There’s a comedy duo I’ve been crazy about since I was a kid: Faemino y Cansado.
If you like Monty Python, you’ll probably love them. Intelligent absurdity. Or just plain nonsense, if you prefer.
Calling them the Spanish Monty Python would be blasphemy. They have things in common: logic pushed to the edge, then a little further. But that would be selling their genius short, simply because they never found a global audience.
Monty Python went around the world. Faemino y Cansado stayed in Spain, performing in theatres and appearing on late-night TV. And that doesn’t make them the local version of anything.
Confusing the size of an audience with the size of someone’s talent is as old as the seashore itself. Or as old as the hills, if you prefer.
And these days, it’s a business model. Complete with a little bow and an MBA.
I remember watching them one night on television. They were performing in a theatre. You could hear the audience’s laughter almost as loudly as the laughter in my living room.
Two audiences laughing at the same time, separated by a screen.
Like now. Except back then I didn’t know it was a dress rehearsal.
And I remember the Romans.
“How clever the Romans were: when they built the Aqueduct of Segovia, they left gaps so it wouldn’t get in the way, and so cars could pass through someday.”
It’s all been thought through.
Someday seems to be today. It’s October 16th, autumn, and I’m still in short sleeves. Chestnuts are competing with flowers. Crickets and birds are singing as if it were spring.
They promised us machines would do the work nobody wants, so we could get on with what matters.
And you’ve stopped doing what you love: designing, writing, creating. Now you spend your time in a private chat with a so-called intern who actually feels like your boss. Mostly because he’s left you all the jobs nobody wants. Making coffee for one. Drinking it bitter in front of the screen.
In private, I’m pim pam, as we say in Spain. Fast & Curious. Straight to the point. I look you in the eye, pick up the phone, send you a DM.
In public, I weigh every word. Because everything moves fast. Because I’m starting to wrinkle my nose at the thought that I’m not just talking to one person, but to the curtain-twitcher across the street as well. Because nonsense sometimes travels further than something you actually worked hard on, putting all your grey matter on the table.
Those are the rules of the game.
So absurd that Monty Python could make a sketch out of them.
“And what has the algorithm ever done for us?”
“Well, reach.”
“Fine. Apart from reach.”
“Carousels. Impressions. A cat in sunglasses going pow pow with its paw getting more distribution than your latest article.”
“Fine. Apart from reach, carousels and the cat in sunglasses… what has the algorithm ever done for us?”
…
Maybe it rewards nonsense to keep everyone’s brainwaves flat. To numb our will, one scroll at a time, and make it easier for everything to go to hell.
That would be comforting. There’d be someone to blame.
But I’m afraid it hasn’t all been thought through. Nobody left gaps in the aqueduct for cars. And nobody designed the scroll to put us to sleep. It just works. And what works, stays.
Maybe today you feel like Van Gogh: so much talent and so little distribution that the money gets tight. The perfect example. But not for the obvious reason.
The algorithm is just another face of the market. The art gallery. The exhibition curator. With one difference: the curator had judgment. The algorithm makes choices. Just not the kind a good curator would.
Van Gogh’s legacy wasn’t saved by the market. Jo, his sister-in-law, saved it. After his death, she devoted herself to moving his work. And she did it with a persistence no system would ever have had. Will.
Yes, Lines. And what about the audience? Well. That depends.
If you settle for the breadcrumbs you’re given, you’ll cry or laugh at the algorithm’s whim. Sometimes you’ll get lucky, and later you’ll call it strategy. Sometimes you’ll stare at the ceiling and refresh every three minutes, waiting for the miracle of engagement.
—Oh my bot!
If you don’t settle, it’s your turn to do what Jo did: distribute, with judgment, what the system can’t see on its own.
The metrics declared plenty of things dead before they were born. And yet, Apple’s “1984”. And yet, Liquid Death. And yet, Oat Cult, a small British oats brand that chose to advertise its breakfast with pagan rituals in black and white. System1 said Nein. They said: all in on black.
What you can do is use the gaps the algorithm has left and drive your car through them. Thumbs pass through without looking. You can pass through driving. Accelerate, please, but with your indicator on. Manners always come first.
Skin. Direct contact. Looking people in the eye, picking up the phone, sending a message that reads like someone actually wrote it.
Be your own Jo. And stop delegating your genius to the intern with delusions of being the boss.
A few centuries from now, someone will walk onto a stage and say:
“How clever the humans were: when they built the algorithm, they left gaps so it wouldn’t get in the way, and so thumbs could pass through someday.”
And the audience will laugh. Some in the theatre. Others at home, in front of a screen.
Lines Aja
Brand Strategist & Verbal Identity Consultant — Las Musas®
cultooruido.com