Powderhorn, 1 year ago

The only thing that’s changed about artists and people in power is that we now know a lot more about their beliefs and personal lives than we used to. One thing that hasn’t changed is that everybody has skeletons in their closet and is the hero in their own story.

As such, and given that I don’t seek out salacious details about people I’ll never meet, so long as their irrelevant-to-the-content/product personal views don’t filter into what they produce, I tend to be unaware of anything else about them.

There are of course exceptions, with Musk being at the top of the list. But as I’m not in an income bracket that would let me avail myself of any of his products, it’s still largely irrelevant.

And the further back you go in someone’s history to find dirt, the more likely they’ve changed. I’d hate to be judged now by some of my early columns in college when I was in my edgy atheist libertarian raver phase, so I’m inclined to give others a pass on adolescent musings.

With more recent stuff, as people let more of their personality into their crafted public personas, it’s not all that difficult to deduce whether their worldview is going to be offensive. But commerce overall is not about whether I’d enjoy grabbing a beer with someone so much as whether their product fulfills a need.