A Back and Forth with Tyler Hurst

Some email exchanges are too good to be kept private. Here’s ours:

CARLOS: I’ve been labeled as an asshole many times because of my tactless way of expressing myself. I am constantly getting into heated debates with people that aren’t big fans of my choice of words. This is a struggle some days, but then I remember that there are people like you online, and feel comforted because I know that if I ever get into a philosophy, social media, or battle of the sexes word shootout, you’ll be right by my side telling it like it is.

Nevertheless, I find myself oddly challenged by you, and that’s why I’ve decided to finally call you out. Of course, being who you are, you agreed. I can only hope this exchange of romance-less opinions will make not only us, but everyone else who’s willing to go with us until the end, to come out smarter and stronger (because there’s too many soft people in the world already). And, of course, to declare me as the winner.

So, let me get into my first topic right away:

We live in an inclusive time. We are constantly talking about communities, and teams, and groups, and crowds, and many other similar concepts. Just to get the spark going, let me ask you: how can we be sure that this is a great thing? Considering how irrational the human mind can be, isn’t it possible that this has undesirable side-effects? Where are we standing and what are we producing?

TYLER: You may very well be an asshole, but how you phrase things isn’t tactless. The accepted definition of the rather annoying word “tact” is “consideration of others while avoiding giving offense.”

That’s an oxymoron right there. Is it possible to be considerate of others while lying to them? This may work for superficial or inconsequential situations where resolving the problems offers no real value, but your bluntness is most likely thought of as refreshing to those with at least an above-average IQ. The only people you should be worried about offending are idiots (look it up, everyone) and to those people, please do be kind. They don’t know any better.

I don’t admire your words, Carlos. I also don’t care what it is you do for a living, nor how you dress. What fascinates me is your ability to affect people, inspire people to change and deftly lead a group of followers (friends? fans? supporters? pick a similar word) toward whatever IS your end.

Andrew Keen, among others, has spoken and written at length of the inclusiveness of our time. I’ve even called this strange GenX/Y early-adopter social-media group our version of the inclusive, pot-smoking hippies of the 60s that seemed to unite my country (do you people even smoke weed there?) than anything else.

But this inclusiveness has come at a cost. The easier connecting and publishing have become, the more people have done it. Because we have some sort of trust associated with printed or published material, these publishers and some of their readers/followers now assume that they are valid.

They are not. We spend too much time talking about the shiny tools to DO anything with them. The less-skilled, less-motivated show up, clap a lot and then offer either unabashed praise or misguided criticism. Nothing gets done, nothing gets created…no one evolves. We produce nothing but minor thoughts, as the masses are a tsunami, leaving destruction in its wake, rather than a lava flow, which at least creates new land mass.

So, how do you beat back a tsunami? Go to a higher ground?

CARLOS: You make an interesting point when you mention the tact oxymoron. I believe that consideration is, in many cases, the easy way out. It is the rationalization of not caring enough. The problem doesn’t lie on the message that may hurt someone’s feelings, it lies in the reality that we have become too weak to hear what bothers us, because we live in a world that praises us and tells us that the sky is the limit, no matter how many defects you may have. A world that takes care of our soft spots since the day we are born, not by strengthening them, but by ignoring them. This creates an army of theories that delve around people’s fantasies because of their inability to grasp what’s real.

You also mention IQ as the reason behind some people’s acceptance of a “tactless message”, but I doubt that that is enough. High IQs and low over-dreaming can co-exist, sadly. The good thing is, I also think the opposite is possible.

We need more lava.
I’m going to try to get into the tsunami topic from two different points of views, but I fear that I know myself too well, I’m too realistic to believe that the second one is even possible. Nevertheless, I shall do it for the sake of the debate.

One possibility is, like you point out, going to higher ground. The problem is, it’s lonely up there. Tsunamis are devastating for a reason, and few are the ones that can motorcycle their way up Elijah-Wood style and see the chaos from the safe mountain. You can use your fast vehicle (your mind) to drive past the masses on foot but the realization that those masses will drown is heartbreaking and anyone would go crazy if left alone for too long, as high as that ground may be. In other words, the potential to create value is there, but what’s the point is everyone has drowned?

The handicapped dreamer inside me tells me there’s another way to beat the tsunami and to look at our purpose: to elevate the ground. If we can teach and show people that a different way of acting is possible, others may follow the example. This would of course be the favourite society’s response, since it’s a very positive message, just like we like it. But to prove how improbable (not to say impossible) that scenario is like, let me define it for you: a world where everyone is skilled and motivated, where people construct with the help of the tools instead of feeling good about them, and most of all, a place where words and their infinite influence are measured and used only to shed light on reality because demagogic inspirational messages wouldn’t be accepted in an already motivated and skilled plateau.

Yes, completely ridiculous.

There’s one more thing that bothers me about the improbable highland situation. I’ve come at the crossroad of empowering the world many times, and 99% of the times, I realized that taking that path would have come with the painful requirement of dulling the edges of the content. Is dumbing down one’s message condition sine qua non to become popular, to succeed, to be accepted by the masses? And if that’s the case, should we even do it? Are we really elevating the ground and helping people if we are aware that what we are communicating is stupid?

