If you’ve seen my posts on 𝕏, I am very critical of “self-victimization” culture. It is something I am seeing a lot in the younger generation - a consistent pattern of behavior that’s both attention seeking and responsibility avoiding - using external reasons exclusively for personal failures, acting powerless and shifting all the blame to “the system” or some other excuse. It’s self-perpetuating, because not holding yourself responsible for your actions and choices ensures that you won’t do anything to improve your situation, and today’s society is full of enablers who perpetuate this behavior instead of challenge it.

The main reason I am so critical is I lived it, and it was ruining my life and hurting those who cared about me. It was a selfish and weak place to be. And so when I see it in others, it is very easy to recognize - I completley understand the mindset, and our minds can be our own worst enemies - but I don’t think we should continue validating it. It’s bad. It’s bad for individuals and it’s bad for society. And we need to stop enabling it and try to get people to break out of it.

So I’d like to tell my story here and how I got into it and how I broke out of it, in hopes that it might help someone else recognize this in themselves or those they care about going through the same thing.

In high school, I felt like I was doing everything you’re supposed to be doing - I did well on my SATs, I had nearly straight-A’s (except that one B from calculus, I’m still mad at you Mr. Coleman!), I played sports and did “key club” and tutored and tried to set myself up for future success in the most generic way you’re “supposed to” in order to prepare for college.

My parents divorced while I was in middle school and I lived with my mom, and as the youngest child I was the only one left at the house. For the most part, I didn’t have much parenting - my mom worked evenings so I was pretty much home alone most of the time, and my house was more or less a hangout area for my friend group since no one was there. For a teenager, this was a pretty ideal setup!

But a little more than halfway through my senior year, as I was applying to different colleges, I started to feel sick. It was a weird general malaise - there weren’t any obvious symptoms pointing to anything, I just started to felt lethargic, would get headaches, had a weird side pain and had trouble eating. And it started spiraling. Because eating would make me feel sick, I didn’t eat much and began to lose quite a bit of weight. My mom became very worried about my health and took me to all her doctors, who gave me all kinds of tests and scans. One in particular I remember was a full body scan where I had to drink a bunch of different dyes. After all the scans, I was completley sick to my stomach and spent the night in the bathroom. I wouldn’t recommend it.

And nothing was found. My friends and my girlfriend were very worried, and my mom was beside herself. I kept spiraling, doing less, eating less, trying to sleeping more, but I would frequently wake up in cold sweats throughout the night. I spent way too much time on the internet reading all sorts of potential reasons for the symptoms, which the internet pretty much always told me was cancer, and I became convinced I had some crazy rare illness that the doctors just couldnt find.

One day, I asked my mom if instead of going to college, I could stay home for a year and instead focus on my health, which she was happy to accommodate. But something unintuitive happened - just from that conversation… I temporarily felt a lot better.

But not because I was focusing on my health.

Focusing on my health was part the illness.

The root cause of all my symptoms? My own mind. Anxiety. Hypochondria. I didn’t want to face the world. I needed an excuse. And my body made one for me. That’s all it was. But I didn’t know that yet.

At that point, I wasn’t out of the weeds. For the summer after my senior year, I would oscillate between feeling better and feeling sick again. I would tell people I wanted a job, and my girlfriend basically set one up for me where she used to work, but I canceled on the interview because I “felt sick” which was pretty understandably frustrating for her. I felt lame enough for not going to college that I decided to attend community college after the summer, but I ended up dropping out after the first week because I kept getting panic attacks in class (I didn’t know they were panic attacks though, my heart would just start beating really fast and I thought I was having a heard attack, and would leave).

I kept seeing different doctors but tests never showed anything that explained the symptoms. I took various medicines - including one that had the warning “this will dangerously lower dopamine,” but I didn’t know what that meant except I would get really tired if I took it.

In the meantime, my not-yet stepdad moved in, and would often get upset with me for being lazy and entitled - which to be fair to him, I was pretty lazy and entitled. This kept escalating, though, and eventually after he threatened to “kick my ass” I decided that this environment wasn’t healthy to my “recovery” and that I should move out. I ended up staying with my dad and stepmom for the interim.

