John Spencer Williams • F**k Work Let’s Play

Author of WHSmith business book of the month F**k Work Let's Play published by Pearson. Founder of The Ideas Lab, helping people create a business they love

[John Spencer Williams • F**k Work Let’s Play @johnsw]

@DanielPriestley Yep, once online business became possible it was ridiculous to suggest we didn’t all own the means of production

[John Spencer Williams • F**k Work Let’s Play @johnsw]

@isnit0 And why do they take longer than building a new rocket to fix them?

[John Spencer Williams • F**k Work Let’s Play @johnsw]

I support this! Let’s get rid of those stupid cookie popus to start

[quibble @QuibbleUK]

Hello, we are Jonathan and Abigail - unashamed pedants who want to bring this affliction to bear on all things public policy and practice.
We believe that details matter, especially in public administration. This is why today we are founding quibble: a campaign to fix the small stuff.
Think, for example, about the cookie banner that we click on every webpage. Each instance is not a big deal, so we just put up with it. But its cumulative impact adds up - on average we press it 5 times per day. The European Commission estimates that it costs EU citizens 343 million hours per year.
And who is there to represent the impacts of seemingly minor issues like this in a systematic way? We want quibble to be the answer. In the case of the cookie banner, lots of advocacy has rightly focused on privacy, but has this meant that user experience has taken a backseat? We believe there are ways to improve user experience without compromising on privacy. We will share more about this soon.
Consider another example. Did you know that in some government-run car parks you can be fined for a minor keying error, such as accidentally typing a zero instead of an “o”? Again, we will come to the detail of this quibble in the coming weeks, but for now just consider again the question: who? Who is there currently to systematically represent the interests of the parker who is given an unfair ticket?
An inherent feature of consumer interests is that those who have them rarely have enough other things in common to make collective organisation and representation feasible. This is the gap that quibble seeks to fill. Now of course excellent consumer interest groups exist. But understandably quibbles might not be at the top of their lists. Our hope is that quibble will be complementary; picking up the bottom-of-the-list issues faced by various groups - the stuff they are almost too embarrassed to raise because they are too small.
We are not embarrassed about detail. If you’ve ever had a splinter, you know small things can have a big impact. This is what quibble is committed to tackling, and our wider hope is that by doing so we will also incentivise policy makers to be even more careful about detail.
Check out our website here, including our first four campaigns: https://t.co/gZiqqHbhIL

[John Spencer Williams • F**k Work Let’s Play @johnsw]

@QuibbleUK I love this. The cookie pop ups are unbelievably stupid.

[John Spencer Williams • F**k Work Let’s Play @johnsw]

@RaminNasibov Chuckie Egg

[John Spencer Williams • F**k Work Let’s Play @johnsw]

@s8mb Here here!

[John Spencer Williams • F**k Work Let’s Play @johnsw]

@lastminuteCX If you think I’m that stupid Mr Scammer you can fuck off

[John Spencer Williams • F**k Work Let’s Play @johnsw]

@rorysutherland @nntaleb I thought you meant it aggressively insults people at random

[John Spencer Williams • F**k Work Let’s Play @johnsw]

@lastminute_com And… you can’t even be arsed to respond here. I think you might actually be the scammers.

[John Spencer Williams • F**k Work Let’s Play @johnsw]

@lastminute_com It's absolutely fucking impossible to get hold of you by any medium. Maybe if you actually provided support you wouldn't have so many scammers rushing into the vacuum.

[John Spencer Williams • F**k Work Let’s Play @johnsw]

@micsolana In fairness, it’s not their fault. They’re not *trying* to kill anyone. It’s the parasites that invade *them*

[John Spencer Williams • F**k Work Let’s Play @johnsw]

@Vitality_UK OK we've given up now. The responses from Vitality don't answer our questions and take a long time to come even then! We will look for another provider.

[John Spencer Williams • F**k Work Let’s Play @johnsw]

@Vitality_UK trying to interact with Vitality over a new life insurance policy is proving to be infuriating. Every response by email half answers the question asked or answers a previous question! It feels like we’re either talking to an AI or a random rotation of staff, all of whom aren’t really paying attention.

[John Spencer Williams • F**k Work Let’s Play @johnsw]

@Vitality_UK We are endlessly going backwards and forwards and getting nowhere

[John Spencer Williams • F**k Work Let’s Play @johnsw]

@Agisuticaeagis @elonmusk Hardcore! I wrote a Bézier curve rendering routine in assembler on an Archimedes computer in the 80s

[John Spencer Williams • F**k Work Let’s Play @johnsw]

@ShippersUnbound @RuthDavidsonPC Yep!

[John Spencer Williams • F**k Work Let’s Play @johnsw]

@stewybabe30 I think he’s fascinating despite how shit the car looks on the outside

[John Spencer Williams • F**k Work Let’s Play @johnsw]

@davidsenra @tobi Loved the Rick Rubin episode that i watched this morning. Will watch this next.

[John Spencer Williams • F**k Work Let’s Play @johnsw]

@joncstone Love this idea

[John Spencer Williams • F**k Work Let’s Play @johnsw]

@campbellclaret @DeborahMeaden Just saw him speak at Hay and my god, it was like discovering a higher IQ lifeform than most politicians

[John Spencer Williams • F**k Work Let’s Play @johnsw]

@david_perell Wonderful!

[John Spencer Williams • F**k Work Let’s Play @johnsw]

@tomhfh Yes probably but you can bet that the app they pair it with will be an unusable shitshow