This Baffler review titled “Barons of Crap”, of a book about the wave of direct-to-consumer internet brands we now see everywhere, does a satisfying job ripping this trend to shreds:

Even the central narrative tension of Billion Dollar Brand Club––small upstarts take on the giants––sloughs off in a depressingly quick denouement… In fact, almost every single brand sells itself to a gigantic globe-swaddling corporation over the course of the book.

And Billion Dollar Brand Club contains almost zero analysis of what the ubiquity of this selling out could possibly mean. But the lesson is right there, whether he wants to see it or not. Corporations––who today plow record-breaking sums into stock-buybacks instead of research and development––have outsourced innovation to the wealthy or wealthy-adjacent who have the time and resources to get the ideas off the ground on their own: a squad of elite MBAs who come up with the ideas, and the venture capitalists who choose which of these ideas get funded. The businesses that Ingrassia profiles are, by the end of the book, essentially the same as the ones they were fighting for market share in the beginning. The founders, of course, have gotten fabulously wealthy, but the book never convincingly establishes the “seismic shift” it promises to document.

Which makes the whole thing a bit less romantic, now doesn’t it? But I loved that take on how unimpressive this “shift” really is, and questioning if there’s anything much to admire or aspire to in these examples. Other than the money, of course.

Is selling out to one of the remaining big mega-corporations the only surefire path to success any more?

How is that good or bad for all of us?

And either way, would you still take it if you could?

I’ve been participating in the annual Goodreads Reading Challenge since its inception in 2011 (succeeded five years, failed three), in which you set a personal goal of books to read that year. It’s a nice motivator throughout the year, and a fun little badge each December once I’ve sprinted to the finish, usually with a few short story collections or graphic novels.

This Atlantic article digs into why we effectively “give ourselves homework” in this way with books so much more often than other hobbies usually considered leisure:

Other forms of entertainment straddle that line—watching documentaries, for example, can be both educational and fun—but reading seems to inspire this gamification, homework-ification, and quantification to a unique degree. Perhaps that’s because society tends to view reading as an intrinsic good, whereas other media—movies, TV, the internet—are often seen as time-wasters. “Given many [people] feel they’re consuming too much media, the goal is usually to limit consumption,” Ayelet Fishbach, a professor of behavioral science at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business who studies goals, told me in an email. “In this sense, for many people reading is a virtue—so you want to increase it—while watching TV is a vice—so you try to limit it.”

Then, it goes a bit deeper into why… but not quite deep enough. Not a single interviewee admitted anything along the lines of, “It makes me feel smart. It’s part of my identity — that I’m a person who reads more than most, which isn’t hard, considering over a quarter haven’t read any and the average is only about 12.” Seems like a reporting miss to not get to why.

Why do you read as much as you do? Or not read as much as you do?

What do you get from it beyond the content of the books themselves, or what do you free yourself up to do by not reading more?

What, if any, inherent value is there in reading books at all?

Sure he seems happy, but the half-full glass harbors a dark secret.

Like many cynical Gen-Xers raised on a healthy diet of irony and apathy, it’s easy for me to be annoyed and dismissive of the cult of positive thinking. Even though I am an optimist in the traditional sense (things are generally ok and we can make them better!), the personal pep-talk industry seems pretty shallow and pointless. What a relief then, to find that science not only supports this claim, but cautions specifically against the harm in positive thinking, as reported in Aeon:

Positive thinking can make us feel better in the short term, but over the long term it saps our motivation, preventing us from achieving our wishes and goals, and leaving us feeling frustrated, stymied and stuck. If we really want to move ahead in our lives, engage with the world and feel energised, we need to go beyond positive thinking and connect as well with the obstacles that stand in our way. By bringing our dreams into contact with reality, we can unleash our greatest energies and make the most progress in our lives.

…

Consistently, we found a correlation between positive fantasies and poor performance. The more that people ‘think positive’ and imagine themselves achieving their goals, the less they actually achieve.

…

We looked at all sorts of goals and pursuits, including learning a foreign language, doing well in mathematics, succeeding in business negotiations, making more effective decisions, kicking cigarette habits, exercising more, and giving help in workplace settings. In all of these cases, we found the same pattern: obstacles led people with realistic goals to apply more effort and perform better, and people with unrealistic goals to pull back. Across many areas of life, mental contrasting seemed to be a beneficial way of regulating the effort we put in so that we stay in the game and succeed.

So, knowing that all that “The Secret” nonsense is not only empty but actively hurting your chances of success, what are we to do?

How do you fall victim to the negative aspects of positive thinking?

What are the things you often think about doing, are proud of yourself for considering, and tell yourself you’re going to do, but still never seem to do?

What could you do differently to counteract all this?