My parents are very different in how they handle things. While my parents are both very kind, my mom is a worrier and gets very emotionally wrapped up in things, my dad is much more stoic, more of a “tough love” pragmatist. The effect that had on my emotional state was quite unexpected.

I started community college again at a different school close to my dad’s, and was doing a little bit better managing things, but one morning I had a weird new symptom - a rash on my neck - and started getting hysterical about it. I called the nurse hotline and she said I needed to come in and I went to my dad to tell him I needed to borrow his extra truck to go to the emergency room.

His response was not what I was used to. My mom would usually panic, drop everything, and take me herself to the emergency room right then and there. My dad just looked at me quizzically, looked at the rash, a bit dumbfounded with the juxtaposition between my agitation and the actual symptoms. “That just looks like razor burn?” He inquired - which it was, I had just shaved with a new razor, but hadn’t put that together yet.

I continued my hysterics, the nurse said I had to go now and it could be from meningitis because of my headache and the rush and blah blah blah blah. My dad approached me, paused, put his hands on my shoulders, and calmly said 4 words that stick with me to this day:

I was finally able to calm down.

It took me a long time to truly understand what was happening with me. That I was never actually sick, I was just scared. My life was previously comfortable - I lived in the same house all my life, I went to school with all my same friends, everything was on rails more or less. But the new chapter was scary. College was scary. The idea of working was scary. The “real world” was scary. I didn’t know if I could do it. So being sick was an excuse. A way to explain to “the world” that, while I could totally face everything obviously, this “illness” is preventing me from doing that. And that’s why I’m falling behind my peers. Something out of my control. Not the reality that I was doing it to myself, albeit unconsciously.

My mom did the best she could, and I do appreciate how much she cared, but objectively and unintuitively her method of compassion actually made things worse for my mental state at the time. I didn’t need someone to get stressed and anxious with me, escalate it to doctors who were incentivized to do invasive tests, and validate my excuses. I needed someone that understood what I didn’t.

That I wasn’t sick. That I was just scared.

And eventually, I found that it was overblown. It wasn’t that scary after all.

For me, the moral of the story is just that we have a lot more power than we think we do - both internally and externally. We can put ourselves in a mental prison and seek out only things that validate our weakness. And I believe that is happening at a macro level right now with many parts of society. There are many who benefit from validating the weakness of others. But it doesn’t help. It makes everything worse.

I think the real truth is, we all have the ability to rewrite our own narratives. We all have hard times, but we aren’t victims - we are people who can overcome challenges and gain perspective and strength. That true compassion comes in the form of helping someone achieve their potential, rather than just treating the symptoms of self-destructive behavior.

You’re not sick, society. You just need a change in perspective, and a little bit of tough love.

1. you can’t

Elon Musk is bad. He does bad things and is bad. One time he did bad things and that was all the time. His companies all fail because he is bad, and even if they don’t, they should because he is bad and thus his companies are bad and are failing due to him being bad. Any good thing his companies do are due to employees who don’t like Elon Musk (because they are good unlike Elon Musk who is bad).

Elon Musk said he is not voting democrat anymore and therefore he is bad. But even if he says things that democrats also say, those things are wrong now, because Elon Musk said it, and he is bad. If a democrat says those things it’s good and right, though, but if Elon says it, then it’s bad again, because Elon Musk is bad.

Elon Musk doesn’t pay 500% of his money to taxes so he is bad. Everyone who is bad should pay all their money to taxes and also more money than exists to taxes because otherwise they are bad, like Elon Musk, who is bad.

I am good because I have the same beliefs as things that are highly upvoted on reddit so I shouldn’t pay very much taxes. But Elon should pay a lot of taxes because he is bad and stuff saying he is bad is highly upvoted on reddit so it’s obviously true. He also could solve world hunger easily but doesn’t because he is bad because spending what the government spends in a few days would solve world hunger. But it’s Elon Musk’s fault because he is bad.

