
The Sound of TED: A Case for Distaste - jonathansizz
http://theamericanreader.com/the-sound-of-ted-a-case-for-distaste/
======
jerf
"TED’s is the language and tone of the pitch. It’s a style that comes from
corporate conference rooms, where product ideas are pitched to potential
investors."

Someone in HN linked this in a previous discussion about TED, but especially
with that quote in the piece it's even more a dead-on satire home run from the
Onion:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tom6_ceTu9s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tom6_ceTu9s)
Part of a series though my impression was that it's the same basic joke over
and over... still, for at least one iteration, it's dead-on, and this is
probably the most pure illustration of just the form in that series, with no
content, for the author's point.

~~~
wodenokoto
There's an actual TED talk like this.

[http://virates.com/society/1486101](http://virates.com/society/1486101)

~~~
teh_klev
Direct link to YouTube video:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=17&v=ToJD5r2SmwI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=17&v=ToJD5r2SmwI)

------
visakanv
The one thing I find more distasteful than TED is are smug commentaries
writing about how distasteful TED is. It reminds me of of jazz musicians
criticizing "watered down jazz-pop".

> "What I ask myself when confronted with any TED talk is this: why do they
> all sound the same?"

Well, why do criticisms of "mainstream, middlebrow" works all sound the same?

I personally have found TED talks to be useful introductions and primers to
all sorts of subject matter that I might not have otherwise engaged with.
That's something I can appreciate. I've learned things and had my interest
piqued in many others, which is more than I can say from reading the original
post.

The idea that TED should be ignored to death, and that only the unwashed
masses watch it– it's cringe-inducingly elitist and holier-than-thou. God
forbid people make an attempt to learn something, and to share their learnings
with others, if they don't do it according to the hallowed principles of the
Harvard elite.

Anyway, these rants are not going to have much of an effect. People are going
to continue consuming TED, just as people are going to listen to jazz-pop.

And you know, just as some people end up inspired by jazz-pop to pick up an
instrument and dive into the deep end, some kid who watches a TED talk is
going to go on to have an illustrious career in some field.

Way better than anything you can say for a grumpy old fart who sits around
criticizing other people.

~~~
colechristensen
>Way better than anything you can say for a grumpy old fart who sits around
criticizing other people.

And what you've done here is so much different?

Let's not have a fight between hipsters and anti-intellectuals.

Mediocrity and popularity go hand in hand. That is it's often incredibly
difficult to maintain quality in an endeavor which has become wildly popular -
or your motivations between creating something great and maintaining popular
appeal get muddled together.

Take jazz music -- it takes a lot of listening, knowledge, and understanding
to fully appreciate really great jazz. Mass audiences aren't going to have
that understanding so there's a strong tendency for the subtlety which makes
the genre great to be bred out -- most of the consumers can't tell the
difference and simply don't care.

It's not elitism that says jazz-pop is awful, it's simple truth that jazz-pop
is a shallow approximation of the real thing.

Maybe it's okay that some things are shallow and simple and fun, there's a
place for such things; but let's not elevate them to greatness so we can bash
folks who appreciate the real thing.

TED talks are increasingly at risk of being very much more about being
engaging than having valuable substance. It turns out most of the real world
doesn't have much of the pop, shine, and sparkle TED talks make it seem.

Simply TED is pretentious.

>attempting to impress by affecting greater importance, talent, culture, etc.,
than is actually possessed

Its heart might be in the right place, but its execution can be lacking. There
are real problems between the sciences and the mainstream and people are right
to criticize things that make this interaction worse by giving wrong
impressions.

~~~
richmarr
> Take jazz music -- it takes a lot of listening, knowledge, and understanding
> to fully appreciate really great jazz

It takes a lot of time and practice to fully appreciate drinking methylated
spirits... that doesn't make it a good idea.

> Simply TED is pretentious.

Your argument boils down to "I dont like TED because people think TED is
clever, but I think I'm cleverer than TED".

Prove it. Do something better than TED.

------
cgabios
TED, I think, serves as a modern version of high-brow oration as the middle
letter suggests: Entertainment. It's a double-ended marketplace platform of
content providers (speakers) and content consumers (paid attendees and non-
paid viewers). Since the cost is high to paid attendees, the content must be
as good and fresh as humanly possible. From what I've seen as a non-paid
viewer, I think TED accomplishes this reasonably well. It seems hard to have
perfect criterion to choose whom to select and whom to not, when there is an
abundance of interesting of voices, but unselected folks can always speak and
publish on other platforms.

