Good piece, fun to read, thanks. My son once showed me a spoof of a TED talk, where the guy used all of the typical intonations, pauses, and gestures, including graphs, etc, and deliberately said absolutely nothing. It sounded like a normal TED talk. Thanks.
One of the Ted Talks that put me off from them forever was a person who defended pedophiles and espoused treating pedophilia and pedophiles as if their inclinations were a normal sexual response that should be approved, rather than shunned by society (as long as they weren't acting on their inclinations). They urged us to call them MAPS, instead of pedophiles, and to be kind to them and treat them as if they were just like all of the rest of humanity. There was a stunned silence from the audience, then incredibly applause. That was it. Never again. Now if I do run into one of them on the internet it just produces a major chringe effect on me. The rank pretentiousness of all of their speeches is really offputting. I never did hear anything remotely interesting, just lots of posturing and lots of strange ideas (like this one) being promoted.
I felt ill and very angry after listening to that drivel. But it did clue me in to what the real purpose of Ted Talks are, and that is to acclimate us to the agenda (one of many, this particular one is to normalize the abnormal as far as sexual relations are concerned and to expand the boundaries of what is acceptable (anything). That's becoming ever clearer these days. That episode was many years ago. These are long players. Patient long players. Everybody needs to wise up.
Pieces like this are why Bindel and Substack are fabulous.
I watched a few Ted talks many years back when I thought I could read a book on a tablet, on intercontinental flights (unpleasant to say the least) and I liked the peculiar ones - the woman with no feet who decided logically if she had to wear false ones, why not make them extravagant and make her seven feet tall. Sure!
Then I was in South Africa at a conference I spoke at on math and computational control control structures, and my sponsor exitedly my wanted me to listen to another speaker from Australia, an economic “thought leader”. He spoke about South Africa at an economic crossroads, with banking and business funding and development and whatnot. I thought the guy had to piss quite badly as he was pacing so much. His gesticulations were hypnotic, sort of something of a slow-motion Bruce Lee movie, soothing almost, with occasional intimations of Tura Satana jerks.
My response was asked for in the drive from Sun City to Joburg, and I couldn’t help it. I said “my thoughts were led to understand that as he said, business will either advance, or fall behind, or stay the same. Astonishing insights.” My sponsor’s husband shot a carbonated beverage out his nose, which I known from experience is painful, while he gasped for breath, while she, experienced in my bitter sarcasm, struggled to steer, but eventually we all stopped shrieking with laughter and had to stop to get more carbonated beverages.
That’s what most Ted talks since then were to me, like that speaker - utter trivialities spoken with childlike earnestness, evocations of cthonic profundity (sorry Paglia) coupled with migraine-inducing auras of visual nothingness which could be sped-up to chipmunk speed and lose nothing in translation.
“humans either advance, stay the same, or regress”
So exquisitely, torturously true to life that I had trouble reading it. And this reminds me of who I think is the biggest fraud of all, a kind of living, breathing TED Talk who has somehow made millions of people think he is a genius, namely Malcolm Gladwell. Here are some of his most famous books:
Blink: "Sometimes snap judgments are the most accurate."
Tipping Point :"When something is building for a while and finally reaches a critical mass, it happens."
David & Goliath: "It's best to root for the underdog."
Outliers: "Often the people on the fringes of society are the most innovative."
His compendium of New Yorker essays, "What The Dog Saw," includes such TED-worthy topics as:
- His investigation into why there are so many different kinds of mustard but only one kind of ketchup.
- The reasons why homelessness might be easier to solve than manage.
- The saga of the quest to invent the perfect cookie.
- A look at hair dye and the hidden history of postwar America.
From his publisher: "Over the past decade, Malcolm Gladwell has become the most gifted and influential journalist in America. For the millions of Malcolm Gladwell fans, this anthology is like a greatest hits compilation-a mix tape from America's alpha mind."
Good article from Julie B.! Can't stand TED talks either, in general, though it depends who's talking and what they're talking about (I saw one on modern day slavery a few years ago which was gripping and tragic, and informative). And I'm glad TED caught Susie Green on tape admitting she transed her son because his father didn't like that his son liked "girly" things and Susie went along with it, all the way to Thailand with him for castration surgery when he was 16. So sometimes, but seldom, TED is worth listening to!
