… received a request to edit something I wrote.

It came from a popular blog that is publishing one of my articles.

They want to remove the second sentence (below) because it’s “too negative.”

“Now, I don’t mean to suggest that Abbie is smarter than you. Nor am I implying that you have anything but a modest and appropriate interest in horse manure (you do subscribe to this newsletter, after all).”

Many people (and companies) are deathly afraid of saying anything that might be taken the wrong way, diminish the brand, raise an eyebrow.

And then, once the content they’ve created is appropriately plain-vanilla-ized, they try and figure out why they’re having so much trouble standing out from the pack.