What's My Problem With Ted Gioia?

Ted Gioia is a remarkably popular Substack writer—you might have seen some of his posts go around before. He's written things which have gained enormous reach, on things like Barnes and Noble's recent growth, ways to evaluate character and 'dopamine culture'. Given that Gioia is, like me, a jazz pianist who worked as a consultant and really likes blogging, you'd think I'd be into him.

But I'm not—I have a problem with him.

Not a personal problem, to be clear—he seems lovely—or with what he says—I find myself nodding in agreement with a lot of it. Granted, some of it's a bit airy, some of it has that consultant-brain thing of declaring things with profound confidence based on assumed conditions that do not obtain—but it's not that.

It's about how he writes, the way he puts his pieces together. They're not badly written or inartful. They don't make my eyes slide off in the way some other Substack writers do. So what is it?

They just have a certain cadence.

Being from the UK, as I am, I associate short sentences and single-sentence paragraphs with the tabloid press, but I don't think it's just that. It's more to do with the way it directs your attention.

Every paragraph feels like the setup for a punchline. I do not trust insight presented in the shape of a joke. Few insights find themselves unconfined by the tight fit of attention-grabbing trickery. Every few paragraphs, like clockwork you'll get a short single-sentence paragraph for emphasis. It keeps you going, sure, but I feel like I'm being jerked around like a fish on a line. If you're writing, you're trying to direct the flow of people's attention, but I feel like I'm being led about by the nose.

This is possibly unfair of me—but noticing this has sadly rendered Gioia unreadable to me, so I thought it merited a mention.