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@ Totally Human Writer
2025-04-15 09:08:47To most people, selling comes as second nature. We’ve actually sold the planet’s resources several times over, so it should be third or even fourth nature by now.
But selling did not come naturally to me. I was born with a rare condition which removes any inherent desire to market products and services. It even quells the need to repost my boss’s latest LinkedIn dribblings.
Doctors have told me the part of the brain which performs this function is occupied, in my case, by something called ‘a conscience’.
When I was a kid, my teachers bemoaned my ‘underactive imagination’. I showed no aptitude for creating fake scarcity or urgency, even failing to act aloof enough to attract invites to teen WhatsApp groups which excluded exactly one ‘uncool’ student.
In reality, I studied hard at not selling. At night, I would practise thinking of nothing, thus decreasing my desire to be included in teenage WhatsApp groups, which I definitely didn’t want to be in anyway. I watched every pitch on Shark Tank to increase my powers of ambivalence and even imagined saying ‘meh’ to the groundbreaking business ideas they did invest in.
On my eighteenth birthday, I was recruited by the Samaritans. It was for a role that was quite unique. The interviewer said he’d never seen so many ‘perfectly timed shrugs’.
My job, which I’ve occupied ever since, is to guard a large pit. The so-called ‘chasm of despair’ was set up as a stunt by a firebrand marketing agency in 2017 to separate the ‘closers’ from the ‘losers’. Turns out that a snappy slogan and one letter of difference can cause quite a deaths.
Hurling oneself into the pit became so desirable that desperate marketers began to pay for the privilege. At least your funeral would be a roaring success if mourners heard you made it into ‘the pit’.
My job is to guard the pit without actively dissuading people from jumping. Tell people they can’t jump into a 60-foot-deep hole with poison spikes at the bottom, and that’s all they want to do. Especially if their weekly Instagram engagement metrics are down by 10–15%. So, I spend my days patrolling the perimeter, looking mildly disinterested.
Although there’s no official uniform, I’ve taken to wearing a beige Sergio Tacchini tracksuit — it’s something far beyond my years but not retro enough for me to attract suspicion of being a hipster.
To pass the time, I listen to Coldplay. It allows my brain to take a rest from silence and negates the need to feel any kind of emotion. These desperate marketers might harness those feelings to make me buy things (e.g. music by other bands).
Some of the marketers, marketeers (I refuse to learn the difference), influencers, salespeople and copywriters try to offload their woes about insufferable colleagues in Business Development called Brad who always exceed quarterly sales targets by 20–25% before jumping to their doom. I just shrug and say things like, ‘It’s not that bad. Brad probably likes Coldplay.’
Thankfully, most of them don’t jump. They fail to sell themselves on the benefits of a painful yet cool death. However, last week, a young growth hacker ran full pelt at the ‘pit of despair’, avoiding the mild protest of my raised arm. As he disappeared into the abyss, he simply screamed, “The economeeeee”.
Yesterday, an author told me how easy I have it. “You call this a job?” she hissed, thrusting a paperback into my hands. “I’m working 22 hours a day on this 18-step list-building strategy, which involves delivering 4–5 titles before I see even a penny in return.”
The cover revealed the title: Sell Your Book on Amazon the EASY Way.
“Write me a review, and I won’t jump.” Her eyes pleaded with me.
The pit has gotten so crowded of late, we need more guards. But then again, a gathering of a dozen beige-tracksuited zero-fuck-givers might look like such good content to Gen-Zers that it crashes TikTok.
The Samaritans have been good to me. They let me get on with it. My indifference is truly making the world a better place, they say. And when these sad and depressed content managers, email marketer, landing-page specialists, and SEO bloggers turn their backs on the chasm of despair, I congratulate them. “Not today, friends.”
Then, it falls to me to remind them they must uncheck the box on our survivor information form. Otherwise, they’ll be subscribed to the pit’s biweekly newsletter.