The search for beauty in the age of algorithms

Transcript

Intro and the plan for today

Hey everybody, welcome to You’re Not the Audience. Sorry about the late start. I was having some camera difficulties with OBS. I think I got them fixed now. So, if you’re in the chat, let me know if everything’s looking and sounding okay. There’s always something every once in a while. But yeah, welcome to You’re Not the Audience. This is a weekly live show where I break down brands, products, and subcultures that stand out by not appealing to everyone. Okay, Aaron. Good. I see you. There’s always something down at the end with cameras.

So I’m Calvin, creative director at Parliament, and Parliament is a brand transformation agency that helps brands when they’re facing big challenges and big changes. And we help them get to that next version of themselves by using strategy, positioning, identity, messaging, all that good stuff. And today, I think, is going to be a big brand strategy–heavy day. Honestly, we’re going to be talking about why we bother making things at all. I feel like that’s what this discussion is really about. I titled this “The Search for Beauty in the Age of Algorithms,” and I think it’s really about our quest for why we make things. What is beauty? What is craft? What is taste? Why do we even care about them?

So, I’m going to zip through this real fast today since I got a late start, but everyone doing good? It’s been sunny and beautiful in Portland. It’s officially T-shirt weather here, so I’m feeling pretty good. Structure of the episode: we’ll start with our normal news and obsessions, then we’ll dive into this idea of beauty in the age of AI and algorithms. And we’ll end with, I don’t know, some of our favorite ways to go touch grass, you know, to get away from our screens.

News and obsessions: Iron City and Bugs Bogey

News and obsessions. A fun one that I have really been obsessed with: friend of Parliament Bobby Baker is a designer who runs a small agency called Leagues Design, and he just recently did this update to the look and packaging of Iron City Beer, which is an absolute classic. This is basically the beer of Pittsburgh, and it’s been around for a long time, and I have just been obsessed with how this all turned out. I’ve talked a lot about heritage and timelessness on this podcast, or on this live show, whatever we’re doing. And I think they just nailed it. They dug back into what’s always worked for them and kind of reimagined it. It feels like it’s always been this way and somehow also feels new. It looks so good. So shout out to our friend Bobby. Nice guy, great designer, and I love how it turned out. I think this is also going to be very relevant to what we’re talking about today, of how you capture the feeling of craft and that human attention was put into something.

And speaking of craft, and other little whispers of human attention being put into things, we just got illustrations back from illustrator Brett Parson for our annual golf tournament called the Caddyshack Invitational, and the illustrations are super fun. We asked Brett to reimagine this little rabbit character that we’ve used in the past for this golf tournament. It’s a very unserious golf tournament. We’re all terrible. We just use it as a reason to go have some drinks in the morning on a sunny day. So he drew up this character whose name is Bugs Bogey, a mischievous little golf guy. And we’re going to start throwing him all over stuff.

I already started designing a bunch of fun things. Maybe I can toss up a little tease of some of the stuff. I don’t know if we’ll end up making all of this. Let me see if I can find where I put everything. I’ll toss it over here. So I just started designing some tees. The things on the top right are like poker chips that you use to mark where your ball is located while you’re golfing. I designed some bumper stickers. I love “Bugs Bogey, Caddyshack Champion,” or “Help, I shanked my balls at the Caddyshack Invitational.” It’s just super fun to make this stuff. It gives us an excuse to make some goofy stuff. Oh, looks like Windsor. Yeah. It’s so fun to just dig back. I collected all this imagery of old golf brochures and things like that, and so it’s fun to dig through those and pull some things out. Got some nice little shoutouts like “Be the ball” to the actual Caddyshack movie. So I love how these turned out. Brett did great like he always does. Absolutely nailed it. So that’s been another fun thing that we’ve been working on on the side.

So now let’s close Photoshop before it crashes my computer or something. Not that Photoshop would ever do that. Okay. All right. We always give awards for whoever does best and worst in the golf tournament. I feel like we should give away a free tattoo, as long as you get Bugs Bogey as the tattoo.

