Paul's Posts — 07 January 2012
By Paul McGowan
In yesterday’s post Bad Storytelling I got a lot of flame mail suggesting I was being critical of tweaks that work like CD rings, green pens, RainX CD cleaner. I was not.
I guess I should take my own advice about storytelling because if that was the message you got out of the post I didn’t do a very good job of telling the story I wanted to.
The message was not that the tweaks don’t work but that the stories being told about why they worked weren’t very good and, in most cases, not accurate at all. That’s where the “BS” part came in.
Most all the tweaks I’ve used work and make a difference. Why they work is another story and that story is the one I was referring to.
The point remains: if we really don’t understand why CD rings, green pens, RainX, demagnetizers work, we shouldn’t create a story that makes it sound like we do. That’s bad for everyone.
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Dom
I had no trouble understanding exactly what you meant. I thought your first explanation was on the mark about the created reasons about why something worked, not whether it actually worked, or not.
Paul McGowan
Thanks. Can’t say the same for a bunch of others, but that’s my fault, not theirs.