A Fun Medley: Girlie Marketing, Sugar Demon, Society, Wisdom, Principles

Sometimes, I send my newsletters in the form of a buffet, like a buffet of ideas one can choose from. It’s usually snippets of undeveloped ideas I’ve had. I couldn’t write a full-blown article about each topic, but I still found it interesting enough to share.

So here I go with something different!

Marketing for Girlies

How did 14 y.o's vernacular make it into the world of adult women? Calling each other girlie when you're 35 is ridiculous. It’s most obvious in the wellness space. The marketing there seems reduced to teenage talk, duck face with a peace sign, and cutesy product names. Essentially, what girls would find appealing.

Why is everyone okay with it? My take:

• Society has been getting more infantilized and doesn’t mind. It’s cool to be a semi-grown-up with adult privileges but few responsibilities.
• Leaving any tribe requires a level of psychological maturity and strength most people don’t have, so they remain stuck with the adult-child peer group, signaling to other girlies even though they’re grown-ass women.
• Perhaps the wellness space target market is modeled after a Valley Girl?

Also, many “adult” things are less affordable compared to 30 years ago (Like owning property). Maybe our generation decided to give up and instead play adult into their 40s (or an accidental pregnancy).

Sugar Demon

Sugar-free is the new fat-free. Sugar-free versions of products filled with artificial sweeteners are sold as a healthy choice. We demonized fat, and then somebody in the industry changed their mind. Now it's sugar's turn.

At some point, we’ll find that sweeteners are just as bad as industrial sugar. The only reason sweeteners don’t get demonized is that Western society is obsessed with being thin. We pretend we’re after health, but it’s thinness. So anything that keeps the calories out is ‘good’.

If I have a sugar-free soda or protein shake filled with sweeteners, I feel much worse than consuming white sugar.

Society

Society is built on the unspoken agreement that the majority of its members should be mediocre. “It’ll make others look bad” is a societal program installed in us early on (and by evolution). Its cousin is "think about others, " meaning don't stand out. Most people with a platform or wealth receive hate because they broke the mediocre rule.

Peter Thiel said that, in theory, entrepreneurship is encouraged, but the reality is quite the opposite. Thinking outside the box requires stepping outside of the societal paradigm, but the social rules penalize people from standing out. He proposed that most big founders are on a spectrum, making them immune to social rules, therefore allowing them to build outside-the-box businesses.

Quotes/Ideas That Made Me Think

There’s a folder in my notes where I store other people’s thoughts I find interesting. Here are some I added recently 👇

• When your views on certain topics can be predicted from unrelated statements, there’s a good chance you’ve outsourced part of your thinking to tribal affiliations. - Kevin Kelly
• You’re always making the best choice based on your current understanding. Don’t try to change the choice - change the understanding. - Naval Ravikant
• Everyone driving slower than you is an idiot, and everyone driving faster than you is a maniac. - George Carlin
• Debates about opinions that one is identified with (politics, religion) tend to be useless. If the cost of changing one’s opinion is loss of identity, friends, and benefits, don’t expect others to follow the truth. Don’t trust yourself where your beliefs elicit moral emotions. - Joscha Bach
• Free Will does not exist at the level of physics but within the self-model of a decision-making agent. It is the representation that the agent is acting under uncertainty and makes a decision for the first time, which means it cannot yet be predicted by the agent. - Joscha Bach
• While people need good advice, what they want is advice that sounds good. - Jason Zweig

14 Principles for Work and Life

1. Health is your first wealth. -Steve Hardison
2. Feeling “fine” is a dangerous attitude. -Nat Eliason
3. Low standards are the high cost of low living. -Steve Hardison
4. Life is a dance between personal agency and universal power.
5. If you don’t know what you want, other people will choose for you.
6. Reflection and self-awareness are key skills of emotional intelligence.
7. If you don’t heal your wounds, you will bleed on people who didn’t cut you. -Marisa Peer
8. Stop judging. Consider the fact that all human beings do what they believe is in their best interest.
9. “A man who judges himself superior, inferior, or even equal to another does not understand reality.” -Buddha
10. You can analyze the situation endlessly, but the real power is to accept, take your lessons, and move on.
11. Ask better questions. “Why does this always happen to me?” vs. “How can I respond to what happens?” lands differently.
12. Your frame of reference is like a fish in the water - you always have one, but you don’t see it. Don’t fall for your own lies. -Andrew Bustamante
13. Your mind creates all that you experience. If you don’t train your mind, you’ll have a miserable time here. -Some version of Sam Harris says
14. Waiting for others to save you is giving your agency to somebody else. If someone’s saving you, they’re fulfilling their agenda, not yours.

What are your thoughts on free will?

Why do you think the girlie phenomenon exists?

What are some ideas from others you find interesting?

Also published here.