When technology starts using us

But all right, let’s get into it. Let’s talk about the search for beauty in the age of algorithms. This is just something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. Our lives are becoming more and more ruled by social media algorithms, AI prevalence, things like this. And what I’m most focused on, most curious about, is just a fact: our attention and our time are becoming more scarce and therefore more valuable. That’s what’s happening. The world of AI and algorithms is maximizing and optimizing every second of human attention right now. And I think that’s opening up an opportunity for slower, more thoughtful moments of craft, beauty, and taste to become even more valuable to people and to brands.

And I think one of the reasons this is coming to mind is because I feel like we’re hitting a switch in the way we’re interacting with all these things. A few weeks ago we talked about the enshittification of tech, and I feel like this is applying to a lot of aspects of our life, where we’re reaching a point where we’re no longer using the technology. The technology is using us to some extent. We feed the machines to make them smarter. There are new jobs coming out where we’re the ones relegated to fact-checking algorithms and AI and approving their work. And maybe this is just my opinion, but these all feel like soulless experiences that we didn’t really sign up for. They’ve just been hoisted upon us by large organizations. So I think brands that are actually paying attention to their fans and can show it, that is going to become more and more valuable.

What I mean by beauty, craft, and taste

But I talk about beauty in this, so I think it’s worth defining what I mean by beauty and craft and taste and all of those things, and it’s probably most important to understand some of my background with that. My background in beauty and craft is I went to art school. I think that really defined it. I did not study design. I studied painting and sculpture. And so I come from this very critical theory–heavy background, and that’s the way I’ve come to look at beauty and craft. But it was through me being a nerd who learned to do front-end development 20 years ago that I got into design. That was how I got my first design job as a young, dumb 19-year-old. And so to me, beauty and craft have always been artful endeavors, ones of passion, ones about caring, and that’s whether you’re making a painting or whether you’re machining parts for a car. There is beauty and craft involved in all of those things.

And the way I specifically always think about beauty and the value of art and things like that, I’m going to get really, really art school deep for a second. There’s a classic essay from World War II times called “Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” It was written by, let’s say it the proper way, Walter Benjamin. [laughter] Or Walter Benjamin, as everyone will say it here. He wrote this essay discussing how there’s an aura to an original piece of art or an original creation. And that aura is its authenticity or its uniqueness. All original things that have been crafted by humans have this to some extent, and it usually revolves around the idea of a little bit of scarcity. They’re unique.

There’s a problem, though, that happens with art in the age of mechanical reproduction, hence the title: the more you create mass reproductions of art, the art loses its initial aura, loses its cultural value, and starts being replaced with some capitalist intent. Which, I mean, I’m a designer. I love branding. I always have a capitalist intent, whether I like to admit it or not. So that’s not always bad, but it can be bad when you start applying it to art and a lot of the things that we create, and when you start making it too efficient and optimizing it to the nth degree. So that’s where my background comes from: how do we protect a little bit of that initial aura from the creation of a thing?

And I talk about taste. Taste is related to this in a way, and I think taste is inherently a very human-specific trait that a lot of AI and algorithms don’t have, because taste applies to care. Taste is having the confidence to assert one’s own vision of the world, and that’s really about sharing your passion, your joy, and your care with other people. So that’s some of my background on how I think about beauty and craft and taste. I’d be curious if anyone else has very different understandings or different thoughts on what they think beauty is.

Attention as something extracted from us

Okay, so we’re talking human attention, and how I think it’s really the attention that you give to art and things like that that makes it valuable. And this isn’t a simple conversation of AI is bad, or social media is bad, and craft is good. I think AI and things like it are just the latest tech competing for our attention. Everything’s screaming for our attention. We all know the downsides of AI and the attention economy. And I think there are some upsides to these things. There’s some good, but we’re just in a time where the downsides make it really hard to appreciate what technology is now capable of doing to our brains. For both social media and even some AI tools, I think some of this stuff can be incredible. I was a diehard Tumblr kid. Tumblr changed my life, and that was all social media. So there are whispers of good in all this stuff. It’s just how the enshittification process starts whittling them away.

