May 3, 2026

getting pretty nose scrunchy when I see gurus that just consistently use outrage as a way to get attention. I get that polarization works. I know we all use it to some degree, and honestly, most of us like to read strong opinions versus lukewarm ones, so it makes sense to a degree. Pattern, however, is charged cultural moment, good guy, bad guy narrative leads to super loud launch that's like some huge pivot, underdeliver, or never talk about it again when it doesn't work as intended. Repeat. That is the loop that I'm seeing over and over and over again, and it's so exhausting. If you're going to build a community using outrage as your primary accelerant, they are going to turn on you eventually because the foundation is not really built on anything. I have these people that I follow quietly, and they're in my inbox, and I read their emails, and I'm like, wait a second, what happened to the other thing you were being super loud about 5 months ago? Like, I can't find anything. Today I actually took Claude and I had it search through my inbox over the past 5 years of this particular marketer that I get their emails. And the pattern, that loop that I talked about, happened at least 5 times in the last 5 years. And the last 3 loops were in like 18 months. It's cool if you want to pivot. It's cool if you try and fail. That's okay. All those things are worthwhile. I've done them all. Okay. I have pivoted many times in my life, but constantly using cultural moments to drum up outrage, to then set up a good guy and bad guy, to then get super loud like you are the savior of whatever new flag you're planting, only to then underdeliver or be silent about it and then just repeat it is absolutely exhausting. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.