(Forward thinking can be controversial, but in order to not offend audiences
and prevent attracting the wrong elements, it seems customary that such topics
are passed on because the forum (e.g., intended audience/speaker experience)
is inappropriate, although the topic may be vital, insightful and have a
legitimate fora elsewhere. (Blasphemy, politics, etc.))

~~~
tjradcliffe
TED talks are predigested intellectual pablum that make the people hearing
them feel smart. Seeing one is mildly entertaining. Seeing two is cloying.
Seeing three makes you aware of how intolerably formulaic they are. In
fairness I've only seen half of a few, because they bored me stupid by the
time they were half way through and it had become apparent that the whole
schtick was to make the audience feel special and insightful. So I may be
missing something wonderful.

TED suffers from the same malaise as all "cutting edge" forums: it has no
apparent effect on the world, other than transfering money from attendees to
speakers and organizers. Which is great: taking money from willing dupes is as
old a humanity, but as the years role by it becomes increasingly difficult to
maintain that anything more interesting than the release of the latest
forumlaic blockbuster is going on.

Refuting this claim is easy: all you have to do is show a dozen or two cases
of people who came away from TED changed in a some permenant and actionable
way. People who didn't just go back to the same jobs doing the same thing in
pretty much the same way. Does anyone have any data rather than anecdotes on
this? It would be easy to prove my judgement wrong using it.

~~~
andrewflnr
Besides deliberate job skill training and radical religious conversion, what
educational media satisfy the "obvious change in lifestyle" test? Like any
nonfictional media, the value is in perspective. Maybe you criticize
newspapers and Scientific American on the same grounds, but otherwise I
suspect you're holding TED to an unfair standard.

FWIW, I know my dad has taken useful insights from the occasional TED talk.
The one about how the first follower is as important as a leader comes to
mind.

------
vixsomnis
I've seen a few TED talks: notably, from those published on Netflix under
"Head Games". There are some interesting topics there. Cults, consciousness
(always amusing to hear people claim they've cracked this one), self-
deception, the optimism bias, and so on.

It's not something you should watch a lot of. I'd consider it mostly
"inspiration" and not actually a learning experience, as most of the speakers
make grandiose claims (fluent in a language within a month, on the brink of
understanding the entire brain, etc.).

TED should be watched and enjoyed if you like that sort of thing, and then
heavily supplemented with more trusted academic material.

For consciousness, I found this book at my school's library last year, and
enjoyed reading it: [http://www.amazon.com/Consciousness-Brain-Deciphering-
Codes-...](http://www.amazon.com/Consciousness-Brain-Deciphering-Codes-
Thoughts/dp/0670025437)

I don't remember if I saw the TED talk first, and then read that book, or
vice-versa...

TED talks make me feel like I'm living in the future. Even if the speakers are
overconfident to the point of foolishness, it's enjoyable to watch as long as
you remind yourself that it is sometimes only conjecture and science-fiction.
I think the author of this article is overreacting.

------
nathanallen
I think we can add a few more genres to our list...

Popularizations

    
    
      - The Paradox of Choice
      - The Long Tail
      - The Shallows
      - Freakonomics
      - Where Good Ideas Come From
    

Podcasts

    
    
      - This American Life
      - Freakonomics Radio
      - 99 Percent Invisible
      - Stuff You Should Know
    

Aggregators

    
    
      - Hacker News
    

I'm being tongue in cheek: I grant you there's excellent content, above, but
I'd be interested to see a breakdown of the following: WHO consumes this kind
of content, and WHY do we/they/I find it quote-un-quote "interesting"? I
distinctly remember a car trip I had recently in which I realized, after about
10 minutes of talking to the passengers, that we were all regurgitating
podcasts! It felt genuine, but we weren't adding anything much of our own in
the mix. Is it a class thing, a source of social cachet? What are we trying to
signal to each other when we share it?

