In recent times I’ve started to find myself more and more interested in stepping away from success. Successful teams, people, companies. I don’t mean people who are likely to be like you and me. I mean the big bosses, the billionaires, the Premier League teams… the winners.
I’m just tired. I’ve watched the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, acting like a teenager on his own social media platform. I’ve seen the super wealthy Matt Mullenweg and his eponymous Automattic, creating a fight between what he supposes is the WordPress community and WP Engine. WP Engine is the biggest of WordPress hosts out there, and worth, I dunno… a billion. Both are big big players. People in the WordPress community are not big players, by and large. Any tall poppies that come along risk being cut down by the always smiling, always affable in interviews, Mullenweg. It happened when he was OK with copying the yet to be released Drupal base theme, it happened when he pulled lots of themes by small firms from the WordPress repo, and it’s happening plenty of times since and until the WP Engine battle.
I don’t care now
So, I used to care if my favourite F1 driver won or lost. I cared if Liverpool won or lost. I cared if WordPress did well or not. Now that WordPress really turns out to be a rich man’s ego trip I don’t care.
But here’s the thing. I do care about the people. The contributors, the small businesses, the torch bearers. All of them have made WordPress a success. Not Mr Mullenweg. Not the big investors. It’s people, employees, business owners, contributors… the lot. The power and profit Mullenweg enjoys was generated by them. Not by him.
And then I look at F1. The Red Bull team runs on the profits of Red Bull. A sweet, health removing drink sold to children and adults around the world.
Look at Liverpool FC. Rich men own the team, rich men play on the field, all funded by hundred pound football tops and thousand pound hospitality meals.
I can’t get excited about so many things any more. Dubai is a consumer hell-hole of tax dodgers but so loved by so many. Trump is the president elect of the most powerful country in the world. Christian fundamentalists have gained power through fear of Muslim fundamentalists.
At the same time, Putin’s army is holding huge areas of Ukraine, Israel’s army had gone on a righteous crusade against Hamas who were on a righteous intifada against Israel.
All these led by big, powerful egos. Men, largely, as well, but women don’t carry innocence here – they support their men, often, and argue online. And it’s always, ultimately, big egos wanting to leave big impressions on the world. At every level, from sports to states, the winner mindset is crucifying normal people and the environment. It makes me wonder if we should, instead, pull back a little. Mock the people in the latest shiny. Question whether huge houses and vast or fast cars should be mocked rather than desired.
The point
So that’s why my blog’s theme has gone back to basics. A default WordPress theme from nearly a decade ago, no fancy features, no clever ideas. Just my musings and thoughts. It’s not the best theme out there, but it doesn’t need me to deal with the complexities of fancy editors. It’s simple. It’s also because the neat ideas in my very old theme needed updating for PHP 8 – they were causing major performance problems. I could have fixed it. I could have asked my colleagues to fix it. But we’re busy, and I realised it’s completely unnecessary. I want to leave my ego behind. The need to be unique and special.
Simple is what I want now. Simple and fast and low on trouble. I want that for everything, whether I’m buying train tickets or charging my car. I doubt I’m the only one.
Are you fed up of egos and complexity and overwrought software designed to increase wealth and prestige, not utility? Are you wanting to see more of grass roots sports in small stadiums with passionate fans than multimillionaires on immaculate grass? Would you like cars to be simpler and easier to look after? Tell me in the comments.