Am I being served?

Last week I went to a shop. It’s a place selling a specialist kind of shoe: wide toe-box, zero drop, for those who recognise that deforming our feet in traditional narrow-at-the-front shoes for the diffuse reason of “fashion” is a bad thing that will, and very often does, cripple us in later life.

The shop was in the middle of nowhere. In Stockholm terms, that means ten minutes walk from the closest subway station. So I trudged through slush and snow to the front door and in I went. When I entered that tiny ten square-metre space (for the Americans, that’s the area of about 165 boxes of Cheerios) I saw two staff. One behind the till, tapping away on a laptop, one roaming the floor. They both said hello. I said hello back. The one roaming came up to me (not a hard thing to do) and asked if there was anything I needed help with. I said no. And I started to browse.

Now, it’s not entirely easy to browse a small shop with two people trying to pretend they’re not watching you. But I tried. I scanned the shoes on offer. Too expensive. Too weird. Too ugly. I reached for one and picked it up, to judge its weight. Whereupon floor-roamer shot over like a bullet.

“Very nice, isn’t it? Maybe you need help trying it on? Or measuring your feet? Perhaps a quickie in the back?” I’m not sure he said that last part, but I’d stopping listening, so he might have.

“No thanks,” I said, more firmly, balancing the shoe back on its miniature shelf (why are those things so tiny?) with polite determination. “Let me know if you need help!” he said, and slid off.

Now my annoyance was tingling. But I figured, okay, I’ve told him twice. That had to sink in, right? So now I can browse in peace. The sale section … hmm. Cheaper, sure. but also uglier…

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw floor-roamer nip into the back. And I exhaled in relief. Seems he finally got the message. Good. Now, in case you’d forgotten, let me remind you that person two was behind the till, tapping on a laptop, ordering laces or admiring photos of brogues or whatever it is that shoe-shop people do. And having spotted a twenty-second silence, she looked up, smiling.

“Let us know if you need some help!” she barked. I nodded, grinning. Please. Please stop.

I continued browsing, moving, in desperation, over to the socks. It was over now. Surely it was. The socks were nice. Wool toe-socks, with extra reinforcement, with a Japanese brand name…

“Let me know if you need help with the socks!” came the voice from directly behind me, making me jump. I didn’t have to look around to tell it was floor-roamer, returned from his visit to the back of the shop. “We can measure your foot,” he added, “so you can get the exact right size!”

That was it. I grunted, nodded, took one last look around, paying my final respects to the gods of footwear, and dashed for the door. “Bye!” I said, and before their answers had time to travel through the three metres of air that separated us, I was out the door and gone, vanished into the anonymous city, where I’d find solitude, and sadness, and slush, but also peace. Blessed peace.

So regular shops (brick-and-mortar stores, as they’re called in the retail trade) are having a hard time. One reason is that web shops are becoming popular. There’s probably many reasons for this, but for me, it’s this one: web shops doesn’t bother you. They let you be. Sure, they’ll flash banners at you, but there’s no constant small-talk to navigate. You can buy, or not buy, and just leave, in silence.

So shop people, stop bugging me when I browse. You can ask me once. Maybe twice (if you’re attractive, have a nice smell or a good, calming voice). But then leave me the hell alone. Because if you disregard my wishes, I’m out of there and you’ve lost a sale and will appear in angry blog posts. Okay?

I finally got the shoes. Online. Were they any good? I’ll let you know when I’ve worn them, because now, fresh out of the box, they are too pretty for such mundane tasks as covering my feet. And I didn’t have to talk to a single human during the entire process. What a wonderful, wonderful world.

/ Paddy

Airheads

I see the Swedish airbag helmet company, Hövding, has gone under. Count me not surprised.

(Let me say at this point that I’m not gloating over the closure of a company. People’s who didn’t make any of the decisions had their lives affected, and that’s sad. I’m just pointing out that it was bound to happen, since it was always a terrifically dumb idea. And here, my dears, is why.)

The Hövding helmet was trying to “fix” a problem that didn’t exist. We already invented bicycle helmets. They work. But Hövding decided it was time to “disrupt the space” and make them sexy, and managed to convince some investor that this was an idea with wings. So they came up with a personal airbag for your head that you wear around your neck as an ugly, sweaty collar, which will explode into existence whenever needed, and then pitched that concept with a straight face.

