Making Sense of the Week That Was #41: Spooky Sensemaking
News Wrap Edition #41 of Volume 1 | 29 October 2021
Lead Editors: Antonia Nicols and Sylvia Gallusser
If you have been a long-time reader of The Week That Was (aka “someone who started reading it six months ago”), you may have noticed a recent shift in our content. We have consciously moved away from making sense of stories from the past seven days and towards “themed” issues focused on recent events.
There are a few reasons for this. First, all TWTW editors help to source articles, and having a theme helps us curate content. Second, it’s easier for people to find us if they are searching for a particular topic.
It’s also an opportunity for the subject matter experts (or the curious) among our editors to dig deeply into futuristic trends that matter to them. Or, in this case, pull a joke out of the…er, air… after a long day of Zoom calls, only to formalize it as “spooky sensemaking”: the things that really freak our editorial team out in good and bad ways. From Brazilian lake monsters to the darknet to the rise of the animals, our team’s Slack channel covered a gamut of issues that would enthrall our therapists, plumbing the shadow side of futurism and the human experience to come up with the Great, the Good, the Bad, the Ugly and the Undecided.
For this issue, editors Antonia and Sylvia defined the shadow side as anything that is hidden, unknown, suppressed or undesired, like that one type of candy you hate that you always end up with. (We are not wading into that controversial pit of snakes but Antonia unofficially deems circus peanuts the Worst Candy To Get. Please debate this opinion in the comments.)
Unfortunately for all of us, someone’s suppressed Mummy issues resulted in a fondness for puns, so… Let’s Wrap!
The “Grave” 😇
1.Vocations… From Iridologist to Master Pumpkin Carver!Did you know that an Iridologist studies our iris, on the basis that patterns, colors, and characteristics of the iris indicate the state of a patient’s systemic health? The naming of job titles is a creative exercise to conduct, and we are still in shock as to how a Social Engineer is not an engineer who works for a social media company, but an expert psychological manipulator who can bring others into performing actions or divulging confidential information. This job is actually on the rise as Cyber Criminals are investing in deepfake technology to make social engineering and authentication bypass campaigns more effective.
According to Chief Metaverse Officer Cathy Hackl, “Search the term metaverse in the jobs section of LinkedIn and you will find 30+ pages of roles that include the term in some form. From Sotheby’s looking for a Chief of Staff, Metaverse to Roblox looking for a Head of Product Marketing. A generation of leaders will emerge around Metaverse-related fields.” What about further jobs that will become prevalent in the future? We particularly liked those Cathy envisioned in these Jobs Ads of the Future: Chief Empathy Officer, Pain Engineer, Digital Twin Doctor, Space Tourism Agent, Lunar Food Scientist, Hologram Stylist, Virtual Couture Designer. Another potential job that may be an easier costume to find: Transhumanism Ethicist.
Without looking into the future, we wanted to highlight some honorable jobs that most of us are not aware of such as Professional Sleeper, Drying Paint Watcher, Fulltime Netflix Viewer, Dog Food Taster, Odor Judge, Snake Milker, and Scuba Diving Pizza Delivery Man! But right now the job which is the most in-demand surely is Pro Pumpkin Sculptor: Terri Hardin was a puppeteer, a Muppeteer, and a Disney Imagineer before becoming master pumpkin carver on the Food Network’s Outrageous Pumpkins.
2.From Aragog to Charlotte in three hours The University of Basel is using augmented reality and gamification to help people overcome their fear of spiders. Arachnophobic subjects used AR headsets that generated realistic visions of spiders for three hours, after which they could go near a spider enclosed in a glass case. This is a further case for exposure therapy as a legitimate means of curing phobias.
3. No, really. I’m not faking.This story is more aligned with the “grave” than the “great, but an anti-vaxxer has been selling prosthetic arms for those who want to get a vaccine card without getting a shot. The trolling on Twitter has been rambunctious. While we at the Guild try to remain politically neutral about freedom of choice, we do feel that authenticity and honesty are important, so those around you can make their own choices.
The Ghoul 🤩
- When Grimaging rhymes with Grimacing
Did you know that in French, grimage means make-up? However, when grimaging looks like grimacing, you wonder if that is the best way to (grim)-age! In these days of horror shows, scary costumes, and spooky front yards, we wanted to celebrate natural beauty. Why would we want to put on masks on natural ageing and rely on cosmetic surgery when the results can be as surprisingly positive as what this AI predicts?