The only reason Elon is rich is because his dad owned every single emerald mine in existence and also owns the sun and not because Tesla is 9th most valuable company in the world. Therefore he is a phony because he wouldn’t be rich without his dad and his dad’s emerald mines and we would all be as rich and successful as Elon Musk if our dads owned every single emerald mine and also the sun.

Please give me a pulitzer prize for this article. It is a good article, unlike Elon Musk, who is bad. Thank you.

Many adults don’t understand taxes at all. This is bad, because taxes aren’t that complicated!

Just kidding, they are excessively complicated for no particular reason.

But you can give your kids a leg up in the world by teaching them how absurd and ridiculous is all is at an early age! Make sure break the charade they might have that adults are competent and the systems we have makes logical sense, so they can reach the appropriate level of cynicism before their 10th birthday.

Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to do this:

1. Give them allowance, but only if they do chores. No work, no money!

2. At the end of the year, inform them that they have to give you a percentage of the money back. Give them a sheet of paper with a bunch of different percentages based on how much money they made in different brackets.

3. Give them an overly complicated form to fill out that supposedly tells them how much they owe you, even though you already know how much they should owe. If they get it wrong, take the money they owe you and then take extra money for them getting it wrong. Or send them to jail.

4. Take a little extra money because they didn’t return any money throughout the year.

5. Take a little extra money and give it to grandpa, but tell them they’re going to get some of that when they’re old too (wink wink).

6. Use the rest of the money for the following:

   1. Fireworks

   2. BB guns

   3. Paying interest on your credit cards

Teaching your kids early that earning $10 really means earning $5 will give them all the tools they need to feel detached and disillusioned before they have a chance to develop any optimism about becoming an adult.

If you really want to go the extra mile to prepare them for the world, charge them monthly for rent! Then raise their rent every year quite a bit, but don’t raise their allowance. Make sure to tell them how much easier they have it than you did while doing this.

Childhood joy is overrated. Get them cynical early. Prepare them for the world.

“Hello this is Samantha from blah blabbity blah, do you have a few minutes to take a survey?”

Now, taking a phone survey isn’t something I ever want to do. Nor sign a petition, or anything along those lines, just leave me alone and I’ll leave you alone, thanks. But not wanting to be too rude, I’d make an excuse, and reply something like “oh, sorry, I don’t really have time.”

This would start a pointless argument as the caller would go to the next part of their script. “It’ll be quick, just 5 minutes of your time.” Then I would have to come up with some other excuse, or just relent, because I did in fact have 5 minutes to take a stupid survey. And invariably the survey would last a lot longer than 5 minutes and be a fantastic waste of time.

So one day, fed up with this song and dance, I answered like this:

“Hello this is Alice from blah blabbity blah, do you have a few minutes to take a survey?”

”Ah, yeah, hi. So yeah, I have the time, but… I don’t really want to spend it taking a survey.”

This seemed to short-circuit the script, and the caller just said, “thank you for your time” and hung up.

I tried it the next time, and same result. I felt like I found the hack - people can’t argue with your own personal feelings and experiences, expressed as your own personal feelings and experiences. It’s very easy to set boundaries if someone tries to press up against “I don’t want to.” Just something like, “I hear you, I understand what you’re saying, but it’s not something I personally want to do and I hope you can respect that.” Then they have to make a decision to try to violate your soft boundary for something they want, or respect you and leave you alone.

This doesn’t just apply to unwanted phone calls, of course, but it’s a way to be kind to yourself, and really, to others. So many times we have a gut reaction where we don’t want to do something, but express it by making random rationalizations, excuses, etc. And since they aren’t generally super well thought out, they become easy to argue with. And in western culture, you will get a lot of pushback.

In Japan, this doesn’t happen, because there’s a cultural understanding of imposing on someone. If someone asks you a favor, they’ll profusely apologize for the imposition. All you have to do, if you have any reason at all for not wanting to do it, is hesitate a little - “ええ, ちょっと。。。” or “ee, chotto” which roughly translates to “er, a little…” and the requestor will immediately apologize and drop it, because they understand they’re being imposing.

