👴🏻✨The Nexialist #0080
Retrospective Aging | Old Hollywood Bloopers | Predicting the Past | Funny Business | Ostrich Effect | Missing You | Where Do You Search? | Five Cs Research Routine| Missing You | Bedtime Stories
Welcome to my weekly attempt to put our brains to exercise a little bit, The Nexialist
I’m noticing the gifs I choose to open the newsletter have become temporal stamps for The Nexialist. Many times they are more related to something I went through or something I’m feeling in the moment I’m writing than the themes. Today I chose this one to to mark the pleasure of going to Lady Gaga’s concert. I’m filled with fabulousness and the joy of dancing together with a whole stadium. She looked and sounded incredible and gave us everything. It was so powerful… I had forgotten how that felt. Does that make me a Little Monster? 🫀
Enough! I will now leave you with this week’s Nexialist, and I hope you enjoy it.
1 year ago » 👙✨The Nexialist #0030 : 2031: A Future World Report | The State of Sustainability | Beyond Silicon Valley | Does Coolness Still Exist? | Skin Hunger | The Clothing Revolution | Classic Nudes | Nipples Poem | Lazy Eye
👨🏻Retrospective Aging
I just love Vsauce’s philosophical trips. In this case he was triggered by the question that many of us have asked: Did people used to look older? When we look at our parents photos at our age, or of old yearbooks, it’s hard to believe how young they were due to how they look. Turns out the answer is complex: while we are aging slower than our historic counterparts due to changes in habits like drinking, smoking, eating and exercising, the fashion and even body language play a large part on this perception of retrospective aging. He even mentions the iconic Time-Travelling Hipster with his unusual style (for the time) and invites us for a fun experiment:
It might be fun to start dressing even more casually or in some other odd way on the off chance that you happen to nail it and years from now you are worshiped as a time traveler.
📺Old Hollywood Bloopers
After watching Vsauce’s video, this thread with old Hollywood bloopers made me stop and click. It’s lovely to see them breaking character and going off-script while easily slipping some curse words.
🔮Predicting the Past
Predicting The Past – Zohar Studios: The Lost Years, a panoramic and humorous view of American life in the second half of the 1800s, channeled by a mythical nineteenth-century Jewish immigrant studio photographer, Shimmel Zohar. It is said that Zohar “explored concealed meanings, mysterious symbols that led to illuminating insight.” A brilliant, witty, visually delightful and humorous read, “even when fact could no longer be distinguished from fiction”.
I was fascinated with these photos and the title of the book/exhibition from 2021. The photos are not the original ones, but were recreated after a series of instructions found in a trunk of Shimmel Zohar. Titles like “Posthumorous” for a picture of a dead clown made me smile.
🗣Funny Business
I have a confession… I feel so uncomfortable with people that take themselves too seriously (also sometimes I do it and I have to snap out of it). Ana Andjelic’s newsletter Sociology of Business is again cracking codes and putting into words what is happening with some fashion brands, and I dare say, to other areas like music and online content. “Self-seriousness is not just a dearth of creativity, but also a losing strategic proposition. Serious brands are dead brands.”
Of course, it resonated with me, as I have discussed the importance of play and comedy in different Nexialists and I hope you see this as a recurrent theme around here (#0067 and #0009). She briefly talks about brand aesthetics, creative direction, audience management, and strategy. Below you can see some ways in which this fun and playfulness manifest in fashion. On her Substack, you see the brands, photos and examples.
Playfulness and humor reflect exquisite taste and precocious creativity. They also reveal sharp intelligence, maturity and confidence, irreverence and independence. In the practice of humor and play, imagination is crucial. Here are some favorites.
-Parody and self-depreciation: mockery and imitation of oneself
-Wit: dry, clever and reliant humor and play revolving around intellectual engagement of the audience.
-Surrealism: weird, illogical, absurd situations and nonsensical themes
-Burlesque: uses ridicule, satire and exaggeration for surprise or comic effect
-Lowbrow: despite popular opinion, it requires a lot of creativity and wit to do something tasteless.
-Incongruity: unexpected and surprising things, mix of things that don’t belong and are inconsistent with what we know about reality.
-Hyperbole: a technique that exaggerates situations, objects, or emotions in an unexpected and playful way.
