THE STATIC

Hey You, Welcome! Here’s your weekly dose roasting tech spin, bluster and puffery. Laugh at the cringe, unjam your message.

This week in:

• Tech Waffle Torture - How to make customers feel secure - on paper.

• Shallow Values - Customer-first: if and when it suits us, otherwise no.

• Savage Takedowns - AI Toaster: smart gadget or stupid idea?

• Pop Culture Cringe - Biggest Loser finds its villain and its audience.

• LinkedIn Templates - Workplace soulmates work Tarot card magic.

• Dear Dr Comms - When team player goes AWOL, the experts step in.

• WTF does ‘Cookie Licking’ mean? Not what you’re thinking.

Already subscribed? Excellent. If not, subscribe below. It’s your antidote to boring meetings filled with circular conversations and strategic vagueness.

Tech Waffle Torture Explained - We tell you what corporate speak really means. You’re welcome.

Original Fluff:
Our adaptive, zero-trust security framework ensures your enterprise is resilient-by-design, protecting critical assets with intelligent threat detection.

Translated:
“Adaptive” = a fresh acronym slapped on the same half-baked tool.
“Zero trust” = we don’t trust our staff, our vendors, or you.
“Resilient by design” = sounds sturdy, crumbles on first contact with hackers.
“Protecting critical assets” = guarding the shared office stapler, forgetting the servers.
“Intelligent threat detection” = machine-generated panic about nothing, while the real breach strolls past carrying your customer database on a USB stick.

Meaningfully Shallow Values – You get them as short and sweet ugly truths

CUSTOMER-FOCUSSED

Customer-Obsessed
“We launched five products no one wanted but they came with upgrade fees, so support tickets tripled and revenue ticked up. Obsession justified.”

We Put The Customer First
“Unless the legal department blocks it, finance won’t fund it, or the product team says no. Apart from that, totally first.”

Customer At The Centre
“We put their logo in the middle of a PowerPoint diagram and created a customer journey map. But then ignored it as it’s easier to build what suits us and explain it later in a webinar.”

Savage Takedowns – Spectator sport or heed the lesson

You’re Toast: The $400 Lesson in Over-Engineering Breakfast
Backed by full Wi‑Fi, firmware updates, weather displays, photo uploads, and toasting presets for 22 bread types, the $400 R180 Connect Plus Smart Toaster promised toast nirvana… and delivered undercooked, uneven bread that looked nothing like the screen’s preview. Turns out, all the tech in the world still can’t fix the fact that - it’s just a toaster. And to highlight how ridiculous this invention is, watch this hilarious 50 second video.

Why it matters:
If your toaster needs AI and Wi-Fi to brown bread, it’s not innovation, it’s indulgence. Chasing ‘new’ for its own sake ignores a harder truth: customers barely use half the features they already have. Just ask any ERP vendor. Real progress isn’t adding complexity; it’s building what actually gets used.

Pop Culture Cringe – Out of touch comms worth your time

Jillian Michaels: From Revered Trainer to Biggest Loser in Netflix Doc
On 15 August 2025, Netflix’s The Biggest Loser doc turned Jillian Michaels into the poster child for reality-TV cruelty. Contestants describe toxic, even dangerous methods. One claims that after a weigh-in, Michaels hugged him and said, “Thanks for making me a millionaire.” She flatly denies it, and is threatening to sue. But the bigger question is whether the showrunners shaped her into a convenient villain, deflecting blame from producers who controlled the format, the health risks, and the spectacle.

In B2B tech, this is the equivalent of blaming a single consultant, product manager, or exec for a failed ‘transformation,’ while ignoring the system that set them up to fail. The pressure to deliver results at any cost, the unrealistic expectations, and the leadership choices behind the curtain often matter more than the face in front of the client.

Lesson?
It’s easy to single out a villain - it makes the story cleaner, the fallout simpler, and the brand less guilty. But whether in reality TV or enterprise tech, scapegoating one individual hides the truth: accountability belongs to the system that engineered the outcome.

LinkedIn Popularity Templates – Syrupy, self-congratulatory. Surprisingly effective.

Template 12: The ‘Workplace Soulmates Forever’ Post

Some workplaces aren’t just jobs. They’re families. 💕

Last night, a group of us, past and present colleagues, gathered for our monthly ‘girls’ drinks.’ And honestly? It felt like stepping back into the magic. ✨

The laughter, the support, the tarot card predictions.

We reminisced about our leaders; they were more than bosses; they were mentors, friends, and role models. 🙌

The collaborative culture? We gushed it was amazing. Stay in your lane, crash into someone else’s - it never matters, as long as the money rolls in. 💰

Some of us may have left the building, but the bond remains. Sure, we bitterly fought over fonts and brand colours, but after the third wine, we all agreed, these were learning moments.

🍷 To Friday drinks (and Sat, 6 am spin classes in penance for 6 Vodkas + 7 wines)
🍷 To friendships that outlasted redundancies (and forcible removal from the office)
🍷 To collaboration (or what some mean-spirited people call turf wars).

We may no longer share an office, but we’ll always share this unbreakable connection. ♾️

Until next month’s debrief over Pinot and Panadol.

#BestBossesNever #CultureWars #CollaborateIsADirtyWord #MonthlyWhinge

Copy and paste on your company page, tagging the entire SLT and asking them to repost. Just don’t tell Marketing - it definitely violates ‘process’.

Got some naval gazing or philosophical musing you’d like to turn into a syrupy LinkedIn post? Reply to this email with your request and I’ll do my best.

Dear Dr Comms – When spin fails, we call in the real professionals to fix our stuff-ups

Dear Dr Comms

I’m leading the strategic pursuit of a $250M Whole of Government deal. Everything is ready… except pricing. Our Pricer has vanished. And it’s three hours before submission. Pricing is everything!! if we f*** this up, we lose!! I’m hyperventilating, pacing the floor, wondering if this is how reputations implode and die! Yours, Suffocating in Spreadsheets

Dear Suffocating,

You’re right to panic - pricing is the oxygen of a bid. Without it, the whole submission flatlines. But let’s see how the pros would fix it:

🎭 Performance Artist:
“Stage a live interpretive dance titled $250M of Value. Judges will be dazzled, confused, and too embarrassed to ask for actual numbers.”

🤖 Robotics Engineer:
“Deploy a pricing bot. It won’t understand government procurement rules, but at least it will deliver numbers that look scientific. Bonus points if it prints them in binary.”

⚰️ Funeral Attendant:
“Prepare the coffin. A missing Pricer means this bid is already a wake. Line up floral tributes: ‘In Loving Memory of Margin.’ Serve sandwiches.”

Got a problem you wouldn’t trust the Comms Dr to fix? Reply to this email, I’ll loop in real experts. 

What The Fluff (WTF)?! – Decoding tech, something that linguists, philosophers, and your boss refuse to do

Layer 8 Insights – Regular deep dives that explore the human error in tech.