Tail Wag Dog #1

Tail Wag Dog.

This past year marked my 25th anniversary as a professional, if I start counting from the year I graduated from university. For as long as I remember, pundits in every industry I worked in since have pushed a similar story: the world is changing faster than ever and you better get on board with [whatever fad] before it’s too late and the opportunity is gone.

Yet wherever I look closer, I can’t see much acceleration other than in the volume of nonsense being peddled, while basic human truths remain unchanged. The political, financial, and societal mess we’ve managed to get ourselves into is entirely of our own making. But so is the level of engagement we choose to have with it. Up to a point, when even the most level-headed individuals lose their temper.

Narrative is leading reality, Groupthink™ is everywhere.

It took me over two decades to realize how the business world is not immune to idealism, and intelligent people will follow a fantasy storyline while driving a corporation into the ground – even when the numbers tell them it’s insanity. I’ve been naïve in acknowledging how far some organizations will go in ignoring physics, bending science, abusing statistics just because there might be some money on the horizon.

Thank God for humour.

It’s not easy to remain light-hearted while being relentlessly bombarded with messages of societal anxiety and pessimism about the future. This is why I’ve written this book, which holds a compilation of satirical articles I wrote in 2023. About one every week, based on whatever new flavour of hype passed through my social media feeds.

Please laugh with me.

Costas Papaikonomou
January 2024, The Hague, NLD