Why “It Depends” is the Best Answer to Most Questions
And Why Most Marketing Sucks
Course sellers and social media “gurus” these days have a real knack for marketing with absolute certainty. And there is a reason why it feels pushy and insincere: this approach is designed to play on our irrational fears and wants. We all know, deep down, that a single “power hour” of freelance coaching won’t make us 10k/month earners, and a $1,500 roadmap probably won’t cut it either. But we would very much like that to happen. With people having shorter attention spans now (as they say), these marketers work to capture our precious attention at every moment. If people don’t have time to stop and think critically, it becomes all too easy to play on their base emotions.
But this style of marketing only worsens the problem. It’s like when someone offers a quicker service at a lower price to attract clients, only for someone else from halfway around the world to offer it for $5 with half the delivery time. See where that leads? It’s a race to the bottom. This analogy, I think, applies well to the current state of marketing and copywriting. How quick, easy, and manipulative does marketing have to get before it collapses under its own weight? This endless cycle of cheap one-upmanship has created the very problem that makes marketing feel so hollow.
A few weeks back, I had a conversation with my friend’s brother, a full-time forex trader. He told me he’s learned to see the world in terms of probabilities rather than certainties. This simple shift in mindset, he said, has allowed him to understand markets—and the forces within them—with far more clarity and realism.
This got me thinking about how it applies to marketing and copywriting. The problem with many marketers today is that they present everything with certainty—full convictions, even. It’s not just the false promises or exaggerated claims; even the true points are often taken out of context, presented without nuance, and stripped of anything that might make them less universally applicable. And so, marketers sell these “truths” as certainties.
People tend to crave certainty. Certainty brings a sense of safety and security that helps us operate in the world. But the truth is, we live in a complex world with endless variables, and it rarely gives us absolute answers. Thinking in certainties, while useful, can limit us by creating blind spots. But when we say, “It depends,” instead of giving an answer full of conviction, we acknowledge the probabilities and nuances of life—an approach that’s often far closer to the truth.
Imagine if a coach or guru responded to your question not with the reassurance you wanted, but with, “It depends.” And then, as you dig deeper, they explain why it depends. You’d start to see the world as filled with more “it depends” than guarantees. You might not enjoy that answer; you might even dislike the coach for not giving you the certainty you craved. But in reality, that would be the best way to educate you. A real expert can only show you what’s happening, outline opportunities, identify threats, and so on. Your success or failure depends on your understanding of these variables, your responses to them, and, yes, even luck (being in the right place at the right time).
By choosing not to play into certainties, a coach might lose some quick cash-seekers, but they’d contribute to a smarter, more discerning market by dispelling the myths people believe are always true. And in doing so, they’d make the market more educated and less cluttered.
If more people thought this way, we might finally see less of this cheap race to the bottom that marketing has become.
Hi 👋 I’m Sameer. Long-form writer specializing in human-centric content.
Great way of thinking. And, actually, what something depends on - also depends on something else. The whole universe is interconnected and no matter how well we think we know the relevant factors, there is always something more that we don't know about.
"It depends" is definitely the way forward.
It applies to most things. We need more nuance in our world. Not only do we inherently crave certainty, but with the deification of science, we've extrapolated absolute truths to every aspect of our lives. And the human experience, and certainly writing, is much more complex than that.