So .. why? So you don’t mess your hair up when cycling! Let me repeat that: so you don’t mess up your hair. While cycling. An activity in which you proceed at speed through moving air. And also, apparently, Hövding offers slightly better protection in some – but not all – collisions.

You also have to keep the stupid thing charged, and trust that its cheap electronics will work as advertised that one time you need it to (and in some cases, they haven’t). Also, after it triggers, you’ll have to throw the whole thing away and pay for a new one. I’ve seen a couple of them in my building’s garbage room, like used head condoms. They’re big. All that material, sent off to be incinerated.

But Paddy, it offers better protection than a helmet, haven’t you seen the research?

Sure it does. In a few chosen situations. And in others, it causes no protection at all. Such as when you cycle at speed into a low sign, or tree branch, or bus mirror. When something falls onto your head from above. When someone swings a baseball bat at you (hey, it happens). A friend told me a story where they were about to cross the street and saw two (male) bicyclists stopped at the lights, having an argument. One shoved the other, triggering his Hövding, which them popped out, leaving him standing there like a bird doing some kind of mating display, while the victor rode away, laughing.

Design should move on and up. Of course it should. But not at the cost of more resources, and increased stupidity in the world. The airbag helmet was a dumb (and expensive) idea, and now it’s gone. Occasionally, just occasionally, capitalism works as intended. And I guess we should be glad for that.

(For those who speak Swedish, there’s a great Flashback thread with some amazing quotes. Some so good they should have been on the product. “A helmet for idiots who fall off their bike for no reason.” They should have gone with that, it could have saved them. But now, alas, we will never know.)

/ Paddy

Taste crime

I was vegetarian for a few years. Then I revolted for a while, gorging myself on sausages and black pudding. Finally I settled down into what I call a practitarian – when it’s practical, I’ll make and eat vegetarian food, because it makes me feel better, keeps the gut microbiome in good shape and results in slightly less of the planet getting incinerated for my benefit. And when it isn’t practical, I’ll just eat whatever is put in front of me: fish, cow, horse, dog, fucking whatever. This is an especially useful when you’re a dinner party guest, because nobody wants to be the vegan who comes to dinner.

Being vegetarian comes with a few features. Firstly, it introduces you to a wide range of idiots, the main one being the spluttering, red-faced man (yes, it’s almost always a man) who sees vegetarianism as a personal slight. “That’s not natural!” he’ll bellow, whilst wearing clothes made from plastic, driving a car, living in a house, using glasses to see, flying on planes, and working with a job as far removed from nature as you can possibly get. And then he’ll go on at great length about human teeth.

Secondly, being vegetarian exposes you to the ultra-processed plant-based food in the shops which, with few exceptions, is vile. I’m talking about the stuff that ends up in the bargain bin: your pea protein slab, your nuggets of unclear origin, your “beyond meat”. I sometimes test these and I’m always stunned by their terribleness. No flavour. No spice. And, knowing this, the manufacturer often covers the item in a nasty sweet coating, trying (and failing) to hide the wet cardboard texture.

There are two reasons for things being this way. One: there’s a belief that what puts vegetarians off meat is its taste (a suggestion given to me by Sewing Goddess). And meat, by popular understanding, tastes good. Therefore, what vegetarians don’t like is taste, meaning that ultra-processed vegetarian foods can’t contain any of it. This leads to the proliferation of tasteless, textureless crap in our shop freezers. It’s possible that this is a Swedish thing, I’m unsure. Linda Mc Cartney’s vegetarian sausages, for example, I found to be quite good. But any factory-made vegetarian food aimed solely at the Swedish market is, for some reason, almost guaranteed to be shit.

And two: profit. It’s in the interests of those who make ultra-processed food that we keep on buying it. And when someone in a family turns vegetarian, the panicked parents, instead of, you know, just making some lentils and vegetables, will buy whatever crap is marketed to them as being vegetarian so that their child can still enjoy “normal” food, meaning meat (or meat substitute) and some sad vegetables. And so the industrial food producers keep on turning out those bland meat substitutes in the hopes that people won’t discover that vegetarian food is just about making it yourself, from scratch, in a way that does not provide profit for them. Because on no account can people find that out.