But in western culture, this courtesy doesn’t exist among most people. Offense can be randomly taken. Boundaries aren’t understood. Communication breaks down, because everyone is different. And enough people don’t even consider the other person in the first place, and just think they are the main character and everyone should accommodate them.

So, do yourself a kindness. If you don’t want to do something, just say you don’t want to. Even if you don’t know why yet, anyone worth talking to will either drop it or can respectfully examine why with you, without being pushy about it. But a simple “mm, I dunno, I don’t super want to do that” will help you a great deal with clear communication. This will avoid many cycles arguing about random top of the head excuses and other red herrings, when really, you aren’t going to get someone who doesn’t want to do something to do it without a cost, and that cost isn’t generally worth it.

And yeah, I don’t wanna buy the scammy extended warranty, I don’t wanna buy your timeshare, I don’t want to babysit your kids, and I don’t have a good excuse, but that doesn’t matter - I don’t want to, and that’s that. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to spend the rest of my Saturday sitting around in my underwear playing Super Mario Wonder.

While I enjoy writing satirical articles after a clickbait title, this one isn’t satire. If there’s a piece of advice I could give, this would be this:

• Get yourself some nice headphones that connect with your phone

  • After trying a whole bunch of different cheapo ones, I got airpods, and I don’t regret that choice, the voice quality is a lot better than the rest I’ve used

And then,

• Go on a long walk in nature

  • Take some time to think about things during your walk, and/or listen to podcasts, and/or listen to music

  • After spending time with your own thoughts, call your parents (or someone else important to you)

That’s it!

If you do that once a week, your life will be much better.

Walking is incredibly healthy for your body and mind. So many times I have something that I’m stressed about and don’t want to think about, but something about taking a long walk provided me with clarity and actionable steps to handle it.

Reaching out to your parents / friends / siblings is something we often don’t make time to do, and we should. And if you do it while walking, you can be productive while being productive!

So, that is my honest advice for how to improve your life. I’m gonna go on a walk right now. Until next week!

i dunno man just post stuff you want to post

1. Does pineapple belong on pizza? - YS-MAC

Here’s my actual opinion: People are free to enjoy the food they like. I personally don’t hate Hawaiian pizza, and the pineapples I think are like, B-tier additions to it. They aren’t the best thing ever, but when people gatekeep too strongly I’ll come on the side of yes, pineapples belong on pizza, because c’mon, just let people like stuff they like!

2. Going deep today: Do you believe in having choices (free will) or is everything fixed? Is the outcome pre-planned or do our choices matter? - MarciJoy

I think I’ve mentioned before that I didn’t grow up with any kind of religion, so even though I generally respect religion, it’s not a fundamental part of my life or thought process. With that in mind, I would say I believe in free will and don’t think everything is pre-planned.

But, things like quantum physics are really interesting, where small picture things can seem random, but big picture they fall into patterns that are predictable and can seem more planned out. Sometimes I can somewhat see that kind of thing in other parts of life.

So, I don’t think I could ever say we don’t have free will and our choices don’t matter, but I do think there’s much more going on than we generally perceive day to day that influence things. Whether that’s related to science or more spiritual, I am too dumb to say.

3. If you could have one immaterial wish right now, what would it be and why? - Aleena Tristan

Hmm, if immaterial, I think I would wish that there is something satisfying and non-final waiting for us when our human bodies die. And maybe that’s already true, who knows. The thought that everything just goes to black and is over is not particularly satisfying!

4. How to manage our ego? - Y.A

Hm, for me I kinda just think humans - myself included - have pretty broken brains, and if we start to think we’re right all the time, then we’re doing it wrong. I don’t think I’m particularly stellar at anything, and I like to be generally realistic about my strengths and weaknesses, even if I usually understate my strengths and am very willing to admit my weaknesses.

But I dunno, that’s just me. I think I’m okay-ish. I think it’s more fun to think about myself less and think about stuff and people I like and admire more.

