Bertxin Galestara and Sir Afilonius Rex,  based on an  opinion piece written by Marty Rhisiart Jones

Mountain View, 19th January 2017 – Bandoxa Thursday 15th January, 2026

“I’ve been accused of vulgarity. I say that’s bullshit.” – Mel Brooks

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Ladies and gentlemen, gather ’round the digital campfire while I, in the grand tradition of three very angry, very loud, very worldly-wise men, tell you the truth about Big Data! (Cue the dramatic music, the kind that sounds like a bar mitzvah band having a nervous breakdown.)

Big Data is bullshit! Pure, steaming, 22-carat, farm-fresh, artisanal bullshit! It’s the emperor’s new algorithm, strutting around naked while a million LinkedIn influencers applaud and post inspirational quotes overlaid on sunsets. You click on one of those articles, “How Big Data Will Revolutionise Your Cat’s Litter Preferences”, and before you’ve scrolled past the first paragraph, you already know it’s dreck. Absolute dreck! It’s like opening a present on Christmas morning and finding another present inside… that’s just more wrapping paper and disappointment.

And the people! Oh, the people! A whole parade of pundits, prigs, and professional bullshit-babblers doing the Hustle of Hype. Picture it: Morgan Freeman voice-over in your head going, “In a world… where data is big… these clowns will big-up Big Data in the most vulgar, ill-mannered, predictably nauseating dance of disinhibited professional-hustling… as old as time itself!” They’re twerking on your timeline like it’s 1999 and Y2K never happened.

But wait, hold the phone, is all Big Data bullshit? Is it just a fad, a load of old tripe, a confusion of weasels humping a barrel of objectionable weasel words? Or is there, somewhere in the petabytes of self-aggrandising garbage, a tiny nugget of something real?

For Google, Facebook, and Twitter (or X, or whatever Elon renamed it this week, probably “Xylophone” next Tuesday), Big Data ain’t bullshit. It’s the golden goose laying golden ad dollars! Ninety per cent of Google’s revenue comes from knowing you want to buy new socks at 2:17 a.m. while crying over your ex. That’s not bullshit, that’s weaponised bullshit. But let’s be honest, bubbeleh: how many of us are gonna do business like Google? Unless your last name is Alphabet and you own half the planet’s eyeballs, you’re not in that club. You’re in the “please don’t look at my browser history” club.

The vendors? Oh, they’re laughing all the way to the bank! They take open-source Hadoop, slap an enterprise sticker on it, charge you six figures, and call it “battle-hardened.” Then they sell you consultants, Big Data gurus, Master Data Scientists, Number Conjurors who wave their wands and make spreadsheets appear like nasty magic tricks. Real people! Getting paid handsomely! To pretend they understand petabytes!

And the success stories? Here, let me read you the greatest hits, celebrity-chef style:

• Uber! Shaking up taxis with Big Data!
• Airbnb! Turning strangers’ spare rooms into hotels with Big Data!
• Amazon! Would be nothing without Big Data, nothing!
• Banking! Revolutionary transformation incoming!
• GDP! Up 1% in the USA, maybe Spain too, because… data!

Beautiful headlines! Except… none of them are actually Big Data in the sacred trinity of Volume, Velocity, Variety, or the Hadoop kitchen-sink ecosphere. They’re just good old analytics with a marketing department on steroids. It’s like calling your microwave “quantum gastronomy” because it heats up soup fast.

Something is happening here, and it’s not legitimate. Can you guess what it is yet? (No, not the butler, it’s hype!)

When it rains Big Data hype, it pours. It monsoons. It floods the basement of reason with cloying, sticky hysteria. Pointing out the bullshit-babblers on LinkedIn Pulse, Forbes, Information Management, it’s like shooting fish in a barrel… with a nuke… while they’re already drowning in vintage Malmsey.

And trying to get these people to think critically? Forget it! For every bullshit-babbler, there’s a battalion of intransigent believers, marooned on the island of Unreason, waving palm fronds made of pie charts. You can’t logic someone out of a position they didn’t logic themselves into. These are IT refugees fleeing the old world, desperately paddling toward the apparently safer havens of Big Data, Data Science, and Data-driven voodoo, all aboard the handcart express to hell!