This, incidentally, is why so many people could never consider switching to vegetarian food, since they assume it consists of removing the meat from “normal” food and just serving the rest, with a gaping hole on the plate, instead of actually learning how to cook in a different and more interesting way. Because for me, vegetarian food is about making as much of it as possible, from scratch, myself. And there are so many excellent cuisines to draw from. A tasteless slab from a factory doesn’t really cut it.

And whatever you do, do NOT order the vegetarian meal on an aeroplane, because then you’ll get the weirdo meal, that single attempt at covering all those who don’t eat “normal” food: the veggies, but also the nut people, the gluten people, the religious people, and all those allergic to flavour.

Maybe there’s some deeper reason I’m missing here. And if you know it, do tell. Because I can’t see why food conglomerates would keep on pumping out factory-made, tasteless slop that’s guaranteed to go straight to the bargain bin and not make them a huge, stinking profit.

Because that would be the most unnatural thing of all.

/ Paddy

An Old New Year

New Years is a holiday I never quite got the hang of. That’s probably due to the way it’s marketed: fancy people in fancy clothes posing in front of fancy meals, celebrating that an arbitrary counting system is moving from one final digit to the next. And then there’s the next morning, the utter mess left everywhere by slobby revellers and their explosives. Not to mention all the shell-shocked dogs.

At least Christmas pretends to be about something — the birth of demi-gods, the goodness to all men — even though we all know it’s really about ravenous, unsustainable consumption. But we can still play along. Plus Christmas is cosy and warm, while New Year is just shiny and cynical, with all those gyms screaming at us that we need to get in shape, pronto, or nobody will love us.

It’s interesting how shops make most of their income in December, while gyms make theirs in January. And flower shops in February. And Irish bars in March. And egg-sellers in April…

Anyway, back to New Years. One in particular spring to mind for me. It was 1994 (going into 1995). I had recently quit a PhD in astrophysics, having discovered that I was not willing to pour more of my life into academia. Instead I’d gotten a job as a ambulatory marketing specialist for an alternative Dublin nightclub, Fibber Magees. Okay then, I was the guy who stood on street corners and gave out discount flyers. Hey, it got me out of the house, gave me free entry to a cool club, and allowed me to meet angry girls with studs all over their jackets, and also goths. So win-win there.

What I did was stand on Grafton Street, handing out flyers to any people who looked alternative, or who I might like to hit on later at the club. Then around midnight I’d relocate to O’Connell street where I’d hand out a few more. And between these, I’d usually pop into Bewley’s cafe on Grafton Street for some warmth and a pot of tea. And this is how, on December 31st 1994, I was sitting in Bewley’s, pot of tea before me, book on table, when the clock struck midnight.

I don’t remember how it was announced, but when it was, I looked up and realised that the café was almost deserted, and everyone in it was sitting at a small table by themselves. Everyone. These were clearly the people with nowhere to go. No parties, no families, no friends. Possibly they were homeless. Some certainly looked it. They stared at their mugs, or at their books, or just into space.

I’d love to report that I gathered everyone together at one table, kicking off an impromptu New Year’s party, making everyone’s life a little brighter. Or that I went table to table, shaking hands. But romantic comedy stuff rarely happens in real life. I didn’t. Instead, I gathered my stuff (by stuff I meant my bag and my book) and headed back out into the chill, turning north for O’Connell street.

And that is the only specific New Year’s Eve I remember. Maybe because it was so different, or so sad. That’s how memories work: sad things stick around, while all the happier times float away like bubbles in the sunlight, or flyers in a breeze. And in the end, when the lights finally fade, all we’re left with, alone in the empty café that is our lives, is the sadness.

Happy New Year!

/ Paddy

Rubber ducking

Yes, it does sound like a sex thing, doesn’t it? And if that’s why you came (ahem), maybe stick around anyway because it won’t be long (goodness) or hard (oh dear me) and over quickly (swoon).

So in coding, there’s a concept called rubber ducking. Some coder, in the distant past, discovered that if they had a tricky problem, and brought in another coder to help them, the very act of explaining the situation to the other coder would often let them work out what was causing the issue.