So my real focus is more about how the more digital content demands our attention, the more valuable human experience becomes. And I think that’s a pretty important thing for us as branders to remind ourselves of. Tech is about giving us abundance. There’s no real scarcity in it. It’s everything everywhere all at once. And the problem with that now is that our attention is so whittled down that abundance is just leading to noise. Novelty is losing all value. We talked about that a lot during the beer episodes, how when there’s so much novelty, it’s just not novel anymore. Even efficiency starts to lose its value, and we start romanticizing these slower means of creation and slower means of making. So technology was once this scarce, unique, new thing, but now that scarcity is shifting towards craft, taste, expertise, tactility, real physical experiences.

That’s why everyone’s buying vinyl. Everyone in chat, put the most recent vinyl you bought in chat. Anybody a vinyl nerd in here? If you’ve bought vinyl, you’re one of the nerds I’m talking about. Jared says, “Oh crap.” Yeah. What’s your most recent vinyl purchase? I’ve got to actually think of what mine was. I go to a lot of metal shows, and so I end up just picking up vinyl for bands as they’re touring, just to spread the love, give them a little bit of cash to pay for gas.

So that’s scarcity. All those things that are very specific human experiences are becoming scarce. And that’s because attention is becoming an extractive thing at this point. Oh, The Visitors, Neptune. I don’t know that one. All right, I’m going to take note. I’m screenshotting it so I remember. Screenshotted. So the idea is that attention is almost becoming extractive. It’s starting to suck a lot out of us. Every platform, AI, every social algorithm is focused on one thing and one thing only, and that’s getting a few more seconds of your time and creating this addicting loop that’s based on that.

This is nothing new. We’ve all complained about notifications, ads, social media. I mean, live streaming. I’m demanding your attention right now. It’s all doomscrolling. We’re all victims, and we’re all instigators as well. But I think we’re at this point where all of these things are constantly battling with each other for attention. This is just maximum optimization at every level of our physical and digital lives. And I think the big part is we’ve reached a point now where very little of this is actually giving attention back to us. They are only extracting from us at this point. Nobody is convinced that social media and things of the sort are really a net good anymore.

Algorithms and the drift toward the generic

And I think the problem with it, too, is that they’ve all started feeding off themselves, and we’ve fed it so much that now, at least in the current state, AIs and algorithms are kind of just agents for genericism and homogenization. This probably won’t always be the case, but that’s where it’s at now. Chris, founder of Parliament, has always said this, and it’s stuck with me and applies here: you can’t always follow best practices or gold standards and also create completely new, innovative, revolutionary ideas. Those are almost at odds with each other. And a lot of the AIs and algorithms are based on understood human thinking. So when you’re using those things, it’s hard to step out of that, do some lateral thinking, and create something new.

So if that’s where we’re at, if our attention is fully just getting extracted from us and we’re not getting much back from brands, where’s the opportunity for people and for brands? I keep talking about brands and people because I think this is a larger psychological thing that’s happening to us as a whole culture. And so I think if brands mimic what people are feeling in that sense, brands can actually have some success, as long as it’s genuine.

Jared says, “It only knows what we have taught it. So for it to become conceptual is a huge ask. That is a long way off.” Yes, absolutely. Who knows? And AI is also one of the only technologies we’ve ever created where the rate of its improvement and the way that it feeds itself is like no other technology. Some of our biggest technology breakthroughs ever, like capacitors and chips, have all required human intervention to create the next step. And now AIs and algorithms are reaching a point where they’re teaching themselves the next steps, and there’s never been anything like that. So who knows where it’s going to go.

Rather says, “100%. Makes me think about how food got so shitty in the ’60s, when the tech of mass food production and preservation was getting legs.” Oh yeah. God, if you go back and look at ’50s and ’60s recipe books, I just did that not too long ago. Those are wild. There are some fun recipes in there. You’re like, I can’t imagine anyone making that anymore.

