A Message from Robert
My favorite movie of 2020 was the silver screen adaptation of Cats. You read that correctly. CATS.
Cats is as hilarious as it is haunting. Simultaneously the best and worst movie I have ever seen, Cats was the greatest in-theater experience of my life, and as soon as I returned home I wrote 1,500 words analyzing the movie and how it made me reconsider what art could be. I do this sort of thing often.
I’ve written several thousand words about Battle Bots and how coolness rejects vulnerability while joy relies on it. I spent another few thousand in defense of Steven Glansberg, the obscure butt of an offhanded joke from the 2006 movie Superbad. Because, like Steven savoring his parfait, I’m not content let life’s moments fly by. I’m going to savor them.
When I have thoughts on something, I examine where they came from, why I think them, and what they say about me and the world. Basically, I spend a lot of time thinking seriously about some profoundly silly things. Maybe that makes me silly, and maybe it makes me profound, but I’ll tell you one thing it definitely made me: a philosophy major. The rhythms of deep examination I built studying philosophy never left me – they continue to shape the way I think about everything from sports to solitude to horrifying CGI cat-people.
Caster and our clients are the latest focus of my thinking, and my gears are excitedly turning to begin putting those thoughts to paper – or to pixel, I suppose. By and large, Caster as a company does exactly what I do as an individual: find an interesting story and leverage it to deliver a greater actionable message.
Take Crestron, the automation solutions pioneer: the story is that they create remarkably intuitive technology products, but the actionable message is that these products will streamline efficiency and enjoyment of both home and office environments. In the case of Cats, the story is …unclear. Maybe it’s that cats have a very complicated annual tradition of ritual suicide? In any case, the message is that a movie doesn’t have to be “good” to be awesome.
With another Caster client, NanoLock, the story is their IoT security solutions, but the message is that if you’re going to have devices handle things you used to worry about on your own, you don’t want to worry about those devices themselves. And for Battle Bots, the story is weaponized toaster ovens smashing into each other, but the message is that you should enjoy silly things sometimes. I clearly do.
What’s the point of doing all this you might ask? Why decipher stories and distribute their message? What’s the message of that story? In both my personal pursuits and Caster’s commercial concerns, the answer is simple: the world is better with more stories in it, and helping people understand those stories is the key to creating more of them. So as I begin my tenure with Caster, I look forward to learning our clients’ stories. I can’t wait to share them.
To connect with me on Twitter, wander on over to @ProbablyYour