“So it’s the weirdest thing. Look, I go here to this part of the code, and this data comes in, and I add it to the list, but then it just … oh. Hang on. I’m not actually adding it to the list, am I? I’m just adding it to a temporary list, which then gets deleted. Right! Thanks for the help!”

In fact, it was soon discovered that another coder wasn’t even required for this to work. You could get the same effect from explaining your problem to any person or object, such as a rubber duck on your desk. Hence the phrase rubber ducking.

And by the now, the humble rubber duck has probably helped to debug more code than anything else in the world. In fact, this concept extends to life in general. It’s basically how problem pages work (“Dear Margie, I want to know if I should leave my husband.”), and also tarot cards (“Dear Margie, will I meet a tall dark stranger when I leave my husband?”). Because if you, as the person with the issue, can sit down and explain to someone (or a rubbery something) exactly what the problem is that you want help with, then you’re almost all the way there.

You see? Not hard at all. Also totally covered in rubber. Which I know you like.

/ Paddy

Teambuilding for introverts

About twenty years ago I walked on fire. This was part of a weekend away with work, doing teambuilding or icebreaking or whatever. We didn’t think the fire-walking would happen, but it did. Burning coals were laid out in a shallow trench by a trained professional (I mean, I assume he was, nobody really checked), shoes came off, and across the burning coals we stumbled. And along with that came a weekend of socialising, all with the intention of making us all feel like a company.

Did it? I guess. I got a great anecdote out of it, at least. However, all teambuilding has an inbuilt bias: it’s based on the extrovert view of the world being the normal one, and that quiet people (introverts) just need a little fire-walking and a good injection of extrovert mojo to “bring them out of their shells”, the poor bastards. Allowing us all to mingle, brainstorm and smalltalk together, forever.

An AI’s terrifying interpretation of “Happy introverts”

Being an introvert, especially in a company setting, is often viewed as a problem, as something that needs to be fixed. Which is evident in official company events, all of which are geared towards the extroverts. Music! Noise! Things happening! Partying! And talking and talking and talking…

It would be nice if, for a change, a company event was aimed at introverts. Some suggestions:

The read-in: Instead of going to a loud, alcohol fuelled location where we have to mingle all night, how about we hire a library and have a nice book-reading evening? Tea is provided.

The silent retreat: A weekend where we walk around in silence, in some nice old monastery, and nod serenely to each other in the corridors and silently examine the flowers.

The long-distance ramble: A hearty walk across some wild location, the wind in our faces, with a good podcast playing, where the chances of bumping into another workmate are small.

The individual workshop: Instead of having to work in a messy group where the loudest person gets their way, you complete a task by yourself and get an AI with a calm voice to present it for you.

Those are my suggestions. Do you think they sound terrible and basically infringe on your human rights? Then you know how introverts feel when faced with another loud mingle. You’re welcome.

/ Paddy

*Clearly, I’m mostly joking here. Mostly…

Please take my money

It’s astonishing how hard it can be to give people my money.

Consider the following scenario. I sit down in front of the computer and something pops up: an article, an ad, a terrible situation in the world. I decide to donate some money. So, feeling like a saint, I go to the donation page, where I’m faced with a long form to fill out. My name, my address, how I heard of the thing in question, what my shoe size is, how many hats I own, my least favourite bird…

That is where I, personally, usually bail. Because I came here to do a good thing, to give you money, and now you want to make me do all this work. To which I say: no, screw you. You should be glad for me being here. You should be doing all the work, not the person taking their time to do a good deed. And so I leave the page, in a huff, and go watch some youtube instead. You can always rely on youtube.

I have no idea how much money donations sites lose through making it hard to donate, but it must be a lot. Based on a single data point (me) I’d estimate that maybe a third of the people turning up at donation pages leave without having donated if they are faced with a form to fill out or a registration to complete. And they also take with them a bad opinion of the organisation in question.

So that’s a problem. And when I point that out to organisations, they always ignore me (I suspect my mail gets moved to the “Ranting middle aged men” folder). But why, if you want people’s money, do you make it so hard for them to give you their money? I suspect it’s because those who own the website, and those who designed the website, have never tried the donation flow from the other end. They’ve designed it from their needs, not from mine. And so they don’t get my money.