Craft is attention frozen in time

Okay. So, where’s the opportunity for everyone? I think this is the biggest, simplest idea to keep in mind, for me at least. How do brands stand out in this world of AI and algorithms and constant human attention extraction? I think it’s the idea that craft is attention frozen in time. When you make something, it is care and attention embodied. Beauty is proof that someone was paying attention. And so if craft is the evidence of human time and attention, that’s going to become more and more valuable as we have room for less and less attention in our lives.

I think taste, craft, and beauty are all evidence of attention being applied to things. And we value things that require attention. When you think of what requires attention, we think of artists, chefs, illustrators, carpenters. These are all things that we romanticize because of the effort, the skill, the craft, and they feel valuable because we can feel the attention. [snorts] Excuse me. Inhaling water. Don’t do it. Excuse me while I [clears throat] choke on water over here. Aaron, thank you. Bless you. [laughter]

Okay, so the idea that you can feel that attention. It’s just as simple as that: attention means you care. That’s it. For people, for brands, attention means you care. And so how do we continue to harness that? Because AI and algorithms, all they do is produce outcomes. They can make things or serve things up that will grab your attention. But what they can’t really do yet, as we were just discussing, is show something worth caring about, because they don’t have that style of passion and joy and shared communal human experience. Efficiency, optimization, and outcomes are really their only goals. And the sad part is a lot of people at the top of organizations pushing these things, those are their goals as well. I would often argue that efficiency and optimization are maybe the opposite of passion and joy in life. Because I just want to slow down and relish all the things.

But I think it’s also worth reminding ourselves, and this is something we’ve actually been talking about with some clients lately. We’ve worked with some clients in AI-related worlds. The opposite of AI isn’t necessarily human, or more human. It’s really just about caring. It’s about showing that you care about something larger than just maximum efficiency and optimization. Like I said, it’s passion, it’s joy, it’s reveling in the things that we deem meaningful, even if they seem frivolous, regardless of how slow or messy they are. So I think the brands that show they care will be the ones that can actually step ahead in this.

Brands that show they care

So, does anyone in chat have brands you think about that really feel like they care about something, that feel like they embody craft? I was just talking about Iron City. Good, simple lager. Feels like it really embodies this idea of heritage craft. It’s made by just a bunch of folks in Pittsburgh who really care about this stuff, and they’ve been doing it for a long time. I think this one’s also fun to talk about because I did a big discussion about how craft beer ended up in a tough spot because they went too deep into novelty. And this is essentially a craft beer that’s just a light lager. They just do it the way they’ve always done it, and they’re doing well because of it. So love to see that for them.

I feel like there are some other classic brands that are really good at showing that they care on a larger level. Muji always has this less-is-more mindset, which is wild for a giant retailer to have and preach. But something about the way they do it, you feel like they actually do care about it. So I think Muji is an interesting example. Brands like Aesop, where their messaging and their spaces are really intentional and thoughtful, and it feels like they really care about the things they make, and they imbue them with almost a spiritual aura that you don’t just get from mass production and mass optimization. I mean, they are mass production, but it doesn’t quite feel that way.

Yeah, Valerie: “Yes, but then they sell out. Everlane.” Oh my god. Yeah. Well, that’s actually my next little thought. A lot of these brands that have focused on craft, and this is something I don’t have an answer to, maybe I’m too old for this, but these brands might all be doing terribly, as far as I know, because they’re a part of the millennial branding explosion, like Everlane, where it’s about good, simple things done right, ethically. And I don’t know [snorts] what this new version exactly looks like for a younger generation, or how craft gets interpreted. I think it might end up being a little less about craft in the making of an object and more about crafting shared human experiences. I think social connection is going to become its own craft, in an odd way, for a lot of people.