I have a sneaking suspicion that the smarter we get, the more gullible we are.
That the world can be "counter intuitive" and that we feel good about
ourselves and our intellects when we recognize this superficial fact, seems
all very strange. Like a slight of hand. Come to think of it, there's a great
TED talk about a pick-pocket...

~~~
mercer
Reminds me a bit of this skit:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JLWQEuz2gA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JLWQEuz2gA)
("Did You Read It?")

I've started noticing more and more that a shockingly large amount of
conversations are little more than continuous references to things both me and
my conversational partner have read, seen or heard. With my brothers it's
Reddit. With my fellow coders it's HN. With my college friends it's a grab-bag
of New Yorker, NYTimes, Instapaper / Longreads articles, and our national 'top
publications'. Whichever one has recently published a particularly thoughtful
(or really, viral) article.

Sometimes I find myself in a conversation like this with _multiple_ , and it
makes me feel like I'm in a Family Guy episode (even weirder: referring to a
family guy joke that is itself only funny because it's a reference).

I've started avoiding these conversations, because it's just too easy to get
stuck in a 'small-talk loop' that just goes on and on. I think that says
something about the subject matter, because I noticed that when discussing,
say, a book we've read or a lengthy documentary, we inevitably end up in a
fascinating conversation about the subject matter.

(another solution, I've found, is to pretend that I didn't also read/watch x,
and get someone to explain and reason about it.)

------
justonepost
The absurdity of TED is not its content, and I think any critique of its
content is wildly misplaced. There's actually some OK stuff there if you ask
me. The absurdity of TED is any claim that they're doing anything particularly
innovative when it comes to curation. It just feels like your average medium
impact journal using a video format and publishing to youtube.

~~~
sp332
TED is a conference that produces videos as a side-effect. Well really the
videos serve to increase the prestige of the conference so they can charge
more money for tickets.

------
thanatosmin
"The inert masses today are defined simply and purely by the energy that they
channel into consuming things. The critical TV or internet consumer is an
addict like everyone else, but his criticism shields him from accepting that
reality. What’s needed instead of the constant study of mass culture is a sort
of barbaric asceticism. Distaste must have its day."

Brilliant.

------
Houshalter
I thought this was going to be about this interview posted today. He claims
that TED, the organization, has become a Scientology-like cult.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JhwQ17mLjo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JhwQ17mLjo)

Instead the article is just complaining that he doesn't like the speaking
style of TED talks. This is extremely subjective of course, but I really don't
mind the format. Yes it's a pitch, but I don't feel like its embarrassing or
shameful like the author keeps saying.

------
A_COMPUTER
They mentioned Sarah Silverman's TED talk deflating the pomposity of TED, but
it is unbelievable that they didn't mention the TEDx talk "2070 Paradigm
Shift". A guy made up a completely false story about himself to get on a TEDx
roster, then for 20 minutes made up complete nonsense like going to Rwanda
with Elon Musk to give African villages ipads so they could learn javascript.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yFhR1fKWG0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yFhR1fKWG0)

~~~
duskwuff
TEDx conferences are run by people peripherally related to TED, if at all, and
they have a long and unfortunate history of giving a platform to frauds,
hoaxes, and charlatans. I think it's gotten a bit better after some
particularly bad talks came to light in late 2012, but quality control is
still frequently lacking.

A starting point for further reading:
[http://tedx.tumblr.com/post/37405280671/a-letter-to-the-
tedx...](http://tedx.tumblr.com/post/37405280671/a-letter-to-the-tedx-
community-on-tedx-and-bad)

~~~
getsat
TEDx might be largely garbage, but it has this talk which actually changed my
life:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0yGdNEWdn0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0yGdNEWdn0)

Strangely, this guy does not even promote his book. His book completely
changed my mental approach to language learning. I highly recommend it to
anyone who is learning a language.

------
api
I somewhat agree on TED, but even more I appreciate the author's "meta" point
-- that it is perfectly okay to be annoyed or disgusted at something. One is
not required to like everything, nor to pretend to like things in order to be
"PC" or something.

------
pcurve
Some of these talks (not just TED) are incredibly inspiring. I particularly
love the ones that were turned into RSA Animate.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc)

------
6stringmerc
When Amanda Palmer delivered a TED talk about the "art of asking", I knew the
platform was more interested in money and publicity than any sense of
intellectual rigor. Mostly because they allowed a person a platform from which
to spew anecdotal garbage, and secondly, because the platform presents itself
as immune to criticism. It is, to me, an embodiment of the phony image that
Amanda Palmer has based her entire career upon (she's not the only one, simply
the most obvious), and it's that selfish faux sincerity that strikes me as
f#*king disgusting.