And of course, even if you do mange to make a donation, it doesn’t stop there, no sir. Because then the organisation begins to contact you. They send you mail, post, SMS, telling of the massive horror in the world, pushing you to give even more. I was of the opinion that once I donated, my job here was done. But no. As a reward for my kind deed, I now have to endure a stream of horror stories, each one leaving me with the guilt of not donating. Making it better to have not bothered in the first place.

I understand, I do. Surely the people most likely to donate are the ones who’ve done so before, right? But this totally misunderstands why people donate. We do it to feel good about ourselves, and to not have to worry about situation X for a few weeks. It’s like when you give money to a beggar to salve your conscience, and from that point on the beggar start pouncing on you whenever you pass. This was not the deal, buddy. I give, you take, I feel good, I get on with my day until the next time I decide to donate. By forcing me to do it, you’re taking away all the pleasure of it for me, and soon I’ll stop.

I’m not sure how to solve this. A training course for beggars before they’re allowed to beg? It sounds like a joke, but if we’re anyway going to have beggars, and we always will, shouldn’t they at least be trained? And hey, we could give the same course to the politicians who are asking for our vote. Another suggestion (and this should be standard) is that all donation websites have a fast-track, a way for people to donate with zero friction. Like the Amazon “Buy now!” button. One click, particle effect, done.

Or how about this one? Allow me to add 10% to my proposed donation and for that you promise to not contact me for a whole year. No email, no texts, no nothing. I am paying you to not have to think about this for a while, so let’s make that official. I would definitely give these people my money.

And as for the orgs who hide their “Donate!” button in some obscure sub-menu, and instead waste the front page of their website telling me about their history and their vision … you, I’ll see in hell.

/ Paddy

Context in cave art

Cave painting are pretty amazing: art made by humans who were basically the same as us, but living in what is essentially a totally different world. In the last few years, a new — and when you think about it, pretty obvious — way of seeing them has emerged. And it’s all to do with fire.

For years, researchers have been clambering into these deeps caves to catalog cave art, blazing bright lamps at them to capture every detail. Some of the drawings were odd — bison with eight legs or several tails, drawings of the same animal overlapping. But hey, these were cave people, maybe they were just shite at drawing. And then, not very long ago, someone had an idea.

These deep-cave drawings were always made in flickering light, either from torches or small fires. So what happens if they were viewed in the same way? Since open flame couldn’t be used, in case the ancient art was damaged, special lamps were developed to simulate the light and flicker of flame. And then — wow! For the first time in thousands of years, these drawings came to life. Literally.

In turned out that many of the drawings had been made so that the uneven flicker of open flame would cause them to “animate”. The light, flickering across the uneven stone, highlights different parts of the images at different times, giving an effect of motion. Tails swish, animals run. It wasn’t, in fact, that stone-age people painted bison with eight legs because they were idiots, it’s that these extra legs, in flicking firelight, making it seem like the animal is running, and alive. Overlapping outlines became a charging beast. By taking the art of its context, we had missed the most interesting thing about it.

Regarding cave art, another question always comes up (in fact it comes up in this article): why did they paint them far, far inside a cave, in a place where a substantial effort would be needed to even see them? As an introvert, it’s obvious to me — because they wanted to get the fuck away from the noise and activity of a busy clan and to a place where nobody could disturb them. Where they could focus on what they were doing without having to listen to some arsehole going on and on about the latest berries, or admiring someone’s carved stone, or enduring endless smalltalk about the bloody weather.

When you want to see cave art in the proper way, use a flame. And when you want a question answered about silent, hidden places and why people would bother to go there, ask an introvert.

/ Paddy

Happiness is a warm kund

We’re not complicated, we humans, even though we like to think we are. “What, go to bed early, eat my veggies, have a walk and go easy on the booze? It’s not that simple for me! I’m very complex, actually!” Whereas in fact the sleeping, the veggies, the walking and the unbooze is probably going to do the trick for you, regardless of how special you feel. It’s just the (slightly boring) truth.

But what works for all of us is to be made feel special and appreciated. This is no secret. And yet, astonishingly, stunningly, very few of the companies we have dealings with seem to grasp this. Once we’ve signed up for whatever thing they’re offering, they basically ignore us, trusting we’ll not make the effort required to change to another company.

