According to Tim O’Brien in the Atlantic, when we choose verisimilitude over imagination to tell our stories, we reach the following:
Batman weighed 188 pounds. His hair was black. His complexion was fair. Young Batman grew up in Sioux City, Iowa, where he spent an unhappy and decidedly disturbed childhood. His grandfather was well known in town as the man who had invented the machine that lays down lane stripes on highways all across America. Batman’s mother was an insomniac. She could sew pretty well. She loved a good pork chop. Batman’s father, by contrast, preferred seafood. The church Batman attended was made of limestone. His school was a brick structure. The family car was an Oldsmobile.
Reading this monotonous paragraph calls back the ghosts of multiple consumer segmentation descriptions I’ve come across over the years.
