I am not sure if this is just a tech thing or perhaps a version of modern day political correctness but it seems like it is ok all of a sudden to aspire to fail.
Failure has become not only acceptable but also fashionable.
Not only is the concept of failure appearing on Magzine covers but was recently the topic of a panel featuring Ben Huh (I Can Has Cheezburger), Micah Baldwin (Graphic.ly), Lane Becker (Get Satisfaction), Charlie O’Donnell, and Rashmi Sinha (Slideshare) at the Web 2.0 Expo Conference.
Failure used to be shameful and something you tried to put behind you. Failure was bad. The shame of failure used to be motivation.
There is no denying that you always learn more from the bad times then the good and adversity makes the strong stronger and the weak weaker but as a community I think we need to stop romanticizing failure so it doesn’t become a self full filling prophecy.
I have been around a while and seen a lot of things and if there is one thing I do know is that failure finds everyone eventually (sometimes big and sometimes small) but success doesn’t….so from now on why don’t we try to make success (even small ones) sexier then failures.
What says you?
[Please Note. I don’t consider any of the above noted folks failures and consider a few of these friends…I am using their good names and stellar reputations for SEO purposes.]