And what do you get when you do leave? Aggro, that’s what! I left the gym SATS recently, since my workplace has a little gym we can use for free. And wow did I suddenly become popular with the SATS reach-out team. Emails asking why I had left. Phone calls from a determined SATS salesperson, who despite being asked to stop calling, kept calling. In the end, I had to block them.

You know what, SATS? If you had showed half — nay, one tenth — of the interest in me when I had been paying 60 dollars a month (for a gym I barely used once a week, if that) then I might have been inclined to stick around. Hounding me with a stick once I’ve bolted the barn isn’t going to do it.

And then there’s all those other things I pay for. All those fucking subscriptions. When did everything become a subscription? It’s a cynical system designed to suck extra money from people through them being forgetful, or lazy, or dead. And it’s always irksome to see new customers to the same service I’m on being offered great deals. Like, hello? I’ve been a faithful paying idiot for four years over here, why don’t I get something nice? A nod? A wink? A trifle? But nope.

The only company I’ve had dealings with that recognise this are Vimla, my mobile service provider. They are genuinely great. They will randomly send me extra gigabytes of internet, for my birthday, or for Christmas. They have a great pooling system for unused internet, where it just builds up in your account until you need it. And if I convince a friend to join, both of us get a small monthly discount, forever.

Last month, Vimla informed me they were changing my monthly rate. But not increasing it — they were in fact dropping it. Yes, I was now going to pay less. How often do you get that from a supplier of anything? My electricity, in comparison, went up owing to “instability and increased demand” or fucking whatever, but did it come down again after that situation had passed? My fat hairy arse it did.

Vimla, by doing this simple, obvious thing have now hooked me as a customer (and ambassador) for life (watch me ambassadoring). Spotify — who removed entirely the Spotify Unlimited payment plan I had been on for over 10 years, never missing a month, in the hopes I would double my payment and move to Premium, lead to me instead stubbornly remaining on the free tier despite the annoying ads, now determined to never give the scumbags a red cent — haven’t. Nor has anyone else.

So, to summarise: the tiny act of giving your faithful customers something nice will turn them from customers into fans. Not doing it makes them into the opposite. (What’s the opposite of fans? Antifans? Vacuums? Sure, vacuums, why not?) You’d be an idiot not to. And are you an idiot? I’ll let you decide for yourself. Take your time. And while you’re doing it, send me ten dollars a month. Cheers.

(And if you are keen to try Vimla, do sign up using my personal link, and then we’ll both get a 10:- per month discount, as long as we both remain signed up and alive. Up with this sort of thing!)

/ Paddy

Kund is “customer” in Swedish, and also (almost) in Danish, Norwegian, and German.

Bad ad tropes

Ads are basically evil poetry. We put up with them because they are everywhere and we don’t have a choice, but we don’t ever really want them, do we? And that is particularly true for me.

There’s some ad tropes I hate extra much. Things that, if they appear, have the opposite effect than the one intended, making me want to fling the product into a lake of fire instead of buying it. And if you want to know what those things are, well, I have you covered. Let’s take them to the next level and show them to the person who matters most – you. Because you, my friend, are so very worth it.

Handmade: When something is described as handmade, it is usually trying to invoke the image of a jolly old lady, a grandma of some sort, possibly Italian, in a kitchen making traditional food. You see it, don’t you? The chickens pecking outside. The cat, probably. Then, when the dish is served, there will be laughter and fiddle music. It all makes me shiver. Because when I hear “handmade” in connection to food all I see is that Italian granny poking it with her sweaty hands, the ash tumbling from her cigg. There’s an ad for chocolate here in Sweden where we see the “artisan” in his chef’s hat pick up the chocolate to admire it, using his hands, the same hands that have just been scratching his knob, or picking his nose. Please, stop it with the handmade. I want my ultra-processed shit food prepared by nice, clean robots. “Made in a sterile and ethnic stereotype free environment”. Now that will get me to buy your product. Handmade … nah, not so much.

