Stakes and Brotatoes: Why All Those Awful Business Hucksters Don't Get They're a Joke
It's late, and I should be asleep, but when you're a professional creative, you don't exactly get to leave work at work. Aside from the fact that my office is just a few feet from where I watch Bluey and Mira and Elena with my kids, my job relies on my ability to see the world, synthesize meaning from it, and turn pretty much anything I experience into words. You never, ever, ever shut that off. Everywhere you go, you're kinda on the clock.
So it's late, and I should be sleeping, but the world just put up a sign that said, "This is a story, Jay! Or at least a rant?"
I'm scrolling Instagram, flicking my thumb past a chef making crab rangoon mozzarella sticks, a podcaster yukking it up with a comedian guest, and a graphic reading "BREAKING" about a sportsball team I love watching. Then I see it. I see ... him.
The business bro.
He's not an obvious business bro at first. He's got a cool-looking hat on. Vanilla-cream white with teal cursive—a logo I don't recognize, because I'm the kind of guy who watches Bluey and Mira and Elena with my kids and then writes "cool-looking hat!!!!" to thousands of people.
He's skinny, with piercing blue eyes and an angular, close-cropped beard. He leans forward, and the microphone (set to maximum gain) blasts into my earballs a single line that inspired me—nay, forced me—to write about it.
Let me set the scene.
I see a split second of this guy's beige ceiling to start the video, then his camera whip-pans down to reveal his cool hat and his regular face.
Cue movie trailer music.
BWAHHHHHHH
"They didn't believe me when I said I could create an entire ebook in seconds."
BWAHHHHHHH
I glance at the profile handle. Something to do with some AI tool for writers.
"Mmph, umph, can you stop?" mumbles my wife. She was trying to fall asleep, but there I lay. Staring at my phone. Watching this Instagram ad.
Laughing my ass off.
* * *
Dear reader, we need to talk about how to use stakes in your writing and speaking, and to do that, we get to dunk on the most insufferable types of online communicators. Don't you just love when business and art combine?
BWAHHHHHHH
"They didn't believe me when I said I could create an entire ebook in seconds."
BWAHHHHHHHahaha
Effective communicators and storytellers understand there's a delicate relationship between the action being described or shown and the emotional stakes created through techniques like music, sound, tone, story structure, and story details included or omitted. Increasing the stakes or decreasing them changes the feel of the story for the audience.
When a simple or typically low-stakes action is given exceedingly high stakes, the result is comedy or parody. Imagine a person handing a friend a teaspoon from across the kitchen table. Now imagine the same hand-off happening in extreeemely slooow moootiooon, set to Avengers-like cinematic music. Or think of a person asking a colleague to grab a friendly cup of coffee down the hall, and when they decline, cut to the first person sobbing uncontrollably in the corner, violins playing in the background.
These actions (handing someone a spoon; grabbing coffee with a coworker) are naturally low-stakes events. When given ridiculously high stakes in a story, the resulting moment is cringeworthy, hilarious, or both. That's because the action and the stakes are wildly misaligned. The audience’s expectations and what they’re given clash.
Again, this is great when your intention is to make a joke.
Someone should tell our baby boi the business bro and his cool hat. He didn't intend for his ad to feel like comedy or parody. As a result, HE is the joke.
BWAHHHHHHHahaha
I imagined him saying to others, "I can write an ebook in seconds," and them replying, "Ha, ok." And instead of shrugging it off, he stomped back to his desk and simmered. "Fools! I'll show them. I'll show them ALL! Then they will see! THEN THEY WILL ALL SEE!"
To be clear, we are talking about (checks notes) writing an ebook. The most commodified and arguably weakest current tactic from the generic content marketing playbook born in 2012. But I imagine this cool-hat-beardy-guy plotting revenge and taking this SO seriously, and I can’t stifle my late-night giggle sesh.
(Late-Night Giggle Sesh: new band name, I call dibs.)
Look, we all benefit from communicating with greater tension, imbuing emotional stakes into our words and our stories, but to do it well, we have to match how others really feel about something. In their heart of hearts, something about their work really matters. They just wouldn’t describe it with those emotions or stakes to their peers, but as a leader, YOU understand it and give language to it. This means going one or two steps further into your feelings than anyone would admit out loud is accurate to how THEY really feel. But I said “one or two steps.” I didn’t say, “You see that molehill over there? In the story, make it a mountain.”
We have to use tension tactfully and strategically align the stakes of our messages and stories to the reality of how the audience feels. Otherwise, we come across too pushy, too self-important, too much like that old Silicon Valley joke: "We're changing the world! … with an app that lets you send the word yo.”
(Be right back, I have to spend 10 minutes being sad that we lived through a moment where THAT APP WAS REAL and everybody was trying to make sense of how it would change communication … forever.)
(If I’m not back after 10 minutes, realize I’ve facepalmed myself so hard, I had to be rushed to the emergency room.)
Add tension, but don't be overly dramatic.
Create emotional stakes, but ensure they're true to what others really feel.
"Overpromising" is many a-bro's preferred approach to marketing, whether it's in reference to the results they swear they can deliver ("10x your revenue in 10 seconds!") or it's something more insidious, something harder to describe but undeniably present. The latter instance can be pretty subtle. Then again, swiping away at your phone, it can also be hilariously bad.
BWAHHHHHHH