A Review of Will Stephen's Ted Talk about... Nothing
- Anthony
- Feb 11, 2021
- 2 min read
A link to the talk:
At first glance, Stephen’s TED Talk seems like innocent comedy and a jab at overly bland, uninteresting presentation styles. Looking deeper, though, it carries a spiritual connection with a quintessential quote from Chris Anderson, the head of TED.
“If you’ve picked up this book just because you love the idea of strutting the stage and being a TED Talk star, inspiring audiences with your charisma, please, put it down right now. Instead, go and work on something that is worth sharing. Style
without substance is awful.”
Charisma and speech patterns become playthings in Stephen’s talk; at its beginning, he outwardly states that he has “literally nothing”, “nada”, “zilch”, and “zip” to share. However, he conjectures, he aims to make it seem like he does through a variety of speech patterns.
Instead of using filler words – comparable to the Latin you see on the template or default page of a website – Stephen is completely transparent.
“I’m going to do this with my right hand, I’m gonna do this with my left”, he utters, accompanied by generic hand gestures reminiscent of bare, dull public speaking presentations throughout the Internet.
Stephen says that he wants to ‘appear like he’s done his homework’: “If you were watching this on YouTube, with the sound off... you might think, ‘Ah, okay, this guy knows what he’s talking about.’”.
It’s hilarious to watch such a brash, uncompromising, and simultaneously brilliant critique of “inspirational filler” presented in an increasingly saturated and tired format.
Pie charts, bar graphs, and meaningless numerical data are used for comedic effect. They represent the lack of substance Anderson directly mentioned and reveal the discrepancy between appearances and sincerity.
In a talk where being disinterested and disingenuous is the main focus, Stephen manages to create one of the most self – aware and foundational public addresses ever published in a contemporary format.
The climax of the talk comes with almost a visible rippling effect; Stephen takes off his glasses (while announcing he’s doing such, complete with vocal intonations) and mentions, as an offhand comment, that they’re just frames.
Poking his fingers through where the lenses might take form, revealing the empty space where substance was thought to be, Stephen creates a defining metaphor for stock motivational videos and talks.
“I’d like you to think about what you heard in the beginning...”, he says, nearing the end of his time, “and what you hear now”.
“Because it was nothing, and it’s still nothing, think about that.”
In the empty space, void of content or commentary, Stephen finds substance.
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