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The Unwondering Project, Tales of Route 66 and Japan's Vending Machine Obsession | #530
Published about 21 hours ago • 8 min read
Dear Reader,
Are we losing the ability to wonder? In a world filled with easy answers, we all need to discover places where we can engage our curiosity without immediate gratification. Labor Day weekend is one of the busiest travel times of the year in America and whether you're heading somewhere or just staying local, this week we just launched an idea that might inspire you to go out and engage find your own places to wonder. The Unwondering Project is a curated collection of fascinating destinations from across the US (inspired by our future word Unwondering). From indie bookstores and ghost towns to lighthouses and bioluminescent kayaking, the site brings together lots of family experience ideas all searchable by zip code. Check it out and let me know if you find it useful!
In stories this week, you'll read about why applying for jobs should be harder, a look at satire and stereotypes and some interesting history about Route 66. A featured story about the data center debate, a new Future Word of the week (Outsourcery) and insights about Japan's curious obsession with vending machines are all curated stories in the newsletter this week too.
One of the consequences of AI content generation tools combined with a push from recruiting platforms to make it easier for applicants to put in their resume for a job is that the market is getting flooded. Several years ago, a posting might have attracted 100 or so applicants if they were lucky. Now it can number in the thousands:
“A year ago, every recruiter would tell me: We want to make it as easy as possible to apply for jobs,” offering candidates a “seamless experience,” Ophir Samson, the head of voice AI for Greenhouse, tells WIRED. Samson joined the recruiting platform earlier this year, when it acquired his startup, which used AI to conduct job interviews. “What they got was 2,000 applicants in 24 hours for a job. That is a shitty experience for everyone.” Good applicants can’t stand out, while bad candidates slip through the cracks.
The growing conclusion from hiring professionals and job seekers alike is that the process of searching for a job is fundamentally broken. The solution seems obvious: add more friction into the process. So how can anyone recruiting for a new position do this?
One solution is to use job listing boards created by people within an industry. For example, Mandy Hofmockel is a journalist who created a postings board and Substack for journalism jobs. It is the sort of resource that is passed from one person to another by word of mouth - and therefore unlikely to be a target for bot farms or for mass submissions of resumes. I'll be on the lookout for other solutions to this challenge and if you can suggest any, let me know.
Easy Money and Native American Experiences On Route 66
A little over a hundred years ago, the iconic American Route 66 was first commissioned with the big idea of stretching a national highway from Chicago to LA. Since then, it's been a part of American history and continually featured in movies, books and art.
The moniker “Main Street of America” had, in fact, been applied to other highways before, so the marketing idea wasn’t entirely original. But to stretch it across 2,400 miles, from Chicago to Los Angeles, was to attempt something more ambitious: a nationalization of America’s most idealized civic space.
It has also inspired some fascinating cultural stories like one this week about the complicated relationship some Native American communities have with the road. The easy money method of capitalizing on stereotypical depictions like feathers surrounding a street sign are exactly the sort of thing that some shop owners are staying away from. Instead, they are using their spaces to say something more authentic:
Now, tribal governments and tourism groups are using the centennial to tell another story: Native nations as founders of towns, owners of land, and as sovereign governments, while directing travelers toward tribal museums and Native-owned businesses. This is reclamation, but also commerce. Gail Chehak, a Klamath citizen and the community relations director of the American Indigenous Tourism Association [says] Native nations ... are using the centennial “to remind people, you know, we were here long before the route, and the route follows a lot of our traditional trails, and that we’re still here.” Many tribe members have “both fond and not-so-fond memories” of the road. It crossed Native land and helped market a generic Hollywood Indian. But it also connected Native communities, carried families along the Powwow Trail, and opened new markets for Native artists, she says.
As we head towards a long weekend here in the US, this is a reminder that we all have a traveler's choice of whether to accept the mass-produced tourism version of the world that we encounter, or to go further. The idea is also at the heart of The Unwondering Project that was featured earlier in this newsletter. Among the collection of spaces are some top Native American destinations along Route 66 that you can see here >>
Stereotypes, Satire and Who Is Really In On the Joke
There's a new Ali G movie coming, and not everyone is happy about it. For those who are unfamiliar with the character that launched actor Sascha Baron Cohen's career; Ali G was a satirical portrayal of "a dim-witted white man imitating urban British hip-hop and Jamaican culture." His character routinely played up stereotypes about other cultures, insulted people and offered a "faux rude boy" persona that amassed him lots of fans. Other comedians too have portrayed satirical versions of stereotypical characters like Stephen Colbert with his right-wing pundit portrayal or Paul Sun-Hyung Lee's brilliantly stubborn Korean patriarch "Appa" in Kim's Convenience.
