I was running a workshop for a tourism thing this week, and it reminded me how many problems could just be solved by hiring somebody to do a very specific job (like making shortform video).

I did some work for the Good Law Project a year or two ago and one of the most impactful things they did was to just hire someone to do TikTok full time. 90% of the organisations I work with don’t have that luxury, instead shoe-horning social media into roles that already do 15 other things, require lots of emailing and involve breaking souls in the iron maiden of institutional bureaucracy.

Without a shit-ton of money that’s not going to change, but there’s something in embracing the mentality of someone whose sole purpose is to create content that makes their followers happy. Sweep away everything in your job that doesn’t serve the audience - the conflicting opinions, the crap mandatory posts, the sheer amount of admin. If you just had to create content that added value to people’s lives, what would it be?

Content of this week

• If you work for a council then put this post by Ealing in the folder named ‘Evidence that councils can get away with not being boring’.

• I’ve seen a lot of meh posts tying into The Traitors but the National Museum of Scotland obviously put a ton of effort into this one and it really pays off.

• Sometimes I wonder if we overthink telling stories about history. I already knew this story about Darwin but it’s how this man tells it, with the pacing, the emphasis and the script. I’m not sure with these things how much it matters that it’s with a live audience - like a subconscious ‘oh if people presumably paid to watch this it must be alright’.

• A post that’s not from Instagram! Jay Hulme is a good egg who knows how to tell beautiful slice-of-life stories as a vicar. This one’s about bones found during roadworks just outside the church, how the police deal with Finding Bones, and their journey to reburial.

The bullet point bit

• There’s lots of stories about censorship on the new US version of TikTok but it’s a little hard to tell what’s (well-founded) paranoia and what’s reality - for instance, I can see why posts of the ICE shootings would break every social media sites’ terms and conditions. Combine all that with performance issues and outages though, and we may see some form of American exodus from the app.

• The UK government paid PwC about £5mn to create an AI Skills hub, which is a glorified bookmark page pointing you to resources made by Google, Amazon and others. This thread details how terrible it is to use.

• If you want to make yourself feel better then this reddit thread about overrated/underrated UK museums will remind you that quite a lot of people do actually love museums (though mixed/slightly unfair reviews for the BM, NHM, Science Museum and V&A).

Personal stuff I do for me and you can just skip this if you like

🎮📖 what I’m consuming as a consumer

I watched the full extended version of Fellowship of the Ring at the cinema last night, 25 full years after it blew my mind as a prepubescent yam yam. After entering at 6:30 and stumbling out at 10:20 I can only describe myself as thoroughly ringed, and I don’t know if it’s because I’m becoming more susceptible to nostalgia but it truly hit home for me why arts and culture make life worth living. It’s just so fucking good.

If you do go to see it though be prepared for the special introductory video by Jackson where he channels grandpa simpson.

I’ve also never understood how Vigo Mortensen can be so hot. It shouldn’t be legal.

🐕 Keith

Here he is