Nightmare

Song of the Day 08/17/2022

Nightmare by Artie Shaw

I must apologize for an annoying typo at the beginning of yesterday’s post. By mistake, I wrote ‘I grew up in Manhattan, where having a car is much stupider than owning one.’ What I meant to write was, ‘where having a car is much stupider than not having one.’ I’ve changed it in the permanent version on the website, but I couldn’t help but be extremely annoyed, as most people who read this thing do it on their email. Once the email goes out, I can’t change it. It’s like in a conversation, I should choose my words carefully. I can’t change what was already said aloud. I can amend it, sure. But the original words were still spoken, the mind of the interlocutor still affected. It’s like when comedians trip over one of their words in the telling of a joke, a performer’s version of a typo. Ninety percent of the time, the punchline is ruined. Some comedians with great experience can make up for this faux pax and turn the mistake into an impromptu joke, which is kind of what I’m trying to do now regarding yesterday’s mistake. Still, though, the mistake was made. I’m human, fallible, it’s normal, all that, I know. But imagining people reading my work who aren’t that aware of my previous writing, seeing such a nonsensical mistake in the first paragraph, thinking, undoubtedly, ‘well, he’s not ready for my attention, this boy clearly needs more experience before I spend my time with his letters.’ Ugh, it’s tough. To be honest, I can’t even be sure I haven’t made a mistake in this post. I’m not really the most talented copy editor on earth. 

I had a short-lived job not too long ago writing for an Instagram news site. What they did was amalgamate the headlines and turn them into memes. They would also summarize popular historical topics in 300-word posts, like a very dumbed down, condensed version of a Wikipedia page. This is all fine and good fun. It was an OK job for me too, as it paid well and probably wouldn’t take up so much time. The problem is that the ‘founders’ of the Instagram page considered themselves to be very serious journalists, which they weren’t, and aren’t, as journalists usually provide some sense of original material, at the very least. 

My job was mainly to write up the 300-word articles, around two per day, and then find some headlines for their audience, which was on the younger end of the demographic known as Generation Z. I quickly learned that if there was a typo in one of the articles, or a misplaced comma, or period, the ‘founders’ lost their mind. It’s not like I ever hit the publish button on anything. Paranoid as ever, they would never have trusted a social media acolyte like me with the login information to their precious Instagram account. What I did was submit them drafts, which in their mind had to be absolutely spotless. 

‘We’re changing the world,’ they’d say, convincing themselves that they were a team made up of the Saints Luke and Paul, who in the first century of the Common Era began the long process of converting a good amount of the world to Christianity, changing the course of history forever. This is, I believe, how these Instagram account founders saw themselves. ‘We do not have time to edit,’ they continued. ‘If you can’t control your typos, you aren’t disciplined enough.’ 

‘Well, all writers make a few typos here and there.’ I finally responded one day. ‘That’s why we have editors.’ 

‘We are not editors.’ One of them said, sternly. ‘And frankly, we don’t need you to tell us how to run our business.’ 

‘Well, what is it you do all day then?’ 

This made them very angry. 

’Engagement! Strategy! We’re designing memes for our 1 million followers, we’re thinking of how to grow our mission, and how to grow it fast! Again, we don’t have time to fix a fucking sentence.’ 

‘But your business is a product, and your product is these short informational essays, these consolidated news headlines.’ 

‘Our product is whatever the hell we want it to be! Wow. Where the hell do you get off telling us, who built all of this (Instagram account) what our company is and isn’t.’ 

Anyway, this went on a few minutes longer, and I quit, or I was fired. I’m not really sure. It was kind of mutual, as they say. It was surely better to have some economic insecurity for a little while than cater to these psychopaths. For most of my adult life, so far, I’ve chosen the route of economic insecurity over catering to psychopaths, which won’t get anyone very far in the business world. This is also fine by me. 

It’s possible to read that anecdote and think: It’s a one-sided story, he probably has an authority complex, he must never be able to work anywhere, for anyone. And I’ll answer: Partially, that take is true, I don’t like working for people I believe to be either crazy or stupid. This makes me a difficult employee. But I do have quite a large threshold before considering something or someone to be crazy or stupid. I have to witness many, many occurrences of craziness and stupidity before I say to myself, OK, this person is off their rocker, I cannot work here. Plus, I have worked very well for masters, bosses, mentors, professors, whatever you want to call them. I might need to feel a sense of ‘respect’ for these people, more so than another person might in order to work somewhere for a while, but I don’t need to find a supervisor to be a genius or anything. I just request from a boss that they be nice, and, if possible, curious, without any power trip—this is a much rarer occurrence than I expected before entering the workforce. It turns out that there are lots of, well, difficult people around. And yes, as stated before, I’m not immune from this status, in some way or another. What differentiates me, at least I think, is that, at least in the workplace, I’m not a dickhead. I’ll always have a typo, and if I ever edit, I’ll always expect them. That’s probably the least of my worries when building a relationship with coworkers. There must be more important things than a typo or two. 

Still, with all this supposed wisdom I have, yesterday, I found that I was enraged at myself for sending out an essay to several hundred people that began with a sentence-long typo. And for that, I’m sincerely sorry. I’ll try my best for it not to happen again. Because anyway, the truth is that for the most part, really, until the day I die, I work for you, my readers. You’re my boss and manager, a spiritual guide as well. You decide what’s good, bad, engaging, or boring. My aim is to create work for you to read and hopefully, one day, be moved by. That’s about all.