The 7 deadly sins represent the corruption of a person’s morality and behaviour. The gist is that as a person sins, they become more accustomed (or numb) to it, which could lead to more frequent acts and/or at higher intensities.
Although you’ll need to refer to a higher power for more on how sinning can impact the soul, we do also know that sins can extend to a person’s work… and your writing could be as easily tainted as your heart and mind if you’re not careful. Join Wordsmith as we explore the 7 deadly sins of writing and how we can avoid committing such egregious errors.
Let’s start by exploring pride – the first and greatest sin.
Scooby Dooby Doo, what happened to you?
Scooby Doo is an animated series that needs no introduction. Featuring a gang of quirky adolescents and their iconic great dane, Fred, Daphne, Velma, Shaggy and Scooby have been around solving mysteries and exposing corny plots since 1969.
What happens when you take something with such a longstanding fanbase and try to reshape it into something that doesn’t quite pay homage to the original IP?
This is what happened with Charlie Grandy and Mindy Kaling’s Velma on HBO Max that launched in early January 2023.
Depicted as an adult animated series, the ethnicities, sexual orientation, personalities and such of the main cast were shuffled to become more representative of contemporary culture. Our main protagonist Velma is Indian, gay, needlessly sassy and feels the need to flex her intelligence at every moment; Daphne is an orphaned Asian who deals drugs in the locker room to deal with past traumas; Shaggy, now preferring his non-nickname Norville, is black, stone-faced and repulsed by drugs (compared to the original Shaggy who was thought to be a stoner); Fred is still visually the same, but he’s become every stereotypical womanising jock who condescends anyone who isn’t attractive, and lastly; Scooby Doo doesn’t exist.
These changes were unexpected, and not in a good way. While diversity is nothing new in modern media, diversity is usually shown in a positive light (eg. demonstrating that there’s nothing wrong with being gay, being asexual, being socially challenged etc). What Velma’s doing seems like diversity and shock for the sake of diversity and shock – the changes to Fred seem completely counterproductive for one.
Being targeted at adults, we should also expect the jokes to be of a mature subject matter, but this is the kind of low-brow humour the writers went with (warning: it’s vulgar!):
Velma has a thing for white “jokes”.
When you advertise diversity as a key selling point, it’s clear that you are targeting millennials, Gen-Z and other demographics who value the same theme… but the kind of humour in this show is baffling. Considering the majority of the population in North America is white, using your primary demographic as the butt of your jokes seems plain wrong. Come to think of it, insulting any ethnicity and its stereotypes just isn’t a good idea at all. It may work for Rick and Morty or South Park (TV shows that are intended to be offensive), but Velma trying to be both diverse and offensive shows an obvious lack of foresight.
Instead of doing focus groups or testing, the writers launched the show with complete confidence. Except that confidence has landed them in a dumpster fire. The reviews on Rotten Tomatoes and IMDB have been consistently abysmal and social media users have been oddly united in expressing their distaste for the show – including many complaints that Velma’s character is a self-insert of Mindy Kaling and her brash personality, with the same persona also present in her prior works The Office and The Mindy Project.
Adding fuel to the fire, there is even a second season of the show being in the works. Talk about doubling down on their pride!
The price of pride
Pride doesn’t just affect television writers – from the lowly marketer to exalted CEO – everyone is equally vulnerable.
Continuing with the subject of diversity, women’s rights and female empowerment have been a longstanding trend. On International Women’s Day, it’s quite common to see brands and businesses hop on to social media to put their spin on the subject.
Burger King (UK) is no different, but the unwitting fool(s) responsible for their twitter page posted something rather dumb on March 8, 2021:
If sounding bigoted and sexist were what they were after, they’ve done it. Although there’s a series of follow-up tweets involving statistics and opportunities for women employed at their restaurant chains, netizens who only saw the first tweet were furious – simply because some marketer thought it’d be a good idea to split up the message across several tweets – and without having it vetted, they proudly tossed it online.
Having lone sentences are a fantastic way to create emphasis and draw attention, but you need to ensure that they can’t be taken out of context.
A more incorrigible first post would be: “everyone deserves a chance in the kitchen” or “women make up only 20% of the culinary industry – it’s time to change this”.
How about another example? 2010 was the year of the disastrous Deepwater Horizon oil spill. The Gulf of Mexico was covered in sludge and both humans and wildlife had their livelihoods put on the line. The CEO in charge of BP Oil at the time, Tony Hayward, released this one-minute apology advert:
The video contained the usual apology suspects:
· Claiming the mishap was a tragedy
· The company is taking responsibility/doing everything in their power to remedy the situation
· The number of boats and people involved in the clean-up process
· Will reimburse legitimate claims
· An apology to all the individuals and families involved
· A thank you to the volunteers, employees and government agents involved
· A pledge to keep viewers involved on the progress
Nothing spectacular or precise as expected of a typical corporate apology... but why would they do the apology in the form of an advert instead of a longer video? Is using money to buy up ad space really the best use of their resources?
To make things worse, Hayward got caught saying something he really shouldn’t have during an interview with CNN : “no one wants this to be over more than me, I want my life back.”
Perhaps it was exhaustion from being the face of the company and being repeatedly grilled for allowing such a mistake to happen, but shifting the conversation to his personal life was one of the most tone-deaf and insensitive responses anyone could’ve made – on public television no less! This statement immediately made the apology video and the company’s efforts seem disingenuous.
Assuming he could undo that blunder of a statement, here’s what the apology should have been:
· Ditch the advert and make a quality video apology instead
· The specific measures taken to soak up the spill
· The type(s) of aid available for the people and animals affected
· Offer a recruitment channel for volunteers
· Show up on video to one of these clean up sessions (a proactive leader is generally preferred to one who is all talk)
Mistakes are deadly in the world of marketing and content creation, but when such mistakes are born of careless pride, your work and reputation would crumble the moment someone is offended – and that can happen very frequently in this day and age. A bit of humility (and an extra couple pairs of eyes) can go a long a way in combating the sin of pride!