We recorded a live podcast last week at MSQ Sport and Entertainment in Covent Garden, to mark the launch of At Last, Callaway Golf's new brand film, a way in to a conversation about the state of the golf business as we head in to The Masters, the first major of the season. The film captures the mood nicely.
A golf ad that doesn't feature the product...Bolshevism!
There's been a story running over the last year or so about the sharp uptake in churchgoing among Gen Z.
This excited religious types, who then projected their own theories on to the data in a rush to explain why.
The theory was based on YouGov research.
Turn out the data was wrong.
Kaya Burgess, Religious Affairs Correspondent
The Times understands that it was mainly the result of people overseas who were trying to claim the financial incentive offered for completing surveys; it found that the fraud was human, rather than being caused by automated bots.
See also: excellent piece on the right's islamophobia.
Fraser Nelson
The creator of W1A has a new thing coming out.
Hugh Bonneville moves to Miami as Fifa’s director of integrity, chairing a strategic operations group, “or Sog”.
At what point does satire become redundant?
Pull this thread and very quickly you get to Philip Roth country:
“You can’t write good satirical fiction in America because reality will quickly outdo anything you might invent.”
He said this in the Nixon era.
Alan Lelchuk
Roth defined satire as "moral outrage transformed into comic art" and "a verbal ritualization of frustration and anger".
Malcolm Gladwell's Revisionist History is really good on the paradox of satire, which includes a version of confirmation bias, when viewers interpret satire in a way that aligns with their pre-existing beliefs.
A famous example is The Colbert Report, a right wing parody beloved by conservatives.
I enjoy talking with old pros. In this case defined as people who've worked in the industry for a long time.
Some of them have great stories; eye opening, jaw dropping anecdotes from their careers spent in and around the room where it happened.
My response is obvious: Come on the podcast and tell them.
Or, write them down. Publish them in a book, or a Substack.
Most don't want to do this.
They're worried about damaging their own or other people's reputations. Or they want a job and worry that they'll be seen as telling tales out of school. Sometimes it's just vanity stopping them, the stories aren't as interesting as they think, or they're not true.
But at what point do you say fuck it. I'm going to tell my story. As truthfully as I can. I've come to think that maybe our only job is to record as faithfully as we can what it was like to live at this time and in this place.
So, what are you waiting for?
The second question is can you be honest about the role you played.
Are you the main character, or a support act.
Are you Hamlet or Guildenstern?
Both are important.
But you need to be honest, and this can be added to the fears listed above, because the truth might conflict with how you've presented yourself in the past. We all big ourselves up, positioned ourselves closer to power than we really were, a little higher up the pole that was really the case.
The vast majority of us are Guildenstern. A minor character in a bigger story.
And that's ok.
In fact, it can be brilliant.
time flies when nobody's having fun.
We started calling them creators because of men
https://substack.com/@toni/note/c-249732812?r=wgri&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action
Interesting topic which goes under reported:
the Stanford study, a survey of more than 8,000 Liverpool fans, suggested the reason for the reduction in prejudice towards Muslims in Merseyside was because Salah was familiarizing his fans with Islam, through his observation of the faith, while his image as a bubbly father, friend, and fantastic footballer breaking down stereotypes of “threatening Muslims”.