I read the other day: “Big Data lets CEOs base decisions on current ‘reality’ instead of past experience…” Oh please! The data you see is curated garbage, filtered through the integrity of whoever paid for the dashboard! It’s like looking at the world through beer goggles made of Excel.

Another genius: “Big Data and AI will change every industry… but none more than Healthcare, Finance, and Insurance.” Wow. Vague. Fatuous. Shameless willy-waving on a limb so far out it’s in another postcode.

And the crown jewel: “Big Data is like 1985 again… but this time it’ll be really, really big… $400 billion by 2018!” Astroturfed, 22-carat, deliberate, intentional, grossly misleading horseshit! Why do they do it? Because niche tech doesn’t sell conferences, keynote slots, or consulting gigs. So they pretend Big Data is the digital universal panacea, when right now it’s barely the hero’s best friend, more like the annoying sidekick who keeps saying, “trust me, bro.”

So I leave you with the immortal words of Dan Ariely, the only honest man in the room:

“Big data is like teenage sex: everyone talks about it, nobody really knows how to do it, everyone thinks everyone else is doing it, so everyone claims they are doing it…”

Suck it up, Big Data bullshit-babblers. The emperor’s got no clothes… and his data lake is leaking. Now get off my lawn!

Many thanks for reading.

In subsequent blog pieces I will be sharing my views on the evolution of information management in general, and the incorporation novel and innovative techniques, technologies and methods into well architected mainstream information supply frameworks, for primarily strategic and tactical objectives.

As always, please reach out and share your questions, views and criticisms on this piece using the comment box below. I frequently write about strategy, organisational, leadership and information technology topics, trends and tendencies. You are more than welcome to keep up with my posts by clicking the ‘Follow’ link and perhaps you will even consider sending me a LinkedIn invite if you feel our data interests coincide. Also feel free to connect via Twitter and Facebook .

For more on this and other topics, check out some of my other posts:

Looking for your most valuable data? Follow the money – http://www.itworld.com/article/2982352/big-data/looking-for-your-most-valuable-data-follow-the-money.html

Stuff a great data architect should know –https://goodstrat.com/2015/08/16/stuff-a-great-data-architect-should-know-how-to-be-a-professional-expert

Big Data, the promised land where ‘smart’ is the new doh!–https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/big-data-promised-land-where-smart-new-doh-martyn-jones?trk=prof-post

Absolutely Fabulous Big Data Roles –https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/absolutely-fabulous-big-data-roles-martyn-jones?trk=prof-post

Not banking on Big Data? – https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/banking-big-data-martyn-jones?trk=prof-post

10 amazing reasons to join The Big Data Contrarians –https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/10-amazing-reasons-join-big-data-contrarians-martyn-jones?trk=prof-post

Amazing Data Warehousing with Hadoop and Big Data–https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/cloudera-kimball-dw-building-disinformation-factory-martyn-jones?trk=prof-post

The Big Data Contrarians: The Agora for Big Data dialogue–https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/big-data-contrarians-agora-dialogue-martyn-jones?trk=mp-reader-card

The Big Data Shell Game – https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/big-data-shell-game-martyn-jones?trk=mp-reader-card

Aligning Data Warehousing and Big Data –https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/aligning-data-warehousing-big-martyn-jones?trk=mp-reader-card

Big Data Luddites – https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/big-data-luddites-martyn-jones?trk=mp-reader-card

Data Warehousing Explained to Big Data Friends –https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/data-warehousing-explained-big-friends-martyn-jones?trk=mp-reader-card

Big Data, a promised land where the Big Bucks grow –https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/big-data-promised-land-where-bucks-grow-martyn-jones-6023459994031177728?trk=mp-reader-card

The Big Data Contrarians – https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/big-data-contrarians-martyn-jones?trk=mp-reader-card

Is big data really for you? Things to consider before diving in–https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/big-data-really-you-things-consider-before-diving-martyn-jones?trk=mp-reader-card

Big Data Explained to My Grandchildren –https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/big-data-explained-my-grandchildren-martyn-jones?trk=mp-reader-card

If you enjoy this piece or find it useful then please consider joining The Big Data Contrarians:

Join The Big Data Contrarians here: https://www.linkedin.com/grp/home?gid=8338976

Many thanks, Martyn.