as a start, I look at what those who appear in my LinkedIn feed “do”

…to determine “who is what”

To illustrate this article, on how to use “cuteness” as a criterion for separating the trivial pursuits crowd from the builder class (i.e., those I address – and need to address), I used the front cover of the book titled “The Power of Cute”, by Simon May, a hardcover edition of which one can buy for $17.52, through Amazon (? https://www.amazon.com/Power-Cute-Simon-May/dp/0691181810? ).

Dispensing and Consuming “cuteness”

…entertainment for the masses

The Economist (February 10th – 16th, 2024), in its culture section, included an article titled: “small but mighty – the culture of cuteness” – which was about how “cuteness” has taken over the world.

The Economist “piece” starts with the following sentence: Scroll through any social-media feed, and before long a cute video will appear.

It then goes on to inform us (as if we didn’t already, know) that “the supply of these endearing clips is huge” - on TikTok there are 65m videos tagged #cute – and the demand is even greater (those videos have been viewed more than 625bn times).

Although the author of the book I used to illustrate this article, looks at the “pervasiveness” of the “cuteness” phenomenon from a cultural, sociological and psychological perspective (and arrives at some surprising conclusions), my interest in cuteness focused on how I can use this phenomenon to separate the “trivial pursuits” class of Health Tourism Industry Player from the “builder class”.

I address – and need to address – the Health Tourism Sector “builder class” (a.k.a. the growth makers and developers), and the challenge I face is how to separate this class of industry player from the “trivial pursuit” class.

One way to do this is by considering what they “read and watch” (or if they are LinkedIn “creators”, what they publish – and in what format).

In other words, what the Builder Class “consumes” and what this class “dispenses”.

I came to the conclusion that these “no-nonsense” growth-makers (who are not prone to wasting their time) obviously, consume “business-relevant information” – as opposed to entertainment (which is the reason that what I publish, for the most part, are “read – learn – understand – do” documents).

If they want entertainment they go to the theatre or cinema – or better still, to a rock concert.

Then (mostly out of curiosity) I looked at what “industry players” generally, often put out (create and publish / post), in order to draw (grab) our attention.

Not surprisingly, a lot of it is in the form of “infotainment” (media content that combines factual information with elements of entertainment, aimed at appealing to a “wider audience”) – heavily laced with “cuteness” (a subjective quality perceived as adorable, charming or endearing).

Since my objective is not to appeal to a wider audience addicted to entertaining cuteness, I arrived at the conclusion that the “dispensing and consumption” of cuteness could be used as a criterion for separating the trivial pursuits crowd from the builder class.

Of course, the challenge remains of determining who, amongst the Health Tourism Industry Players, consumes and dispenses cuteness.

As a start, I look at what those who appear in my LinkedIn feed “do”.

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