Quality Control

Time to take a good hard look in the mirror

A few months ago, a friend relayed a great anecdote: his family friend, who oversees TSA at a small airport, wanted to run a regularly scheduled test on his employees, and so asked him to stow an unloaded gun in his luggage through security on their upcoming family trip to Florida. Just to see if they’d swarm him, which they did, and at which point the family friend stepped in and waved everyone off. Insane move.

We need this level of quality control here at Low Lift Ask. There’s no other way we can hold ourselves to the lofty standards we’ve already set. Every successful product necessitates built-in cycles of internal review, and we’re no exception. We already have multiple rounds of editing, fact-checking, peer review, and lawyer consults for each piece, but it’s time, I think, to institute a public-facing assessment.

It’s time to abandon all sense of external critical thought and focus ever more inward on our own project until it collapses in on itself. Today I will pick a number randomly from 198 (the number of posts) and subsequently tear it to shreds, see if it holds up or is funny or interesting in any way at all.

Impartial Google

Looks like this was the 90th newsletter.

Time for Ritam’s little tale to go under the knife.

Just off the bat: the title? I think I laughed at the time. One of those classic little Ritam word association things. Robe. Robespierre. Same four letters at the top. You know the vibes. Today, though? I’m viewing it through a more critical and nuanced lens, and I’m not sure this one passes muster.

OK then, Lil DeLillo! Go head… Now if there’s one thing I could add, it’s that I’d probably take all this out. It’s unnecessary. You’re just, like, using a lot of big words and shit that mean complicated things for no reason and it doesn’t make sense and maybe some of our subscribers don’t know what they all mean. It’s actually condescending, really, and frankly, kind of arrogant. Thinking about it more, it’s actually kind of fucked up to me that you would do this. I honestly can’t believe it. Now I don’t know if I want to do this whole thing with you anymore…? I mean, not that I’ve made the decision or anything, but the idea has breached the walls of my porous mind fortress. Just saying.

Sure, I guess. It’s funny. I don’t fucking care. I’m thinking about that thing from before. And now look, you referenced Knausgaard. That’s so fucking pretentious. I don’t care that it’s part of the joke. I hate explaining jokes. I hate when people explain jokes and why something’s funny. Just shut up—shut UP!!!!

Actually just thought of something funny: Thawb Time. And that’s funnier than Ritam’s little thing, definitely. Period..

“You know I had to do it to Thawb…?” No…

And here’s where Ritam lands the damn plane, I guess:

A lot of wordplay going on here. Or not even wordplay: just moving around letters. Half-hearted stabs at cultural relevance, like The Orb and crypto. A joke that could be interpreted as racist (“In Robe”).

Look, if you guys want proof for yourself, here. I was already in the middle of executing this idea I came up with last night when Ritam texts me this shit:

That’s not what we do here, at all. He just doesn’t understand..

What do you think I’m doing, dude…? Let’s take this asshole down, team. Let’s end his shit. I’m tired of his torturous games.

So here’s what I’m proposing: If we can get enough backing/venture funding, I’ll split off from Low Lift Ask and start my own thing, potentially in the creator marketing space. I could do like a crypto-backed, freemium-tier thing where I publish weekly product reviews with affiliate links, and then partner with content creators across different platforms to maybe boost my own brand? I don’t know, just spitballing, but we’ll figure it out. I’m tired of being beholden to this guy and his obsession with word association and being mean to our audience’s intelligence. I’ll only ever be nice to you, like I always am, like how I always only say really sweet things to our subscribers—and my solemn promise to you, forever, is no word association bits. None. That’s my guarantee. So who’s with me?

Fuck

Ritam’s Footnote

Qual Rove