WHAT THE HELL IS ASTUTELY OBTUSE
The Reason We're No Longer Invited to Alumni Meetings
In high school English, my teacher said that I was astutely obtuse. When I questioned what that meant she said that I was insightful, but an asshole. Damn, that's brutal.
We created astutely obtuse as a way of poking at things that are obvious, but not discussed. A general reality check that seeks to point out that the idealized experience in business is overwhelmingly bullshit.
Sometimes, things suck, people suck, and if you are not ready for it, you can get overwhelmed very quickly.
We've been accused of being overly pessimistic, and that the things we discuss are the exception, not the rule, which... is probably true, but being wrong on the internet has never dissuaded someone from posting on the internet.
We use strong language, hyperbole, sarcasm, snark, and memes in an attempt to prepare PMs for things that they might face, because a prepared PM is a successful PM.
HOW WE GOT STARTED
In 2021 three friends had a late-night drunken bitch fest. We were tired of bullshit from academia, narcissistic CEO assholes, and generally shitty advice columns that ignore the nuances of being in the business world.
That night, I penned an angry rant and sent it to Christina and Mike to get some input. Where do I send it though? Who is going to listen to me? If we were going to voice our grievances, we needed to do it somewhere we had control, thus Astutely Obtuse was born.
THE RANT THAT STARTED IT ALL
as a grad student, I’ve learned to hate academia. The entire system is built to make money, rather than educate. Students aren’t interested in gaining any knowledge, instead, they are bent on getting a good grade, so they can get the degree and get a good job. It’s fucking ridiculous.
But more than that is academic papers. Fuck academic papers. Sixteen pages of absolute drivel that should have been condensed down to half of that. Worse still is the boring writing… holy shit. Sentences like
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“…in recent years researchers have began to disregard this theory, as the effectiveness of it has produced mixed statistical results, and counter theories have been demonstrated to show that participants don’t respond in accordance with the theory outside of a controlled laboratory setting…”
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instead of “no one believes in this theory anymore because humans don’t fucking work that way! Here’s ten more pages on why it’s bullshit!”
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Therefore, Astutely Obtuse is my way to angrily shout into the void and be sweary while still earning that educational/informative Saturday morning cartoon sign-off. Further, it is an attempt to say fuck you to the headline, clickbait, traffic-generating, piece-of-shit journalists who create headlines that are used as a way to mislead or flat out fabricate a goddamn narrative (relevant SMBC).