I used to watch some of them years ago. There were not so many speaker lived experience platforms then. Now I agree with you that they are so staged that they can lose authenticity. As well, some people started using Ted talks to personally promote themselves and that was the last straw for me.
Couldn’t agree with you more. I was introduced to TED some years ago by my niece’s then-wife, who had discovered some particle physicist turned life Guru who himself had discovered Truth and the Way. I must hear him! I watched and was impressed with one thing: He had the ability to present pseudo-scientific drivel (consciousness based on quantum effects) with confidence, slickness and really captivating graphics. His style reminded me of the prince of motivational speakers, Tony Robbins. No more than a week later, a colleague pulled me into her office at the college where we taught because I “had to” hear this brilliant guy’s theory about cognitive development (or whatever). I listened, I heard a few very pedestrian and unoriginal ideas, but they had been tarted up, and presented with the conviction, confidence and the joy of He who has seen Truth; and again, those dazzling dynamic cartoony graphics- boy, I’d like to use those for my lectures! Saw perhaps one more TED talk, and that was more than enough for me. Some business types preach “sell the sizzle, not the steak”. The TED formula seems to be: no steak even required. The rubes will actually eat up the sizzle. (Postscript: A few years ago, I came across a list of the 10 most popular downloaded TED talks. Of course, I was curious. Read the last and cracked up when I saw that Tony Robbins was #6 on the list If you don’t know Tony Robbins on your side of the pond, you may not get the delicious irony but Tony Robbins pretty well invented the TED talk before there were TED talks. His basic lesson was that confidence and motivation could allow you do anything. TED merely extended that to teach that confidence and motivatiion (and slick graphics) could allow you to turn intellectual lead into gold and convince people to buy it.
Good piece, fun to read, thanks. My son once showed me a spoof of a TED talk, where the guy used all of the typical intonations, pauses, and gestures, including graphs, etc, and deliberately said absolutely nothing. It sounded like a normal TED talk. Thanks.
One of the Ted Talks that put me off from them forever was a person who defended pedophiles and espoused treating pedophilia and pedophiles as if their inclinations were a normal sexual response that should be approved, rather than shunned by society (as long as they weren't acting on their inclinations). They urged us to call them MAPS, instead of pedophiles, and to be kind to them and treat them as if they were just like all of the rest of humanity. There was a stunned silence from the audience, then incredibly applause. That was it. Never again. Now if I do run into one of them on the internet it just produces a major chringe effect on me. The rank pretentiousness of all of their speeches is really offputting. I never did hear anything remotely interesting, just lots of posturing and lots of strange ideas (like this one) being promoted.
Yes I actually heard this one. My visceral response was where can I get a submachine gun!
I felt ill and very angry after listening to that drivel. But it did clue me in to what the real purpose of Ted Talks are, and that is to acclimate us to the agenda (one of many, this particular one is to normalize the abnormal as far as sexual relations are concerned and to expand the boundaries of what is acceptable (anything). That's becoming ever clearer these days. That episode was many years ago. These are long players. Patient long players. Everybody needs to wise up.
Pieces like this are why Bindel and Substack are fabulous.
I watched a few Ted talks many years back when I thought I could read a book on a tablet, on intercontinental flights (unpleasant to say the least) and I liked the peculiar ones - the woman with no feet who decided logically if she had to wear false ones, why not make them extravagant and make her seven feet tall. Sure!
Then I was in South Africa at a conference I spoke at on math and computational control control structures, and my sponsor exitedly my wanted me to listen to another speaker from Australia, an economic “thought leader”. He spoke about South Africa at an economic crossroads, with banking and business funding and development and whatnot. I thought the guy had to piss quite badly as he was pacing so much. His gesticulations were hypnotic, sort of something of a slow-motion Bruce Lee movie, soothing almost, with occasional intimations of Tura Satana jerks.
My response was asked for in the drive from Sun City to Joburg, and I couldn’t help it. I said “my thoughts were led to understand that as he said, business will either advance, or fall behind, or stay the same. Astonishing insights.” My sponsor’s husband shot a carbonated beverage out his nose, which I known from experience is painful, while he gasped for breath, while she, experienced in my bitter sarcasm, struggled to steer, but eventually we all stopped shrieking with laughter and had to stop to get more carbonated beverages.
