...it seems as a society that we've come to kind of glorify people who just shoot from the hip and say quippy things without giving it a whole lot of thought, and maybe that's partially a reaction against the fact that when we do see things that are more polished, they tend to be advertisements which the platform has kept you on to see as many of as possible.
- Jameson Nathan Jones, composer
I thought this aside from him was so insightful. I think this broad reaction is totally understandable, and that it compounds problems with how we create things and share them online right now, and how we treat information in general.
Your gut feeling, hot take, or first-and-only-draft is real--but it's a grave mistake to treat those as 'more real' or 'more authentic' than a research process, creative revisions, questioning yourself, building a robust argument, and the effort of making your work refined, coherent, and appealing to the people you want to reach. In a word: polish.
We do this because most of us want to be (or at least seem) real / authentic, and it's natural to avoid things which are positioned as less real or less authentic. When the very idea of effort, polish, and deeper thought in our work is put in that position--most people will put in less effort, avoid deeper thought, and will not refine their work or make it more coherent or more appealing. If you've ever heard the term 'try-hard,' been told you're 'overthinking it,' or that you're 'too sensitive,' you've experienced this mindset at work.
Here's the big problem with that, when we put 'brands' / 'corporations' / 'capitalism' or just plain 'bad actors' back into the mix: they will keep creating refined, coherent, and appealing advertisements, movies, articles, news bylines, scientific studies, books, videos, podcasts, TV shows, inventions / patents, you name it. Their ideas and their message will be carried out into the world, by means of their refined, coherent, appealing work. Polish propagates; polish persists.
Rejecting polish in your own work means rejecting much of its potential to propagate. Writ large: if entire communities of artists and thinkers retreat from refinement, coherence, and appeal? Then the ecosystem of refined, coherent, appealing work, which propagates and persists, will naturally be dominated by the brands and bad actors whose work has polish.
I would not like that. I hope that you also would not like that.
To avoid that, then, our responsibilities are twofold:
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Produce polished work. Refine your ideas, make them coherent, and make them appealing. Appeal includes elements traditionally grouped in the realm of 'branding': making it discoverable, giving it a nice catchy title, getting the visuals 'just so,' giving people an 'in.' Obviously there's room for posting your short hot takes as well, but if there's something there? Polish that something. Your authentic ideas deserve, and demand, your authentic effort.
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Engage with and propagate the polished work of the people you like. You are a part of this ecosystem, not an outside observer. Ideas don't grow and prosper by themselves. People are part of that, and you are part of people. Yes, this takes effort. See all of the above.
