Your chances of running into a marketer at a neighborhood bar are slim but never zero. Given the remote-capable nature of the work and the continued growth of their economic sector, marketers have spread across the U.S., making the most of their relatively high salaries by moving away from the more expensive coastal centers of industry.
By and large, they’re lovely people. But I live in fear of the moment when the conversation takes that dreaded turn toward the last redoubt of small talk: What do you do? Posed with that question, any halfway enthusiastic marketer is likely to let loose a litany of acronyms and jargon that cause a physiological response in listeners, or at least in me — a glazing over of the eyes that is instant and unavoidable. As with Microsoft Outlook, the board game CATAN and the rules of hurling, there’s something there I can’t bring myself to grasp, a Lovecraftian boredom that lies just beyond the borders of what I can perceive.