🙈Ostrich Effect
They say the first step in fighting something is giving it a name. Recently I learned about the term Ostrich Effect. Examples include: not checking your bank account in fear of seeing the actual damage, not asking for feedback because you cannot handle negative feedback or avoiding taking a test/going to the doctor in order to avoid seeing the result.
The ostrich effect, also known as the ostrich problem, is a cognitive bias that describes how people often avoid negative information, including feedback that could help them monitor their goal progress. Instead of dealing with the situation, we bury our heads in the sand, like ostriches. This avoidance can often make things worse, incurring costs that we might not have had to pay if we had faced things head-on.
The resource I found with a great explanation is The Decision Lab’s Knowledge Center. They have a Bias Index, a very easy-to-navigate library with practical information.
[I know Emmanuel is an emu, not an ostrich, but I just laugh every time I see it, and they are related after all.]
🔎Where Do You Search?
Apparently younger people are starting their search journey also on TikTok and Instagram, data that came as a surprise. However, when you think about it, these platforms really have improved their search and tagging systems lately. Personally I am enjoying Instagram to find art/inspiration and nice recipes. One one side it is nice to see this searching behavior fragmenting in other tools. On another, the fragments are still in the Big Tech group.
“In our studies, something like almost 40% of young people, when they’re looking for a place for lunch, they don’t go to Google Maps or Search,” he continued. “They go to TikTok or Instagram.” The figure sounds a bit shocking, we have to admit. Google confirmed to us his comments were based on internal research that involved a survey of U.S. users, ages 18 to 24. The data has not yet been made public, we’re told, but may later be added to Google’s competition site, alongside other stats — like how 55% of product searches now begin on Amazon, for example.
This is also a reminder for us to vary your research beyond Google, especially when you want more of a social listening element. Reddit has also been a great source, with its thriving communities (though I would guess it’s for older generations than GenZ).
👓Five Cs Research Routine
I have brought Inesplorato here before as one of the reasons I wished everyone understood Portuguese. They are Knowledge Curators and they created an easy-to-follow researching routine to make the life of everyone that works with information, easier. I translated it for you.
“Our brain is not a machine. Reinventing the way how you inform yourself in order to improve your work is more than necessary.” “For each day of the week, a suggestion for you to inform yourself about an important theme about your work.”
➖Monday - CREATIVITY: Start the week by stimulating your mind, informing yourself about market news in a broad sense. Time to look at new technologies, new projects and inventions.
➖Tuesday - CUSTOMERS: You will connect with the people you work for, your company's customer. The idea is that you know about behaviors, habits and desires that are emerging and that you need to be aware of.
➖Wednesday - COMPETITORS: Day to look at your competitors, those who compete for the same customer of your company.
➖Thursday - CRITICAL THINKING: Time to face criticism, learn about the different points of view of your company.
➖Friday - CONTEXT: To close off the week, find out about what has happened in recent days in relation to the economy, society and culture.
They also suggest 4 steps to get started. I would add to block time in your day, whenever it works better for you.
Step 1: Choose one website for each C. It will be your source for a month for each theme.
Step 2: Organize your websites: Save on your opening screen of your phone (or favorites in your browser)
Step 3: Start the Routine: Now you just click on each link according to the day, and enjoy the reading with the theme in mind.
Step 4: Update your sources: Choose one day per month and put it in your calender to review your sources.
👀Missing You
SG Lewis released a couple of new songs and they feel so good, so I wanted to share one of them with you.
💤Bedtime Story
Shygirl’s new song is so much fun. A bit of a naughty lullaby. I hope you enjoy it! 😈
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🔌Let’s Collab?
I truly believe innovation comes from bringing improbable areas together, and that’s why I called this project The Nexialist. Some sectors are known to be self-referencing and hermetic. Sometimes teams are on autopilot mode, focused on the daily grind, which hinders innovation. As a Nexialist, I like to burst these bubbles, bringing references from different areas, and maintaining teams inspired and connected to the Zeitgeist.
I offer inspiration sessions, called Brainsparks, creative desk research (Zeitgeist Boost), Plug’n’Play deals for workshops and sprints, and other Bespoke formats. If you want to know more about this, send me an e-mail with your challenge(s) and we can figure something out together. Check out my website and some work I’ve done below:
Great roundup, Rodrigo, as always. The funny business topic reminded me of the "rogue social media manager persona" that's trending as an advertising strategy, with Duolingo as the biggest example. I love seeing humor, playfulness, and not taking everything so seriously, as a strategy from brands.