The Dead Zone of Slick

Good post from my Nephew Geoff.  Just how much of what we do is truly authentic?  Much of what we do is slick or the result of clever spin.

The Dead Zone of Slick

Some good thoughts from Seth Godin.  He's talking about the dead zone between something being
REAL and something being SLICK.  Both are good, but it's the dead zone in the middle where things really suck.

You can send me a hand-written note (but don't write it in crayon with words spelled wrong) and I'll read it. And you can send me a beautifully typeset Fedex package. But if you send me mass-produced junk with a dot matrix printer, out it goes. The dead zone again.

That's why really well done HTML email works, as does unique, hand-typed text email. It's the banal stuff in the middle that people don't read. And yet, 95% of what I see is precisely in the dead spot of the middle zone.

The Blair Witch Project and Pi both felt authentic. The Matrix was perfectly slick. The new Star Wars cartoon is just dumb.

I suppose the same is true of church services.  Real and Authentic is fantastic.  Slick and Perfected is impressive.  99% of church services fall in the dead zone in the middle. The real stuff is faked.  The slick stuff is pathetic.
Does it matter?  I think it does.  What should we do about it?

I think if we're good at being super slick, go for it (but don't lose the real-ness of relationship outside of the service).
I think if we're not good at being super-slick (most of us aren't), then let's just stick to being real.

Reflections of a Snook: The Dead Zone of Slick