Most sold: You see this a lot here in Sweden. “The nordic’s most sold sexual lubricant!” is assumed to be something that shift units. I guess it’s the “A million rats can’t be wrong” school of logic. But, honestly, why should I care that something has been bought loads of times? Is it suddenly more appealing just because all those saps fell for your advertising? You show me a thing that’s “most sold” I will sniff at it and go elsewhere. I am, after all — or have been constantly told by ads that I am — an individual and a free-thinker who knows what he wants. So get your story straight.

“Sweden’s most sold single malt whiskey” as if that were a good thing.

Designed in Sweden: This bugs me immensely. What this means in reality is that a Swedish company, who used to push the “We are Swedish” angle, has moved their manufacturing to a cheap country but still want to harp on about their product’s quality. “Made in Slovenia!” doesn’t shift many units (except perhaps in Slovenia) so instead they tell us it was designed here, in Sweden, by clever proper people, you know, people like you, but better. People wearing beanies that don’t quite cover their ears. Because, clearly, those Swedish designers have a bigger affect on the quality of the product that the people who actually make the thing. Do fuck off. If it’s made in Sweden, tell us that. Otherwise, put a sock in it.

Cutting-edge science: What other kind of science would you use? Old science? Second-hand science? New-age science (bring me the crystals and the brass gong, Jasmine). Again, begone. It’s a non-claim, a phrase put in an ad just to have the s-word appear somewhere. And it annoys me.

Exclusive: People rarely seem to think about what this actually means. An exclusive product is one that only some people can have. That’s what it means, you see: to exclude some group. Generally, those without money. These days, though, we’re being lead to believe that it just means “good”. I’ve even seen “Exclusive and affordable” used in ads. Nope, sorry, it can’t be both. Pick one.

Ukulele music / whistling: Ever since I saw this hilarious video by Irish music youtuber tanatcrul I’ve been aware of these massively irritating audio tropes. Clapping also fits into this category. If your ad soundscape includes any of these, you can be sure I’ll promptly close my ear-holes.

You are unique: And here it is, the most cynical of all “Buy this!” tropes. Here you’re being told that nobody else is like you, therefore you should buy this thing (maybe it’s exclusive?) that everybody else has, because you are so special. Go on, love yourself! Marketers, I beg you, please stop doing this. It’s mind-numbingly dumb. And no, I don’t love myself. Only awful people do that.

So, to summarise, if you want me to buy your shit, try something else in your ads. Maybe something funny or weird. Or how about truthful? “We’re destroying the natural world to create this thing you don’t need, which will end up in a landfill, or wrapped around a turtle, but which makes your life a tad easier.” Or: “Fuck biodiversity, here’s a barely edible industrial product made from amazon rainforest beef and palm oil.” I mean, I probably won’t buy it, but it might make me love myself a bit more.

You know, like a psychopath.

/ Paddy

A burger too far

An article in this free Stockholm newspaper informs us that the gourmet burger, at least in Stockholm, is no longer trendy. Count me unsurprised. I mean, it was only a matter of time before we realised the emperor had no buns, lettuce or cheese. “But he’s just a piece of burnt meat!” the villagers all shouted, pointing and laughing, before they headed off for a poké bowl and a tasty spirulina shake.

This whole burgers-are-fancy thing kicked off about ten years ago in Stockholm, or at least that’s when I started noticing it. I assume some Swede had been to New York and got the idea there, since that’s where most Stockholm trends tend to come from (bonus points if it was stolen from a cool area like Brooklyn). One of Stockholm’s loudest gourmet burger chains (yes, we’re now using the words “gourmet” and “chain” in the same sentence) slammed open their doors in Stockholm in 2018. These people with the name “Bastard Burgers” – oh dear – had an extremely tiring “We’re no-nonsense proper men from the north of Sweden!” aesthetic. They’ve also used a slogan which said, in English, “Treat yo’self like a bastard” the stupidness of which still boggles my mind. 

Since then, more chains have followed, so many more, with different (but aggressively cool) names. If you ask me, all of them could have the same name: Overpriced Burger. Because that’s what they did – taking something that we’ve all agreed is cheap and trashy, then making it “gourmet” and charging twice as much for it is little more than a cynical marketing ploy, and is not going to last.

And, according to the article above, it hasn’t. Bastard Burgers and others are closing many of their Stockholm outlets. They’re all blaming the pandemic, inflation and changed food habits, but to me it’s pretty obvious the burger bubble has just burst. We’ve done this, we’re bored with it, we’re moving on.

