Accidental Poetry

I made some art I want to share with you today. First, a background story on the pieces from Accidental Poetry further below in the email. I’m exciiiiited!

Life coaching is an interesting industry. It’s weird and helpful, scammy and supportive at the same time. Some life coaches are great. Others sell BS and are better at talking you out of your money than providing you with results.

When Instagram exploded in the 2010s, an interesting trend took off in the personal development space: People sharing wisdom in little quote posts with the internet. At the time, the algorithm was still easier to manage and suddenly, it felt to me, this type of content was everywhere.

You could build a career out of this, encouraging people to live their best lives through the power of social media. Reading this, you’ve probably seen one or ten of them in your feeds over the years - and maybe rolled your eyes at them. 🙄

The Human Need for Validation and Support

I feel very conflicted about this industry. When I was still on Instagram, I resented being told over and over how to live my life. Like, I’m good, I’ll find my own way.

Still, I looked, resentment-watching this type of content. Grumbling and scrolling on. I was admittedly looking for some sort of outside confirmation that my dreams were valid and that I was doing okay. So, in a way, the content fulfilled its purpose.

It’s only human to look for validation. I think the rise of the life coaching industry on social media in the second half of the 2010s and the first years of the pandemic only reflects that people were looking for betterment and some type of leadership. Politics got messier, life more complicated, and old structures like organised religion, parties, or associations became too wobbly to provide the type of structure people were looking for.

A New Take on Centuries-Old Questions

What are we supposed to make of this messy, complicated life? Will I be loved? What’s my purpose? Are my dreams valid? How can I make them true? Those questions aren’t new. When you look to literature and philosophy, humans have been wrestling with these matters for centuries, millennia even.

What’s new is the immediacy of the conversation around these matters and the fact that some people can position themselves as (thought)leaders in this area through communicating their ideas on social media - irrespective of whether they’re qualified in working with people or not. Through the help of the above-mentioned inspirational quotes, they build a brand, post by post.

Attention spans on social media are short, so whatever you write about needs to engage people’s eyeballs and minds. Over the years, I noticed that this created a genre in online writing that was emotionally charged and at the same time quite simplistic - often absurdly so. Owing to the nature of the feed, these posts had to be succinct enough to distill big ideas in simple terms. They’re also quite reductive, verbally, in order to fit into a square frame neatly and succinct enough to capture big ideas in simple terms. This has created some interesting outcomes.

And yet,

and yet,

they’re also strangely poetic, encompassing the complexities of life. They’re full of emotion and longing, and speak to our greatest wishes - to be seen, heard, understood, loved, without financial worries, and feel self-efficacious, among other things.

So, I present to you, my most recent art project:

Accidental Poetry - Life Coach Haikus

Accidental Poetry is a collection of haikus I curated from life coach accounts on Instagram.

They’re hilarious, a little absurd, some profoundly touching, and others just plain odd. These accidental poems run the whole gamut of the human experience on- and offline.

Their beauty, to me, is that they exist in their poetic shape randomly on the internet.

Once you take them away from the context of the feed, they reveal much more about the human condition than I suppose their authors, the Accidental Poets, intended.

Here’s one:

Here’s another one that’s quite spicy:

To see them all, go here and scroll down the page. Some will have you roll your eyes, others will make you chuckle.

I had a fantastic time making these!

Accidental Poetry is part of a bigger project I’m working on that looks at how social media and digital technology are changing language and how we communicate.

Get a Life Coach Haiku for Yourself

I’m selling the Life Coach Haikus in my art shop. You can see a full selection of these Accidental Poems on the shop page. I make and sign them individually.

You can put them up ironically (what I would do, to get a daily chuckle out of them) or use them in earnest in areas of your home where you’re looking for some extra support - or a kick in the butt.

These handmade prints also make for a great gift for that friend who’s obsessed with personal development.

They’re 25€ each* + 5€ for a shipping flat rate.

*VAT may be added at checkout, depending on where you live. You will see this before completing your purchase.

Have a great, accidentally or intentionally poetic day,

Johanna

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