A lot of corporate speak is developed in the US and then companies all over the world spread it around. Often the adoption happens without deep understanding of the concept, and without adaptation to local realities. And thus it feels much more unnatural.

If I share a project with an American friend and he says it's awesome, I still don't know whether he liked it or not.

If I share it with a Polish or German friend and he says it's "not bad" then I know he is really impressed.

It's not "fake" - it's cultural differences where what is intended to come across as polite by Americans[1] can be seen as insincere by people from elsewhere. On the flip side, Americans often view foreign behavior that's intended to be neutral as unfriendly, uncaring or cold.

1. e.g. lots of smiling, use of superlatives like "great"/"amazing" to describe mediocre items/effort/results

Oh yes.

Execs are ‘super excited’ about everything. There is no dynamic range at all. They appear to have no opinions and no judgement because their opinion is always that everything is awesome. When the audience knows that stuff is either normal-level ok or actually fucked up, this message is insulting to receive.

Worse, it trains people downstream that shiny happy is the only valid comms. Hard to escalate a concern when you don’t know how to start the message with how super excited you are about it.

It drove me crazy during my corporate period.

Yeah, absolutely.

At least to my British ears, Americans rarely sound authentic.

Its always grandiose statements and elaborate smiles.

Speaking as a Brit, our national trait is generally too understate things. So even saying what you mean, directly, comes off as a bit immodest and hyping it up in sales pitches sounds shady.

Americans generally say what they mean a bit more, so I think their mid point is just different.

As other comment suggested, the way I see it Americans are addicted to hyperbolas. Instead of "Thank you" it's "Thank you so much". So when you genuinely want to thank someone because that person went above and beyond (saved your life, avoided you a substantial hassle, etc.) then it's difficult to convey that.

Beyond just American, they are trying to emulate Jobs style without his genius for presenting in a compelling and attention grabbing way.

As a Brazilian, I also find that annoying and unnatural.

So I'm not personally on the spectrum, but I definitely get the frustration with "this is so fake; why are we all pretending it's not?" experiences.

But "almost all praise is fake" and "small talk is all lies" feels like a pretty depressing place to end up?

Why do you feel like that's the case? How do you differentiate sincere praise from "fake" praise?

Move to Europe, friend - a weight will be lifted.

And how many parents are watching a WWDC presentation?

Yes, thank you for explaining PR 101 to me.

The comment is about how everyone in their videos does it. The over-use of it is the issue, like when you say a word too much and your brain stops understanding what it means.

Probably but even the fact that they're rehearsing time-filling stories is a more human trait than the pre-recorded months in advance videos that are usually shown today.

Someone with no money must survive with short term thinking: hunt and kill a wombat on the savanna or something. From there you work your way away from short term thinking; you might have enough to get through the week already, so the threat of starvation is more long term. Eventually with enough in the bank you have nearly no urgency; you could conceivably mishandle your bonds when they mature in twenty years or something. But with enough money, literally the only risk is short term thinking and immediacy. Bending over to pick up a penny is not going to even be considered.

If my ship ever really comes in and docks at the harbor I’m going to remember to keep my wallet full of cash, so I can stop and get that strawberry ice cream cone without worrying about the long term consequences, which are all I would have left.

> Curse of money

Sure, but I think it’s also b/c the target audience for these keynotes has shifted. Given their immense market cap, now there’s an increased fiduciary responsibility to control how presentation lands, such as earnings reports, which comes at the expense of the fun.

It’s not money they started it during Covid and it stuck because presumably Cook likes the little movie making bits they had in it judging from other things like the Mother Earth skit he did.

Would be a welcome change it if the incoming CEO went back to live on stage imho

Ironically that's often what ends up costing one the most, i feel like

Your comment is the most upset I've seen in this thread. Maybe re-read what you wrote and take your own advice.

I think some people mistake "I don't value the human layer of a communication" with "The human layer has no value".

A presentation is a live audio visual medium. If you just want the information as facts with no affect why not read the stats later?

Some might say the information here is even more padded and puffed than in a traditional presentation.

amen, god forbid they try to make a polished display of new features instead of fumbling through live presentations

Their audience are no longer the people in the room. The audience is the people watching the video or livestream which is great because that means you don't need thousands of dollars and an invite to go to WWDC.

> Did you really think the roaring response were organic feedback? It was always controlled. Personally I'm happy to be done with the on-cue tumultuous cheering and whooping.

While I agree with you, I think even the controlled audience mattered.

The audience, even if they were largely Apple employees + journalists, did not know what was gonna be revealed. And there weren’t literal cue cards.

So you would never see the audience boo, but there were several situations where the Apple presenters expected cheering but got polite clapping instead, or cheering which was very evidently just the sycophantic employees (or the team that worked on something).

When something was truly exciting, the cheering reflected that in a way it didn’t when the announcement wasn’t.

Two very different examples of this were the Snow Leopard reveal, where the excitement could be felt throughout the presentation, culminating with the $29 price, and the iPhone reveal with the 3 devices in 1 gimmick.

but did you really not know that Apple always stuffed audiences with Apple employees?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeqPrUmVz-o

(Aside from clearly not an Apple employee, Jobs' way of taking the question is brilliant. Yes I know this was probably not the keynote, but it's a big, risky, filmed WWDC event.)

But yes, HN is overwhelming filled with angry, shakes-fist-at-clouds "it ain't like the olden days!" sorts now. So if you really think this place represents the norm...

Yes, let's resort to personal attacks. There are a lot of things that are better now. Apple Keynotes are not one of them.

Well now they don't even need to convince the employees and sycophants.