> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://berniejmitchell.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # No Child Wakes Up Wanting to Be a Corporate Droid - URL: https://berniejmitchell.com/no-child-wakes-up-wanting-to-be-a-corporate-droid/ - Published: 2026-09-07T19:54:27.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-07T19:54:27.000Z - Description: We were warned in 1999. Twenty-seven years later, being yourself is the advantage. - Author: Bernie J Mitchell So Reader, I'm writing this listening to Brian Eno's *Music for Airports* with the windows open and a wild storm raging outside: thunder, lightning, rain so heavy you can't see the road when you look down from our third-floor apartment window. It always amazes me that I can leave the window open and the rain never comes in. But this only works for the front of the building. Round the back, where all the other buildings on our block back tightly onto each other and we hang the washing, see into each other's kitchens and read the labels on each other's washing machines, the rain pours straight in. Is there some kind of magical force field on the front of the apartment buildings here in Vigo in Galicia? What you are reading comes into being by me collecting things, like walking down the beach in [Mersea Island](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mersea%5FIsland?ref=berniejmitchell.com) with a bucket, picking up stones and shells and not knowing where they'll end up, just thinking 'that looks interesting.' ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c9/28/c9283390-5b9d-40c7-8566-b6d828dc082f/content/images/2026/09/Mersey-Island-beach-hut-.jpeg) ****Mersea Island** \- Sunny Essex --- > **I put the** [**Coworking Community Builder Email Engine**](https://berniejmitchell.com/coworking-community-builder/) **together for people running a community, a project or a coworking space: a free six-day course on using email to connect and build your community.** > [**Get it here.**](https://berniejmitchell.com/coworking-community-builder/) --- ## The job The **Cluetrain Manifesto** by Levine, Locke, Searls and Weinberger came out in 1999\. Christopher Locke wrote about how "a couple of centuries ago, a new invention arrived into the world. It was called 'the job.'" The idea was simple: you went to some hellhole of a factory, worked sixteen hours until you were ready to collapse, and kept doing that every day until you died. *"Among the many casualties of this arrangement was the human spirit. And of its necessary functions, conversation was the first to go."* David Weinberger, in the same book, says the longing for connection through talk is atavistic, from caves to mud huts to open-air bazaars. We have always conversed, always connected to the people of our world in our authentic voices. The industrial age suppressed it; the internet was the microphone that let it be heard again. For me, The Cluetrain wasn't a promise that the internet would set the human spirit free. It was a warning about what would happen if business and marketers got hold of it first. We were told, and we did it anyway, and we always have the chance to stop doing it. ## The rugby guy Years ago I ran a thing called TAGtribe, networking for people who hated networking. We'd do Pecha Kucha nights: seven minutes to talk about anything except what you do. [Mark Williams](https://www.linkedin.com/in/markwilliamspensar/?ref=berniejmitchell.com) was one of the regulars and I liked him, but he was Mark the IT guy and I did not know what that meant. All I knew was he could manage companies that ran both Apple and Windows, which in 2010 was a big deal. Then he got up and talked about what rugby had given him all his life. Nothing about his job or his IT services. Just rugby, how he got into it and what it means to him. He moved from being just another IT guy to someone with a relatable story. Of course Mark hadn't changed a bit. He'd only taken the job out of the room for seven minutes, and what got up to talk was the person. Early this year, Mark celebrated [30 years in business](https://www.linkedin.com/in/markwilliamspensar/?ref=berniejmitchell.com), and I had a blast with him and Rachel at [Creator Day in Poole](https://www.creatorday.uk/?ref=berniejmitchell.com). I'll be back for more next year. At the risk of sounding romantic, I think business is really human, and I want business to be really human. It's one of the reasons I don't get excited about big companies. I love sole traders, micro and small businesses: the bigger you get, the more detached from humanity your organisation gets. When I hear 'all markets are conversations,' I think of the [Royal Exchange in London](https://theroyalexchange.co.uk/heritage/?ref=berniejmitchell.com), its bazaar, the market. Here is how Voltaire described the scene in 1733: *"Take a view of the Royal Exchange in London, a place more venerable than many courts of justice, where the representatives of all nations meet for the benefit of mankind. There the Jew, the Mahometan, and the Christian transact together, as though they all professed the same religion, and give the name of infidel to none but bankrupts. There the Presbyterian confides in the Anabaptist, and the Churchman depends on the Quaker's word."* ## The Borg All the time I've been running my own show I've known people who are amazing: funny, sharp, full of stories. Then it comes to talking about themselves and they turn into some weirdo business robot, taken over like the Borg in Star Trek. *We say things like: "best in class, best practice, and the leading provider of a service specific to our clients' needs."* Fuck me, that is the least you could hope for. One hardware and software provider to the coworking industry had "We Power Ambition" on the front of their website, and it was the first thing you read, pure business-macho cock-measuring in the way it landed. We accidentally use words like "professional networking" instead of just networking. We think this is what we're supposed to do when we're in business. No child wakes up going, "I want to be a corporate droid when I grow up." We don't start out wanting to sound like this; we learn it. - The panic of fitting in, the emergency of fitting in, is exhausting and sad. - We all want to pretend we like this thing: the navy blue suit, the Pret sandwich, the life we're supposed to aspire to. - If we all stopped pretending, we could still have the same jobs and do the same work. - We could just be ourselves when we're doing it. ## Zoolander One of the best things I got from dashing to Nashville in February 2020 to do all the StoryBrand shenanigans was the filter: "Does this help me thrive and survive?" Don't worry. I still mess it up, I arrived in Nashville with the words: > **"Connection. Community. Coworking."