2. Taking off the Mask
Emotional vulnerability amongst leaders appears to be more and more accepted. HBR categorized leaders as “Heroes” — those who focused only on the positive, “Technocrats” — who concentrate on tactical solutions, and “Sharers” — who openly acknowledged doubt, stress and concern. Sharers were most likely to build successful teams under stressful conditions.
3. Putting the “Psychic” on “Speed-dial”
The Pandemic has accelerated interest in new age spirituality to combat stress caused by remaining in ambiguity for long periods of time. According to a recent survey of 2,000 people 21 and over, 63 percent believe in the paranormal in some form. Respondents say the most common unexplained beings they believe exist include ghosts (57%), visitors from other planets (39%), and Bigfoot (27%). A third (35%) even say they’ve felt an unexplained presence in their homes, prompting them to worry that they’re being haunted by the paranormal. Fifty-six percent believe some people can see and predict the future, while 51 percent think some people can read minds. Two in three (63%) also believe life exists on other planets somewhere in the universe and 55 percent believe full moons can make people behave strangely.
Millennials in particular are seeking spiritual guidance in everything from careers to fashion, and social distancing has caused traditional churches to re-evaluate their services and roles in their community.
In related news, a rise in the practice of witchcraft is historically bound to the battle against the patriarchy, particularly in times of uncertainty. Or is it the patriarchy that invents it to create a scapegoat in times of modern plague? On TikTok, the ‘WitchTok’ community grew exponentially, with influencers posting tarot card readings, manifestations, and good luck spells that their followers could watch from home. As of today the hashtag #WitchTok has received 8.3 billion views, while hashtags like #witch and #witchcraft are trending. [Ed. #witchTok is at over 20.5 Billion views today Oct 31, 2021]… WTH and Saints preserve us… Or call in the bloody psychologistas!
The Bat😬
- When the ghoster gets ghosted!
Another effect of the pandemic is that workers have increasingly been ghosting employers. Research from Indeed.com shows that 28% of candidates ghosted an employer during 2020, which is up from 18% in 2019. Two-thirds of candidates ghost potential employers because they found a job with higher wages or better benefits.
Another common cause of ghosting is poor communication: The CareerBuilder survey found that 51% of workers are frustrated with the lack of information. In addition, 38% say that employers are leaving them in the dark about where they stand as a candidate, and 30% are disappointed that employers aren’t acknowledging receipt of their application.
According to research by Harvard Business School, ghosting from employers has been on the rise in the hiring process these past years because of expanded use of algorithmically-powered screening decisions, with screening criteria in applicant-tracking systems vetting out otherwise qualified applicants, even before human factors enter the hiring process.
In return, we now witness a phenomenon of workers ghosting on jobs, causing serious disruption in the labor market. Many workers view it as a turning of the tables on human-resources practices that businesses have been guilty of for years.
2. Bacon Extrusion
Our lengthy list of articles this week was like a deep dive into the hidden psyches of our fellow editors and it was… troubling. One editor generated a surprising number of articles on the negative impact of the worldwide rise of feral pigs, while another editor countered with a story about the Bacon Extruder, an artifact from the future used to produce bacon in vitro at home using AI and blockchain. The thought behind the tool is that it might “enable new economic agents and reinvent trust.” What’s more, the pigs themselves are selling proprietary, DRM-protected steam-cell capsules to be used in the extruder and making a profit off of it. We suppose that this could be a “good” leap for technology and food supply chains, but our editors still think this sounds creepy. Insert your favorite “Animal Farm” quote here.
3. When there’s not enough giggle-gas to give pleasure
One of our GSG editors got this list from his local dentist’s office, and is pretty sure that the cats put dogs on this list of top 10 things that scare people, but we don’t know why venus flytraps didn’t get a mention. According to psychologists, though, there IS a level of pleasure involved in being scared, which hopefully came in handy for this family who discovered an unexplained room accessed through their kitchen cupboard.
The Ugh-ly 😱
- Damned if you do…
Leaders face paradoxical situations every day; a symptom of environmental and cultural “dynamism and complexity”. But some leaders can generate “paratoxical” situations by using double-bind rhetoric in order to exercise power. In double-bind situations, followers are trapped in a paradox: they have no possibility of doing what is right, but can always be made responsible by their leaders for wrong decisions. This article published by Sage Journals contrasts the bright and dark sides of paradoxical leadership.
….and damned if you don’t.
Does “paratoxical” leadership sound too negative? How about a “negative charismatic” leader, aka a delusional narcissist? Beware of the dark side of charm — the “universal management paradox whereby the people most likely to climb the organizational ladder do so because (rather than in spite) of character traits that impair their performance as leaders.”
