's the next proliferation of the Semantic Web (which I have written about), except instead of a like button, a simple flick tells the platform what you like, and how to capture you. Imagine checking on one notification bubble only to discover 40 minutes have gone by, and now I've got a new gardening project, and a shiny new opinion about a political situation overseas based on 90 seconds of context. If we see enough of those videos, we'll actually think we're educated on the topic.

According to studies, scrolling through reels is addictive and reduces focus, memory, and executive function. And for those of you already afflicted, that means it makes you dumber. Every news organization has used the flickable content as a way of getting stories in front of audiences. Congressional hearings are purely focused on soundbite moments, and most opinions are formed based on scant knowledge. Most news is consumed from headlines, and the industrial complex consisting of politicians and those who write about them is all pressured to move toward the lesser value, to get more clicks. Even the marketing industry has followed suit, as I wrote this week at HRNDN.com. Brands have prioritized short-form, low-value content instead of providing the value their clients deserve.

Even The Lorem Ipsum, because of my own time, has spent more time on quick takes with punching payoffs, when the reason I started this platform was to provide depth and levity. Last year, I wrote 10 full-length articles, the year prior I wrote 22, and these are some of the most valuable parts of my body of work, only to be pushed to the side for quick stats. Long-form content has value, and our life is filled with short form, short cycle, short sighted content.

Short content keeps the dopamine hits coming and keeps us addicted. It has reduced us to a population of uninformed drones with a prolific video newsfeed, filled to the brim with emptiness, telling us what to believe.

There was a time when we had more context. We read the paper. Trees were dying left and right. The rainforest was melting. But at least we weren't. We didn't skim as many headlines. More than likely, we read the whole dispatch because there wasn't much else to do, except manually repair our own cars and make our own food.

We had more context, but we also had less context. We didn't believe we needed to have an opinion on everything, without researching at length and checking our own biases, or having long conversations about it with others. Institutions were sources we could trust. We had people like Walter Conkite and Neil Armstrong to be inspired by. Sure, I know the moon landing was fake, but now, everything is fake. I'm now revisiting the brain in a vat theory, because it feels more fulfilling than being stuck in front of the tractor beam of a TikTok.

But I'm rather optimistic, for I have not been sucked into the tractor beam of the reels. I have thankfully prioritized long-form reading and extensive research, with breaks for long-form conversation at lakes, driveways, and firepits.

That's what I spend my time on. When I'm not in deep work as a brand strategist, or in deep relaxation off the grid, I'll be in deep research mode, trying to understand the world, so I can provide you a point of view, and invite you to provide yours in a long conversation (in the comments, please).

So to answer your question, I'm doing really well.

That's it for this week.

Remember: The Lorem Ipsum endeavors to be deep. But not deep in your inbox. It likes to be on top, and as always, shared with friends.

Have a great weekend!