Over the past decade, we’ve transitioned from a world where all the important decisions are made by Very Serious People, to one increasingly led by the memesmiths with the best grasp of irony. Examples abound: Elon Musk, the world’s (second?) richest man, implies in his tweets that the SEC stands for “Suck Elon’s Cock”; Keith Gill tells the House Financial Services Committee that he is “not a cat”; David Solomon, Goldman Sach’s CEO, drops slammin’ club hits.
Yet our elite business schools seem stuck in the past, lacking courses like Shitposting 101, or a concentration in viral video creation. Tomorrow’s business leaders are being groomed for the past. Sure, they’ll understand a balance sheet and get a chance to think through critical strategic issues from the 1990s, but they’re going to be dead in the water if they primarily respond to criticism with mealy-mouthed corporate jargon.
The recent history of corporate irreverence might have started with Taco Bell, whose food creations and messaging have been an early harbinger of this trend. Now, among fast food chains, it’s a race to see who can seem the most current — the most “online”. And while I imagine that executives tacitly approve the shenanigans as they seek to relate to customers, it can’t be long before it’s the executives taking their marching orders from their social media teams — their army of memesmiths.
Perhaps the “Fast Food Wars” mentioned in Idiocracy are nearly at hand. And unless something changes in our education system, those armies will be led not by fancy Harvard, Stanford, and Wharton MBAs, but by emerging YouTube and Instagram personalities with billion-user followings and a keen sense of humor.