5. What is your favorite project that you are the most proud of and why in your lifetime? - KittyTellesWolf

I have a hard time being proud of anything I’ve done if I didn’t work hard on it, which is why I don’t put dogecoin as my favorite project that I’ve done - it wasn’t a passion or anything, just something silly I figured out how to do.

Probably my most proud is coding a video game and composing the musical score for it. I like writing music because I can always come back to it and listen forever, it’s a tangible thing that exists that reminds me of the time and place I wrote it.

6. What are some things on your bucket list? - Pro𝕏ima Centauri B

There are so many places I want to visit!

• Europe, like, pretty much anywhere in Europe

• Monaco

• Iceland

• Turkey

• Greece

• Dubai

• Australia

• Yadda yadda I could go on and on

I’ve been to lots of parts of the US, New Zealand (which I LOVED), Canada, Mexico, Japan, Thailand, and Singapore. But there’s so much more world to discover!

I want to publish a video game, write a musical, write a book, go on a fancy cruise, win a decent-sized poker tournament, and yeah. Lots of things. But I’m also pretty willing to just kinda take the hand I’m dealt, and it’s okay if I don’t get to do everything I’ve ever wanted to do!

7. What facet of a game plays the largest part in drawing you into it's world? - BSP3

Off the top of my head -

• A “good” tutorial - i.e. introducing new, interesting mechanics in an interactive and clever way

  • The BEST example I can think of is Blizzard games. Their RTS campaigns, like Warcraft 3 and Starcraft, are essentially tutorials as each stage introduces a new mechanic and lets you toy with it. I highly prefer this to on rails tutorials with lots of interjections.

  • There’s also a great video by Egoraptor on the subject that I generally agree with:

• A “hook” - usually a mystery, or something I want to explore (like in Zelda BoTW, seeing the world and all the places you can go), or anything that hooks me into wanting to understand the world more.

  • Sometimes game intros are… Very long, before getting to anything that is intriguing. I find this tough - like, it’s cool that there’s a lot going on in this world, but I kinda need to care?

• Good characters - I tend to care a lot more about characters with decipherable personalities, cool design, and realistic dialog than “story” a lot of the time. If characters don’t act like anyone would act in a situation, it can really take me out of the game world.

  • This doesn’t necessarily matter if the story is more emergent based on your own personal experiences, like with World of Warcraft - I couldn’t tell you a single part of the actual game story, but I could tell you plenty of stories of things that happened while playing!

• Good music - the thing about music is it’s the thing that will most stay with me after I finish the game and leave me with a more positive nostalgic feeling about it. The games I remember most fondly, I also remember the music the strongest.

8. Do you have any recurring dreams? - Anna Rae Aurora

I have quite a few! I have the classic recurring dream where I’m in a class that I’ve not attended and have a test and haven’t prepared, that’s happens pretty commonly actually.

One recurring dream happens whenever I get a new car. It’s weird. It’s happened since childhood, whenever my parents would get a new car. I’m trapped in the car, and I look outside at the moon, and a circle envelopes it and it slowly phases to different states (full, half, crescent) until it disappears altogether. It’s super weird. But literally happens every time I get a new car (or my family got a new car).

9. What dream (or dreams) have you given up on? Why? - 𝕏 Gabbie Stephanie ✨The Dogenie ✨

When I was a kid I wanted to be the shortest basketball player to have ever dunked in the NBA. But, due to busted knees and mid basketball skills and age, I think we can safely say that dream will not become a reality, except in virtual reality or video games!

10. How do u see social media user trends evolve now that ai will be able to create a majority of the content we see - Gainzfeldt

This is a tough one. I think a lot of things get overtaken by bots and made crappier - online gambling, online games, and social media are three such examples. But aside from bots, I think AI can help augment things - for example, I use AI to make the art on my newsletter, and that’s great because my own drawings are pretty mid and it takes a lot of time and effort.

As it is right now, I think we can generally tell when something isn’t organic, and I’m not sure in my lifetime it will be something that isn’t obvious - it’s very hard to imitate organic human things without being a little bit off. So I think there will be a place for human creation and shitposting and whatever else on social media throughout my lifetime.

