I started following TED over ten years ago: back then I found it innovative, inspiring, thought-provoking.

It was really about ideas worth spreading.

Until it became no longer about the ideas, but about the speakers.

Let me take a step back.

There was a time on TED when content was king. I was both excited and challenged by hearing about the latest research and most counterintuitive findings about reality, condensed by top-notch academics in 20-minutes segments, digestible for a general audience.

A problem of authenticity

But as the years went by, a disturbing sensation began to creep up my back every time I watched a talk.

As the number of talks increased, I felt that the quality was no longer up to standard all the time. Ideas were not world-shattering, but more emotionally appealing and views-catching.

But most importantly, the lights, the silences, the pauses, the use of the clicker, the opening lines, the emphatic tone of the speakers: they all started to sound a bit the same. And not only in TED. It felt as though the TED style had influenced all the other talks around.

What started as innovative format seems to have grown into a subtle trend, a fashion, a one-size fits all suit that everybody needs to wear.

Whenever I start to see a trend, from the way Facebook posts are written – all in a similar fashion – Instagram poses or hashtags, jargons that proliferate in market niches and industries, or buzzwords spread across social groups and corporations, I always feel slightly disturbed. Because of the lack of authenticity.

I believe that the speaker should bring the most authenticity to his talk. Because his authenticity and uniqueness is all he has to give. Or else he can just stay off stage, there’s no shame in being invisible, contrary to what modern society pushes us to believe. It dawned on me that TED may have involuntarily created a way of showing up on stage that everyone has been subtly conforming to, consciously or unconsciously, making them look artificial.

Ideas or… egos worth spreading?

And then I had a somewhat startling realization. The ‘ego’ has largely infiltrated TED.

Is TED still about the ideas, or is it about the speakers?

You see, all those pauses, emphatic tones and carefully rehearsed silences are often accompanied by a level of sanctimony and pomposity.

I started to question whether TED is still mostly about promoting ideas that audiences can do something with, or promoting personalities and egos.

Today there are personalities whose major life achievement is having spoken on TED. Their main title is TED speaker and they’ve built their business and credibility mostly around this one feature.

Being on TED has become a bit like having a New York Time best seller. If you make the list, also by incurring substantial marketing costs (yes, it doesn’t come for free..), you can hope to cash in later with keynotes, events and so on.

All those pauses, emphatic tones and carefully rehearsed silences are often accompanied by a level of sanctimony and pomposity

But it should be the other way around. I can’t blame anyone for having TED speaker as his main title on Linkedin, nor for having his TED talk as his main credential on the homepage of his website. But I can certainly question what TED has become about, if we’ve reached the point when, for many speakers, the TED appearance itself outweighs their track history of work and contributions, in terms of importance.

The rise of TEDx

As Andy Warhol allegedly said: “in the future everybody will be world-famous for 15 minutes”.

Pretty much the duration of a TEDx talk, except that the fame is usually limited to the town or university where the talk is held.

While TEDx is an interesting franchise model for TED, this ‘Mcdonaldification’ of ideas (supposedly) worth spreading raises more than one question on the value added by these local events.

In fact, pretty much anyone can get a bunch of people together, franchise the whole thing from TED and set up one of these local events that mimic the TED format, except that the background, reliability and quality of the speakers and speeches is pretty much a non-issue.

TEDx has devolved into a free for all format, where a group of people can set up the event mainly with the purpose of having a stage where to exhibit themselves and put the name TED to it to, so it looks cooler. Ideas are secondary.

TEDx seems to respond more to the need of the ego to have 15 minutes of fame, than to the need for knowledge in the world. For a TEDx event the only surefire result is that a bunch of semi-average Joe’s can now proudly add TEDx speaker to their title and play like kids who are imitating their heroes, by using the clicker, the tone, the emphasis the same way they’ve seen on Youtube. All other results and externalities are to be verified.

TEDx seems to respond more to the need of the ego to have 15 minutes of fame, than to the need for knowledge in the world.

Was the event organized because they had something so crucial to share or did they choose to organize an event and then figured out something sound to say? Watch a few and judge yourself.

A new epidemic called: ‘Personal Branding’

According to Wikipedia: as of January 2014, the TEDxTalks library contained some 30,000 films and presentations from over 130 countries.[72][73] As of October 2017, the TEDx archive surpassed 100,000 talks.[74] In March 2013, eight TEDx events were organised every day.

At this rate, in a year or two you’ll likely have at least two family members who are TEDX speakers…

Am I saying TED is not bringing value to the world? No, that’s not the point. Do I believe it’s bringing value together with a lot of noise? Yes, I do.

I just feel it’s not what it used to be. I think it’s been largely infiltrated by the collective ego and, in the effort to scale and grow, it’s now serving more the egotistic purpose of personal branding for thousands of people in the market, while only secondarily raising global knowledge.

This is only part of a larger trend that pushes all of us in the market to more and more ‘personal branding’.

We live in such a marketing-oriented society – a gigantic dysfunctional competition for eyeballs and attention – that branding products, services and ultimately oneself, is taking up so much time and effort, that it’s getting in the way of honing one’s own craft sometimes.

And when I look around, I see more and more the validity of the proverb: empty vessels make the most noise.

While there’s nothing inherently wrong with TED, TEDx and speaking at events, I think it’s time to realise that we need less personal branding and more personal growth around the world.

We need less TEDx speakers, and more men of substance.

That’s why, in the end, I’ve stopped following TED.

Also published on Medium.