That’s what most Ted talks since then were to me, like that speaker - utter trivialities spoken with childlike earnestness, evocations of cthonic profundity (sorry Paglia) coupled with migraine-inducing auras of visual nothingness which could be sped-up to chipmunk speed and lose nothing in translation.
“humans either advance, stay the same, or regress”
Done. Clapter, muppets and toast please.
Yes, they are maddeningly pretentious. Mostly empty garbage trying to sound original and brilliant. Crap.
So exquisitely, torturously true to life that I had trouble reading it. And this reminds me of who I think is the biggest fraud of all, a kind of living, breathing TED Talk who has somehow made millions of people think he is a genius, namely Malcolm Gladwell. Here are some of his most famous books:
Blink: "Sometimes snap judgments are the most accurate."
Tipping Point :"When something is building for a while and finally reaches a critical mass, it happens."
David & Goliath: "It's best to root for the underdog."
Outliers: "Often the people on the fringes of society are the most innovative."
His compendium of New Yorker essays, "What The Dog Saw," includes such TED-worthy topics as:
- His investigation into why there are so many different kinds of mustard but only one kind of ketchup.
- The reasons why homelessness might be easier to solve than manage.
- The saga of the quest to invent the perfect cookie.
- A look at hair dye and the hidden history of postwar America.
From his publisher: "Over the past decade, Malcolm Gladwell has become the most gifted and influential journalist in America. For the millions of Malcolm Gladwell fans, this anthology is like a greatest hits compilation-a mix tape from America's alpha mind."
Good article from Julie B.! Can't stand TED talks either, in general, though it depends who's talking and what they're talking about (I saw one on modern day slavery a few years ago which was gripping and tragic, and informative). And I'm glad TED caught Susie Green on tape admitting she transed her son because his father didn't like that his son liked "girly" things and Susie went along with it, all the way to Thailand with him for castration surgery when he was 16. So sometimes, but seldom, TED is worth listening to!
I tried to listen to the Ted talks but have found the presenters to be routinely insufferable. Noxiously smug at times
I used to watch some of them years ago. There were not so many speaker lived experience platforms then. Now I agree with you that they are so staged that they can lose authenticity. As well, some people started using Ted talks to personally promote themselves and that was the last straw for me.
Also, whoever coined the phrase "thought leader" should be shot.
I think this will make an excellent Ted talk. Although I say that having never seen a Ted talk.
Yes most of the talks are as dull as dishwater. Many contradict each other and many have erroneous or outdated 'facts'.
Couldn’t agree with you more. I was introduced to TED some years ago by my niece’s then-wife, who had discovered some particle physicist turned life Guru who himself had discovered Truth and the Way. I must hear him! I watched and was impressed with one thing: He had the ability to present pseudo-scientific drivel (consciousness based on quantum effects) with confidence, slickness and really captivating graphics. His style reminded me of the prince of motivational speakers, Tony Robbins. No more than a week later, a colleague pulled me into her office at the college where we taught because I “had to” hear this brilliant guy’s theory about cognitive development (or whatever). I listened, I heard a few very pedestrian and unoriginal ideas, but they had been tarted up, and presented with the conviction, confidence and the joy of He who has seen Truth; and again, those dazzling dynamic cartoony graphics- boy, I’d like to use those for my lectures! Saw perhaps one more TED talk, and that was more than enough for me. Some business types preach “sell the sizzle, not the steak”. The TED formula seems to be: no steak even required. The rubes will actually eat up the sizzle. (Postscript: A few years ago, I came across a list of the 10 most popular downloaded TED talks. Of course, I was curious. Read the last and cracked up when I saw that Tony Robbins was #6 on the list If you don’t know Tony Robbins on your side of the pond, you may not get the delicious irony but Tony Robbins pretty well invented the TED talk before there were TED talks. His basic lesson was that confidence and motivation could allow you do anything. TED merely extended that to teach that confidence and motivatiion (and slick graphics) could allow you to turn intellectual lead into gold and convince people to buy it.
Totally agree Julie, it's all so pompous and cringe I can't bear to watch it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecgSlHdkMLA
So true. The whole culture of pseudo intellectual gurus is insufferable.
I recommend Decoding The Gurus- a podcast that deals with these issues. Helen Lewis is also very good at guru-decoding.
My dad and I have an inside joke that whenever one of rambles about inane stuff, the other responds with "Thanks Ted".