twisted image

I am going to do somethng not very nice. I'm going to write about somebody I only barely know and then I'm going to say not very nice things about them. It's not because I hate them, or that they are a bad person or even deserve my rancour, nor is it because I have any kind of grudge. No, I'm going to do this because I am thoroughly fascinated by how this person got to where he is. Truly, it's a fairy tale, full of fairy dust and moon sprinkles and little elves making shoes in the middle of the night.

When I worked at a software gaming company for too many years not long ago, we had a communications director for a little while named Mitch Joel. He was a nice enough guy, if a little bland and obsequious. But he was alright, got on well with others in the sandbox, and managed to always look busy. Never mind that he never did any actual work. He blared music all day long, chatted with the shiny boys who looked up to him, talked ad nauseum about what he was going to do, and travelled to every techno and marketing junket available. He was that kind of guy. In a moment of downswing and shake up, he was let go. I can't say he was missed for more than a second. His actual contribution had been, as far as I could tell, nil.

Since then, however, he has fashioned himself, according to his own bio, into a "visionary marketing guru." Hello? He still doesn't seem to have an original thought in his head, nor a talent for real work, but boy can he market his pants off. He has published a book, won some awards, travelled the globe. It all looks so juicy and good on paper. But don't waste your money.

We don't need to hear about global warming any more - stories like Mitch Joel's are enough to let us know that civilisation is doomed. How did it happen that our society became one in which learning to "brand yourself!" was the way to success? How is it that, in the wake of one of the biggest and dirtiest financial collapses ever, we still respect white men in suits who are going to tell us everything we need to know about marketing? Aren't these guys the enablers of disaster, the ones who told the Emperor how cool he looked?

No offense to Mitch Joel, he's just another systems masseur. Guys with no particular talent (or with a hidden talent that they have chosen to ignore) but who have learnt how to massage the system for full benefit. Doesn't matter what the system is. He'd be equally adept in Pharaonic Egypt or Stassi-infected East Germany -- he plays by the rules and gets rich doing it. He's the Great Oz, booming his voice from behind the curtain, pretending that anything more than common sense is his own personal marketing concoction.

I guess Mitch Joel is happy. He's the little lost princess who kissed the right frog and suddenly woke up rich and popular. I bet it's a mystery to him too, how he got to where he is, how it is that anyone really listens to him let alone takes him seriously. Who am I to care that he has his own personal Rumplestiltskin spinning gold somewhere in his dank and lonely tower?

I guess it's every bit as fascinating as learning about those fish who live off the bellies of whales, or parasite viruses, or bed bugs for that matter. Apparently, after 10 years, the weight of a mattress is almost exclusively made up of bed bugs and their husks. How much does the weight of the Earth change if it filled with "gurus and visionaries" like Mitch Joel? If your intellectual environment includes Mitch Joel, just how many different types of environmental disasters are there? I suppose if you put 100 Mitch Joels in a room for 100 years you eventually end up with a Shakespeare play. Titus Andronicus surely.

And on that note, I leave you with my haiku on the matter.

Same old, same old toy
a bald man turns like a top
upside down he spins