The Sound of TED: A Case for Distaste

You are, in the very best sense, a hater.

And you have a karma of 24864.

So it's hard for me to believe that HN is somehow TED-Junior.

I criticized TED years ago on Twitter, and someone responded to me (who had gone) about how life changing it was and how she was motivated and now was going to really make a difference the world. I challenged her on this and said "honestly, what are the odds that you're going to do anything?" She was certain that TED was significant and she was empowered and she was going to make a difference.

Now, I use Twitter so rarely (in part because of that kind of exchange-- I wasn't rude to her at all, I was just trying to make my case) -- that going back it was easy to see years later if she'd actually done anything. I checked, googled her name, nothing.

TED made her feel a certain way. Important for sure. She was very full of herself and she felt that TED was a place of rate "doers" who "will make a dent on the universe" (this was before TEDx, before TED videos when you had to pay boucoup bucks and be part of the special group of invitees in order to go, IIRC)....

She paid 5 figures to TED for a weekend seminar, at the end of which her self esteem was boosted (don't think it needed it) into the range of smugness and she felt it was important.

I disagree. I think it was an ego stroker and she accomplished nothing (and based on what she said I can conclude this from google searches because she didn't do any of the things she said she would do.)

I didn't write back to her to point this out... but this was my little ad hoc experiment.

I remember when I first heard of an acquaintance who got invited to TED and how supremely smug he was when he got back, and how he'd share little stories of rubbing elbows with celebrities and references to events.... I've never been a fan of exclusivity and so that sorta made me jealous and not really like it. But over the years it became more and more irritating.

TED is propaganda. Propaganda of high form.

I think americans are so saturated in propaganda that like a fish who can't recognize water as a thing, Americans don't realize how much of their beliefs and perspectives are shaped by propaganda. When they see propaganda that disagrees with the propaganda they've internalized they react really negatively, and not in a critical thinking here's how it's wrong from a logical basis-- but from a tribal get-rid-of-the-alien perspective.

It's important to stay out of dogma. Something that makes you feel good about yourself and important should be considered critically. IT might be healthy, and it might not be.

I think TED is unhealthy and actually corrosive and anti-intellectual.

I agree with most that has been written in the article.

There is an interesting (actually) counter-example to the preformatted typical Ted Talk: French designer's Philip Stark https://www.ted.com/talks/philippe_starck_thinks_deep_on_des...

This talk is so out of line with the other TED talks that I was a bit disturbed the first time I saw it, but actually this is the one that I still remember the most vividly five years after. Of course, it takes a real genius, and not just a marketing "genius", to deliver such a particular performance, and get away with it.

TEDx might be largely garbage, but it has this talk which actually changed my life: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0yGdNEWdn0

Strangely, this guy does not even promote his book. His book completely changed my mental approach to language learning. I highly recommend it to anyone who is learning a language.

The one thing I find more distasteful than TED is are smug commentaries writing about how distasteful TED is. It reminds me of of jazz musicians criticizing "watered down jazz-pop".

> "What I ask myself when confronted with any TED talk is this: why do they all sound the same?"

Well, why do criticisms of "mainstream, middlebrow" works all sound the same?

I personally have found TED talks to be useful introductions and primers to all sorts of subject matter that I might not have otherwise engaged with. That's something I can appreciate. I've learned things and had my interest piqued in many others, which is more than I can say from reading the original post.

The idea that TED should be ignored to death, and that only the unwashed masses watch it– it's cringe-inducingly elitist and holier-than-thou. God forbid people make an attempt to learn something, and to share their learnings with others, if they don't do it according to the hallowed principles of the Harvard elite.

Anyway, these rants are not going to have much of an effect. People are going to continue consuming TED, just as people are going to listen to jazz-pop.

And you know, just as some people end up inspired by jazz-pop to pick up an instrument and dive into the deep end, some kid who watches a TED talk is going to go on to have an illustrious career in some field.

Way better than anything you can say for a grumpy old fart who sits around criticizing other people.