Being Bored, Being Bad, and the Restaurant of Mistaken Orders

Hey all,

Hope you’ve all had the most terrific of weeks. This week’s collection features some lovely stories on creativity, audience attention and viral cat videos. But before you all jump into the links, a couple of things from fellow readers.

Nicole Davis has a new episode of her Never Told podcast in which a writer tells a story of their own that they’ve never told before, paired with a bespoke soundscape.

Strategist and friend of ours Steve Bryant has a downloadable, plug-and-play workshop for innovative marketers. It’s a newer, bigger, better, more fantastic version of a deck we shared last year. That turned out to be one of the most-read stories of the year. So, if you need to run a brand workshop, check it out.

Finally, I’ve been blown away by the work Descript has been doing in using AI to improve the audio production process. I’d love to hear from video creators whose processes have vastly improved as a result of AI. Get in touch if you’d like to talk.

Have a fantastic weekend all.

Hugh

5 Things About My Audience (7 min read)

Boredom is a Pitstop on the Way To Making Something (4 min read)

The Restaurant of Mistaken Orders (2 min watch)

You’re Only As Good As You’re Willing to Be Bad (4 min read)

The Company Teaching Creators How to Get Rich Without Going Viral (5 min read)

Is All AI Art Terrible? (10 min read)

Are Viral Cat Videos Actually Viral (5 min watch)

Is There a Word For the Feeling of Heightened Awareness When Travelling? (1 min read)

Show Your Stripes (data visualisation)

The Art of the Copyist (5 min watch)

How can we help you?

Storythings is a strategy and production company based in Brighton, London, Bristol, Berlin, and Ibiza. We'd love to help you with some creative and bold ideas. Here are 3 reasons to get in touch. 

1. Audience Strategy - Do you struggle to understand constantly changing audience behaviours, and what strategies you need to reach them?2. Content Format Development - Do you want to develop and test content formats that give you a direct relationship with your audience? (e.g. newsletters, podcasts, publications, or video series).3. Production - Do you need help creating and running an existing or new content format, and growing loyal audiences around them?We do other things too. We're very friendly and always enjoy meeting people, so get in touch. 

5 Things About My AudienceIf this first interview is anything to go by, I’m going to really enjoy this format in which content creators talk about how they reach their audience. Quanta Magazine’s Senior Engagement Editor, Matt Carlstrom, talks about the tools he uses, new audience behaviours he’s noticed, what he’d like to know about his audience, and a project he’s a big fan of. (7 min read)

Boredom is a Pitstop on the Way To Making SomethingAustin Kleon on the creative joy of being bored featuring quotes from Neil Gaiman, Clay Shirky, and this from Nicholas Carr: “We don’t like being bored because boredom is the absence of engaging stimulus, but boredom is valuable because it requires us to fill that absence out of our own resources, which is process of discovery, of doors opening. The pain of boredom is a spur to action, but because it’s pain we’re happy to avoid it.”(4 min read)

The Restaurant of Mistaken OrdersDo yourself a favour. Watch this video and enjoy two beautiful stories. And remember to always include humanity in the company budget. (2 min watch)

You’re Only As Good As You’re Willing to Be BadStill on the theme of creativity, six short stories on getting comfortable with being bad at something before you get good: “You’re only as good as you’re willing to be bad…The fact that you’re not going to be good at something or that you’re going to fail at something—that’s OK. Because you’re never going to get good unless you’re willing to be bad.”(4 min read)The Company Teaching Creators How to Get Rich Without Going ViralAn interesting read on Hotmart, a company that helps content creators in Latin America and beyond make serious money by focusing on their existing niche of followers. Unlike YouTube whose business model requires virality, Hotmart provides tools that monetise evergreen content. (5 min read)

Is All AI Art Terrible? Sam Thielman on how we could be using AI in art: “Human art is made of mistakes, but high technology doesn’t prevent errors. Frequently, it reveals what makes errors so human and, too, why they hold our attention. Just as other art forms often experiment with the hard edges of technical capability — guitars with deliberate distortion, video art incorporating magnetic static — the trick with AI is not to force it to duplicate human technical capabilities, but to find its limits and exploit them. I can already count those limits on all seventeen of my AI-generated fingers.”(10 min read)

Are Viral Cat Videos Actually ViralI somehow missed this excellent Kevin Slavin video on viral cat videos the first time around. After seeing it and then deciding to share it, I’m beginning to wonder if there is something more worrying going on. But you would have to watch the video to understand.(5 min watch)

Is There a Word For the Feeling of Heightened Awareness When Travelling?There are a few. And have a great holiday to those of you travelling this summer.(1 min read)Show Your StripesNice work Reading University. Pick a country and see how hot it’s got over time. (data visualisation)

The Art of the CopyistCopying is how we learn. In this short film, Artist Jas Knight sets up his easel at The Met and copies Diego Velázquez’s “Juan de Pareja”: “Velázquez’s brain is on that canvas. I’m literally interacting with him.”(5 min watch)

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Thanks for reading. We’ll see you all next week.

Hugh, Matt, Anjali and the whole team at Storythings.