Or, at least, I sure hope so!

I’m in a funk right now.

And that’s not super uncommon, it’s something that happens to me quite frequently, actually - my creative process isn’t particularly disciplined, it’s quite capricious and fleeting, and I’m often low on energy for various reasons - both physical and mental.

But because it’s always been this way for me, I have a few things I try to break out of it and start being productive again. They don’t always work, but when they do it’s quite nice! So I thought I’d share, in case it helps someone else as well:

1. Do something nice / say something nice to someone

This is my go-to, if I’m feeling blah, I like to give someone a compliment or let them know something that I noticed that I thought was cool, or something along those lines. It’s easy, it’s free, and spreading good vibes also grants good vibes.

In general, I don’t think people say positive things often enough. There’s enough criticism to go around at all times, and life in general can be pretty rough. People appreciate hearing nice things, or simple kind gestures.

2. Go through your previous creative work

I write music, so if I’m feeling uncreative and want to get the juices flowing, often I play some of my older work that I thought turned out pretty well. It’s a nice reminder that I can actually be competent at times! For writing, sometimes I read my older articles, or older stories I’ve written.

This doesn’t always work - sometimes I’m just like “man how did I even do that” and start spiraling negatively, but most of the time it helps fight back against the more negative thoughts that I tend to have when my energy is low.

3. Take a walk

Legitimately one of the best pieces of advice, for all sorts of situations, is to take a walk. Not only is it just generally good to do some exercise, it stimulates the mind. It also works much better to go outside and walk than just go to a gym and walk on a treadmill - something about the outdoors assists in the process.

When my stepdad passed away, I was having a really hard time processing everything and thinking about what to say in a eulogy. It felt impossible. But I drove to my favorite hiking spot and walked around for a few hours, and in doing so, it eventually came to me.

4. Do some chores

I basically only clean my apartment when I’m procrastinating, preparing for visitors, or trying to bust out of a funk - but hey, whatever works, right? It’s the best when I can add some chores to a to-do list and check them off, very satisfying, and it’s just nice to do something easy that also feels productive.

And it’s never a bad feeling to have a clean place.

5. Just grind it out 

This is what I’m doing right now! I haven’t written an article in a few weeks, and I thought, y’know what, I’m just going to open the app up and start writing about whatever. Eventually, I stumbled on this topic, as it was on the top of my mind, so I thought, why not. And then this article popped out. It’s not the best thing I’ve ever written, but hey, at least it’s something productive, right?

And maybe it’ll help someone get out of their funk, too.

I’ve been playing a lot of poker (Texas Hold’em, to be specific), both with friends and strangers, and what I’ve generally noticed is people’s approach to poker is a lot like their approach to life. The risk takers are loose and like to gamble, the risk adverse play tight and only bet when they think it’s a sure thing they have the best hand, or close to it. Some bluff frequently, some pick and choose their spots, some never bluff.

What I most like about poker is the organic feel of it. You get a starting hand of two cards, some have great odds, some are mid, some are poor. But any combination can potentially win a hand, whether by luck or simply pretending and convincing others they are good.

Which I think parallels to life in general pretty well - you often hear people say “gotta play the hand you’re dealt,” but in Texas Hold’em you don’t have to play the hand, you can just fold whenever you want and wait for the next hand.

So I think it’s an allegory about opportunities in life. Something like this:

I’ve heard a similar analogy used to describe surfing, waiting around for a great wave you can ride, sometimes missing opportunities due to fear, sometimes whiffing on something more containable, which I think is also a strong allegory. There’s something really appealing to me about looking at life this way, in that it allows the mental framework to take more chances that could be very successful, and temper the disappointment of failure, as at least we took the chance.

Sometimes, we make bad decisions - or even seemingly good decisions that don’t end up panning out. And that can feel terrible and be quite damaging. But that’s life.

And there’s always another hand.

