The Elephant We’re All Pretending Isn’t in the Room
AKA, Public Relations on Parade
I don’t like politics.
I don’t mean that in the casual, “ugh, politics are boring” way. I mean I genuinely distrust the entire machinery.
I’ve worked in PR. I’ve seen how narratives are shaped, softened, buried, or re-framed until reality becomes something adjacent to the truth rather than the truth itself. Once you’ve seen that side of the curtain, it’s very hard to unsee it.
So I usually stay quiet (unless it’s internet tech, then I’m all in).
But something is happening right now that feels too big to ignore. Too grotesque. Too revealing.
And if you’ve spent more than a few seconds on Instagram (or the internet as a whole) recently, you already know exactly what I’m talking about.
I’m not going to name names.
I’m not going to mention countries, companies, or documents.
Not because they don’t matter, but because at this point, they’re almost irrelevant. Everyone knows. Or at least, everyone has seen.
This isn’t about the data dump.
It isn’t even about that man.
This is about someone else. A secondary figure. A “titular” character. Someone I personally admired for a long time, not as an idol (that’s dumb), but as a business role model. Someone whose journey, discipline, and output I respected.
Watching that image collapse has been… disorienting.
Admiration Without Idolisation
I don’t believe in putting people on pedestals.
That’s not humility, it’s laziness. It offloads discernment.
But I do believe in respecting competence. In acknowledging when someone has navigated complexity, built something meaningful, or influenced the world in ways worth studying.
I also understand, perhaps more than most, that a large portion of public success is marketing. Carefully staged. Carefully framed. Often rehearsed.
You can live in the comforting fiction that most powerful people mean well.
Reality does not support that belief.
There are genuine people in the world. Many of them.
But it’s almost always a small percentage who cause the most damage, and they’re the ones who receive the most attention.
You don’t have to be rich to be deeply unethical.
But history has shown that when power, wealth, and insulation converge, rot tends to follow.
Still, that’s not what this piece is about.
The Strategy You’re Not Supposed to Notice
What is worth talking about is something more subtle. More insidious.
A tactic.
One I can’t prove, but I recognise instantly, because I’ve used its ethical cousins in marketing.
Here’s what happened.
A major scandal breaks. Serious allegations. Global attention. For a brief moment, the narrative is uncontrollable.
Then, almost immediately, the subject re-enters the media cycle.
Not to address the issue.
Not to deny it.
Not to clarify.
Instead, they pivot.
Suddenly, there are interviews. Thought leadership. Long-form discussions. Big, cinematic pieces about other topics, safe topics. Impressive topics. Existential topics. The future. Technology. AI. Danger. Humanity.
Important conversations, sure.
Just… oddly timed.
This isn’t accidental.
When you flood the news cycle with high-production, high-engagement content, you don’t need to erase the bad story. You just need to outcompete it.
Search results shift.
Headlines get displaced.
Algorithms reward recency and engagement, not moral weight.
Before long, the original story becomes “old news.”
Harder to find. Easier to forget.
That’s the trick.
And it works frighteningly well.
When Reality Gets Buried by Noise
You can see it in the comments.
Some people vaguely remember something happened.
Others are already fatigued.
Most are distracted, because there’s always something else happening.
This is how uncomfortable truths die, not through denial, but through saturation.
And that’s what makes it so disturbing.
Not just the allegations themselves, but how easily perception can be redirected once you understand the mechanics.
Personal Success, Global Collapse
This year has been strange for me.
On a personal level? Things are going well.
Business is strong. The work is paying off. Momentum exists.
And yet the world feels like it’s unraveling in real time.
Almost everything I’ve written lately is heavy. Not because I want it to be, but because pretending otherwise feels dishonest.
When the people we admired start falling.
When truths dissolve.
When institutions wobble.
It forces a recalibration of reality.
In some ways, it’s good that these structures are collapsing. Truly harmful people don’t deserve the comfort of invisibility.
But collapse isn’t clean.
It sends shockwaves.
And in a globalised world, those shockwaves don’t respect borders.
The Lucky Country, With an Asterisk
I’m often grateful I live in Australia.
Not because we’re perfect, we’re not.
We have deep, systemic issues bubbling to the surface.
But we’re buffered.
We’re not on the doorstep of war.
We’re not embedded in collapsing alliances.
We’re not staring down the immediate consequences of geopolitical implosion.
We’re insulated. For now.
That distance doesn’t absolve us of responsibility, but it does give us perspective. And perhaps, time.
Paying Attention Is the Minimum
This article isn’t a call to outrage.
It’s not a demand for action.
And it’s certainly not a manifesto.
It’s simply a refusal to look away.
Because when narratives are this carefully managed, silence isn’t neutrality, it’s compliance.
And sometimes, the most dangerous thing isn’t the villain.
It’s the distraction.