Raise your hand if you overthink stories.

Unpacking ideas with people, over dinner, in the classroom, in conversation, is easy for me. My thoughts gather shape in the moment, dancing with the attention of the listener. I speak freely. I flow.

All that changes when I try to write them down.

The meaning of each word and sentence hardens. There’s a kind of finality to writing that creates friction for me. My focus turns, and I begin interrogating myself while typing. 

Listening while speaking; decoding my own words mid-sentence. 

“When you are in the middle of a story it isn't a story at all, but only a confusion... It’s only afterwards that it becomes anything like a story at all. When you are telling it, to yourself or to someone else.”  — Margaret Atwood, Alias Grace

I came across the Margaret Atwood quote while collecting stories for this Food for Thought, in a film called “The Stories We Tell” by Canadian filmmaker Sarah Polley.  

What if I approached writing as an interrogation? like in Polley’s film. I could use the questions to lead the story…

I asked the computer Copilot what it thought about this.

Apparently, this is a kind of “second-order thinking”; I had to look it up… Basically, I’m writing while simultaneously imagining the story it generates in another person’s head. Which is likely possible for me, since most of my work requires attention to perceived meaning. I make a living thinking about what other people are thinking about—questioning the questions…

So what do I do with this? Could I just get Copilot to do it for me—can we do that now?

I'm tempted to just share a bunch of links and say nothing. Let them figure it out, I think to myself… 

Can I call it mine, if I add some yellow?

A picture is a bridge to an idea; a word is a definition of an idea. When it comes to graphic design, my ability to translate someone else's gaze is useful, but it seems to complicate the process when it comes to writing. Managing the tension between authentic impulse and anticipated reception is strenuous. It usually stirs doubt in me and spirals into over-editing.

Raise your hand if you are hyper-aware of other people’s imagined interpretation.

That means you have the tool for nuanced storytelling with relational depth. People like us are attuned to signs and how they're received. Most people stop at first-order thinking. Overthinkers have the ability to consider the ripple effects of a decision. We are second and third-order thinkers.

So are we editing for resonance or approval? 

I would say: resonance.

Mike Mills' 1999 documentary AIR: Eating, Sleeping, Waiting and Playing approach to telling a story is all resonance. The story leverages confusion; It embraces the act of telling, with all its imperfections, hesitations, ellipses, and repetitions. It shifts between observer and participant. Instead of pretending to be an invisible observer, the director is in the film as a character in the story. 

Perhaps there’s a way to leverage critical thoughts as a narrative strategy?

Take Barbara Kruger as an example. She doesn't just interrogate, she questions the viewer/reader. Her Direct Address approach flips passive observation into active participation. The story confronts the critic.

But that’s not my intention. These Food for Thought stories aim to provoke thought in the same way two people would explore an idea in a discussion. 

That makes me think of the last part of the Atwood quote: “it becomes anything like a story at all. When you are telling it, to yourself or to someone else.”

The resonance of a conversation is hard to summon when alone with a blinking cursor.

When I write, the idea can’t ricochet; it just sits there. Attempts to create a dialogue collapse. The rhythm disintegrates. I have to come back a day later to read it with fresh eyes; pretend I’m replying to someone else’s idea.

Then I pick up the fragmented thoughts and try to build a bridge between them. It’s like “a wreckage of shattered glass and splintered wood”. There’s a gut feeling that somehow, these ideas are related, but not sure how. So I wrestle with them and bend them into different shapes; come back a few days later and bend them some more… 

Can you feel the pauses where I hovered over sentences, unsure if they belonged? I do this again and again—moving words and sentences around on a page, until they fit the gut feeling.

Maybe these Food for Thought stories aren’t meant to resolve. Maybe the interrogation is the telling.

Food for thought.

Stories, not content; because the world doesn’t need more obscene digital landfill

Why we refuse to degrade our stories to ‘content’ and how good stories are the antidote to this epidemic of meaninglessness

Every time we get a commission inquiry for ‘content creation,’ I have to swallow the nauseating feeling before patiently explaining why we don’t do that. Because what they probably mean by ‘content’ is, in fact, much more than that.

Let’s be clear—content wasn’t always this despicable. The term emerged innocently enough during the early days of the internet, used to describe anything published online: text, images, videos. But as digital spaces evolved, and businesses began hiring marketers to fill endless feeds, the word ‘content’ became a catchall. Its meaning flattened. And with that flattening, came a normalisation of meaninglessness.

‘Content’ now refers to the endless digital detritus churned out to satisfy algorithms, not audiences. It’s a word that makes no distinction between a lazy meme, a heartfelt documentary, a research-based article, or an empty carousel of brand clichés. ‘Content’ strips intention from information. It assumes that everything we put online is just there to fill space.

And that is obscene.

Because silence is not a gap to be filled. It’s a necessary part of life. Infants find solace in it. Animals retreat into it. The idea that businesses must constantly post for the sake of filling the silence—adding to the noise of the world—is a symptom of our deeper discomfort with stillness.

And it’s not harmless. Everything we post has an ecological cost. Yes, your post about the cupcake you ate does cost the planet. This is the reality of our digital excess. It’s not just overwhelming. It’s wasteful.

