Like the legendary DJ Deadmau5, our anonymous advertiser Adnonamau5 (pronounced ad-nonymous) puts on the mask, drops by the Rockstar CMO penthouse and tells us how it really is This month he sets his unforgiving sights on the self-proclaimed “expert”, hoping we self regulate before we drown in the bullshit.
“Opinions are like assholes, everybody has one”
Dirty Harry
I’ve been amused and somewhat perplexed by the – what seems to be – an increasing number of experts that are obsessed with informing us of their opinions drawn from their vast professional/worldly experience. They appear on every possible channel, Twitter, Instagram and – of course, the biggest culprit- LinkedIn. Some have even written books and peddle the speaker circuit talking of the doom that awaits us all should we not follow their sage advice, and then appear on whichever social channel is likely to earn them a kudos point to hammer home how close to the end of the world you are and how majestically wise they are.
Fuck that! From what I can see, most of what these people spout out is either a basic professional attribute or nothing more than an opinion, often based on a sample size of 1. Yet there they are in my Instagram feed, my LinkedIn feed, etc. telling me how to deliver transformation or engagement, or be better at what I do or how to be happy. Often supported by a ‘white paper’ or the announcement of a best practice. The aforementioned book summarised in tantalizingly small snippets to suggest greater knowledge can be achieved by acquiring the tome in which the recipe for world order resides. It seems everyone has a way to do things that work.
But what is this all based on? Many of the people seem to not yet be old enough to be left in a car on their own let alone espouse to the world their great words of wisdom. Why everyone thinks that because they stumbled over a crack in the sidewalk on their way to work it now qualifies them to advise the world on subduction zones and plate tectonics. We seem to be living in the world of the homemade genius, literally someone who wakes up one day and feels the need to educate us all on what idea is rattling around their monumentally vacuous mind.
LinkedIn for me is the by far the greatest social media channel through which this happens and I wish they would put a stop to it. Or better still – like Wikipedia – the audience would self regulate, crying ‘Codswallop’ every time some bullshit was published. If that happened though, LinkedIn would go back to being a useful channel for professionals and who wants that, or even worse the ego’s that need obvious satiating would have to go elsewhere and that could mean someone collaring you on the subway or at your local coffee shop insisting they can deliver you from evil.
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