TYLER: Yes, we’ve created a world where safe not only means absence of harm, but complete absence of the possibility of harm. Most great ideas come out of conflict, and unless we can generate such, we’re cursed to never actually get better. If you’ve been following US politics, I’d say much of the frustration happening right now stems from the itch that something isn’t quite right, albeit answered with completely inappropriate actions (racism, hate, etc.). Similar to how our feet land HARDER on softer surfaces (because our foot’s natural inclination to find the hard bottom) we’re pushing harder because we know we can. Chris Rock will never hit a woman, but he’d shake the shit out of her. We’re too scared to even do that anymore.

Moving to higher ground isn’t the answer. As fun as elitism may be, practicing such in regards to the unwashed masses only insulates us and prevents anything good to actually happen. Surely we shouldn’t all drown together, but preaching from on high isn’t going to get the message across, as people won’t even be speaking your language.

The answer is subversion. The answer is becoming better storytellers. The answer is to find the liaisons that can act as a bridge between those acting and those wanting to, and I bet there’s a lot of the latter out there, they are just lacking the tools, the time or the nudge. (man, this sounds preachy and Buddhist-enlightenment like. Awesome)

The ramp and the jump.
It’s not about being accepted by the masses, it’s learning how to tell them what they need to know in a way they can understand. Similar to magazine developers programming their product differently for the iPad than in print, those who consider themselves intelligent must make the choice to become multi-communicable. Groups are, and will continue to be, as strong as their weakest link. The weakest link isn’t always the smaller or most puny, it can also be the one with the least connection to the group. Elitists must make sure they don’t end up as the latter.

CARLOS: I feel like Malcom Gladwell emailing Bill Simmons, it only takes you a couple of minutes to get back to me while I need days. I may take you on a Spanish back and forth some day, just to feel good about myself.

You are more imaginative than me, I’ll give you that. But until the world proves me otherwise, I’ll stick to my historical references, and in my case, admiration and competition have acted as better motivators. Seeing the elites comprehend things that I don’t makes me want to join them up there more than seeing the masses makes me want to help them comprehend what they don’t IF they are no interested to try by themselves. Because that’s all one really needs: interest. You say that people already have it, but I doubt it because we live in a society that lets people reach comfort very easily. And interest requires discomfort, a situation that people aren’t fond of. It also requires ignorance, and people aren’t willing to be ignorant (consider religion: people rather believe something proven wrong than say “I don’t know”).

It’s not that I don’t believe in bridges (or should I say ramps?), but I don’t believe those bridges should or will be built by those on the top, but by those trying to get higher. The elitists are not trying to preach, they are trying to be the proof of something better.

Do I believe in masses? Sure, but being condescending with them is as fruitless as being distant of them. I wish hardware development analogies would work here, but I they don’t. We are too flawed to think of us as precise codes and wires. Nevertheless, I will concede that becoming multi-communicative is important. The most important lesson while working in sales was to adapt your speech to the listener. But it’s impossible to do it online. You can only publish one message, and you lose validation the moment you start diversifying it.

Should one even want to be connected to the big group? Maybe the result of that will be one big beach instead of the current uneven territory. In that case, I’d rather have some people survive the flood before seeing everyone swim on one big ocean of mediocrity.

TYLER: You’re selling us both short. Simmons and Gladwell both try and interpret the past, when that’s not what either of us are after. It’s about what’s next, not about what happened.

Spanish would be fun. I’ll be sure to make up as many Spanish-sounding words as I can in order to stay up to speed.

Have you seen Religulous? Bill Maher makes a few excellent points, but none more poignant than his comment about how if any group was as homophobic, racist, violent and ignorant as most religions, that they’d be laughed out of the room and never taken seriously. Problem is, MOST of the world has fallen prey to such drivel. It’s not that I WANT to save them, it’s that I know Noah’s Ark wasn’t real and that a small group of people can’t turn their ideas into results without a lot of other people to do the work spreading the information.

Ramps is a tricky word. You’re basically describing elitism (yes, the actual practice of condemning others for their stupidity) and it’s a waste. Who gives a shit about followers? I’m not looking to build a bridge, a ramp or a ladder, I want to jump. Ain’t no safety nets where we want to go, nor should there be. Making it easy to get somewhere isn’t a worry those who are there first need to concern themselves with. Cartographers are of a different breed.

So what’s next? The purposeful and immediate disconnect from produced work. No more wasting time staring at finished pieces or polished manuscripts, rather an appreciation of what is REALLY there. Everything that we produce is simply a representation of what we truly think and like a straight line written on a piece of paper, doesn’t truly exist, and is rather a physical interpretation.

More trying. More failing. More dissent. More ideas. Admitting that we don’t know jack shit.

And no, this was not written from an iPad.

CARLOS: That’s some positive thinking, kudos. Want to share this with the world?

TYLER: Yep. It’s time.

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