Jared says, “Patagonia would be the front-runner in my mind, but I don’t know if it’s the brand or the people behind the brand.” Yeah, Patagonia is a great example of a brand that feels like it cares about something. One thing I love about Patagonia, and I can’t remember when they did it: there’s a question we ask brands all the time when we’re talking about their values. The biggest question that usually tells you if a brand really cares about something, and if it’s truly a value to them, is: is it something they would be willing to lose money on? And Patagonia is a great example. I mean, they make a bazillion dollars, but I know they’ve done those blackout days where their website just goes off for a day, so you can’t buy anything on their website. That is so much more powerful and adds more meaning to their brand than just selling really nice outdoor products. That shows the proof is in the pudding for them. They’re willing to shut down everything for a day because they care about this stuff. Yeah, I think Jared said this was Black Friday. I think they shut down on Black Friday. I don’t know if they do it every year, but I love that.

Oh yeah, Everlane. [snorts] The fact that Everlane sold to Shein, I never know how you pronounce it, that is absolutely crazy. Two polar opposites: this brand that was supposed to be really intentional and thoughtful and ethical, bought by maybe one of the least ethical fashion brands out there. Incredible. Good work for them. I at least hope everyone at Everlane got a real nice payday. [laughter]

Oh, Jared. Yeah, the CEO of Costco and his outlook on hot dogs. Yes. That is such a great example of someone who just cares about what their brand is supposed to embody. The fact that he threatens people if they ever increase the cost of the hot dog is just so symbolic of the way they think about everything, and they treat their employees well. They’re great.

Oh yeah, and Valerie: “The recent Pattie Gonia drama. No brand is perfect, I guess.” Yeah. For anyone who doesn’t know, there’s a drag performer named Pattie Gonia who does a lot of stuff riffing off of the Patagonia name, and it’s turned into this terrible court case. Oh man, this is maybe a whole other conversation for another day, where you get into the ethics and legality of appropriating art and corporate assets. We talked last week in the Wipeout episode about subvertising, where you steal the language of corporations to subvert it and add satire to it, and what’s the legality of that? There was a huge movement of artists focusing on this, especially in the ’90s. Oh my god, why am I blanking on all the names? Richard Prince was an artist who did a lot of work in this. I’m not going to pull up Richard Prince’s artwork right now because I don’t know what it’ll show. [laughter] But he did a lot of work pushing the limits and legality of art versus corporations. I love it so much. That’s great.

Questions brands can ask themselves

Okay, back to this idea of what [snorts] brands can do now that attention is becoming more valuable. Human attention is in dwindling supply right now. So what are some things brands can do? What are questions brands can ask themselves? I think each brand’s going to have to figure out how to navigate the future in its own way, whatever is best for them. These are just some questions that come to mind for me. I do this in brand strategy documents a lot: here are questions to ask internally when you are creating things. And these would be ones that challenge us on how we put attention forward.

So one: normally we’re asking, how do we get attention? How do we get engagement? I think it’s just simply flipping it to, how do we show attention? That can show up in the way you handle support at a company. That can show up in the way you prepare your products, if it’s in packaging. Everyone praises Apple’s packaging because it shouldn’t be as beautiful and artful and detailed as it is, but somehow it is. That shows attention. Little things like that, down to that level.

Another question is just: did we care enough to actually perfect something and show it off? Because especially on the tech side, we have this “fuck it, build it, ship it” kind of mindset. And I think that’s going to start happening faster and more and more as AI starts assisting with developing digital products and things like that. So if you can sit back and ask, did we actually perfect something here, and can we show that to someone?

I think the other question is just: what deserves our attention? We forget as brands that we are humans who are usually our own audience a lot of the time. So what deserves our attention, and how do we put that back into the ether, into the world, so people who care about what we do can share in it?