I’m not that sorry to see it go. Besides being food for children, and horrendous for the environment at a time when keeping our gasping planet alive needs to be our primary focus, burgers just aren’t my thing. Not for any health reasons, I’ve just never liked them. Too much meat, too much grease, the whole eating-with-your-hands thing, all the slopping … I just find them kind of gross. And whenever I’ve convinced myself to have one, I always feel a bit ill and bloated afterwards. Added to this is the requirement to add fries so it feels somewhat like a meal, further caking my arteries. Hey, I’m old, I have to think about shit like this. Don’t worry, you’ll get there too, trust me.

If you like a burger, good for you, don’t let my whining put you off. Keep on doing your thing and be happy. In fact I’ve heard the Bastard people are quite approachable and friendly. Good for them. But for the rest of us, it can’t be denied that the gourmet burger is on the way out. We’ve all seen through the ruse — paying twice as much for impractical, slightly more cool and manly junk food — and we’re done with it. Or, more likely, we’re all just jaded and are moving on to Stockholm’s next food trend. And whatever that is, I can predict the following: it will be stolen from New York, it will be marketed to us in some embarrassing way, and it’ll be horribly destructive to the environment. I’m thinking rhino-horn flapjacks. Or amazon rainforest deep fried parrots. Or maybe New York pizza rat pizza, with extra whale liver and panda fries.

And trendsetters, if you need a sad slogan in English for your new Stockholm eating experience, do call me. I’m cheap* and very, very good at bullshit. 

/ Paddy

*Actually, I’m not that cheap…

Jesus AI Christ

It was fun for a while, wasn’t it? The whole AI thing. Making weird images. Asking a chatbot in clever ways how to go about making a bomb. Getting it to pen our boring emails for us. But now, at least for me, the novelty has well and truly worn off.

Yes, yes, I know should be concerned that AI is going to get me fired, or destroy the world. Although what people really mean when they say it’ll destroy the world is that it’ll destroy humanity. And, sure, while that might be a pain in some ways — ceasing to exist, no more chocolate — it can’t be denied that the world itself would be far better off without us. And who’s going to change the AI’s batteries when we’re all gone? Didn’t think that through, did you? Superintelligence my arse.

I’m not worried about AI. Maybe because I have enough man-made horror to fret about (the impending climate collapse; the mass extinctions brought about by our desire for sun holidays and cheap burgers; films with Chris Pratt in them). If anything, I’m bored by it. AI “generated” art is starting to look sad to me. I can spot it from a mile off, and it always makes me sigh. The washed-out look, the lack of deliberateness. And the more cliched it’s starting to look, what it’s saying is becoming louder and clearer: Hey you, I spent as little time as possible on this, don’t you think it’s great?

No, I don’t. If you want people to spend their time interacting with your thing, reading it or viewing it, you can’t just put zero effort into it. So no, I won’t give you my time. Do the bloody work, and pay the people who dedicated their lives to becoming good at it, the people you’ve “sampled” to train your robot.

Since AI models must be trained on actual data, what they are really good at is making an average, a stodgy conglomeration of all the (stolen) things they’ve been fed with. It’s possible they’ll one day be able to manage something resembling true creativity. But even if they do, who cares? Art is not just about the art, it’s about the intent and the meaning behind it. And sure, AI illustrations might be good enough to plaster all over your advertising campaign or LinkedIn profile, but until the AI can sit me down and explain to me the many levels of meaning and the events in its life that brought it to this point, the illustration is just a plastic copy, a wavy dream.

Art needs artists, aware of their own mortality. Anything else is just a dreary soup.

And now a new trend has been popping up on my Facebook reels. People doing AI animations of Jesus (no doubt having “sampled” the images without paying anyone) telling us boring, predictable things about prayer in a bad AI voice. Or the admittedly entertaining Twitch stream where AI Jesus answers all questions posed to him 24/7. Even on Sunday. Not even Jesus gets a day off anymore. 

And let me be clear, when the day comes to pledge allegiance to our AI overlords, I’d totally turn my back on my own species and hop onboard. Could it be any worse than the mess we’ve made of things? And hey, maybe they’ll have chocolate.

/ Paddy