Some might question my basis for this, but I didn't earn my National Forensics
League membership easily. TED is essentially feel-good, disposable
information. Compared to Nova, or pretty much any issue of National
Geographic, it's a pile of profitable hot garbage.

~~~
solipsism
I don't know anything about Amanda Palmer. Could you link me to something
critical that expands upon your position?

------
JohnTHaller
Will Stephen's How to sound smart in your TEDx Talk is a fun deconstruction of
the pacing and process of most TED talks:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8S0FDjFBj8o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8S0FDjFBj8o)

------
mr_luc
I absolutely loved one critique from the article:

> middlebrow megachurch infotainment

This hits the nail on the head on so many levels. (And maybe that's enough;
maybe the college-educated need their megachurches as well).

Like megachurches, TED offers highly-produced "public speaking as
entertainment", but the purported content of the talks isn't entertainment,
but $SERIOUS_ISSUE being told to you by $PERSON_WHO_KNOWS_BEST.

This grates because TED events are inherently artificial; everyone knows that
they're there to be entertained, despite the _trappings_ of importance.
Contrast with political speech, which is (usually) ugly, but has the solidity
that comes from serving real (if often equally ugly) purposes.

Once might say, hang on -- what's so bad about public speaking at TED and
megachurches? What's the difference between TED/megachurches and, say, standup
comedy, or storytelling, or politics?

The difference is both 1) honesty, and 2) the role of the audience.

Honesty: Speech at TED or a megachurch comes with almost suffocating trappings
of weight and import. In contrast, storytelling and standup and all sorts of
ordinary entertainment are much more honest and down-to-earth: they don't
claim to present anything more than a good yarn, some ear-tickling.

Audience: In both TED and megachurches, their audience does not expect to
think critically, or to in any way hold the speaker to account. They do not
expect to ply the speaker with questions later. In contrast, the audience
keeps standup comics honest and can turn on them viciously; and politics
invites constant comment and criticism from all quarters, of a kind that
mostly keeps politicians from indulging in extravagant and exalted speech that
could distance them from the everyman.

Could we make it more honest? That's tough without making TED itself have more
of a functional purpose than just entertainment. The world does need
exploration and discovery and curated content, but TED's format is clearly
"preaching as entertainment", not discussion, and not journalism. It's like a
Church devoted to episodes of "The Price Is Right".

But apart from TED developing its own 'platform' for change in the world and
becoming a more functional organization, to go along with the views it invites
... as a thought experiment, I can imagine for instance having 2 experts on
the _same_ subject, each presenting it through their own lens. This would
complicate preaching tremendously and keep it much more honest, but it would
probably be far more instructive and nourishing to the audience.

~~~
kirsebaer
TED speakers do take questions from the people in the audience and there is a
comments section on the TED website, videos usually get lots of discussion.

Some nice things about TED/TEDx: * They have made intellectual talks "cool". *
Video equivalent of a Scientific American article. * Encourages people to give
short entertaining talks instead of 40 min powerpoint "presentations". * With
TEDx anyone has the opportunity to get onto the TED website.

People on HN complain about the crazy cost of attending a TED conference, but
this is just a networking/conspicuous-consumption event for rich people -- is
that any different than $10k charity dinners?

~~~
mr_luc
Interesting.

I think, boiled down, that it's purely the exalted tone at TED talks that
really grates on me (and it seems a good number of others). Intellectual talks
may not have always been cool, but they rarely used to sound like preaching.

------
SideburnsOfDoom
"TED is a good example, if only because ... it has not yet been critiqued to
giggles."

Um, I'm not quite sure what "critiqued to giggles" means to the author, but
doesn't this qualify? [http://gizmodo.com/5956248/the-onions-ted-talk-
parodies-keep...](http://gizmodo.com/5956248/the-onions-ted-talk-parodies-
keep-getting-better-and-more-scathing)

------
Raed667
I wrote a little something about TEDx [1] a while ago. This format is
destructive because it is monopolizing the idea of an "event" and almost no
other format is being considered anymore.

[1]: [http://raed.tn/blog/why-you-shouldnt-attend-a-tedx-
event/](http://raed.tn/blog/why-you-shouldnt-attend-a-tedx-event/)

------
fermigier
I agree with most that has been written in the article.

There is an interesting (actually) counter-example to the preformatted typical
Ted Talk: French designer's Philip Stark
[https://www.ted.com/talks/philippe_starck_thinks_deep_on_des...](https://www.ted.com/talks/philippe_starck_thinks_deep_on_design)

This talk is so out of line with the other TED talks that I was a bit
disturbed the first time I saw it, but actually this is the one that I still
remember the most vividly five years after. Of course, it takes a real genius,
and not just a marketing "genius", to deliver such a particular performance,
and get away with it.

------
cwyers
> I will be crass: the most interesting thing about Bratton’s talk is that in
> the early minutes of the lecture, just as he has delivered his main thesis,
> he suddenly forgets what he is supposed to say. There is a pause. It would
> be perfectly natural in another format to wait and gather one’s thoughts,
> but the pause is strangely disturbing in this context. He loses his place,
> then his nerve, and for the rest of the talk he struggles under an invisible
> weight. He has to heave a breath into each sentence, trying to propel
> himself into a rhythm that he doesn’t regain until the very end. What he is
> struggling under is the pressure of the TED style.

Wait, what? Is the author a telepath?

