3D-printed shoes, AI-fake news, and the cult of cute
Cuteness overload
To mark the 50th anniversary of Hello Kitty, a cultural exhibition has just opened in London. The name? CUTE. Obvi!!!
See what I did there?
One aspect of cuteness is the overuse of exclamation points and shortened or lengthened word forms. It’s just sooooo adorbs!!
Sorry, couldn’t resist.
Although the exhibition is presented in partnership with Hello Kitty creator Sanrio (the company that arguably commercialized cuteness), the collection explores far beyond white cartoon cats with no visible mouth. Curator Claire Catterall has showcased “the most prominent aesthetic of our times” through a variety of artifacts, artworks, videos, and video games.
Cuteness, in the form of the Japanese kawaii esthetic, pre-dates Hello Kitty, and can include handwriting, fashion, behavior, and design. Some critics see the cute phenomenon as a yearning for eternal childhood in a world where “adulting” is so difficult it needs its own noun. But I’m not so sure that this is the real explanation for cute’s popularity. After all, age is basically just a number – children can have traumatic experiences and adults often retire in comfort.
The superficial features of cuteness – big eyes, curved edges, pastel colors, demure behaviour – are not a consistent reflection of immaturity, but of softness and gentleness. To truly understand cute, it helps to look at its opposite, which is a sliding scale of nasty, starting at being unfair, then moving on to being harsh, criminal, cruel, and, ultimately, violent. From this perspective, cute is an escape from a reality that seems to be terrifyingly unpredictable
The writer of a Guardian piece about the CUTE exhibition wrote this week: “Who loves cute things most? Advertising executives!” I beg to differ. In fact, my personal experience of ad creatives (I’m not sure who he meant by “executives”), as well as being one myself, leads me to the opposite conclusion. Copywriters like edgy stuff that isn’t cute at all. No, the people who love cute things the most are privileged people who only stand to lose, both physically and psychologically, from a world where the opposite of cuteness fills our news feeds and social commentary.
We can learn something from two esthetic movements that had their turn in the cultural spotlight one hundred years ago: the clean lines, white surfaces, and geometric shapes of Bauhaus design and Modernism; and the dream imagery, irrational irony, and fluid forms of the Dada movement and Surrealism. The former was a rejection of the insane carnage of the First World War through order and purity. The latter was an acceptance of that same carnage by pushing its insanity to the limit. Both were attempts to deal with social crises.
If the current popularity of cuteness is an attempt to deal with the crises of our own era, who’s to say that it’s a bad thing? And, as I noted back in December, surrealism is making a comeback. Coincidence? That would be super-duper cute!
Treading carefully
London-based footwear brand Vivobarefoot has partnered with material science company Balena to create the prototype for a running shoe that is 3D-printed from compostable materials. Called VivoBiome, the shoe is intended to be made-to-measure, based on in-store foot scans, and printed over 30 hours. The shoe looks a little like a bleached Croc that has been melted onto a foot, which might not sound great, but is presumably comfortable whatever fashion sacrifices you end up making for the sake of the planet. Balena’s BioCir®flex material is a patented thermoplastic formulated from 51% biological and 49% petrochemical ingredients, so it cannot be thrown into a domestic compost heap but is biodegradable in a composting plant, as opposed to being discarded in a landfill.
VivoBiome shoes are certainly more eco-friendly than mass-market running shoes made with plastics and glue (and more biodegradable than certain “vegan” alternatives made from petrochemicals), however the most environmentally responsible option for footwear may still be leather: long-lasting, repairable, biodegradable, and a byproduct of the meat and dairy industries. At least the VivoBiome shoe promises to provide an alternative that is one giant step away from the landfill.
News you can’t use
Research by 404 Media reveals that AI-generated news articles are becoming more prevalent on Google News listings. These pieces are often word-for-word rip-offs of already published content with minor changes such as the headline. Of course, anyone can cut and paste a news item onto their own website without attribution, but AI allows scammers to automate this plagiarism at scale. Even national news outlets such as the CBC are becoming victims of the practice.
Worryingly, the 404 Media reporter was told by Google that the company does not focus on whether a news article was written by a bot or a human. As we witness the floodgates open to a tidal wave of AI-generated content, tech firms – from X to Meta and Google – are increasingly under pressure to establish content moderation systems that protect both the creators of original content and the consumers of that content. But moderation is expensive and complicated, so internet users will increasingly be forced to double-check sources themselves or approach what they read, hear, and see with a heavy dose of skepticism.
AI jobs impact less than feared
New research from MIT and IBM suggests that although machine learning models will reshape the labor market, the impact may be more gradual than many observers expect and many workers fear. The study factored in whether AI systems actually perform well enough to replace human tasks, the economics behind reaching such a level of performance, and the investment needed by companies to replace humans with AI. When researchers crunched the numbers based on real-world scenarios, they concluded that disruption may happen much more slowly than current panic would suggest.
