Everyone hates HR

Last weekend I was at Freedom Fest — a Libertarian conference.

I was asked to speak about the influence of brands on culture. I made an off-hand comment about HR.

I said:

“I want to be the first company without HR.”

They cheered. I continued.

“They produce nothing. They monitor our words. They tell us what we can and cannot say. They inhibit creativity. It’s bad for business.”

This throwaway comment I made during a talk about something else entirely went viral. The Instagram post has over 5 million views in less than a week. The X post from yesterday has 1 million views in less than a day.

The conference boasted other much more well-known speakers as their key notes — people like Bret Weinstein and Adam Carolla. Their videos from the conference have 14k views and 3.6k views, respectively. I’m not boasting, I’m just pondering why what I said struck such a chord, when generally people are much more interested in them than in me.