The antidote to this is not more content; it’s meaningful stories.

A story is not something made to fill a calendar. A story has reason to be. Stories deliver new insight, a sensory experience, transformation, discovery, amusement, inspiration, leadership, compassion, caring, understanding, empathy, or to liberate the audience or solve a problem for them. A story engages your intellect and emotions, and we don’t mean this through the terminology of engaging equalling commenting, liking, or sharing on social media. To engage is to think about and allow space in your mind, regardless of whether you hit that like button. A story considers its audience, their state of mind, their mental space, their world and its current situation.

The term ‘content’ became more mainstream as businesses cut budgets and turned to marketers to produce creative work. But that’s also when the trouble started. As social media platforms pushed more advertising space into our lives, the volume of content exploded. The result was what some called “content shock”—a tipping point when there was simply too much stuff and too little attention.

Many who weren’t truly equipped for the creative work of story-making still stepped into these hybrid creator-marketer roles, underestimating just how much it takes. It seemed easy—just post something, anything. And so, meaningless filler became the norm. But authentic story-making isn’t easy. It demands craft, insight, originality, and emotional intelligence.

Marketing and story-making are never the same thing; too often, they require two very different kinds of thinking and creativity. That’s why we don’t substitute our work for a marketer’s—or vice versa. We always partner with exceptional marketers and don’t pretend to be them. And when clients come to us without in-house marketing, we collaborate with experts from our carefully chosen circle of affiliates. Because meaningful connection doesn’t come from either side pretending to be both.

And now, as audiences begin to retreat from the noisy public squares of social media—into private, quiet, curated digital spaces like DMs and group chats—there’s, hopefully, less room for meaningless noise. People are becoming extremely intentional about what they give their attention to. We think that’s a good thing because it’s an obvious preference for stories over ‘content’. 

So, no. We don’t do content. We do better than that. We do stories—good stories that exist for a reason other than the inability to sit with silence.

A system for wrath: Social code to express big emotions

Across cultures, some rituals are often formed as structured social expressions for deep emotions—grief, joy, disgust, and anger. Their formalization reflects a society’s attempts to channel powerful feelings into comprehensible acts. Among the Vanniyela Aetto, known more commonly as Veddas—the first people and the jungle folk of Sri Lanka—there is a striking example of this. This extraordinary practice is recorded by anthropologists C.G. and Brenda Seligmann.

Their 1911 study, ‘The Veddas’ reveals how the Vanniyela Aetto once used a piece of dried human liver, obtained through personal acts of violence, to summon courage and resolve in moments of profound insult or challenge. This was no casual outlet for aggression but a response to situations that struck at the very foundations of an individual’s dignity—instances such as the theft of a spouse, betrayal, or the violation of land or belongings.

“Every group of Veddas except the most sophisticated village Veddas believe that it was formerly the custom for a man to carry in his betel pouch a small piece of dry human liver. It was essential that the liver should be taken from a man killed by the individual who proposed to carry a portion of the dried liver in his pouch.”

The ritual was reserved for wrath, for extreme situations, far removed from the mundane outbursts of frustration. Their approach to such intense anger was measured, deeply symbolic, and tied to the core of their identity as hunters and defenders.

The act of chewing this dried liver was not just symbolic but a visceral reminder of personal power, a ritual of transformation that turned indignation into action. As the Seligmanns describe, the practice seems to have vanished several generations ago, but its echoes remain in oral traditions. The liver served as a talisman of strength, a bridge between the act of past vengeance and the courage required for future justice. This practice—ritualized, extreme, yet deeply tied to the Vanniyela Aetto’s social codes—embodied their understanding of controlled fury, situating anger as a tool wielded only in moments of utmost necessity.

“The purpose of the dried liver was to make a person strong and confident to avenge insults. As far as we could understand a Vedda might thus work himself up into a condition of berserker fury, but this was only done after very serious insult, as when a man’s wife had been carried off or been unfaithful, or when his bow and arrows had been stolen or an attempt made to take his land or caves.” - C.G. and Brenda Seligmann

This story offers a glimpse into how the Vanniyela Aetto transformed raw human emotions into structured responses, embedding their struggles within acts laden with cultural meaning. It provokes broader reflection: How do rituals shape our responses to emotional situations? The Vanniyela Aetto ritual was practiced by men; what about other genders’ use of rituals to express emotions? How do societies, ancient and modern, formalize emotions into symbols, forging connections between personal identity and collective values? Protests, riots and vigils, are current examples of forms expressing collective anger. What are their personal counterparts? What are ‘accepted’ forms for an adult to express their personal anger right now? Vanniyela Aetto’s practices make us question our response toward anger, our ways of demanding justice, and whether we still need systemized ways to communicate our deepest emotions through ritual. Perhaps, having a socially-accepted method to channel a deeply unsettling emotion is convenient, as our systemised responses to other emotions, like love and gratitude, show.

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Emotions are essential to human communication. Expressing emotions in a calculated, measured manner has been part of Eastern creative practices since the 4th century BC. We bring this into practice as part of our commercial story design methodology. Read more.