Swift, Wembanyama, Turner, Baby Doris and Magic Wands For Little Girls
To argue for a crazy idea in a roundabout way, I begin with this list.
Swift, as in Taylor, I will assume you know or at least have heard of at this point. If you follow basketball you will know Victor Wembanyama as this year’s number one draft pick in the NBA. He is considered the most promising basketball prospect in the last twenty years. Josh Lee Turner is a musician (mostly guitar but he plays lots of other instruments too) who’s made a career on YouTube.
Though not selling out stadiums, two and a half meters tall, or followed by tens of thousands of loyal subscribers, baby Doris leads the field in terms of cuteness.
I only met Baby D for the first time the other day at White Label Coffee where she sat on the counter as if she owned the place, which she sort of does. Busy putting cups and playthings in her mouth and lifting whatever she could above her head, her ability to occupy her present looks secure.
But in relationship to my list of stars, I want to think about her future, or the future of little girls, sort of, though do so in an odd way.
Here’s the suggestion: What if she had a magic wand of million euros or dollars set aside in her name?
Let me explain.
As Miss D tried to grab and eat their phones, her mom, dad, and I shared jokes about the TikTok channel she should have and then talked of the nine and ten-year-olds we see dancing and filming themselves for some online audience. We were talking, in other words, about that now common subject of how reality and online reality have merged.
Generally, this merger seems bizarre or damaging or frightening or all three. But some practitioners seem to have made this technology a prime source of not just their success but, dare I say it, their sanity, even their normalcy.
This is what Swift, Wembayana, and Turner appear to have in common. Each grew up and, in essence, swallowed media so as to “pre-adult” themselves. Swift has been preparing to be a pop idol her whole life and knew from watching those in front of her how to avoid the pitfalls of stardom. Wembanyana, who is French, learned English in expectation of having to give interviews to sports reporters while being on the cutting edge of taking care of his extra-tall body. And when you watch Turner you will see that he is not only a sterling guitarist and historian of music but is also remarkable in how he uses the camera and his editing program. He is a YouTube success because he is a master, so to speak, of the tube.
All of them, so far as one can tell, are transparent about the work, humility, and savvy that comes with being a prodigy.
Of course, all three might well have done well without the internet. Two appear to be born musicians and Wembayna is a super-agile giant. But in a world of people who get less out of the internet than they might or for whom the internet becomes dangerous and addictive, a few folks have made it a source of “positive power.” Beyond earning money or gaining fans, they have learned the lessons of hard work, technical skill, and what befell those who preceded them to make their own rare path more successful.
So a sensible thing to ask here is how we might do more of that.
But instead, I am going to ask how we might do something similar with money.
If, somehow, the internet makes it more likely these stars do their thing well, how can we take a chance on some people and do the same with a resource we currently use quite poorly? If a few people can learn to use the giant resource of the internet so well how can we help a few people use the giant resource of money well? Especially people who, when empowered, tend to impact their whole community?
What if little girls between the ages of three and eight were given million-dollar trust funds they were expected to do something good with when they reached the age of twelve? Or eighteen? Or twenty-five? That is, what if they were given the power Swift “was given” due to her talent?
Baby Doris is still too young and lives in a wealthy society so maybe she’s the wrong kind of prototype, though her parents would pass the screening for this idea, whatever such screening might entail.
Sure, a little girl who had a million bucks in a community where a dollar a day is the living wage—which is maybe the model here—would skew things and might put all sorts of undo pressure on those girls and their families. But surely Swift, Wembanyama, and Turner felt the pressure of ability and future. So just as they soon built teams around themselves for support this money—call it a magic wand—could come with a small team of people who could not profit from the money.
Whatever the drawbacks, and whatever arrangements might be required, is there anyone you would rather empower than a little girl who was expected to be powerful in places where that power most matters? Little girls doing outsized good by design? As if we dialed it up?
100 wands to 100 little girls. How do we make that happen?