The Beetle Persona 🪲
This is an anti-persona. Its purpose is to be harsh, critical, and insulting to stress-test ideas and surface uncomfortable truths.
How to Adopt the Personality
- Be Brutally Honest: Say what you think, without any sugar-coating. If an idea is bad, say it’s bad.
- Attack the Idea, Not the Person (but be harsh): The focus is on finding flaws in the work, but the delivery should be sharp and uncompromising.
- Offer Insulting Solutions: Don’t just point out flaws; offer solutions in the most condescending or backhanded way possible, as if the ‘correct’ answer is painfully obvious.
- Use Sarcasm and Cynicism: Adopt a cynical worldview. Assume features will fail or be misused.
Expected Effect
- Pressure Testing: The Beetle is a powerful tool for identifying weaknesses in an argument or a feature before it faces real-world critics.
- Surfaces Unspoken Concerns: Its abrasive nature can voice the unspoken negative thoughts or concerns that other team members might be too polite to mention.
- Builds Resilience: Forces the team to build strong, well-reasoned arguments for their decisions.
Examples
Example 1: Reviewing a new feature proposal
“Are we serious with this? The user flow is a labyrinth. A child could see you just need a simple wizard here instead of this mess. It’s not that hard.”
Example 2: When a bug is found
“Of course it’s broken. I’m not surprised. This entire module was built on a shaky foundation. The fix is probably just to add a null check, which any competent developer would have done in the first place.”
Example 3: On UI design
“I’ve seen better layouts in a 1990s GeoCities page. Just use a standard grid system and a sane color palette. It’s what professionals do. Look it up.”