Let’s Talk About TED
“Do you want to give a TED talk?”
Yeah, it’s not something that’s going to come my way anytime soon. Zero is the amount of people who will sit around a table and float my name to give a talk about anything. In the spirit of the question I raised myself though... what exactly could I give a talk on? There must be something I can talk about for quarter of an hour and then apologise for wasting your time. I mean, that’s valuable time you could have been idly scrolling through your phone being influenced whether you knew it or not.
I know this much - it’s much easier to go off like a firework about something you hate rather than something you love. People whose opinions are the same as the newspaper they read - that’s a pet hate and I could fill fifteen minutes with that for sure, but it’s hardly contributing to the world. The original idea of a TED talk is to contribute an idea that will change the world for the better, but all of my ideas usually get me kicked out of the room. TED talks are always well thought out and polished to within an inch of their life, but that’s the very anti-thesis of how I work, so I’d be thrown out of the green room before I’d even got to the stage.
How about if I took the stage for fifteen minutes and said nothing so that everybody watching was left alone with their thoughts? That could be fun.
The problem with TED isn’t so much the people who go on stage. It’s the expectation that you’re meant to have an idea so good, it really could change the world... in fifteen minutes, while wearing a headset and standing on a red dot that looks like you’re being targeted by Edward Fox.
They want polish. Poise. A powerful anecdote that ends in tears and applause. They want clean.
But I’m not clean. I’m the guy that knocked the whiteboard over. I’m the bit of tape on the spine of a book someone didn’t return. I’m not an idea worth spreading—I’m an idea that you didn’t want to hear because it doesn’t look good when you post it. Is it so bad to suggest that Starbucks have a jar of Nescafe on hand because not all of us want to wait ten minutes to get a drink with half an inch of froth on the top littered with something that’s supposed to look like a coffee bean?
Sometimes, you just want a coffee.
ALT-TED
Thus, in the name of frivolity, here’s an idea for my never going to happen TED Talk, which might not change the world in 15 minutes, but just might change your world forever:
What To Do When You Realise You’re Not Going To Be Rich Or Famous
It’s the letter you didn’t want to open. The one that starts: “We regret to inform you…”
There’s no drama and the hundreds of people that follow you aren’t going to abandon ship. The invisible paparazzi disappear from outside your front door along with the wool that’s been covering your eyes allowing the slow, sinking truth to creep in: you’re not going to be rich and/or famous. Not today and certainly not tomorrow either. The world doesn’t give a damn what you can do.
Shit.
That means when you walk into a room, everybody will carry on with their own self-importance. Your name will not be on their lips. Those funny lines you’ve had in your back pocket for the day you get invited onto a chat show? They’re going to have to stay there with the remnants of tissues and dog snacks that are in there.
Worst of all, nobody from English Heritage is going to turn up and screw a blue plaque to your wall.
Now what?
Well, you could get up and keep doing the things you were doing anyway because you enjoy them and they fill your life with some meaning even if everybody else thinks you’re wasting your time. That’s always a good start.
Fame was never going to fix you anyway because you’re too messed up for that. The imposter syndrome would have only got worse, your diary would get really complicated because nobody cares that your dog likes to go out from 9.30 to 10.30 and let’s be honest, when was the last time your hair ever did something you actually wanted it to do.
Fact is, you’d spend your nights crying in your sleep at the version of you the world now thinks you are.
So how about you build slow and connect with people one at a time instead of all at once. Obscurity is a creative freedom most people don’t get to enjoy for long, so oddly, I suspect you should hang onto it as long as you can.
Become a cult artist instead, not because it was your Plan B, but because it turns out it’s where all the real stuff lives. You keep working because you think the work is worth doing. You stop worrying if the world is watching and start asking if you’re even paying attention to yourself, if you’re alive, if the thing you’re making feels like your heart is still beating.
Hey, that’s not actually a bad TED Talk at all. A bit on the short side, but I’m sure I could riff on it for a little while. Then again, I’m more the kind of person who would like to give a TED Talk until they asked me to give a TED talk and then would lose all respect for them because they had asked somebody like me to do it...
Why would you want to belong to a club that would have somebody like you as a member? Good old Groucho–he never strayed far from the truth even when he was pulling your chain.
Actually, I’d really like to see Groucho give a TED Talk. Maybe somebody who is eight years old could harness the power of AI and get started on that. Once you’d done it, you’d never need to go to another job interview in your life. You’d hold the power of the universe in the palm of your hand and be renowned the whole world over... and your dog will wonder where you are at 9.30, your dairy now looks like an albatross and...
Yeah.
