The Pitch

Eight billion people on a planet assuredly proclaiming "I've got this!" while hilariously bungling absolutely everything.

It's pure comedy gold. Not as metaphor. Not a wry aside about the greater human condition. I mean it quite literally. That's what this all is. Not joking. Not being cute.

As a child, I had the inescapable feeling of being trapped in a comedy movie for the entertainment of some invisible party. Maybe "God" or whatever, idunno - I was never a big name dropper.

Decent insight for a kid, but it's a whole other thing to reverse engineer the full proposition of a farce in which one is trapped. It took me a bunch of decades.

I realize that there’s vast juicy goodness to be gained by reconsidering absolutely everything from this framing. So if you just chuckle and move on to your next bookmark, you'll miss out on tons of potential integration and explanation now that the entire predicament has finally been nicely framed for you.

But you will miss out. You'll consider it for no more than 17 seconds. Why?

A greater conviction that you've got this.


Thanks to the great Bill Monk for planting the seed. A few years ago when Red Ventures shut down Chowhound, I submitted a few smart requests and suggestions, and they answered me condescendingly, just like every feckless, cocky product manager since the day I sold out.

Bill noted how remarkable it was that I was still hearing “Yeah thanks but we got this” even as they were literally shutting the thing down.

"We got this," I realize now, is an absolute monster.