The Cult of Beautiful Baloney

The Rise of Poetic Nonsense in Business

About 100 years ago, I took a business writing class that changed everything.

The core idea was to make it simple. Simple to read. Simple to understand. Simple.

Clear writing is easier to read, and act on, and infinitely more respectful of your reader's time. It's not about dumbing it down. It's about making it digestible.

That experience gave me something powerful: permission.

Permission to write short. Blunt. Direct.

To drop the filler and speak plainly.

That’s when my personal tone of voice started to take shape.

Since then, corporate speech has gone way off the rails.

Somewhere along the way, clarity got replaced with performance. Precision lost out to poetry. And business writing—once a tool for getting things done—became a stage for sounding impressive.

Every now and then, you stumble across a sentence on a company website that makes you pause, tilt your head, and whisper to yourself, "What the hell does that even mean?"

You think it’s you. Like maybe you missed something. Maybe it’s a metaphor. Maybe it’s a riddle. Maybe if you read it again, slower this time, it will start to make sense.

But it doesn’t.

Because it was never meant to.

It was meant to shimmer. To perform. Not to communicate.

Welcome to the lyrical hallucination of business jargon.

Where "unlocking human potential through purpose-driven ecosystems" is a sentence people say with a straight face.

Where “possibility architecture” is apparently a job.

Where the word “story” has been waterboarded until it can mean literally anything that makes you feel things about a brand.

We are living in the golden age of poetic nonsense.

It didn’t used to be this way. There was a time when the language of business was ugly, sure—but honest. We talked about customers. We talked about problems. We talked about products, services, and revenue. It was dry. But it was clear.

Then came the aesthetes. The brand whisperers. The consultants with minor poetry degrees and major FOMO.

Suddenly, the strategy wasn’t a plan. It was a soul. A story. A song.

The decks got gorgeous. The language got lush. The sentences grew soft and suggestive like they were trying to seduce you at a TED Talk.

Instead of saying, “We help companies solve problems,”

They said, “We partner with visionary leaders to catalyze transformation through narrative-centered provocations.”

Instead of “We build websites,”

It became “We design portals of interaction that align user desire with the brand’s sacred promise.”

And if you’re thinking, “That doesn’t sound that bad” — I get it. It sounds kind of beautiful. But don’t be fooled. That beauty is a mirage. A carefully styled Instagram filter for a strategy that doesn’t actually exist. Because underneath all the shimmer?

Still no clarity.

Still no substance.

Still no plan.

This isn’t just annoying. It’s damaging.

Because people stop doing the work and start performing intelligence.

They make slides that feel meaningful instead of being meaningful.

They start mistaking resonance for rigor.

And here’s where it gets scientific.

In one of my favorite research mic drops, a study in 2006 by Daniel Oppenheimer proved something we already felt in our bones: using fancy words makes people think you’re dumber.

Not smarter. Dumber.

His study—titled, with intentional snark, “Consequences of Erudite Vernacular Utilized Irrespective of Necessity”—ran a bunch of essays through a readability blender. When people read complicated versions of simple ideas, they didn’t see brilliance. They saw bullshit. When essays were plainspoken? Readers assumed the author was smarter, more competent, and more trustworthy.

Translation: People don’t confuse complexity with intelligence.

They equate clarity with intelligence.

Because clarity signals that you understand the thing well enough to explain it simply.

So when you bury your message under poetic fog, you’re not impressing anyone. You’re hiding. You’re distancing. You’re armoring up in language so no one can see there’s nothing underneath.

It creates a culture where people say “We must unlock the soul of the system” and be praised for sounding visionary—when all they did was obscure the real issue.

And let me say this, with love: if your strategy only makes sense after three espressos and a guided meditation, it’s not strategy.

It’s vibes.

Vibes don’t move businesses forward.

Clarity does.

This kind of writing—the lyrical hallucination—isn’t just a style. It’s a tell. It tells me you don’t know what the hell you’re doing. Or that you do know, but you’re too scared to say it plainly. Either way, I’m not following you.

So here’s the call: SHUT. IT. DOWN.

If you write strategy, lead teams, or shape brand language—stop talking like you’re giving a wedding toast at Burning Man.

Start saying what you mean.

You’ll stand out more if you do..

Plain language is not plain thinking. It’s disciplined thinking. It’s generous thinking. It’s the kind of thinking that says: I care more about being understood than about sounding smart.

You don’t need to catalyze impact :: You need to help someone.

You don’t need to architect possibility :: You need to solve a damn problem.

You don’t need to ignite purpose-centered momentum :: You need to build a thing. Test it. Adjust. Keep going.

Because the only transformation that matters is the one people can see.

And the only strategy that sticks is the one you can explain to a ten-year-old—without using the word ecosystem.

So go ahead. Cut through the fog.

Say the real thing.

That’s where the power is.

And science backs you up.

This Post’s Readability score: 87/100