Saving the giraffe
The silly LinkedIn post story
Let me start by saying I’m not complaining.
I’ll repeat that a few more times. This is not a complaint post.
I’m simply describing something. Something you’ll have to come to terms with if you plan to write professionally about Additive Manufacturing or any other specialized, niche topic.
As long as you write challenging, niche, expert-focused posts, articles, or columns, you should expect limited reach and a modest number of reactions on social media.
But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. When writing about complex topics, your aim is to reach a relatively small group of people. You want either to inform experts in the field about something important to you, spark discussion, or simply showcase something.
However, preparing such content will take time, and in the end, you’ll probably expect some relatively decent feedback (say 30 reactions, 20 comments, and 3,000 views).
Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t — that’s just how it is with specialized publications. Just to be clear — I’m not complaining. I’m just stating how it is.
But every now and then, you stumble across something on the same social platform that not only achieves far greater reach, but is so absurdly stupid that you start questioning what you’re doing.
Like that LinkedIn post about saving a giraffe…
The post
The author of the post is Nazanin Bigdeli. Here’s her LinkedIn profile and her website. But that doesn’t matter. I’m not delving into who she is or what she does. I’m talking about her post.
The post consists of a 15-second video and three short sentences of text.
The video is AI-generated. It shows a rescue operation for a giraffe trapped on the edge of a cliff. A crane-excavator (it’s hard to tell which) pulls the giraffe from the cliff. A crowd of people stands around supervising the rescue and cheering the giraffe to safety. Of course, the giraffe is rescued, and everyone applauds and cheers.
Nazanin Bigdeli captions the post with:
What unites us is love and care.
In times of true need, human beings always come together to serve and to love.
Let us distance ourselves from those whose intentions are to divide rather than spread love.
At the time of writing, the post had 3,763 reactions, 480 comments, and 245 reposts. I don’t have data on views, but it was easily in the hundreds of thousands.
The analysis of the post
Honestly, there’s not much to analyze here… The video, while seemingly well-made at first glance, reveals a bunch of errors and imperfections after the third or fourth watch. It is pure AI. Not the best though...
The concept itself is absurd. I don’t want to waste time or internet space listing everything wrong with it… starting with the fact that no giraffe would ever end up on such a cliff, it would likely jump to death rather than allow itself to be hoisted, and ending with the ridiculous rescue operation using the mentioned crane-excavator.
As for Bigdeli’s content analysis, there’s none. It’s 37 words strung together into three meaningless, trivial slogans. Stuff like "let's care for each other," "let's save the planet together," "let's end wars." Blah blah blah… "Let’s hold hands and cheer! Hey! Why aren’t you smiling?"
Oh, and I don’t gamble, but if I did, I’d bet Bigdeli didn’t generate that video herself.
Reactions to the post
And this is really why I wrote this piece.
To be clear — I’m not complaining. But seriously… Just take a look… Here are just a few examples… This is beyond reasoning...
And so on, and so on…
Running an AM company is like playing in an obscure death metal band
In January, I wrote an article comparing the nature of working in the AM industry to being a musician in an extreme metal band. In both cases, success requires a unique set of skills, a lot of time spent honing them, and in the end, you receive appreciation from a small group of people:
Working in AM just as playing technical death metal in small clubs in the middle of nowhere can be incredibly frustrating and disappointing. Sure, it’s fun and allows for high self-fulfillment, but it doesn’t translate into massive success.
You do what needs to be done, and then a post about saving a giraffe gets more recognition in 3-4 days than 6 months of your specialized work.