If everything is fabulous and great and you’re always excited or proud, that becomes the baseline.
If I share it with a Polish or German friend and he says it's "not bad" then I know he is really impressed.
1. e.g. lots of smiling, use of superlatives like "great"/"amazing" to describe mediocre items/effort/results
Execs are ‘super excited’ about everything. There is no dynamic range at all. They appear to have no opinions and no judgement because their opinion is always that everything is awesome. When the audience knows that stuff is either normal-level ok or actually fucked up, this message is insulting to receive.
Worse, it trains people downstream that shiny happy is the only valid comms. Hard to escalate a concern when you don’t know how to start the message with how super excited you are about it.
It drove me crazy during my corporate period.
If everything is at a “10” in linguistic intensity (“Incredible”, “Legendary”, “GOAT”) then nothing is exceptional.
It’s the linguistic equivalent of a Dorito chip.
I’m American and this marketing/corporate speak drives me up the wall. I have a harder time respecting the judgement of people who thoughtlessly speak this way.
At least to my British ears, Americans rarely sound authentic.
Its always grandiose statements and elaborate smiles.
"I may be wrong", but perhaps 'Americans rarely sound authentic' to you simply because you're just more familiar with your own culture's idiosyncrasies?
Anyway, I love the Brits; no flame intended. I come in peace! :-)
Americans generally say what they mean a bit more, so I think their mid point is just different.
Any native knows that "Interesting, but perhaps we should reconsider" means "You're an idiot and I don't understand how you ever learned to breathe."
The pinnacle is "Not bad", which can mean either deep approval or blistering contempt, depending on tone of voice.
It drives foreigners insane. But of course it's not our fault if they never learned English.
It’s like ‘American corporate’ is a totally different language that I don’t speak. The words sound the same, but that’s about it.
I think they mean well. But it feels weird.
Small talk is all lies. Almost all praise is fake. And it all drives me insane. I can fit in at work just fine, I can appear joyful and excited to come to work, I have 30 years of practice with it. But I avoid it whenever possible because it is all lies.
Americans appear to oversell everything because people get mad if you don’t.
“Why can’t you just be positive?!”
Because I’m not going to lie. I can’t fake praise, and I won’t even try. Being positive while lying is immediately obvious and it undermines the positive attitude that you’ve painted on. If anything, I take a negative message when I see someone faking a positive manner of speech.
But "almost all praise is fake" and "small talk is all lies" feels like a pretty depressing place to end up?
Why do you feel like that's the case? How do you differentiate sincere praise from "fake" praise?
No, not really. I just see it as a tool that normal people use to keep themselves happy. And that's not depressing, to me. It's kind of ... annoying that people are so fragile that they have to do that in order to have a "normal" day, but I can't fault anyone for doing things that make them happy. I wasn't given that opportunity; I was weird and if I didn't conform then I got in trouble. Yet normal people LOSE THEIR FLIPPING MINDS when asked to consider my behaviors normal and to consider my various physical movements as normal and tolerable. You have never seen such orchestrated and immediate pushback in your life, I promise. But I was forced to do what they refuse to do, which is to accommodate the other side. So, if anything, I'm angry about it all. Not depressed.
I don't need those platitudes to feel happy or normal, I need to be alone to feel happy, most of the time.
Praise given in private is usually legitimate. I value that. I feel that. Praise given in front of others (like ceremonies and ritual award reception stuff) are the fakest fake activity known to humanity. The ceremonies are for normal people. People like me can simply be privately told "well done" and given a piece of paper that they can look at, and maybe a raise, and that's enough. And maybe a mention during the ceremony that I will not be attending so that people know about it, if they're interested.
And to an outside ear, it does just come across as completely fake.
Jobs' "reality distortion field" was just the conviction in his voice as he spoke. There is no, none, nada, zero conviction in the way Apple deliver these missives. It reeks of corporate America and is therefore not trustworthy.
I'm also kind of surprised that no-one there has altered the format. There are a lot of smart people at Apple...
