Why we don’t need any more hero’s or hackers
Do we really need any more self-adulating, righteous bio-hacking heroes on our feeds? It seems we can’t open a social media app, LinkedIn, or a podcast recommendation list without being fed “a better you”. *sigh
Never before have we been inundated with bio-hacks, self-help advice, and expert therapy, all at the hands of self-professed gurus. This constant barrage of unsolicited guidance has fostered a culture where everyone feels compelled to be a guru, leading us towards a narcissistic “expert syndrome.” LinkedIn seems to be the new breeding ground for millionaire “thought leaders” telling us how to “level up.” As a result, everyone wants to be credited as the “leader” and no one the cheerleader. It just doesn’t seem sexy enough to simply be the guy or gal standing courtside in your game of life, amping you to grab life by the balls. Everyone would rather be known as the guru who showed us how.
Have we lost something crucial? Have we forgotten we are capable feeling our way through as long as we have a solid hype wo/man who’d rather see us cross any finish line, not the one they created for us? When I deliberated over the framework of Bruce Ryder’s persona, I was acutely aware we may not need any more heroes; what we need is a hype man.
Maybe we need to make the simple ‘HYPE’ sexy again?
Bruce Ryder, The Wild Card of Life
When writing the character framework for Bruce Ryder, I noticed I was inadvertently harvesting a nutrient we were deficient of—the nourishment of the imperfect but loyal friend who believes life alone is the Ducks Nuts and anything we give a crack is worth cheerleading. A mate who reminds us to loosen up on the chokehold we’d put on ourselves with the arrogance of absolutes and righteous options. Creatively he somehow resonated more for me wearing a gold jumpsuit, pouring a Malibu cocktail into a coconut with Bob Seger playing in the background. As I developed the character brief for the design team his aesthetic was OTT yet his philosophy poetically simple. I found the echo-chambers of ‘absolutes’ exhausting and just an inadvertent way to signal moral superiority to the world. It was all getting way too serious and well… boring. It seems I wasn’t alone. The immediate response to launching Bruce Ryder into the wild was “I wish he was real, he’s the type of guy I want in my corner and my next party”.
Maybe there is a few of us quietly craving the voice of a rogue wild card who gives zero fcks to perfection and hacking human performance to remind is “Listen kid, this thing called life, it’s a wild ride. Just getting into the driver’s seat is a hero’s move. So jump in and grab it by the balls.”
