This morning I spent a few minutes performing a routine medical procedure to get my blood pressure up. In other words, I read an article that popped up on a news aggregator, from some site I had never heard of, called Stakedy. The headline of the article ran:
“Social justice for the bald man”
The article was a quick series of arguments backed with proof. Baldness causes social stigma and pain for bald men, who spend billions of dollars trying to repair their wounded self-images. Of the top 100 most beautiful actors in the world, exactly zero are bald. Baldness is a genetically caused medical condition. For all these reasons, discrimination against the bald should not be allowed in a progressive society.
The article concluded with the following:
“Do we need laws to fine people for such discrimination? Do we need quotas for bald men on movie sets? Do we need to demonize women who won’t date a bald man for fear that she will have a bald child? What we need are some bald social justice warriors.”
As I finished the article, I both grinned and I frowned.
I grinned because I looked forward to the furious comments, both pro and con, that were sure to follow in the comments section of that news aggregator site.
I frowned because in spite of myself, I took a side. I started preparing my own serious and impassioned arguments and getting ready to enter the fight, at least in my head.
Sure enough, in the comments, there was plenty of dismantling, dismay, disappointment, and disgust.
“What’s next? Social justice for the short and for the shortsighted?” “You can’t save everyone…” “I’ve been bald since 1989 and I think…”
And then there was the top comment. It quietly said:
“Stakedy is auto-generated by AI. (It’s hard to figure out how, it’s some crazy blockchainy thing.) The fact that people don’t recognize that and try to argue the merit of the article here makes me scared.”
So what to say?
I could get back on my favorite hobby horse, and say that “good enough” AI is coming, or is in fact here.
Some people insist that copywriters and marketers will be spared if they are smart enough, if they are empathetic enough, or if they are simply willing to work hard enough. Who knows, maybe these people will be proved right.
Or maybe they will be proved wrong. Maybe we will all soon be campaigning for social justice for our particular stigmatized and endangered groups…
But you know, that’s just my hobby horse. And you can’t ride too far on one of those.
So instead, let me saddle up a big and serious Clydesdale for you:
Humans have these predictable, robot-like emotional buttons that can be pressed.
One button for attention.. another for affinity… a third for acquisitiveness.
These buttons are so predictable and so easy to press that now even a machine can do it.
So shouldn’t you be doing more of this pressing, in your own marketing and copy, in some smart and empathetic way?
I’ll leave that question hanging in the air.
And I’ll just say that, if you want my help performing this routine medical procedure on your audience, now, while there’s still time, before we’re both out of a job, you can contact me here: