Lore Is the Antidote to Slop
2025 was the year of slopification.
Content became trivial to produce; so did reactions to it. Everyone adapted Trump’s “flood the zone” comms strategy. Startups measured their success based on the views notched on their AI-ified launch videos, and we saw the corresponding rise of “timeline takeover as a service.”
In other words, we live in an age of plenty, as far as content is concerned. So now, amid so much noise, the challenge is breaking through.
Not, mind you, “breaking through” in terms of impressions or engagement or whatever else the consulting class wants to sell you.1
But in terms of actually making a lasting connection with your audience. Impressions or engagement in the human sense, not the digital marketing one.
As the good fellow T.S. Eliot put it in that timeless epic, The Wasteland:
What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish?
Lore Is the Antidote to Slop
In this brave new world, volume alone is not what will create a generational company. This is why companies are desperately seeking storytellers and narrative chiefs, not just “communicators,” per The Wall Street Journal.
But by lore, I mean something more precise than mere storytelling, a word so broad that, by now, it can mean almost anything.
The antidote to slop — the roots that clutch out of stony rubbish — is lore.
Lore is the story behind the story, the messy realness, the how and why and who. It is, as Will Manidis, from whom I borrowed the form of this newsletter’s title, wrote, craft, and craft is that “sacred space for human hands and minds.”
Slop is the opposite of sacred. It adds a pernicious form of frictionlessness that is the opposite of the sticky and the human. Sure, people might throw you a thumbs up on your LinkedIn post about your latest fundraise — and if you text enough people, you might even create a viral moment — but winning LinkedIn for a day is not the stuff of lore. Lore is what makes people remember you not tomorrow but 10 years from now. Lore is what separates the great companies from the truly generational.
In the coming weeks, you can expect more analysis of how to do comms well and deep dives on companies who’ve successfully built their lore. In the meantime, check out this prior post on how to build your own.
Additional Reading
Yes, the rumors are true — I’m a part of that consulting class.
I'm into the idea that the internet personality is a new form of art. Seen from this lens, you could say that the project of creating lore is an artistic act in and of itself.
Love this!