Here’s the thing.

I hate modern day marketing.

Sensational videos, grandiose claims, clickbait titles, outrage porn, and in the worst cases, straight up deception and lies.

There is so little accountability for companies that exaggerate the kinds of value they offer to their potential customers.

I hate it.

Well.

Half the time I do.

I actually don’t hate it IF they actually deliver close to the expectation that they set for the course.

If you’re going to make a strong claim, and then you deliver on it, OK, you have earned my respect and trust.

But more often than not, I feel disappointed with what I bought. I feel continually misled and and oversold by their marketing, polished landing page, and cherry-picked user reviews.

Which is why I think most of us rely on testimonials from friends before we try something out. And for the most part, that’s reliable. But to me that’s just a symptom of the piss-poor current state of marketing nowadays.

There’s a different world I’d prefer to live in.

It’s probably unrealistic to some degree, but the world moves a little closer in that direction, I think we’d all be a little happier.

That being said, my philosophy, especially when it comes to digital goods/content is to optimize for open access.

It’s a little sad to me how the incentive structures and state of society has turned the internet — one of the game-changing tools democratize access to potentially-life-changing information — into somewhat of a gated community where things are only accessible only if have the money to go through the paywall.