kat's 'normal' 'ordinary' blog

And there was this one guy I talked with who seemed super sharp, but had virtually zero experience writing software. When it came time to do the show-n-tell part of the interview he whips out his laptop, brings up a website, and spins it around to show me what he made.

A website of tiny ceramic frogs.

Not for sale. Just… all these ceramic frogs, organized into categories. Frogs on bicycles, frogs with hats, frogs sitting on lily pads. It was a virtual museum of ceramic frogs in web form.

I scrolled through his online collection of frogs, slightly baffled.

“This is your website?” I asked finally.

“Yep!”

“You coded this yourself?” I popped into view-source mode and poked around some incredibly well-formatted, well-commented html. I nodded slowly. This guy was meticulous.

“Yep!”

“So… where’d all the frogs come from?”

“I made those too,” he says, beaming. 

And while I’m processing this he rummages in his bag and pulls out a little ceramic frog working at a computer terminal. He places it on the table before us, next to the laptop.

“And THIS one,” he says, “I made for you! As a thank you for the interview.”

It was adorable. I hired him on the spot. I mean, why not? Worst case he’d wash out in 90 days and we’d hire somebody else. He turned out to be one of the best developers on our team. 

The reason WHY Team Beast wants to "create fandom" is because they have an awareness that fandom is something that makes Number Go Up, and they want to have access that sort of loyalty and attention. But fandom isn't really something you create intentionally, it's more of a natural side effect of caring about something a lot, and going about the business of expressing how much you care, and finding community that cares in a similar way. But Mr Beast and his team do not actually care about anything at all, except Number Go Up. Everything Team Beast does is just a random exercise in throwing money at different ideas to see which makes Number Increase More.

Team Beast made chocolate bars because they know their audience of kids likes and buys candy, not because they liked candy or were interested in the process of making good candy. This is how they ended up making a chocolate bar that lacked the pre-sectioned bar shape that any other reputable candy maker has known and utilized for decades.

Team Beast made a reality show, because they know that reality shows are popular, and that Squid Game was a massive cross-cultural phenomenon, not because they care about reality shows, or are interested in telling stories about the limits of human cooperation and integrity in high stress, high rewards situations. This is how they ended up making a reality show with too many people to focus on any sort of interesting individual narratives, filled with elimination challenges that didn't work.