Clarity in the Binary

I am pressing the edge of a $29 carbide scraper into a patch of hardened industrial adhesive on the side of a transit hub, the kind of gunk that seems to have been there since at least 1999. My knuckles are white, and the vibrations from the scraping are traveling up my radius, settling into a dull ache in my shoulder. This is what I do. I am Cameron F.T., and I spend my days removing things that people didn’t have the permission to put there in the first place. There is a strange clarity in graffiti removal. Either the wall is clean, or it is not. There is no middle ground. There is no ‘perspective’ on whether a spray-painted tag is gone. It is a binary world, and honestly, after what happened last night, I find that binary world to be the only thing keeping me sane.

I was scrolling through my phone at 1:49 AM, a time when no good decisions are ever made. I found myself on her profile, looking at a photo from 3 years ago-precisely 1099 days ago, if we are being pedantic. She was standing in a field of sunflowers, looking like she’d never had a bad day in her life. My thumb slipped. A double-tap. A heart. A notification sent into the void that I can never take back. It was a mistake of visibility. I thought I was a ghost, a silent observer in a flat social landscape where we are all just ‘users,’ but the hierarchy of attention is real, and I just signaled my place at the very bottom of it. It’s the same feeling you get in those ‘progressive’ companies where everyone is told they are a partner, right until the moment they realize they are just a witness to someone else’s ego.

The Shadow Hierarchy Revealed

I remember the meeting at the last ‘innovation lab’ I consulted for before I went back to the honesty of manual labor. The Head of People-let’s call her Sarah, though she wore a lanyard that just said ‘Growth Facilitator’-stood at the front of a room filled with beanbags and $559 ergonomic stools. She smiled with all 29 of her visible teeth and told us, ‘We don’t believe in titles here. We’re a flat ecosystem. Your ideas are the only currency that matters. We are all equal partners in this journey.’

Everyone nodded. It felt good. It felt modern. It felt like we had transcended the stuffy boardrooms of our parents’ generation. But then, a junior designer named Leo suggested we pivot the user interface to something more accessible, something that challenged the founder’s original ‘vision.’ The founder, a man who insisted on being called ‘just Mike’ but wore a watch worth $9999, didn’t say a word. He just leaned back, crossed his arms, and sighed. The temperature in the room dropped by about 19 degrees. Sarah, our ‘equal partner’ and ‘Growth Facilitator,’ immediately sensed the shift. She didn’t defend the flat structure. She didn’t invite more discourse. She simply said, ‘Actually, Leo, I think we need to stay focused on the core DNA for now. Let’s shelf that.’

The Game of Social Telepathy

The conversation died instantly. It wasn’t a murder; it was an assisted suicide. The ‘flat’ hierarchy was revealed as a shadow play. In a real hierarchy, you know who the boss is. You know whose door to knock on, whose signature you need, and whose bad mood to avoid. In a flat hierarchy, the power is still there-it’s just invisible. It’s hidden in the way Mike sighs, or the way Sarah interprets his silence. It’s a game of social telepathy where the rules are never written down, which means you can never actually follow them correctly. You are constantly searching for the ‘true’ north in a room where every compass is deliberately broken. This ambiguity doesn’t create freedom; it creates a special kind of low-grade anxiety that follows you home and makes you accidentally like your ex’s photos at 2:09 AM.

This lack of clarity is exactly why I find myself gravitating toward professionals who actually value the definition of expertise. When everything is vague, nothing is excellent. When I’m working on a high-stakes removal job, I don’t want a ‘collaborative brainstorming session’ about which solvent to use; I want the person who knows the chemical composition of the brick. I want the authority that comes from actually knowing what they are looking at. It’s the same reason why, when your vision is blurry, you don’t go to a ‘vision partner’ for a vibe check. You go for visual field analysis because they understand that specialized knowledge isn’t an insult to equality-it’s the foundation of quality. Professionalism requires the courage to stand behind a title and the responsibility that comes with it. If everyone is a ‘visionary,’ then nobody is actually looking at the details.

The Price of Hidden Power

In the shadow hierarchy, the ‘Head of People’ becomes a high priestess, interpreting the silent will of the god-king founder. Because there are no formal channels for disagreement, dissent becomes a social faux pas rather than a professional difference of opinion. If you disagree with the boss in a flat company, you aren’t just ‘wrong about the data’-you are ‘not a culture fit.’ You are ‘difficult.’ You are ‘low-vibration.’ By removing the titles, the company removes the accountability. Mike can veto whatever he wants without ever having to take the blame for a bad decision, because ‘the team’ decided it together.

The 9-Month Collapse (Regression Rate)

I’ve seen this play out in 49 different versions of the same story. A company starts with a dream of being ‘different.’ They throw away the org chart. They replace ‘Manager’ with ‘Lead Catalyst.’ And within 9 months, the office has turned into a high-school cafeteria where the ‘cool kids’ (those closest to the founder) hold all the power and everyone else is left guessing. It is a regression disguised as an evolution. We pretend we have moved past the ‘command and control’ model, but we have actually just moved into a ‘manipulate and mask’ model.

Revealing the Structure

I think about the 19 layers of paint I sometimes have to strip off a single wall. Each layer represents a different person trying to leave their mark. Some layers are thick and stubborn, others are thin and flaky. But they all think they are the top layer. They all think they are the final word. My job is to reveal the original structure, the brick and mortar that actually holds the building up. You can’t just paint over a problem and call it a ‘new beginning.’ You have to strip it back.

Last night’s ‘like’ on that photo was a reminder that I am still looking for structure in places where it no longer exists. I was looking for a connection in a digital space that is designed to be flat, where my heart-shaped tap is worth the same as a stranger’s, yet carries the weight of a 1099-day-old history. It was a moment of weakness, a desire to be seen in a world that thrives on being hidden.

Boundaries and Beauty

In my line of work, I see a lot of people try to ‘flatten’ the city. They spray their names over windows, over signs, over history. They think they are asserting their presence, but they are really just creating noise. The best parts of the city are the ones where the boundaries are clear-where a park is a park, and a clinic is a clinic, and the expertise of the architect is visible in every arch and beam. There is beauty in a well-defined boundary. There is safety in knowing where you stand.

Honest Structure

I’m packing up my gear now. The wall is clean. The adhesive is gone. I’ve spent $149 on chemicals this week alone, but the result is undeniable. I’ll go home, I’ll probably stare at my phone for another 9 minutes, wondering if she saw the notification before I unliked it-though we both know that once the notification hits the lock screen, the damage is done. It’s out there. The invisible power of the ‘like’ has been exerted.

Maybe the answer isn’t to fight the hierarchies, but to demand they be honest. Give me a boss who is willing to be the boss. Give me a structure that doesn’t pretend to be a circle when it’s clearly a pyramid. Give me the precision of a professional who knows their role and performs it with authority. Because at the end of the day, a flat world is just a world where the bumps are harder to see, but they still trip you up just the same. And I’m tired of tripping.

Tripping over things that everyone pretends aren’t there.