Page 3 Profile: Shingy, Digital Prophet

‘There’s a new term out there called Pizzled…’

I beg your pardon?

‘Dude, it’s a whole other scene man, and it’s pizzling.’

Meet Shingy. Né David Shing, he is the official Digital Prophet of media company AOL. Problem is, no one can understand what he’s saying.

So pizzling is puzzling?

Exactly. Shingy gave a lecture at the Next Web Europe Conference during which he appears to have spouted some of the finest tech gibberish ever. He left the crowd baffled with: “Is ‘always on’ always good? ‘Always on’ is important, versus ‘always relevant’ is more important.” At one point, he intoned over a video of a dog driving a car: “It’s not even about the way it’s shot, it is low-format. It is not even hi-fi. It’s just an incredible story.”

‘If I wear all my wearables, I look like a tribal leader.’

Yes, that brings us to another point. With his wacky hair and zebra-print trousers, Shingy looks like the lovechild of Bill & Ted and hipster icon Nathan Barley.

And what exactly does he do?

He calls himself a “storyteller” . His more prosaic daily role at AOL is to meet clients and advise them on a digital advertising strategy. ”

And AOL know he’s out in public saying these things?

Having previously been videoed at the SXSW festival riding a wrecking ball in a mock-up of Miley Cyrus’s controversial video, he is, according to advertisers, an attention-grabbing asset.

You laugh – he may be the future.

And on that note, he says: “Sound in the future is very, very important.” Quite.