Interesting and somewhat positive news on a similar subject comes from a recent survey of nearly 700 business leaders across countries on several continents about what skills employees need as AI becomes a workplace reality. USC business professor Peter Cardon summarizes the conclusions in this Fast Company article. The bottom line? AI is encouraging employers to value soft skills such as interpersonal communication, integrity, and the ability to inspire others. In other words, as intelligent machines become more commonplace, humans need to become more human!
Nausheen Chen, public speaking coach
Business leaders, top academics, and even famous actors can suffer from nerves before addressing an audience. But when a presenter is supremely confident, a different problem sometimes occurs: smooth talking can signal inauthenticity. The last thing you want is for people to switch off because they don’t trust what you’re saying. So I asked Nausheen Chen what advice she would give speakers who want to be convincing.
Q. Could you explain to readers how they should balance authenticity and performance when presenting an idea, making a pitch or simply giving a public speech?
A. There’s no distinction between authenticity and performance. Or at least, there’s no distinction when the two are done right.
I see too many speakers being robotic and unnatural when they speak because they think that’s what it means to be a strong speaker. They think they need to put on a persona, announce something, or wave their hands about. The critical mistake that they’re making is that they’re introducing a disconnect: between their “true” authentic selves and what they’re projecting outwardly as a performance.
The truth is, you don’t need to put on a performance when you present your idea or make a pitch. You need to amplify yourself. You don’t need to tick off the boxes on some arbitrary list of “speaker rules”. You need to figure out which parts of your own personality to shine a spotlight on.
Here is the 3-step framework that I teach all my clients so they become their most impactful selves when they speak anywhere. I call it my “out-in-out” strategy – but it unfortunately doesn’t have anything to do with In-n-Out burgers (except in its deliciousness).
1. Analyze what’s on the outside: First, develop a clear understanding of how you’re being perceived when you speak. Ask for feedback from your network. Record yourself speaking and evaluate your skills. This might be a cringeworthy exercise – but it’s crucial in understanding what your current strengths are and what you need to improve in. You can evaluate your skills in 5 broad areas: your voice, your energy, your body language, your expressions, and your overall articulation.
2. Work on the inner skills and confidence: Then, work on building your skillset as well as your inner confidence. No shortcuts here – work with a coach or enroll in training to learn and practice effective and impactful speaking skills. Don’t just focus on outward mannerisms like how to stand, how to project your voice, or how to eliminate filler words. Those tools are important – but not as important as your inner ease and comfort. Once you’re totally comfortable speaking to an audience – that’s when you can infuse your talk or presentation with your personality.
3. Now go out there and test your skillset: This is not just about “getting the reps in” – it’s about strategic application of what you’ve learned. Each time you deliver a presentation or do a podcast – target working on a specific speaking skill or tool. That way you can easily measure how successful you were at applying it afterwards.
You don’t need to sound like a poor replica of someone else when you speak. You need to create an amplified version of what makes you “you” – and then activate it each time you want to impress when you speak.
Nausheen I. Chen is a French-Pakistani public speaking coach and a 3-time TEDx speaker. She has coached CEOs and founders of fast-growing companies to speak on the BBC, Forbes, TEDx, Bloomberg, Business Insider, TechCrunch, and more. She has helped execs at companies like IBM, AT&T, SAP, Walmart, and P&G to build their personal brands through speaking on camera and on stage. She has 15+ years of training, speaking, and coaching experience – all the way from Fortune 50 giant Procter & Gamble to bootstrapping a communications strategy startup to $1 million in revenue. Her website is at www.speaking.coach.
Flat whites for everyone
In his new book Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture, journalist Kyle Chayka explores what he calls “the tyranny of the algorithm”. It’s the phenomenon we often experience where hipster cafes all have the same vibe wherever you are in the world. The generic millennial look of WeWork office spaces, Instagram walls, and gastro pubs has been shaped by the recommendation engines of social media platforms. We find ourselves trapped in a bland yet vicious circle drawn in in the perfect foam atop a fair trade latte.
Chayka called this homogenized reality “filterworld” – a global phenomenon we can all recognize from its curated mix of artisan and tech that suspends any notion of specific location. Are we better off in a world where digital nomads can flit from continent to continent with interchangeable backgrounds for their Zoom meetings? Chayka wonders whether seamless consumption puts us in a state of constant docility. Sounds more like flat beige to me.
Google’s GenAI
Digital marketers all over the world are bracing themselves against the upheaval to the search landscape that Google’s generative AI model will bring over the course of the year. In this episode of #Hashtags, Gartner’s Marketing and Communications podcast, researchers Jessica Dervyn and Wilson Zhao discuss how these changes are driving a decrease in brand visibility on Google SERP, which is challenging brand website traffic from organic search. Consumer search behavior is constantly changing, and Google SGE (Search Generative Experience) will further transform how consumers look for and find information online.
Dog brush?
Want a fun new Discomfort Zone feature? Well, here you go!
Despite achieving impressive results for many visual outputs, AI image generator Midjourney still produces comically bizarre pics that totally ignore clear user instructions. And because Midjourney’s interface is hosted on Discord, anyone can see what everyone is producing.
So today I bring you: the dog brush:
Send me your comments on Discomfort Zone at john@johnbdutton.com and please connect with me on LinkedIn if you haven’t already.