Refrigerators.

This might sound a little weird but nevertheless it's true. I became a first-time home-owner at the age of 40. Since that time--more than a quarter-of-a-century--I've observed two types of refrigerators behaviors.

I started out when my kids were young with refrigerator-as-bulletin-board. The front surface of our machine was metallic and when my wife and I traveled, we would try to bring home souvenir magnets of the places we'd been. It was a dopey way of teaching our kids some rudimentary geography. It was also an expedient way of giving them a little gift something on our return.

On the fridge, we'd also have magnetic alphabet letters. We'd hang our third-grader's collage, or a snapshot of a kid at the beach, or a letter from our super telling us about some repair that was happening in our building. 

The refrigerator surface was, in a word, noisy.

Then, as happens to people when they work 24/7 and are good at what they do, we decided we had to renovate our apartment.

We started, of course, with the kitchen. We reconfigured it to use the space more efficiently. We knocked down a wall and built a peninsula as a divider from our dining area. We put in new custom-made cabinetry and new flooring. New appliances. The renovation to be clear cost as much as the original price of our apartment. But that's par for the course if you're behind the avarice eight-ball, as most people are.

Our refrigerators in our renovated New York kitchen and our rarefied Connecticut kitchen are way too snooty to be treated like our original ice-box.

First, they are clad in fine millwork. We therefore must abide by the old New York dicta "Post No Bills." Instead, on our expensive marble countertops, we have to give over a couple-thousand dollars' worth of square-feet to a large school-kids' calendar. The sorts of notices we used to put on our fridge, now take up valuable counter-space. How else will we know when our dental appointments are or when Julia and Mario are coming for the weekend?

It occurred to me in the dark of night how vital our refrigerator used to be as a communication device. And how our counter-space now plays that role. 

It also occurred to me how weed-like communication can be. How much easier it is to add than to take away. How we gravitate to clutter not importance.

As my therapist said to me almost forty years ago in the days before I had ever even been online, "The problem with the internet is the problem of hierarchy. Everything everywhere is shouting at you every minute. There are no chapter headings. No "front of the book," or appendix."

Last night I was scrolling on LinkedIn--as I do. I get a lot of my business from people I "meet" on the site, and business is important to me. (See price of renovated apartment above.)

For the last six months, whenever I see a connection on LinkedIn who posts things that are blindingly obvious, platitudinous, insipid or just plain dumb, I remove them from my network. I do this with the ferocity of Bergman's Grim Reaper in the "Seventh Seal." But despite my eugenic pruning, the dopey just keeps on coming.

And all this with none of the Sweeney crap.

The issue, I think, facing many people and companies today, is not that different from my refrigerator issue.

Without serious, scrupulous editing your brand becomes a Fresh Kills landfill of fetid junk. That's the obvious default for most brands and people. Meaningless always-on annoyance that some content "strategist" has recommended and called it a cadence--when it is more like a dump truck. A ferocious dump truck.

BTW, every content strategy is the same: Post more content.

Others, don't play at all. They sink into oblivion because they simply are not present. They don't show up with anything fun, interesting, important, persuasive.

Someone now will utter the word "curation." But that's a bullshit word to make someone feel like there is discretion in a world where there is none. It's like trying to avoid trumpism. You can't get away. 

The only ways are to succumb or to shut off completely.

Each way sucks in its own way.

And unlike a refrigerator, the light never goes on.