The question they all seem to pose is one that has become more central to humor itself: what topics are acceptable to satirize and who should do it? Should Cohen's portrayal of Ali G be treated one way because he is portraying a different race versus Lee's Appa because he is ethnically Korean? Or should being funny be the only test, and if they can deliver humor than all else is ok? These are the sorts of questions that some people spend a lot of time thinking about while others never do. Maybe you're somewhere in between. If the question strikes a chord for you, I'd love to hear what you think about it. Let me know and share a comment with me by email.
The Non-Obvious Future Word of the Week
Outsourcery
From the parenting chapter, one of the big topics Henry and I chose to dig into was the growing use cases for technology to make parenting easier. Robots reading bedtime stories, automated apps checking infant sleep patterns and so-called homework bots were all part of this shift that we've been tracking for years. One of the words we picked to describe this was "Outsourcery." It was a word that you could imagine applied to any situation where you are able to use technology to achieve almost magical results through automation.
The parenting lens on it was a fascinating choice for us because it has already evoked a different sort of response. Something about using technology to take over some portion of parenting duties feels simultaneously concerning and inevitable. The line also seems to be shifting. What one parent considers desirable with technology might be anathema to another. That blurred line makes this word and phenomenon interesting. So when I saw the article this week about a mom cloning herself to be there for her teenage son while she was traveling - it was yet another use case for outsourcery in the wild. Whether you criticize or welcome it, at least we now have a word to describe it.
The Non-Obvious Media Recommendation of the Week
Vice
VICE is a platform with physical magazines, newsletters and nearly every social media platform. The mission is to "capture the people at the heart of stories, and focus on the ideas, issues, and context that other outlets miss." Very non-obvious. What I like about the platform and the reason it's on my regular reading list is because of how their stories often inspire thinking about broader trends and cultural shifts. This week's story about "dial-toning" (when someone gives out their number, then ignores every attempt to follow up before a connection ever starts) was a good example, offering an interesting angle on dating and how the fear of rejecting someone to their face can lead to this sort of behavior of sharing details but never intending to actually connect. From songs to gaming to snack recommendations, the site has plenty of content that points towards our shifting culture and (as promised) they do indeed routinely share perspectives that other platforms missed. For that reason, it's my pick for the Non-Obvious Media source of the week.
The Non-Obvious Book of the Week
The Castle: Adventures In A World of Unraveling Men
Fascinating explorations come from asking unexpected questions. This book starts that way, with an invitation to a castle that spawns a journalist's inquiry into the often discussed and quickly diagnosed "crisis of masculinity." If you are familiar with Ronson's previous books on public shaming or conspiracy theorists, this one seems like a natural sequel.
Masculinity has often been at the heart of his past work too and his research in this book dives behind the scenes of real men imagining their own worlds and shaping them to their imaginations. Whether you blame permissive media for normalizing toxic masculinity or believe the "crisis" is short lived and overblown, Ronson's stories will make you think.
In a world with plenty of books on masculinity written from a female perspective, Ronson is unafraid to put his own manhood under the microscope too as he explores big questions about what he describes as a "lost generation of men." Ultimately, the book accomplishes what any exploration of extremes should. The characters in his stories may inspire a combination of fascination and repulsion, but love them or hate them - you cannot dismiss their experiences as fiction. While they may not all fit your definition of a real man, these men are still all too real. And so studying them can remind us of who we want (or don't want) to become ourselves.
Every week I share a new “non-obvious” book selection. Titles featured here may be new or classic books, but the date of publication doesn’t really matter. My goal is to elevate great reads that perhaps deserve a second look which you might have otherwise missed.
Even More Non-Obvious Stories …
Every week I always curate more stories than I'm able to explore in detail. Instead of skipping those stories, I started to share them in this section so you can skim the headlines and click on any that spark your interest:
Fascinating unusual stories + news curated by Rohit Bhargava.
Join over 25,000 readers of this Webby award winning newsletter where #1 WSJ bestselling author of ten books Rohit Bhargava curates stories on innovation, marketing, trends and the future. Be more interesting. Be more nonobvious.
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