Just Culture #15: Ren and Dumb Money

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For all new readers, Welcome! Just Culture is one of many sections in the Just Publication. Remember the first rule of Just Thoughts;

Why should I think that way?

The Just Home has been in culture mode for the last few posts, and we’ll keep it simple because

Sometimes words are just art, awaking feelings in our inner worlds

Sometimes, words can fix a broken world with just a few simple words.

I wrote about cultural appropriation of rap in Just Thoughts #20, mentioning quite a few American artists, realizing I left Lil Dicky off the list of greats.

However, we won’t talk about Lil Dicky, who “owned his niche” in a way any entrepreneur can learn from and articulate why he’s going to win absurdly well, as demonstrated in “Professional Rapper” ft. Snoop Dog.

Ren

I nerd out on rapping sometimes, hence the highlight on Ren. You may be looking for comparisons of his style to other rappers or artists, but I won’t do that in this post. Instead, I will label him Ren, the first of his kind. Not because there aren’t comparisons to be made, as I’ve highlighted in a previous note;

Instead, because, more than most artists, he articulates his pursuit of uniqueness in a way that demands respect. In his song Hi Ren, he captures where the artist draws their creative energy: the pendulum that swings between the light and the dark.

With this thought, we can describe how an artist distinguishes himself from an entrepreneur and the artist in a profoundly emotional but relatable way;

The artist lets the pendulum swing between the light and the dark, sometimes to the point of delusion.

The entrepreneur chooses to see the light, sometimes to the point of delusion.

Putting these thoughts in a different perspective, an entrepreneur will learn from the darkness to stay in the light, while the artist will learn from the experience to move gracefully between the two states.

Ren draws inspiration from his mental health struggles and expresses them in lyrics for rap songs, but he’s also been able to convey the breadth of his talent more recently with songs like Chalk Outlines with Chinchilla;

The interesting part of his artistic development is how wide he’s taking it, which makes you think this is only the beginning of his Artistic career.

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Dumb Money

This weekend, I also watched the movie Dumb Money, which has an IMDB rating of 6.9 and 84% tomatoes & 85% popcorn meter at the time of writing. You can find the movie at least on MAX, among other streaming platforms.

The low rating likely reflects the entertainment value substitutes; some movies are better. However, suppose you’re looking for a way to convey the “true story” and its learnings, such as what happened with Robin Hood & Game Stop during the end of the pandemic. In that case, this blend of made-up supplementary characters with the real people involved in what transpired gives the story justice.

There is also a leadership lesson, the power of the crowd, and a testament to the power of live streaming and transparency that drives a different type of loyalty from your followers.

An interesting study would be the loyalty between people who attend live events as part of a community vs. those who follow live events online: Would there be a difference? And what happens when you actively combine both?

I’d argue that trust among individuals builds faster only if people have to work together for extended periods. Still, even then, it works effectively to maintain a community of former co-workers and maybe even spark trust among people the same way you find it when working together with others on the same team.

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