As well as blogging about my healing journey to reduce my migraine-days and increase joy in my life, I am also (hopefully) in my final year of completing a PhD, I’m the primary contact for my daughters’ school communication, AND I sometimes help my husband with things to do with his business. As a result, my email inbox is filled with a truly eclectic variety of subjects.
Very occasionally I receive a newsletter from a marketing ‘guru’.
A while ago I received one that made me a touch uneasy from the get-go. Mr Guru advised that one of the best ways to create solidarity within your readership is to make a joke that deliberately ‘crosses the line’. He suggested that in the next article you publish, you include a ‘joke’ that mocks a group of people for their idea of success, achievement, or approach to doing business (and by extrapolation, I’m guessing that perhaps appearance, race, wealth, (dis)ability and so on, are also ‘OK’ subjects of choice).
Once you make your joke and hit send, you wait for the replies. Some readers, Mr Guru said, will hopefully ‘bite’ and reply with “hey that’s a bit rude” or “I normally agree with you, but I think you could reword it to be a little less offensive”. Good! says the guru. Now – double down. Reply to the replies with “it’s just a joke dude” / “what, no sense of humor huh?” / “chill out man”.
This ‘polarize-to-be-popular-approach’, he says, has disadvantages and advantages. The downside, he notes, is that you might lose a few readers. Conversely, the upside is ‘so cool’ because those who don’t unsubscribe are going to admire you for speaking your truth and standing your ground.
When people do leave you, Mr Guru says, well then, “good riddance” because they weren’t the “right people” after all; they don’t get your sense of humor, so they don’t align with you or your business… who needs them!
I thought about adopting this approach here, on my blog, for… hmmmm… a nanosecond, and then decided, NO THANK YOU.
I’ve written before about body-shaming, and my belief that it is NEVER alright to mock others. The idea that making fun of people for ‘likes’ or ‘loyalty’ turns my stomach. I 100% believe in helping others, and that even if I only have the power to make a difference in just one person’s life, that one person might go on to help another, who helps another. How wonderful that there might be an invisible ripple effect of kindness that flows out from a single good-will moment!
I’ve been alive for over 5 decades, (some of which were “so last century” as my daughters like to point out) and I don’t know a lot about plenty of things, but one thing I suspect to be true is that we have never needed a ‘provocatively-polarizing-approach’ less than we do right now.
I acknowledge that opinion is probably, well, polarizing.
If you are reading this and thinking “geeze lady, lighten up”, know that I DO have a sense of humor, however, the last time I had a belly-laugh at someone else’s misfortunes was probably when I was 7 years old.
If you are reading this and thinking “any minute now this hippy-chick is going to encourage us to all link hands and sing Kumbaya,” know that I can’t remember many of the words to the song, but that I AM already envisioning a digital get-together sometime in the future (maybe monthly, starting in mid-July) where we can all see each other in real time and offer support to each other, with or without music. Moreover, I can’t tell you with enough enthusiasm how much the idea brings a smile to my face!
If you are reading this and thinking, “I’m open to helping other people and lifting them up… so long as they’re the ‘right’ people”, then know that I completely understand why you might want to unsubscribe from my blog. Know that I won’t be thinking ‘good riddance’, I will genuinely be sorry to see you go, and I hope, with all my heart, that your people are waiting for you wherever you go.
Take care people, and dare I say it, “be kind and inclusive”, Linda xox
The Mindful Migraine 
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