Recently, HR and business-folk have decided that what they need more of in their companies is “storytellers.” I’m not making this up! Job boards are suddenly crammed with companies seeking “storytellers,” and English majors everywhere are getting excited that their work may finally be worth something.
Alas, were it only true! I suspect this new trend of hiring “storytellers” is just a rebranding of what used to be called “marketer” but with a special emphasis on manipulating potential customers on an emotional level. I’ve done the research, and, no, companies aren’t suddenly in a hurry to hire people with Creative Writing degrees.
This trend reminded me of an article I wrote back in 2009 for a website that no longer exists. I dug up the article, and with a little updating it’s still pretty relevant! Enjoy, and thank you for reading!
When it was published in 2009, Ben Mezrich’s book, The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal (which the movie “The Social Network” was based on), was criticized by some in the “real world” for being too loose with the facts in the interest of creating a compelling story. Merzich’s genius response to the critics who judged him for not following standard journalistic practices—such as talking with sources and not just making things up—was that he was trying to create his own genre of nonfiction. Apparently, this new genre of nonfiction is so revolutionary and new that it actually can be fictional but still reside in the nonfiction section at Barnes and Noble.
Let’s face it: if you’re looking for a steamy, page-turning, action-packed, fun-filled adventure, the true story of someone making a web site isn’t the first place to look. But, if you don’t actually care about the facts, a whole world of possibilities opens up. Suddenly the mysterious world of internet protocol, switches, HTML, JavaScript, and Secure Sockets Layer becomes a sexy, sweaty, action-packed, thrill ride! Or, alternately, it can be a haunted place filled with vampires, ghouls, shape-shifters, and voodoo incantations.
Take, for instance, the following “true story” of the creation of Internet Explorer 6.
