Was reading a substack from a Canadian writer (get me with the channel awareness, and at my age. Mind you, I’ll probably find out my 90-year old In Laws have been on there, like, for ages) about how people who post are “addicted to attention”. 

More interestingly (because I can’t possibly be suffering from that condition…) was her thesis about how we - well, again, not me, obviously - use all kinds online spaces to continually seek “to misunderstand each other”.

The compulsion to take an actively disagree(able) stance isn’t something you ordinarily experience in business (even takedowns in LinkedIn are usually well-tempered. Been a while since I read a serious piece of shitposting there, but I’m always up for the sardonic sideswipe). Clients rarely actually lean across the table (or the desktop) to tell you to, how should I put this, ‘shut the fuck up you no-mark’ and put you on ignore. 

I get that being obtuse is a serial trait (at least associatively? Well, by reputation and so to an extent, expectation) of designers, especially at the Director-level end of the spectrum, but I’d always put that down to either a certain type of wilfulness (for which read bloody-mindedness) where the person really isn’t doing something in anything other than their own (imagined) best interest; or strongwill because, having actually looked carefully at things from all angles they could see actual benefits - ones that given a chance to unpack would demonstrate real worth. 

The former is just a massive emotional wind-up; likely to win awards, rather less hearts. I’d always choose to work with the latter - always nicer to be gently wised-up. Owls might not be as noisy as Seagulls, but they’re less likely to crap all over you. 

Today I also discovered that the Old English word for all owls is ‘ule’, which is pronounced ‘oooo-l’. Which if you say it out loud is almost exactly what they sound like. And it also sounds bit like ‘all’ and much nicer than a gull’s ‘ha-ha-ha’…