We are slowly descending into an idiocracy
You may have heard that people are reading less.
You may have also heard that literacy rates are falling in young people, which is pretty f*cking bad for society as a whole. You only need to take a look at the data... at the exams older generations took when they were expected to be well-read, to be able to read Latin, etc., etc... versus the colouring book approach to education that seems to be sufficient these days to know that this is true.
As a society, people are getting dumber. We are slowly descending into an idiocracy. And with people reading less, you're probably thinking, "Damn, being a copywriter and running an email business is a bad idea and probably only going to get worse."
I want you to think about this:
Why on earth would you want everybody to be interested in your business?
Trying to cater to everybody is the easiest way to cater to nobody. Anybody trying to do so will swiftly be out of business. From a purely mercenary business perspective, why do you care if young people can read or not? If you are one of the few people who are still able to read and write, you are at an advantage. In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
I don't know about you, but I want the smartest client or customer possible, so using our medium as a filter is a good thing.
You WANT to put most people off. You WANT only a certain percentage of people to work with you or to buy from you. Why would you want customers who can't read? Sounds like a nightmare waiting to happen to me.
All these dopamine junkies who can't even finish a chapter of Captain Underpants. Why would you want to deal with those people? If you enjoy chargebacks, bad reviews, and people blaming their failures on you, then go right ahead. I'll pass. I purposefully built my business to work with a higher-calibre of customer and client.
I want people who are smart. And if that means that some young kid can't read my emails and misses out, then so be it. If a kid can't be bothered to read a couple of hundred words in an email, then he's definitely not going to take the time to study and implement what I teach.
I heard the big dog of the UFC, Dana White, say something a while back which perfectly encapsulates this entire situation:
"If you are even remotely a savage, you will run these kids over. It's all out there for the taking right now."
It's never been easier to be a savage. I thought you needed hard skills like copywriting and email marketing to separate yourself from the herd, but apparently, even just being able to focus and read might be what puts you ahead.
Think about all of these idiots who have outsourced even their most basic decision-making to AI. This is your competition? You should be grateful. It's one of the easiest times in human history to build a business. Start-up costs are almost nonexistent. You have every piece of information that has ever been discovered in human history at your fingertips. You can pay people to tell you exactly what to do in your specific personal circumstances to be successful. You think any of your ancestors had that opportunity?
It's so easy now, BUT, and there's a big BUT - you have to be comfortable with being polarising. You don't want the zoomers who can't read to join your list or buy your products, and you certainly don't want them as clients. You want to actively repel them. You want your copy and your emails to attract high-calibre customers and clients who can read. I can't believe that being able to read is a signal of high quality, but here we are.
So don't worry about the brain-rot macro trends. Focus on writing the kind of emails that get your products and services in front of the right kind of customer or client.
If you'd like me to work with you on doing just that, I'm currently looking for clients to work with in 2026.
Send me an email with the phrase 'PRIVATE CLIENT' if you're interested, and I'll be in touch.
James Perkins
P.S. Working with me is an investment, and therefore not for those early in their biz journey. If you'd like to earn some cheddar towards working with me in the future, I will pay you handsomely for any client you send my way that I end up working with.
