Upstream #192

religion of Z ??, satisfy ??, stupid chaos ??, synthetic ??, arooj ??.

Hey, how you doing? All ok? Good. Won’t dilly dally this week. Let's get on with it.?

“I like subversive humor, freckles, women's knees and long hair, the laughter of playing children, and a girl running down the street. I hope for vibrant love, the impossible, the chimerical. I dread knowing precisely my own limitations.”

René Magritte

culture // religion of Z ??♀?

In the 1600’s Blaise Pascal wrote “there is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of each man which cannot be satisfied by any created thing but only by God the Creator”. Or everyone has a god shaped hole in their heart.?Freya India wrote about the dangers of?therapy culture becoming a new religion for Gen Z, she said "we don’t pray at night; we repeat positive affirmations. We don’t confess; we?trauma dump.?We don’t seek salvation; we go on?healing journeys".?A self care obsession, has become a hyper individualistic religion.?There’s an absence of guardrails, beliefs (one reason authoritarianism is rising) and being a part of something bigger. Which brings us neatly to Amish barn raising and cultures that exist on collectivism and reciprocity. So, how can young people build barns together?

brands // satisfy ??♂?

Satisfy is a Parisian running brand founded in 2015 by Brice Partouche. A runner himself, he was also a skater and snow boarder as a kid. For him, both were more about friends and experiences, than points and performance.?So, he wanted to create a running brand like that. For people that run, not just runners. Less performance. More culture.?Subtle, but important. He said in an interview?“what the big brands were doing with the performance side of things it didn’t resonate with me at all. There was no music, no art, no experience. I wanted to give running a new culture, an alternative.”?They shot an ad a few months ago in LA (I think I saw you on my run today) featuring War On Drugs.?It’s COOL. And captures it well.?Small shifts, can create great space.

creativity // stupid chaos ??

Work is mostly about order. Process. Systems. But?chaos is critical for creativity. And we badly need more creativity. Chaos and confusion are essential, to see things fully. You have to allow yourself to get uncomfortable. Innovation and creativity often emerge, as Steven Johnson wrote in Where Ideas Come From, “on the brink of chaos, in the fruitful realm between order and anarchy”. Ian Leslie also wrote how?creativity needs stupidity. How traditional “Intelligence" and creativity are different things. Analytical, logical thinking is often ignored when we’re being creative. We need to be comfortable being stupid, saying mad things, without fear of failure. Just like Bob.

technology // synthetic ??

Synthetic data is rapidly headed your way. It's already all over pharma, healthcare and banking, now it’s coming for market research.?Two big wigs from the Linkedin B2B Institute have launched a platform to produce lots of it. Instead of humans, research is run on digital twins or?synthetic personas. AI is trained on large data sets to mimic human answers (90%+ accuracy). Ritson has a view, he says?"This will be the story of AI versus a half-assed, often hilariously bad process, which can be replaced by a superior system that works for a fraction of the cost and lead time" Feels like another step into the mirror world. Reality is blurring. Researching robots, to make ads with robots, which get viewed by robots. Sigh. When we act like robots, we'll be replaced by them.

five random (ish) things:

1. Think?outside the box ?? .
2. Small is big in the Tiny Awards ??.
3. BIG activations here ?? & here ??.
4. Sexy rat boyfriends ?? ?
5. The death of the dining room ??

listening // arooj ????.

Arooj Aftab’s new album, Night Reign, is lovely. The grammy winning Pakistani-Amercian singer, composer, producer made a warm musical bath. Sit in. Soak. Linkedin isn't allowing share links from the album ??♂?, so here's her tiny desk concert from a few years ago.