And maybe the last one, since I’ve talked about beauty and craft and how there are different ways of communicating craft. I talked about beer brands doing all these wild different beer things to be crafty, but it just got lost at some point. And I’ve talked about this with a lot of brands who care about the idea of craft or quality in their brand. I always ask: are we fetishizing craft, or are we actually proving it? I always call it fetishizing craft because you aren’t actually doing the work. You’re just talking it up. You’re using the language of it. You’re romanticizing it rather than doing it authentically and genuinely. And it’s hard. It’s difficult to do craft in a way where you can actually see it and feel it. But it’s very easy to just talk up quality and craft, and as soon as anyone says they’re the best at everything, you’re like, that’s not the kind of quality and craft conversation we need to have.

Hell yes. So good. The hot dog. God, I feel like the Costco hot dogs have come up a couple times in our streams now. And it’s been years since I’ve had a Costco hot dog. Maybe I need a Costco trip in my life soon.

Choosing joy over optimization

All right. So I guess, I don’t know, this has been a lot of thoughts. I don’t have any answers on any of this stuff. There are no answers to this. Oh god, I don’t want to be too dreary. We’re all in the middle of some really unknown territory when it comes to technology, and specifically as makers, especially as designers, writers, people who care about aesthetics and meaning. I think it’s been a really challenging time for folks when the world has become about engagement in this attention economy, where it’s not about meaningful engagement. It’s just about how do we get an eyeball to go to the next one, to go to the next one, to go to the next one. And I feel like that’s been challenging for people, at least people like me who really care about slowing down and taking in the meaning of something that’s been made. That’s definitely not how our attention economy is operating right now.

Every company’s screaming for our attention right now, but I think very few are showing that they’re really paying attention to you. And I think there’s something in there that can be unlocked, some kind of space where brands can start working. So I think attention and care and passion and joy will become brand differentiators for a lot of different brands that really care about that human experience. And I think craft, beauty, and taste have always been at the heart of attention and care. Those are always interlocking, because craft, beauty, and taste are attention embodied. Physical or digital, we can feel it when that happens.

So in the age of algorithms, efficiency, optimization, and infinite content, the brands that stand out might not be the fastest and loudest, and they might not be the biggest either. I think that’s okay. Not every company needs to be a trillion-dollar company. It’s okay if you’re just a good lifestyle company. Slow and steady wins the race over time. You’ve got your focus. You don’t need to be fast and loud. You just keep doing what you do best. So I think the ones that might start getting ahead are just the ones that feel like another human was there.

We’ve been talking a lot in our office about how we communicate tech in a way that feels like it’s being made by people who actually care, and who care about the person on the other end. I think this is going to be a continually evolving thing. I don’t know if I have any deep insights there, but I think it’s to communicate to people that people have value. The technology is a tool that helps give them value, as opposed to the other way around.

I try desperately not to be too dread-filled with this. I’m a pretty far-left progressive in my politics, and it’s very easy to look at the world right now and be a drag. I feel like the people of my shared political interests are often, honestly, a little critical, a little annoying, a little whiny. And there are lots of things to be whiny about. So I’m trying to look at this and say, I think it’s a pretty radical act to look in the face of efficiency and optimization and just say, no, I’m going to do it my way. It doesn’t have to be some grumpy thing. It’s just, I like doing things the way I like doing things. Maybe it’ll take longer. Maybe it’ll be slower. But I’ll experience a joy and a level of fulfillment that I maybe wouldn’t otherwise get.

And that’s kind of at odds with the way we think about business and corporate culture in general, where it must always be faster, more efficient, keep growing. We’ve got to hustle, I guess, but sometimes it’s worth remembering to just take a step back and experience the joy, and as a brand, ask how do I help my fans find that joy as well. And I think that’s going to be the biggest way to stand out during all of this. But anyway, that’s Calvin’s motivational talk for the day. [snorts] This is really just me talking to myself, being like, “You can do it, Calvin. You can make things that are filled with joy.”

