The Most Important Job You Don’t Know, Why “Deinfluencers” Matter and the End of the English Major

There seemed to be a lot of predictions about things ending this week. The end of the English major. The death of influencer marketing. The demise of stamp collecting. Some are true. Others feel hyperbolic.

In today’s newsletter, we’ll break down the difference and explore these topics, as well as a story about the most brilliant job that you’ve probably never heard of, why we may soon be headed towards an Oscars without gender categories for awards and how “overstaffing” is the callous new way to describe why there are so many layoffs.

These are your non-obvious stories, and they are all below. Enjoy!

The Greatly Exaggerated Death of the English Major (and How To Save It)

It’s a story I feel like I’ve read before.

The New Yorker’s attention-grabbing headline summarizes their long feature which explores the decade-long decline of English majors (and students majoring in humanities overall) at college campuses across the country. The data paints a bleak picture.

“During the past decade, the study of English and history at the collegiate level has fallen by a full third.”

The article presents every theory that has been offered to explain this decline, from the rise of smartphones and addictive technology that makes us stupider, to concerns about AI taking over writing jobs, to the very real desire and pressure on students to pursue a degree that will supposedly lead to better job prospects. 

Yet still on the surface, professors and administrators alike are finding the trend hard to understand:

“English professors find the turn particularly baffling now: a moment when, by most appearances, the appetite for public contemplation of language, identity, historiography, and other longtime concerns of the seminar table is at a peak.”

Perhaps most worrisome is one professor’s theory that “students [are] arriving at college with a sense that the unenlightened past had nothing left to teach.” The flow of funding is also a factor, as schools increasingly funnel dollars toward STEM majors and more “in-demand” industries such as cybersecurity.

The problem, as one student noted, is that those classes are often filled with “just people trying to learn something to get a job.” I’m a former English major myself, and have benefitted greatly from the way of thinking and skills I learned by doing that. So, yes, I would love to suggest a way to save the English major and other humanities majors too.

The solution won’t come from higher education, though. It can only come from the rest of us who have the power and opportunity to celebrate those majors and hire the students who chose to do them.

Employers say they want team members who think for themselves, are creative and understand how to communicate. You could easily argue that these are all strengths of humanities majors. If technology will ultimately help make our lives better, we will also need a new generation of leaders and teammates who understand ethics and carefully consider the implications of the innovations they unleash upon the world.

The world, in short, needs English and humanities majors. It’s up to all of us to do the things that will prove that to the young people who are choosing their majors right now. Otherwise the future will have much bigger problems than shrinking college English departments. 

The Runner Who Starts Races and Never Finishes Them

Erik Sowinski’s job is to lead the pack for the first 800 meters of every big race … and then drop out. He is a professional pacer–the one who literally sets the pace for all the other runners. His task is more important than most of us realize. If he starts the race too fast, the runners will burn out. Too slow and the entire race can be off record pace and lose excitement. His presence is a comfort to other racers too, who can avoid the stigma and mental pressure of breaking out to the front of the pack too early themselves. 

I love everything about this job. Sowinski is a world class runner who’s job is to sacrifice his own chance to compete in order to make the race better for the rest of the racers. He is renowned for his consistent ability to run the 800m in a reliable 1 minute and 53 seconds, which other racers describe as “a gift.” When some of them go on to deliver world record performances, he’s one of the people they thank.

The world could use more people in roles like this, who are rewarded financially and emotionally for helping others turn in their best performances. This week’s profile about Sowinski suggests he is looking for a new sponsor right now. I hope he finds one and they decide to name a new shoe after him. 

The Philatelic Disaster of Self-Adhesive Stamps

At the age of ten, I could name more than one hundred countries. I learned them from stamp collecting. Lately you might have noticed that all new stamps are stickers because in 2020, the USPS officially announced they would no longer be issuing the “lickable” version of stamps. Collectors were devastated. 

Aside from the different aesthetics, these new stamps are no longer water solulable, meaning you can’t soak an envelope in water and remove the stamp the way we once did. It’s hard to imagine stamp collecting will survive this new shift. Collecting stickers on paper just doesn’t feel right. There could be hope for old school philatelists, though, because Self-Adhesive sticker stamps are more expensive to produce. Not to mention Revivalism is still hot. People buy vinyl music and Kodak is making physical film again. The past, in other words, is making a comeback. Maybe stamp collecting will too.

How Much of a Problem Is Overstaffing?

Is overstaffing to blame for all the recent rounds of layoffs? The theory is that companies hired too many people and are now correcting their workforces to be at the numbers they supposedly should have been at. The only tech company that has been immune so far is Apple. It’s a callous way to explain the abrupt end of employment for so many people. Yet it does introduce the perhaps unanswerable question of what the “right” level of staffing really is? 

This question may be missing the point entirely. Many large rounds of layoffs often have less to do with the relative value or necessity of those workers and more of a short-sighted tactic from management to create a short term spike in shareholder value. Every time layoffs happen, company valuation predictably goes up.

It’s the perfect outcome for an immediate-win oriented executive team. Who cares about the negative impact to workers lives, or fueling a demoralized culture or all the negative PR? As long as the stock price keeps going higher, that’s all that matters. It would feel too cynical as a conclusion if there wasn’t so much recent evidence that this is already happening.

Why “Deinfluencers” Are The Hottest Thing On Social Media

What do you call someone who goes on social media to tell you all the things that you shouldn’t buy? If you guessed “deinfluencer,” you’d be right. Apparently that’s the hottest new hashtag on TikTok as a range of creators alternately criticize consumerism, review products and offer advice on saving money or finding “genuine happiness.” The hashtag #deinfluencing has over 260 million views on TikTok.

Despite some claims that this shift is evidence that “TikTok users finally starting to place authenticity over consumerism,” or that “influencer marketing is dying,” the truth seems a bit more predictable. People are fed up of being manipulated or lied to through fake content from influencers who claim to love products they are just paid to promote. The smarter influencers are finding ways to promote only the things that they actually like … while still cashing that sponsorship paycheck. 

Even More Non-Obvious Stories …

Every week I always curate more stories than I’m able to explore in detail. Instead of skipping those stories, I started to share them in this section so you can skim the headlines and click on any that spark your interest:

How are these stories curated?

Every week I spend hours going through hundreds of stories in order to curate this email. Can I inspire your team to become non-obvious thinkers with a custom keynote presentation or workshop?  Watch my new 2023 speaking reel on YouTube >>