Thinking in Public
Smart people paying beautiful people to sell things to insecure people.
The economy is smart people paying beautiful people to sell things to insecure people.
Read it slow and it sorts itself out. Smart people build the funnel — the psychology, the timing, the growth loop. Beautiful people are the face on it — the ad, the reel, the smile that makes the pitch land. Insecure people are the audience the first two are built to reach.
You're probably all three in the same day. You strategize your own post at 8am, curate your face for it at noon, and by evening you're the one buying something to feel better about scrolling past someone else's.
It's hard to not be all of them. Creating is better than consuming.
I don't know who said it first. It goes around as a saying. The money behind the middle of the sentence is real: WPP Media forecasts global advertising revenue of $1.14 trillion in 2025, up 8.8%, not counting US political ads (WPP Media forecast). All of that is spent to reach someone like you.
Next time you want to buy something after seeing an ad or a post, wait a day and write down what you thought the purchase would fix. Then spend an hour making something instead: a post, a meal, a plan.
Choosing what you let into your feed is part of this, and I wrote about it in the future is all about taste.