(The scene opens on a dimly lit stage. ALFIE SWEARY stomps out, wearing a suit two sizes too small, sweating profusely. He is shouting.)
ALFIE SWEARY: ALRIGHT! SETTLE DOWN, YOU BUNCH OF SYCOPHANTIC MIDDLE-MANAGEMENT YOGURT-KNITTERS!
I’ve just been reading LinkedIn. Or as I call it, “The Digital Dementors’ Circle Jerk.” And I came across a post by a man called Barnaby Muck. A “Business Futurist.” What a job that is, eh? “Business Futurist.” It’s what you tell the police you are when they find you lurking outside a Dixon’s at 3 AM with a soldering iron and a look of existential dread!
A smartphone surrounded by numerous social media posts and like icons, depicting digital interaction
Martyn Rhisiart Jones
Madrid Thursday 9th April 2026
Right. LinkedIn.
You know, I was thinking about this the other day, or rather, I was forced to think about it because some algorithm had decided that what I really needed at 7:42 in the morning, while I was still half-asleep and trying to remember why I exist, was yet another notification telling me that Kevin from Supply Chain Optimisation had “viewed my profile.”
Here’s a brutal, no-holds-barred blog post from Sir Afilonius Rex, titled “The Perpetual Victim: How Professional Martyrdom Became the Most Lucrative Career on Earth”
Intro Before the Outro
At 3.17 a.m. I published a short, unsparing blog post. It argues that victimhood has been quietly professionalised into the highest-return occupation of our age. This occupation is tax-efficient, prestige-laden, and entirely unregulated. The returns are eye-watering. You can create a Substack and give a few tearful keynotes at $75,000 each. Add an NGO advisory seat at a quarter-million a year, and you can clear eight figures without ever producing anything. All you need is carefully calibrated distress. The raw material – historical or borrowed suffering – is free, non-depletable, and impossible to audit. There are three leading operators. The Hereditary Victim sees trauma as a trust fund. The Borrowed Victim deals with suffering leased by the aesthetically oppressed. The State-Level Victim acts like a sovereign wealth fund with an air force. The business model has one iron law: the grievance must never be resolved, or the revenue dies. Hence the goalposts are not moved; they are towed into the sea at dead of night. In the victimhood Olympics, gold medals are cast from everyone else’s corpses. That is the entire thesis. The rest is accounting.
Full-Private Number-One in the Awkward Squad of the rank and file of life was Sloppy, and yet had his glimmering notions of standing true to the Colours.
Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend
I am a sceptic, part of the awkward squad of troublemakers.
The awkward squad consists of people who ask questions and who won’t stop asking until they arrive at the crux of the matter.
The awkward squad won’t take bullshit for an answer.
The awkward squad are unquestioningly not pre-programmed to follow specific paths.
“I was a fool and what i’ve seen has made me two fools.”
Rafael Alberti, Spanish poet
Friends, Europeans, and fellow citizens, it’s time that we all spoke out against wrongdoing, criminality, and impunity. It’s time we took a stand against injustice wherever we find it. And it’s time to say that enough is enough.
Dud: Pete, did data exist before data warehousing?
“Never discourage anyone who continually makes progress, no matter how slow.”
Plato
Narrator: Let us start with a softball question. The kind that even your granny could have knocked out of the park.
How does a business describe the value it gets from accessing and analysing fresh quality data to decide what is strategically, tactically and operationally preferable for the future of the industry?
It’s not a trick question, but a tricky one that is as hard to grasp and come to terms with as a mightily greasy piglet with a very questioning tail.
What do Pete and Dud think about that? Get ready kiddies. Let’s take a peek…
