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version seven. http://demongin.org |
Who is Seth Godin?
In which I go on record as having called for his resignation.
Thursday, 2011-03-17 | New Athens, On the Internet, On Writing Well
| Take Leo Burnett, David Ogilvy, Bill Bernbach and Mark Twain. Combine their brains and shave their heads. What's Left? Seth Godin. |
| Jay Levinson |
I had never heard of Seth Godin until yesterday.
If I have not been misinformed, he is something of a celebrity blogger: near as I can tell, Seth Godin makes his money making speeches, publishing collections of his wise bloggings and so on. Apparently he is well-known, well-received and very popular.
My introduction to Godin came via a post on his blog that indicts the "drive-by technorati" for the insubstantial nature of their contributions to media and technology discourse:
These people rarely do anything of much value, though...Click the link and read the whole thing. It's about 200 words. Most of Godin's posts are about that long.
...
Only when an innovation is dead can the real work begin.
...
The drive-by technorati are well-informed, curious and always probing. They're also hiding... hiding from the real work of creating work that matters, connections with impact and art that lasts. I love to hear about the next big thing, but I'm far more interested in what you're doing with the old big thing.
A developer I know criticized Godin's style but conceded that he was making a "solid point". My actuary buddy expressed annoyance that Godin, frequently credited as some kind of technology or media guru, really only publishes "obvious advice trying to be frank and quaint".
I kind of see the former angle--i.e. that these are inane commonplaces dressed up as media/business savvy--but after scrolling through Godin's blog for a few minutes, I have yet to see anything verging on "solid". In fact, I don't see a single substantial sentence in the whole collection.
Based on the annoying, parochial tone to the sheer uselessness of the "points" he makes, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that this guy Godin is not even really worth discussing. His "essays" (and I hesitate to even call them that) are merely the long-form tweets of a vapid narcissist with nothing to say and no justification for saying it.
No justification outside of paying the dry cleaning bill, I mean.
In the essay I mention above, does he really score a meaningful hit on the "drive-by technorati"? Does he say something that fundamentally undermines the or even seriously calls into question the inevitable (and well-observed) tendency of those on the cutting edge towards internecine conflict?
Furthermore, consider his main thesis in the post we're talking about: "[o]nly when an innovation is dead can the real work begin."
Is that even supported in the "essay"? Or is this sort of inane platitudinizing exactly the same thing that the "drive-by technorati" do, except without any actual substance, support or even so much as a nod in the direction of a qualification?
Godin fires some chaff in the form of hypothetical generalizations:
Great music wasn't created by the first people to grab an electric guitar or a synthesizer. Great snowboarding moves didn't come from the guy who invented the snowboard... No one thinks Gutenberg was a great author, and some of the best books will be written long after books are truly dead.But does that support the concluding point that the "drive-by technorati" are somehow professionally or commercially deficient because they choose to concern themselves with emerging media per se, rather than concerning themselves with a particular medium?
I don't think it does. And scrolling through his blog, I see a lot of this kind of writing. I see a lot of poor writing: disingenuous, unconvincing and, most unforgivably, deeply cynical writing that conveys little other than the author's obnoxious self-satisfaction.
Bottom line: a guy only writes like Seth Godin writes when he knows he's getting paid by the profundity.