2. Blind Spots
Some of you may have seen this viral video circulating on LinkedIn this week, but it gave our editors pause. This is (sadly) a perfect example of two men with blind spots talking over a woman of color about… her experience as a woman of color. The mansplaining, the hidden — and not so hidden — biases, the patriarchy, it’s all here, folks. And quite possibly on a Zoom call near you. A great learning opportunity, but unfortunately not one that the South African sponsor of this radio show appeared to take advantage of.
3. Brain Dead
As if we didn’t have enough problems, the pandemic is literally changing our brains. Researchers at Northeastern University have been studying how rats’ brains have been changing under extended stressful conditions. In the male rats, neurons in some brain regions actually shrank, whereas neurons in those same brain regions grew in female rats. Those shrunken neurons in the rats’ brains do grow back during a recovery period, but they don’t grow back in exactly the same way as before. “We don’t know yet exactly what purpose those structural changes have,” researchers noted, “But that is something to keep in mind.” Assuming you can remember it.
The Grey Zone of the Undead — oops! Uncertainty 🧐
- Is the Future Herbivore and Fictosexual?
In Japan, the combination of endemic loneliness (which led to the appointment of a ministry of loneliness to fight social isolation and prevent suicides in the midst of the pandemic) and technological advancement is taking the subculture of romance simulation to new heights.
Herbivore men or grass-eater men (Sōshoku-kei danshi) describe young men who express little interest in getting married, having physical sex, or being assertive in relationships with women. They date anime characters such as Konami’s LovePlus companion Rinko, so they can adjust the girls’ moods and personalities to suit their preferences. They can buy gifts, exchange romantic messages, and go to the hotel with these virtual girlfriends. A newly available option is to marry holograms, such as this popular illustrated Vocaloid voice synthesizer character appearing as a hologram in a cylindrical contraption called Gatebox. Through sensors and microphones, this AI character detects her very human boyfriend’s movements and speech and responds accordingly. Wanting to make his love for his virtual companion more concrete, a 36-year-old man spent 2 million yen to throw a wedding. Both of their names stand by the front door to “their” apartment.
This attraction to anime and cartoon characters — called Fictosexuality, fictoromance, or fictophilia — is becoming more and more popular in online environments. This reminds us of this quote from Joanna Bryson, Professor in Artificial (and Natural) Intelligence: “There are two things that humans do that are opposites: anthropomorphizing and dehumanizing. I’m very worried about the fact that we can treat people like they are not people, but cute robots like they are people.”
2. What We Do In The Shadows
Speaking of both dehumanizing and anthropomorphizing, during a protest over the killing of George Floyd last year, demonstrators in London targeted the famed statue of Winston Churchill in Parliament Square. In his recent book Churchill’s Shadow, The Life and Afterlife of Winston Churchill, Geoffrey Wheatcroft attempts to shine a light on this charismatic historical figure. According to him, Churchill was “not just a racist but a hypocrite, a dissembler, a narcissist, an opportunist, an imperialist, a drunk, a strategic bungler, a tax dodger, a neglectful father, a credit-hogging author, a terrible judge of character and, most of all, a masterful mythmaker.”
In analytical psychology, the shadow is the side of your personality that contains all the parts of yourself that you don’t want to admit to having. It is at first an unconscious side. It is only through the effort to become self-aware that we recognize our shadow. According to Scott Jeffrey, one of the best ways to identify your shadow is to pay attention to your emotional reactions toward other people. The Shadow Self has first been acknowledged by Carl Jung in his Four Major Archetypes.
3. It’s electrifying!
Perhaps this new brain implant which has the ability to interrupt depressive thoughts with a burst of electrical stimulation can help with dealing with our dark passenger? The case demonstrates that highly targeted stimulation in a specific brain circuit involving depressive brain patterns can be an effective form of treatment for severe depression, which affects an estimated 5% of adults around the world. If this deep brain stimulation technology effectively zaps away our negative thoughts, it raises thorny ethical questions.
The Tapestry
The collection of images, videos, and charts delivered by the zeitgeist that is the internet and the news cycle.
Meme of the week:
Book of the Week
It’s long and deep and may inspire the next Joseph Cambell to write our next generation archetypical stories that add to the “Heroes Journey”. Get the book, we keep it on our shelves. Here is the link.
Chart of the week: It’s not everybody.
Video of the week:
BEST of What We Do In The Shadows S1 PT 1
Photo of the week:
Halloween 2021 — The Top 10Costumes from Amazon.com — Admit it, you’ve always wanted a wizard cloak.
Podcasts of the week:
- “Family Ghosts” is a podcast that investigates the haunting side of family history.
