The Mechanism

Someone I know—someone we could describe as a struggling actress—has always dreamed about a career in Hollywood. Although perhaps there isn’t a more competitive industry on the entire planet, this did not stop her from pursuing her dream of becoming the next Scarlett Johansson. But in order to achieve such dream, there was a bureaucratic, not so glamorous, yet crucially important factor between her and her acting career: getting a H-1B Visa so she could settle in Los Angeles. The H-1B visa is targeted for highly achieved individuals, also applicable for foreign talented engineers, scientists, medical doctors and whatnot. When it comes to the fine arts, in order to be eligible for such permit, you must demonstrate that you are, well, kind of an accomplished person wherever you come from, or at least show there is some sort of “paper trail” behind you. In other words, you must provide evidence about what you have done. What paper trail the visa processing authorities look for? Anything helps, but there is—I learned—a strong reliance on specialized media. This means, showing that different publications in the fine arts arena are talking about you and how great your work is.

But this person’s career back in her country was not what you could call precisely extensive. Was this a party-pooper at all? Of course not: because she knew someone who knew someone who knew someone, she managed to create a critical mass of nicely crafted articles in arty media portraying her as the next Julia Roberts. Long story short, she managed to get the visa, and although—not surprisingly—her gig has proven to be quite difficult, she’s finding her way, because she definitely has talent.

Now, it is not real news (pun intended) the role media plays in the hype cycle. We know the drill: 

1. Something bombastically worded is published for the benefit of someone

2. Piece is picked up by a decision maker who does not bother to scratch beyond the surface and buys the words to the beat

3. Goto 1

Specialized media acts as the substrate, the vehicle on top of which all this takes place. All while holding absolutely no accountability; cashing in and staying safely aside if eventually there’s a carnage down the road because of the content published.

Space industry is a classic user of this mechanism: random company gets an—usually paid—piece in some popular publication announcing something along the latest fad: small launchers, OTVs, machine learning, artificial intelligence, blockchain, funding, or—even better—a combination of all that. Or, an already established actor announces a new factory of thousands of square meters to be built somewhere in order to manage the insurmountable peak of demand they are experiencing so they can mass produce whatever they do, thousands per year. Always adding fancy renders—and casually forgetting to clarify they are renders—hoping the textures are right enough for an untrained eye to confuse them with something real. Mostly nods to budget trigger-happy defense and space governmental entities who are surely watching. You feel like the third wheel reading all that.

In cases, opaque organizations may join forces and go out together with pieces where they announce flashy partnerships which tend to describe a long stretch between what is being announced and the actual traction of the announcers, for example: Humbug Space Systems and Hofstadter Launch Services¹ Sign Partnership for Sending 10 missions To Jupiter’s Moon Europa. Does this prevent some investors—small or big—from absolutely loving it because InNoVaTioN and start throwing money at that, although most likely nothing will never, ever materialize? No it does not.

In Internet in general, there is a growing ecosystem (to use a polite word) of highly dubious digital newspapers whose main objective is to place ads all over the place. In these, you can find every single day clickbait articles such as: “Chinese man eaten alive by a Komodo dragon”. The curious event always happens very far away, in very distant regions or rural areas of remote countries. Nowadays they do not even bother to add any source, news agency or anything. Who checks if there was actually a poor man munched by a reptile somewhere? Nobody does of course, and that’s the beauty of it. But clickbait is clickbait, they don’t try very hard. What you see is what you get.

But clickbait disguised as serious specialized journalism? That’s another story.

Some might say: don’t kill the messenger. But can we at least ask the messenger a few questions? Can we ask the messenger for some quality assurance, or to follow up?  We definitely don’t have to go all the way to kill them, maybe we need to make them a tiny, tiny bit more accountable.

I bet there must be some filter of sorts behind specialized space media for the pieces they publish, which just makes me die wanting to know about those which didn’t make it past the filter. The bullshit must be…*chef kiss*.

But Ignacio, you are so boring. Let people be. Let the marketing teams do their job, would you? Let people be iNnOvAtiVe and push the boundaries. 

Alright, let me be that guy one more time before this strange year comes to an end. Maybe, MAYBE, this is how it all starts. Where the bullshit seed is sown. The quintessential snowflake of the snowball. Maybe this is the first gear of a long mechanism where, at the end, people are misled to spend their money buying stock or investing on purely smoke-and-mirrors hyped by fancy words spouted by respected—ahem—journalists. Some others might correctly point out that these journalists have to pay the bills. Fair enough.

I tend to believe that good, complex products and substantial engineering traction speak for themselves. You can talk about it, you can be outspoken and proud, why not. But good marketing is not clickbait. Do not kill the messenger, but at least question it.

1.  They don’t only make hot dogs, they also make rockets now (aka they are “pivoting”)