Two simple words of passion...

Seattleduck's Kevin Broidy captured the essence of user passion when he said, "Passion starts with two simple words: F***ing Cool!" In Kevin's words (and I think he nailed it):

"That’s where passion begins. Those are the words I want every user of my product to utter. Ideally followed up by something like:

<>'Dude, you have to check this out. It’s so f**king cool!'

I don’t want their reaction to be a measured, rational, dispassionate analysis of why the product is better than the alternatives, how the cost is more reasonable, feature set more complete, UI more AJAXified. I don’t want them to pause to analyze the boring feature comparison chart on the back of the box.

I want 'f**king cool!' Period.

I want that pure sense of wonder, that kid-at-airshow-seeing-an-F16–on-afterburners-rip-by-so-close-it-makes-your-soul-shake reaction, that caress-the-new-Blackberry-until-your-friends-start-to-question-your-sanity experience. I want an irrational level of sheer, unfiltered, borderline delusional joy."

But "f***ing cool" is not a "business appropriate" phrase. It's unprofessional. So while we may want our customers to feel it, sure, we certainly can't have one of our employees saying it. Heavens no. According to some folks within Sun, anyway. It seems that the insightful tech blogger Tim Bray--who happens to be a Sun employee--used the words, "f***ing cool" (but without the asterisks) to describe Sun's Project Blackbox, and he took some interesting heat for it from both outside and inside the company.

"Out of public view, the Sun internal bloggers alias exploded, opinions ranging from those saluting me as an exemplar of New Age Marketing and Proactive Transparency to others who felt my mouth ought to be washed out; one person related that he’d heard from a Sun shareholder who was going to sell as a consequence."

But this is who Tim is. He didn't use the F-word to attract attention. He used it because he honestly believes that Project Blackbox is, "totally drop dead f***ing cool." So he said it. And of course it brought up all sorts of issues related to honesty, authenticity, professionalism, personal vs. corporate blogs, etc.

I would be proud and thrilled to have someone describe something I made in those terms. Those exact, most passionate, terms.

But here's why this whole story made me smile (in that but-I'm-not-bitter kind of way)... when I was still a Sun employee, I got into serious trouble for using just ONE of the words in that phrase... cool. Yes, cool. It came up as a black mark in my annual employee performance evaluation. So Tim, times have changed when you call a Sun product "f***ing cool", and all they care about is the F-word.

We all have to decide what constitutes "professionalism" for our own business. And my standards might be much lower (or rather different) from yours. One of my favorite exchanges was between Hugh MacLeod and one of his commenters, some time back. Hugh, not known for self-censorship, was told, "Maybe you'd have more clients if you stopped using such inappropriate language." His response: "If that's what I'd have to do to win those clients, they aren't the people I'd want to work with anyway."

Which reminds me of Paul Graham's Dignity is Deadly speech.