Favorite ways to touch grass

All right, I can’t hang on too long today. I’ve got a meeting in just a few. But everyone, what are some of your favorite ways to go touch grass? What do you do when you need to get away from the screen and stop doomscrolling? What’s your favorite real-life experience where you actually feel #present? One of my go-tos, the place where I always call it going to church: I go to metal shows all the time. And metal shows are great. They’re super loud and noisy. You’re surrounded in a sweaty, dark room with a bunch of other nerds who are into metal. And I feel like I can shut off all of those other parts of my brain that are screaming that I need to do this, I’ve got to go here. And sometimes it can be a very meditative experience, even though you’re surrounded by all this noise and usually angry music. So that’s one of mine.

Oh, Jared says, “Digging for vinyl in antique stores.” Yes, I love a good vinyl-digging day. Okay, this is one of my favorite things I’ve ever done vinyl-wise. So, here in Portland there’s a legendary place called Music Millennium, and I did a date night there with my wife one time. And [clears throat] the rule was we could only spend $10 on a vinyl. Each of us would find a vinyl that cost 10 bucks, come home, make a cocktail at home, and listen to the vinyl that we got. Incredible, honestly. So fun. First of all, it’s very hard to find vinyl there that’s only $10. So you start digging into the craziest avant-garde section, some weird old jazz section. That’s very fun.

Oh, Nick says, “Chopping wood is so satisfying.” Nick, I feel like you’ve had a lot of trees fall in your yard, if I remember right. So yeah, you’ve probably had to do a lot of wood chopping. I totally get that. There is something really nice about chopping wood. Especially being a designer for 20-plus years now, and Nick, I know you can definitely relate, we’re often working on time scales that are months long. So when you get to do a task that’s dead simple, like, I see this pile, I’ve got to do this thing, and at the end of this it will be done, you can really lock in and do it, and you get that immediate “I did it.” It’s great.

A lot of crafts do that for me. I like painting minis for board games. Board games are my other form of touching grass. I play a lot of board games. In fact, that’s the plan today after work. It’s board game night. And the game we’re playing is called Earthborne Rangers, which is a whole futuristic game about exploring the possibility that the post-apocalypse happens and we actually become better as humans as opposed to more evil. So maybe that’s related to today.

Oh, Valerie says, “Moss on trees.” Yes, moss on trees. If you grew up in the desert, you just don’t know. Moss on trees is beautiful. Dang. Now I want to go digging for some vinyl. Jared, next time you’re in Portland, let’s do a Parliament trip to Music Millennium. We can do the $10 rule. We’ll make it our own Parliament date night, where we each get $10 to go digging for some esoteric album.

Wrap-up and what’s next

But all right. Well, I think I’ve probably got to wrap up for the day. That was a fun little chat. I don’t know how to end this one. I feel like this one is kind of just me, an old man, yelling at the future. But I think we’re at a really interesting time with tech and brands, and who knows what’s going to happen, but the thing that definitely never goes out of style is showing that you care. I feel like we’re entering a time where there are going to be a lot of people forgetting to show that they care. They’re going to be cranking out work that’s just meant to grab eyeballs. And that’s fine. Sometimes we’ve got to do that. We’ve all done that if we’re working in branding and marketing. But sometimes it’s best to just slow down and make something real that feels meaningful to you, whether it’s for work or just something at home. And I also think brands can apply that to the way they think about things, too. So everybody, go be an Iron City Beer. Go reimagine your heritage and just keep it going. I think that was the best.

All right. Next week, it’ll be same bat place, same bat time. I don’t know exactly what the subject’s going to be. We keep talking about millennial branding a lot, and I’m going to want to get into what that 20-plus-year era of millennial branding was at some point. So I’ve been thinking a lot about that. We’ve also been talking about some other fun possibilities of pulling other Parliament folks in. One thing that we’re known for inside the Parliament office is having some pretty heated, intense debates about things, maybe things we don’t even care about at all, like is a hot dog a sandwich kind of thing. So we might end up doing that here in the future, where we get a couple of us together, bring up something that’s worth debating, and have some hot takes. So there’s going to be some more stuff happening with You’re Not the Audience soon. Otherwise, I’m Calvin, and this was You’re Not the Audience. I’ll see you back here next Thursday at noon. Thanks so much, everybody. This was great.