Read Lovely Books
Why should anyone hand a readership to you just because you deserve it?
Every now and then you might want to check in to see if those people are still
So, you go to their profile page only to be shocked at how much new information is
As you scroll through all the content, you think, “I would have much preferred to read this
At the same time, he probably posts a bunch of nonsensical articles about how the only people
Go on! Go to your social media account right now and ask yourself if there’s even
A social media platform based on merit would change the world
On various social media feeds, I often see posts from people I don’t follow
Their ugly faces appear in my feed as shared posts from other people I don’t remember
I don’t understand why the general public is so passive as to accept that without evidence
When you think about it, there is no incentive for anyone to create a meritorious distribution mechanism
All that would mean is that you’d be shifting power over to the people who actually
I was around in the early days when social media was new and the oligarchs didn’t
Everyone is aware that the government just prints up money right? Well, social media platforms can just
There’s just the illusion that the response to a social media post represents an actual connection
When people write good things, it gets buried because an audience is power and the world is
Then you get to see their posts and you can stop whining about your tinfoil hat conspiracies!”
Often, I stand there pushing that button like an imbecile and nothing happens
If somebody disconnects the hot wire to a light switch it’s not going to turn on
How many of the people who shoot their mouths off in the comment section know how to
” So I flip the switch and I’m still in the dark and my opponents persist in
” That kind of chatter should make you nervous for a number of reasons
First of all, people need to recognize that unmediated free speech is about the most terrible thing
We get this wrong all the time and it’s because we assign irresponsible meanings to the
“Obviously not, what are you a crazy person or something?”
You have to be aware of the larger and malicious motivations that serve as the foundation for
When they say they’re “anti-censorship” it’s because they’re pro-censorship
When they say they want to “cultivate intellectual discourse” they actually want to control all social narratives
By the time I reached the upper level classes, the students who asked those questions were gone
Some might argue that it’s the ONLY question writers and those that study writing should be
Why are we reading this work instead of that work? We are in the midst of a
In my college, we studied the work of a slave-owning Confederate sympathizer in four different classes because
Somebody made the deliberate choice to bury the non-white writers and elevate the white ones
I assume that writers with a lot more talent than me have given up because they couldn’
If you post something on social media and it dies on the vine, you’re wrong to
If social media was fair you could expect to get the same response no matter where you
Why should they be fair? It’s nobody’s responsibility to hand you the title of the “
Even if you find a platform that allows readers to find your work, you can’t come
Maybe on a “fair” platform you’d have one hundred times the readers
I’m mentioning all this because writers are inclined to arrive at unfounded conclusions
The people who run these platforms claim the algorithm is designed to present people with the content
When has it ever been to your benefit to take someone at his word? Ask for evidence!
When have you ever been on social media and found, in your feed, the content you actually
I never find anything I like except when I make a deliberate effort to go and find
Now, compare that to the information that’s available in college science courses
It’s all in support of a fabricated narrative (well, not all, but more than is healthy
Think of how smart you’d be if you passively sat around and listened to a college
Not only would you be smarter, but, over time, you’d actually grow in your intellectual ability
Think of all the distribution mechanisms that are available to make you smarter
The maps from Alien Syndrome that I played in the 90s are hardwired into my brain
They control the distribution mechanisms, so that’s why they can get away with that behavior
If you’re a parent, you already know that you should probably keep your kids off of
I know that I’m guilty of wasting far too much time on social media
For a while there, agents and publishers used to encourage you to go out and “build your
If you can build a following then more power to you, but don’t waste your time
Most importantly, don’t allow yourself into being manipulated into an uncharitable assessment of the value of
That’s not an exception, it’s fundamental to all social media platforms just as it’s
The sad part is that the minimal ambition of getting the writing community to recognize that reality