Martyn Rhisiart Jones

Madrid, Wednesday 6th May 2026

THE SEMIOTICS OF THE ABYSS: WHY EVERY CHIEF EXTRACTION OFFICER NEEDS A BRAINVACUUM™ PROTOCOL

“The most expensive sequence of vowels I have ever been forced to endure.” – Kenny Meh

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By Barnaby Squelch-Toad (Founding Partner at ShiteLogic™)

(Imagine, if you will, a man standing on a stage. He is wearing a suit that costs more than your house, but it’s tailored to make him look like a trendy geography teacher who’s just had a nervous breakdown in a Muji. He is pacing. He is doing that thing with his hands, the “invisible accordion”, that all these “thought leaders” do. This is the prose equivalent of that man.)

THE ONTOLOGICAL CRISIS OF THE CORNER OFFICE

Listen to me, you overpaid, spreadsheet-fondling, fleece-vest-wearing parasites! I’ve been looking at your Q3 projections and, frankly, they’re about as useful as a chocolate fire-guard in a crematorium! You’re sitting there in your ergonomic chairs, which, let’s face it, are basically just high-tech nappies for people who’ve forgotten how to stand up for a principle, and you’re wondering: “Why is my brand as relevant as a VHS copy of ‘Jim’ll Fix It’?”

I’ll tell you why! It’s because you lack BrainVacuum™.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re sitting there, probably in a “breakout space” that looks like a primary school designed by a sociopath, and you’re thinking: “Stewart, isn’t ‘BrainVacuum’ just a meaningless compound noun formed by smashing two unrelated concepts together to create the illusion of depth?” And I say to you… yes. Yes, it is.

But it’s a strategic meaningless compound noun. And if you don’t pay me £50,000 to explain it to you over a lunch of deconstructed kale, you’re basically admitting you’re a dinosaur. And not a cool dinosaur, like a T-Rex. You’re a Diplodocus. A big, slow, plant-eating nothing that spends its life looking for a hedge to hide in.

WHAT IS BRAINVACUUM™? (AND WHY YOU’RE TOO STUPID TO UNDERSTAND IT WITHOUT A SUBSCRIPTION)

Imagine a bucket. Now, imagine that bucket is your company. Now, imagine the bucket is upside down. Now, imagine the bucket doesn’t exist, but you’re still charging the taxpayer for the handle. That is BrainVacuum™.

It’s about the “How Not To.” Most consultants tell you “How To.” But “How To” is for the little people. It’s for the people who actually make things, those sweaty, terrifying individuals who live in places like “The North” or “The Warehouse.” You don’t want to be like them. You want to be a Visionary.

And a Visionary understands that the most powerful thing you can have in a boardroom is a total, echoing, cosmic absence of thought.

Look at the history of it. It’s like the Peasants’ Revolt, isn’t it? Wat Tyler and his mates marched on London because they wanted a fair wage and the end of serfdom. But imagine if, instead of being decapitated, Wat Tyler had just had a LinkedIn profile. He wouldn’t have marched anywhere. He’d have sat in a “Hub” in Smithfield, “pivoting” the revolt into a “disruptive consultancy for feudal alignment.” He’d have called his pitch “The Void-Peasant Synergy.” And Richard II would have bought it! He’d have given him a seed-funding grant and a TED Talk!

THE THREE PILLARS OF TOTAL EMPTINESS

To implement BrainVacuum™, every CEO must embrace the following:

1. Post-Rational Obfuscation: If someone asks you a direct question, like, “Why are we dumping toxic sludge into the local nursery’s ball pit?”, you don’t answer. You transcend. You say: “We are currently in a period of non-linear environmental recalibration.” It sounds like science! It sounds like you’ve read a book! (Even though the only book you’ve read in five years is a biography of Steve Jobs that you mainly just looked at the pictures in).
2. The Agnostic Revenue Stream: This is where you make money from the fact that you aren’t doing anything. It’s the ultimate capitalist dream. It’s like being a landlord, but without the hassle of having to occasionally pretend to fix a boiler. You create a “Strategy” for the “Void.” You sell the holes in the Swiss cheese.
3. Recursive Self-Aggrandisement: You must write articles like this. You must get people like Kenny Meh to say things like, “This article changed the way I look at my own reflection on the back of a spoon.” ### CONCLUSION: JUMP INTO THE HOLE

(The man on stage has stopped pacing. He is whispering now. He is leaning in so close you can smell the expensive gin and the total lack of empathy.)

You’re scared, aren’t you? You’re scared that one day, someone will realise that your entire business model is just moving numbers from one side of a screen to the other while the world literally catches fire.

Don’t be scared. Embrace the Void. Buy the BrainVacuum™.

Because if you don’t have a strategy for the nothingness, the nothingness might eventually notice that you’re nothing, too. And then where would we be? We’d be in a world where words mean things. And nobody wants that. Especially not the shareholders.

Now, give me my money, you fat, corporate bastards. I’ve got a conceptual art installation to fund in Shoreditch that consists entirely of a golden toilet that flushes copies of the Financial Times.

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Barnaby Squelch-Toad is a Global Thought-Pretender and the author of “The Zen of the Exit Strategy: How to Fire Everyone and Still Feel Like a Victim.”