For all you influencers and thought leaders
February 10, 2018 7:48 AM   Subscribe

A handy Davos jargon explainer from the BBC, and accompanying reader reactions. Don't miss the helpfully captioned illustrations.
posted by Dr Dracator (6 comments total) 8 users marked this as a favorite
 
Have "learnings" gone out of style then? Or maybe it's still exclusively American corporospeak.
posted by BungaDunga at 9:05 AM on February 10, 2018 [1 favorite]


Visioneering the future

If Inspirobot and George Orwell's 1984 were merged, this would be the chilling empty phrase they'd come up with.
posted by Alexandra Kitty at 9:11 AM on February 10, 2018 [1 favorite]


I think "Influencers" is out of Malcolm Gladwell's "The Tipping Point".

By the way, if you still have any doubt that Gladwell is a hack purveyor of just-so stories, check out this exchange, from The Fall 2017 Paris Review, p. 88, in a conversation with Michael Lewis. I thought this was so amazing that I am going to type it all in, since I can't find it online:

Lewis: ....Two parts of that book jumped off the page for me. One was the stories of the dyslexics. You argue that their dyslexia was an advantage-

Gladwell: In certain cases.

Lewis: Of course. But If someone were wanting to pick a fight with you, he might say that with so many dyslexics on the planet, some of them are bound to end up successful. Then you go find the successful ones, cherry-pick them, and tell a story about them.

Gladwell: Michael, you're being a killjoy. Look, people say this. Maybe it's true, but there's a certain class of critical reaction out there that comes from people that are determined at all costs not to enjoy themselves....

Lewis: You wonder why they bother themselves with reading your books.

Gladwell: Janet Maslin reviewed Blink - hated it. David and Goliath - hated it. This is turning into an exercise in masochism. I feel sorry for her. I don't want her to suffer. I want to go and give her a back rub just to lessen the pain of reading my books.
posted by thelonius at 9:40 AM on February 10, 2018 [11 favorites]


This made me think of The Adventures of ACTION ITEM.
posted by ob1quixote at 1:51 PM on February 10, 2018 [5 favorites]


One day I'll be able to see Davos without first thinking of the creator of the Daleks, but today is not that day.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 1:21 AM on February 11, 2018 [2 favorites]


The summary of a Davos-attending friend was: "Everyone seems annoyed that they didn't benefit from the huge boom in cryptocurrency over the last few months."

A couple of weeks later, Bitcoin had lost more than half its value and crashed down to more... affordable... levels.

It's enough to make a crazy old conspiracy-junkie go hmmmm.
posted by rokusan at 6:26 PM on February 12, 2018


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