** 🤮Those three words were written at the top of my website and thought I was somewhere between Stephen Fry and Giovanni Versace, when really I was Zoolander. (Which I'm kind of ok with.) But when I was pulled up on it, "What does that mean, Bernie?", I could not answer. It sounded cool and said everything and nothing at the same time, and mostly said nothing. It is fucking amazing how you can have a run of words on a page and think you know what you've written, and when someone asks what it's about you crumble. Here's the choice: you can put shit words on the internet and contribute to the mess, or you can put some effort in and write yourself into existence. ## Blue Garage Michael Korn runs a place called Blue Garage in Lewisham where people invent and build things. As automation takes over, Michael says the people committed to making things and being creative are the genuine artisans of the future. Kofi Oppong runs [Urban MBA](https://urbanmba.co.uk/?ref=berniejmitchell.com) in Hackney. In his soon to be published book [The Street Entrepreneur](https://thestreetentrepreneur.com/?ref=berniejmitchell.com) he tells young people the same thing from a different angle: you have to create your own job because technology is taking over. The entry-level job is going extinct, so you have a responsibility to embrace your creativity and make your own revenue. Both places are human, interested in people, inclusive and in neighbourhoods where you can be yourself. They're not breaking news, just places acting like humans: welcoming, curious and fun. Business has always been human; the more we automated everything, the less human it became, and the more we dehumanised ourselves with a lust for business. Places like Blue Garage and Urban MBA succeed because they never stopped being what business actually is: human! Hannah Eisenberg posted on LinkedIn that [AI slop isn't an AI problem, it's a human laziness problem.](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/hannaheisenberg%5Fi-have-had-it-i-am-done-i-cant-take-it-activity-7494404788407750656-iEaZ?utm%5Fsource=share&utm%5Fmedium=member%5Fdesktop&rcm=ACoAAAF8VlIBOlHiOyMYD8sgvsdQKH6ZNindd1Q) She's right, but the laziness wasn't invented by ChatGPT; it's the same laziness the Cluetrain warned about in 1999\. Marketers ruin everything because marketers, people who are scared of not fitting in, reach for the robot voice instead of their own. ## Blades of steel Stick with me here, in [The Prelude](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The%5FPrelude?ref=berniejmitchell.com), William Wordsworth writes about ice skating at sunset: > All shod with steel, We hissed along the polished ice in games Confederate, imitative of the chase And woodland pleasures, the resounding horn, The pack loud chiming, and the hunted hare. I studied that poem at uni and I still can't tell you what it's about, but that line is seared into my brain forever. The whole verse, stanza, whatever it's called, paints such a vivid picture I am there. That's the opposite of "We Power Ambition." It's harder to read because you have to decode it. Everything today is fast and easy to understand, and fast and easy is how you end up with "best in class", words that say everything and nothing at the same time. Before newspapers, radio, screens and the internet, writers had to put the effort into their descriptions, because jargon and abstractions had not been invented yet. The lines from Shakespeare and Wordsworth that we still garble today stuck because they borrowed the general knowledge of the time, like "I wandered lonely as a cloud" or "The pack loud chiming, and the hunted hare." ## I've got a social capital problem. The words "social capital, civic infrastructure, connection, combat loneliness" sound dead grown up when you say them in a room, which is why everyone nods. I write these words every week and groan to myself, as I type them. They're status signals, a way of saying "I went to university" without having to say the you did. But nobody at a bus stop in a cost-of-living crisis would say to you: > "Fuck me, I've got a social capital problem. I must go and see my local community advocate." Those words mean everything and nothing, just like "best in class" or "the leading" whatever you are peddling. The effort to get people to understand was in the descriptions, and that effort is the work of making it simple and relatable. ## The same conversation The Cluetrain wasn't a promise that the internet would save us. It was a warning about what would happen if we let business and marketers get hold of it first. Twenty-seven years later, we're still doing it. But the human version never went anywhere: Blue Garage, Urban MBA, Mark Williams talking about rugby in a room full of people who hated networking. The through-line from Cluetrain to the citizen conversation to ACTionism, it's all the same thing in different decades. Stop outsourcing your voice to someone else's template. Being yourself is harder work than fitting in. But fitting in costs you the thing you were trying to build. And right now, when everyone else is hiding behind the robot voice, or hiding behind AI doing the robot voice for them, being yourself is the advantage, not because it's noble but because it works. ## Monday Domino 1. Read the first line of your website out loud. 2. Now say what you do, out loud, in one sentence. 3. If the second one is clearer, that's your new first line. ## Bernie's Picks - 📖 [The Street Entrepreneur](https://thestreetentrepreneur.com/?ref=berniejmitchell.com): Kofi's book, out later in 2026. - 📖 [The Cluetrain Manifesto](https://www.cluetrain.com/?ref=berniejmitchell.com): the original site, and you can buy the book there. - 🏢 [Blue Garage](https://www.bluegarage.org/?ref=berniejmitchell.com): Lewisham's innovation centre. - 🏢 [Urban MBA](https://urbanmba.co.uk/?ref=berniejmitchell.com): 2027 is their ten-year anniversary. - 🎧 [Music for Airports](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNwYtllyt3Q&ref=berniejmitchell.com): the Eno record I was listening to as I wrote this. - ✉️ [Coworking Community Builder Email Engine](https://berniejmitchell.com/coworking-community-builder/): the free email course. - 📅 [Creator Day, 6 May 2027](https://www.youarethemedia.co.uk/lunchclub/yatm-creator-day-2027/?ref=berniejmitchell.com): see you there. ---