Washed Away

Welcome to The Beat by Rockstar CMO. I’m Ian Truscott, a CMO, trusted advisor, strategy consultant, and Chief Bottle Washer at Rockstar CMO. In this newsletter, I’d like to share a mix of what’s caught my eye, topics from our podcast, and our street knowledge blog.

Hello!

This week is a bit of a rant, with some swearing.

I have just experienced the delight of discovering an article I wrote for a publication has been published, then reading it with an uneasy feeling of wondering if I really wrote it like that and the disappointment of comparing it with the original to conclude that the editor had seemingly turned Grammarly (or some robo-editor) up to 11 and accepted all the changes.

It’s a machine gun staccato of short sentences, all of the human and my funny (OK, debatable), quirky expressions and voice had been ironed out.

It’s an em-dash short of anything you might read from ChatGPT.

What was the fucking point?

I am constantly fighting with Grammarly, as I try to keep some voice and humanness in my writing, we have to keep our heads up above the sea of slop, we have to fucking work at being human.

But, if a publication edit round is going to strip all of that out, using, what I suspect to be the robo-edit-3000, I might as well have succumbed to the slop, punched a quick prompt into ChatGPT and sent them that shit.

YES, I know I need an edit - I am not that good a writer - I’ve written for this same publication for years, and I’ll roll with an insistence of an Oxford comma or that whatever was in my head at the time that I formed the words has not really jumped off the page and needs a nudge.

And, I do use Grammarly, but like I say, I fight the bloody thing so what comes out conforms to something grammatically correct enough to be readable, but not so much that you might as well have promoted your pet syntho-content creator - “please email me a rant about being edited by a robot”.

I’ve just spent some time composing feedback to the editor, instead of writing this. The email sits unsent, as what kind of bloody prima donna do I want to sound like? Who am I to want to sound like a flawed fucking human?

Take that last paragraph, this is what Grammarly would prefer:

I spent some time composing feedback to the editor, which remains unsent, as I'm unsure of the tone I want to convey. Who am I to want to sound like a flawed fucking human?

I suppose I was lucky that it let a profanity through, but it’s choice “as I'm unsure of the tone I want to convey” might be correct, I guess, but not the same as “what kind of bloody prima donna do I want to sound like.”

The edits of this particular article, with its robotic, dehumanized, short sentences, absolutely convey the information, but is that what this is? An efficient way to share information or something with a little love, joy, or entertainment?

The robot writing problem is pervasive; we either get the robots to write for us, enslave ourselves to its edits or we submit our humanness to some other bugger that runs it through their synth-a-like machine.

But hey, maybe it’s only the robots reading this shit now anyway?

In any case, rant over. I read this thing and felt washed out - I wasn’t in this article.

This led me to an obscure album track for the subject line, from an album I used to listen to on repeat by Arrested Development - "Washed Away.”

Thanks for reading, fellow human🙂

Cheers!

Ian

Ian Truscott | Chief Bottle Washer Rockstar CMO

Please say hello by replying to this email or stop by our website.

PS - I did a webinar on Friday, I’ve done a lot of these things, the team at Marketing Profs are genuninely wonderful, the website might be a little creaky, but, the webinar is available on demand.

This week’s street knowledge

What caught my eye on the topic and a bit more from me…

This week on the podcast…

Latest on the pod as I continue to publish twice a week…

Get your Monday Marketing Mojo Working

Do you feel washed out? This might not get your mojo working straight away, but give it time, or maybe try some of the other hits on this classic album.