It’s Day 52 of our quarantine in the age of COVID-19, and I’ve spent the last five weeks editing a running recap of events during this entire mess. By the end of this I hope you’ll follow some underrated Twitter accounts/comedians, be shocked about some things that weren’t reported in the news, and have a better understanding of the worst flavor of LaCroix.
- There is nothing I love more than correcting internet trolls’ use of there/their/they’re on Twitter. Nothing. I can literally feel the rush of endorphines as their headspace becomes a Pikachu gif, and seconds later morphs into a living American Chopper meme.
- We’re not nearly appreciating how much this entire debacle sullied Gal Gadot’s reputation in Hollywood, and why anyone thought this was a good idea. I imagine – pun intended – that some of the Hollywood A-listers recording this cringed while it happened, and it was the ultimate favor to a friend that ended with “but like…no one’s going to see this, right?” We’re sleeping on how much this tone deafness will affect her career, and I just saved a Google Calendar invite two years from now to bring me back to this post. I’m right about this.
- Robert Kiyosaki – the author of Rich Dad, Poor Dad – could make a trillion dollars, but you’d still have to take his advice with a grain of salt because he referenced Donald Trump multiple times in his book as a “successful businessman.” Not a good case study in credibility. On the other hand, Howard Stern’s multiple interviews with Trump that made it into his new book make him look like a genius.
- My new favorite Twitter account belongs to a 20-something comedian name Abby Govindan, who’s unapologetic about how obsessed she is with 22 Jump Street, and has gems like this. Cutting gender humor always gets to me. I have no idea if she does comedy in New York, but if I see an upcoming set, you will know about it.
- Alexa and I have discussed this multiple times, but the world is getting a false sense of remote work, and you can immediately tell this is the case because we’re referring to it as “working from home.”
Here’s a few things that aren’t usually present when you’re working remotely in a space/ a world that allows you to focus: children, a dog, a full refrigerator ten feet from your workspace (even at Google and Facebook), 1 million people infected with COVID-19, the inability to work from a cafe, store, or temporary office, crippling anxiety from being unable to physically interact with another human without a mask more than six feet away.
Moreover, what we’re experiencing is a world where we talked a lot about being situated for remote work, the tech stacks needed to make them happen for companies who operate outside of the tech space, the managers with the skills to effectively foster productivity, etc. We did little to nothing to implement them, and that’s squarely on senior leadership across mid and large C-Suites, governments whose longtime elected officials have stalled their learning later in life, and more.
On the flip side, I hope all of this causes senior leaders at companies to ask a key question: “Is this the output that my mid-level managers who are more performative (rather than substantive) have been putting out this entire time? ” This will be a hard look in the mirror, and several conversations about the Peter Principle can and should resurface in a world where managers need to be comfortable effectively managing up or managing out remote employees. One full year of lost productivity (this isn’t ending tomorrow) from front line employees because their line managers couldn’t deliver outputs without physically standing over them is a problem. - I learned that outside of work hours, I’m becoming more and more allergic to talking about work. It perpetuates the notion that Americans are their careers, and after spending a bunch of time in places where there’s a higher collective happiness level of populations with significantly lower GDPs.
- One of the more amusing things to come out of the last five weeks is the narrative that wine moms are fighting back against being called Karen. That is the most Karen thing I’ve ever heard. And if you want to follow a subreddit with an encyclopedic knowledge of suburban Karens, I would start here. I hope we get one for ‘Chad’ soon.
- The much-anticipated Final Fantasy VII remake was a solid B+. The musical score was fantastic and they put a unique spin on an impossibly legendary title in the short history of gaming as we know it, though it did have its shortcomings. I’ll probably write a full blog about this.
- Dennis Rodman deserves his own documentary. His antics in the 90’s were obviously out of the norm, but we’re not even close to understanding how many there were and how it got him into the 2000’s. While the entire nation sat in front of their TV’s to watch Episodes 3 & 4 of The Last Dance, there was a chance higher than zero that Dennis Rodman was on the phone with medical teams in China and North Korea being briefed on the health of Kim Jong-Un before any government official in America knew about it. Considering how 2020 is going, I wouldn’t even be surprised if he’s elected as the Supreme Leader of NK tomorrow.
That’s it for now. #StayHome and wear your masks.