- “Welcome to Night Vale” is presented as a radio show for Night Vale, a fictional town. and all of the town’s strange happenings.
- “Jim Harold’s Campfire” is set up exactly like the tradition of telling ghost stories around the campfire. The chilling tales cover anything from paranormal activity, UFO sightings and ghost encounters.
- “In the Dark” takes an investigative journalism approach to crime storytelling. It covers real crime cases, breaking them down in fascinating detail.
- “Inside the Exorcist” explores one of the most popular and frightening movies, The Exorcist, which was released in 1973
- “Crime Junkie” is a weekly true-crime podcast. In the latest episode about Ryan Stallings, a young mother is accused of poisoning her infant with antifreeze. But could there be another explanation for the chemicals found in his blood?
- “Darknet Diaries” is a podcast about hackers, breaches, shadow government activity, hacktivism, cybercrime, and all the things that dwell on the hidden parts of the network.
- “Tim Ferris Show — interview with Chuck “Fight Club” Pahalniuk. If you want to write spooky, Chuck runs a workshop that helps writers write real, and wonderfully uniquely for the readers’ sake. Our favourite movement we leaned in was when Chuck describes his parents. “They fought like animals”, and how that became the spine of Fight Club.
Lexicon — extreme fiction terms tapped by the collect writers of the vampire canon
(1) Fictophilic paradox. Fictophiles do not ‘confuse fiction and reality,’ but overtly address the parasocial nature of their relationship. However, their genuine emotions and feelings toward the characters may generate discomfort since they cannot interact with the characters in the same way as they do with their human peers.
(2) Fictophilic stigma. Fictophiles often experience a stigma, which can possibly be lessened by their search for peer support.
(3) Fictophilic behaviors. The related behaviors often tangle around various fan-like activities that contribute to interacting with the fictional objects of love or desire.
(4) Fictophilic asexuality. For some, fictophilia seems to be connected to asexuality, and although the phenomenon cannot be considered specific to adolescents, it may reflect liminalities of development and growth.
(5) Fictophilic supernormal stimuli. Fictophilic relationships resonate with supernormal stimuli effects, i.e., fictional characters appear more competent or otherwise better than their human counterparts.
Collection of the week:
Best Halloween decorations for 2021, according to BuzzFeed. Here’s an example — Selfie Nation, Dante’s Inferno Deconstructed with Milkcrates and old smartphones #artiswhatyougetawaywith ;
About Us:
We’d love to hear your thoughts about spooky sensemaking. Grab a mini Snickers and join us on Clubhouse this Sunday the 31st of October 2021 at 8 am PST | 11 am EST | 4 pm BST | 5 pm SAST to make sense of it all, have your say, and engage with your favourite Grey Swan Guild Wrap Editors: Doyle Buehler, Sylvia Gallusser, Sean Moffitt, Agustín Borrazás, Rob Tyrie, Louise Mowbray, Ben Thurman, Antonia Nicols and now new additions to our team Esmee Wilcox, Geeta Dhir, Gina Clifford, Su McVey with Clubhouse Captains Howard Fields, Scott Phares, and Lindsay Fraser.
We have opened up another Medium and Clubhouse flank to the Grey Swan. Based on the pioneering successes of our Grey Swan News Wrap effort we have created “The Futures & Sensemaking” Series with an array of articles forthcoming about the why and how of making sense of the world.
Our first two well-attended sessions happened were on “Why Futures & Foresights Matter? and “Why Sensemaking & Critical Thinking Matter?”.
Next up: Episode #5 is “Nurturing Futures & Foresights in a Short Sighted World”. Join us as we learn from the best how to keep a rudder on the future, as the present tries to take us off course.
Join us and Sense the Future : https://www.clubhouse.com/event/M5Y5ErNJ
Our Guild’s Atelier #8 is a whopper.
What started as a three hour event has now turned into a twenty hour+ one., We’re calling is 1,000 Day Radar and its our attempt across twenty different topics to get beyond the fashion and fads and get more practical than distant futures and moonshots to work with three year perspectives.
We’ve asked our hosts and experts, what will 2025 user in? probable, possible and wild card scenarios? and implications for us now? Let’s get ahead of the future together. All of our sessions will turn into 14 page mini-reports available to our members. It all goes down November 10th and 11th.
Day One starting at 12pm ET: https://bit.ly/gsgatelier8
Day Two starting at 12pm ET: https://bit.ly/gsgatelier8two
Grey Swan Guild
Our Mission: Making Sense of the World’s Biggest Challenges & Next Grey swans — curating and creating knowledge through critical thinking observation, informed futurism, scenario-driven foresight and sensemaking analysis🦢
