Influencer Influenza

Today had been scheduled for my annual SXSW mockapolluza blog piece. Every year, since the festival began, I have gleefully taken the opportunity to bust its hairless hipster balls.

This year, due to the "almost airtight contained" outbreak of Coronavirus, the festival has been put on ice.

And with it, all my well hewn jokes about: kale, breakfast burritos, knit hats, Gary Vaynerchuk, ad tech, more ad tech, and still more ad tech, ear gauges, tattoos, FFDKK™ (Frivolous Fuckwadian Digital Knick Knacks, gang bangs, obscenely-paid C-Suiters, BBQ brisket, Capri pants, self important world changers and of course, The Long Table of Mediocrity™.

That will all have to wait until next year. God willing there will be a 2021.

If you are familiar with my curmudgeonly ways, you might imagine I have little use for these  industry confabs.

I'm not big on forums. Or panels. Or ra-ra speeches. Or really anything that involves more than 8 people. Unless there's alcohol, recreational painkillers and the possibility of some spouse-sanctioned, off-the-range bacchanalia involving fish net stockings and leather catcher masks.

I'm not a big group person.

These days, with the possibility of other people, who I probably don't like, killing me with an errant sneeze of fatal micro-contagions, I'm even less inclined to venture into a crowd.

Many, many years ago I was actually invited to Toronto to sit on one of these panels and speak publicly about some misperceived success. Naturally, I prepared nothing in advance. And winged the whole damn thing. It went surprisingly well.

The truth is, and I've got over 2000 entries on this blog to prove it, I know nothing. I have no expertise. At one point in my life I could solve differentiated quadratic equations and do some rudimentary bookkeeping, but other than that, I'm just an ad guy who can occasionally turn a funny phrase.

That makes for a pretty shallow and meaningless speech. In that light, you can see why I don't like to dish out advice. If I were to dispense any it would be directed at one person and one person only, the younger me.

Here, with the benefit of 2020 hindsight only a 44 year old could accumulate, is what I would tell my thinner and younger self:

1. Shut up and listen
2. Shut up and stop complaining
3. Shut up and play with your kids more
4. Shut up and stay away from the free Friday donuts
5. Shut up and leave that unburnt bridge, unburnt
6. Shut up and work harder
7. Shut up and plan better
8. Shut up and push yourself
9. Shut up and worry less
10. Shut up and enjoy more

I suppose I could share this homespun wisdom with my kids. But as you might have guessed, they don't listen to a word I say.