"Sometimes it seems like there's more footnotes than text. This isn't something we're proud of, and over time we'd like to see our footnotes steadily shrink"
About this Quote
An executive confession disguised as a style note: the footnotes are bigger than the story. Barry Diller is talking like a publisher, but the subtext is pure corporate survival. “Footnotes” reads as legal disclaimers, fine print, edge-case policies, retroactive clarifications, all the defensive prose that accumulates when a business moves fast, breaks things, then hires lawyers to explain the shards. The line admits a modern truth about big platforms and media-adjacent companies: the product is never just the product. It’s also the liability wrapper.
What makes it work is the way it frames bloat as a moral and aesthetic problem. “This isn’t something we’re proud of” signals reputational awareness, not just operational frustration. Diller’s tone suggests the company knows how it looks when every promise is followed by an asterisk. Footnotes are where trust goes to die; they’re the visible scar tissue of past overreach. When he says he’d like to see them “steadily shrink,” he’s selling a future of simplicity, but also hinting at a shift in posture: fewer exceptions, cleaner incentives, less need to pre-defend every claim.
Contextually, it lands in an era when consumers learned to read corporate language like weather reports. Shrinking footnotes isn’t merely tidying up copy; it’s a bid to reclaim credibility by reducing the gap between what’s marketed and what’s actually delivered. The most telling part is “over time”: a promise of reform that sounds reasonable, and conveniently indefinite.
What makes it work is the way it frames bloat as a moral and aesthetic problem. “This isn’t something we’re proud of” signals reputational awareness, not just operational frustration. Diller’s tone suggests the company knows how it looks when every promise is followed by an asterisk. Footnotes are where trust goes to die; they’re the visible scar tissue of past overreach. When he says he’d like to see them “steadily shrink,” he’s selling a future of simplicity, but also hinting at a shift in posture: fewer exceptions, cleaner incentives, less need to pre-defend every claim.
Contextually, it lands in an era when consumers learned to read corporate language like weather reports. Shrinking footnotes isn’t merely tidying up copy; it’s a bid to reclaim credibility by reducing the gap between what’s marketed and what’s actually delivered. The most telling part is “over time”: a promise of reform that sounds reasonable, and conveniently indefinite.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
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