User personas are mostly worthless

If you're still using "user personas" or "marketing personas" but claiming data is massively important, well, you're lying to yourself somewhere in the process.

User personas -- sometimes called "marketing personas" -- are ways that companies attempt to define the customers they're chasing. This is all an incredibly fraught deal on any number of levels, and if I don't constrain myself somewhat, I'll likely go off on a rant about it. (It would not be the first time.)

I guess the easiest way to begin is to say thi…