Lessons From Watching Tiger King

The hot topic of the moment seems to be a show called Tiger King on Netflix. It might be madness from the quarantine and feeling like a caged animal inside your house that made the show so popular, or it might just be people’s weird obsession with rubber-necking when they drive past an accident on the highway — but the popularity of this show and the amount of mentions on social media is undeniable, so I gave it a try and watched the series this weekend. Surprisingly, I actually learned something and wanted to share it with you…

Lessons From Tiger King

1. Don’t watch Tiger King
You have a ton of projects you’ve been postponing until you had more time to work on them. If you skip watching Tiger King you will have about 7 hours of time that you could be using to do something more important.

No one in this show has any redeeming qualities
You know how most traditional stories have a hero and a villain, and the story is about good triumphing over evil? There is no redemptive story arc in Tiger King. Virtually every person in this series has made some horrible life choices that are put on display, and virtually none of them evolve during the course of the story.

As a matter of fact, most of them just continue to make worse choices as the show goes on. You’d be better off reading a book on personal development. At least by the end of the book, you’d walk away with some ideas on how you can improve your life. I guarantee you that none of those self-help books advise buying an exotic animal zoo as a path toward improving your life.

Nothing in this show will improve your life
There are no life lessons to follow. There are no business lessons to apply to your professional efforts. Just a lot of self-obsessed and uninhibited people doing whatever they can to stay in front of the camera and get people to notice them.

That’s it — there is no lesson #2.

There is a ton of content out there. Look for programs and books and courses and podcasts and videos that can teach you something worth knowing and applying in your own life. Find lessons that will improve you both professionally and personally.

If you are entertained by train wrecks and take some sort of pleasure from watching people destroy their own lives in public then maybe Tiger King is the show for you, but I hope you’re on a quest for more inspiring and positive entertainment.