~~~
fabulist
I don't think informed speculation is out of line in an opinion piece.

------
phonon
It's this generation's Chautauqua.

------
kleer001
tl;dr Haters are an important part of healthy ecosystems of consumption.

------
quadrangle
SIMPLE:

TED world is made up of thousands of speakers. Some are completely and
sincerely excellent, informative, and inspiring. Some are mediocre or are
smart but pretentious and mostly hot air. Some are really lousy.

To judge TED on the basis of a misc. selection of talks isn't all that useful.
The difference in quality and value between the best TED talks and the
lousiest is HUGE. We should not trash great value just because a bunch of
lousy stuff is mixed in.

------
bitwize
TED is like www.edge.org combined with the recent trend of presenting ideas
only in videoed live "talks" you have to sit and watch and listen to, rather
than as textual documents you can peruse silently at your leisure.

It's a perfect forum for R.U. Sirius and Jaron Lanier. Not people who get shit
done.

------
michaelochurch
It isn't just "TED". TED is a symptom (and not all of the talks are bad; the
format must be shallow because it reflects the short attention span and quick-
to-dismiss mentality of the upper class). It's this horseshit faux-liberal
self-congratulatory corporate house-slave culture. That's where this speaking
tone of "pitching" rather than teaching or exhorting or enlightening (when
needed) condemning comes from. I can't fucking stand it. It glorifies saying
_nothing_ in a vacuously charismatic and uselessly intelligent, but extremely
socially acceptable, way. It legitimizes the existing elite's sense of its own
"meritocracy" and encourages the passive-aggressive behavior for which the
California business culture is known.

This whole culture (and I can't blame TED for this; it would exist with just
as much force regardless of whatever TED did or didn't do, because TED really
isn't a big deal in any way) castrates the people who are supposed to be
"intellectuals" and it often galvanizes the upper-middle-class _against_ truly
creative people, who are almost never socially acceptable because those two
objectives are often diametrically opposed.

That said, I've been on the pro-distaste vector for years and look where it
has got me such as... well, let's start here, on this TED-Junior forum we call
Hacker News. Anything I say, 5 people I've never met who've only read the name
and not the content come and downvote it to shit. None of that matters in the
least (downvotes don't really mean anything when you get them for nothing) but
it's worth pointing out. Yes, the world absolutely needs people to express
distaste and disgust. We need to stop accepting the monstrous waste of
resources and peoples' finite attention when something like Snapchat gets
funded and some Joffrey gets to play boy-king. That said, it often leads to
some pain for the courageous individual. You don't always make friends being
right.

Rant over. Fucking take it away.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
I totally agree. Dissenters/malcontents don't have an easy life, and they have
to be absolutely freaking amazing (genius, good communication skills) to have
any impact at all (or they are just written off as cranky, crackpots, or
worse). Much easier to just join the echo chamber and go with the flow.

~~~
michaelochurch
Even that top 1% that manages to break through gets written off as cranks and
"crackpots" by most, at least early on. It's the fact that an elite and
discerning few, whose opinions are the only ones that matter to us, can
recognize our talents that keeps us going.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Eh, to be fair, it is often very difficult to tell who is a crackpot or just
being cranky, and who is a legit dissident/free thinker. We (ya, I include
myself) can develop behind a wall of understanding and support, but eventually
we want to change the world, which means...somehow appealing to the broader
community.

------
Animats
From the article: _" middlebrow megachurch infotainment."_

(somebody else just posted that phrase while I was posting)

They have today's TED nailed.

I was thinking of applying to give a TED talk. Then I watched some of the
newer ones. No.