1. Who's your favorite Succession character and why? ~ Debora Garbi

Roman, hands down. He’s a total degenerate and uses sarcasm and joking as a defense mechanism.

I relate.

2. Ever thought of moving to a smaller town / city? ~ Nitro & Sheps

I think it would be all kinds of awesome to move to one of the cute cities in New Zealand near one of the lakes and just kinda chill.

3. What was it like going from a quiet life to someone with a large following on Twitter/X? How has that process changed you and what did you do to manage the change? ~ Shibby

At first it was entirely overwhelming and I had multiple panic attacks and meltdowns. It’s a lot better now, I get triggered occasionally but I’m much more immune.

I still more or less live a quiet life, I actually consider my online life an entirely different… Life, almost? I don’t really actually want to be famous, so I’ve basically just mentally separated the two and been generally private. Perhaps one day they will merge, but only if I can make a sustainable living doing this stuff!

4. Make a tier list of the Final Fantasy games ~ Ardenteon

With the caveat that I haven’t yet played FFXVI, and never played FFII, FFIII, or FFV, and am leaving out the online games, here is my list:

1. FFVI (IMO the perfect game for when it came out. The best soundtrack. Gaming at its pinnacle for its time)

2. FFIV (This game was lifechanging, in that it started me writing music and stories as a kid. So many twists and turns. It doesn’t age as well as many of the others, but will always hold a special place in my heart)

3. FFVII / FFVII Remake (I loved both this game and the remake. It’s very close but the top 2 games more or less were childhood obsessions and FF7 was something I absolutely loved, but I can’t put it higher)

4. FFX (Very solid, love the Besaid Island theme, love the world, even loved blitzball after literally restarting the game to get the Jecht shot)

5. FFXV (I actually liked this more than most people did - the story was kind of presented clumsily, especially toward the end, but the gameplay was fantastic and the youtube videos explaining the story propped it up for me)

6. FFI (I used cardboard tubes to act out this game as a tiny kid with my sister. It’s… Not a great game or anything, but, it’s the first, and I played it a LOT)

7. FFIX (This one is tough because it reminds me of my first girlfriend, so at the time I loved it, but then it became associated with the pain of breaking up. I should revisit it. But right now it falls in the middle)

8. FFXII (The gambit system was fun. The story had such a great intro and then it just… Did anything really happen?)

9. FFVIII (I had a big crush on Rinoa. The gameplay was kind of terrible, but still a classic in its own right. The best meme came out of it, anyway)

   

10. FFXIII (I just rented this one and got bored, I actually thought I outgrew Final Fantasy then, sad times. But I think it’s just kind of a mid game, which is not great for a Final Fantasy)

Very excited to play FFXVI though, as soon as I finish Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (another masterpiece)!

5. What are your thoughts on Dunkaroos? ~ Moose

I don’t think I’ve ever had them. My mom would buy me Twinkies growing up (which I still have a fondness for but don’t buy for myself), and Goldfish snacks (which I still buy for myself), but not these. They look pretty good though!

6. Are you like Garfield (cat) who hates Mondays? ~ Juan R. Diaz

Oh, definitely. But Sunday night is actually the worst for me, because I always have a whole bunch of stuff I wanted to accomplish on the weekend, and then I procrastinate, and feel massively guilty. It’s pointless because it nearly always happens and I so often feel guilty even though I rarely ever actually accomplish my goals.

7. If you could remove one personality trait from all humanity which would it be and why? ~ KingsVerdict

I think it would be nice to just kinda reduce the narcissism. There’s no reason for so many people to be so sure that they’re so great. We’re all pretty mid. We’re humans, after all.

I think reducing pointless ego protection would go a long way in making navigating this crazy gift of life we were given a lot less stressful and frustrating.

8. How does someone with no earthly idea about crypto, buy a modest pile of doge? Or should they? ~ JasonX

So I should answer your second question first. I never recommend people buy crypto, that is completley up to them, if they want to go crazy. I wrote about it in this article:

If you read that and still want to for some reason, I would only suggest you be willing to lose all your money and use something that has been around for a long time. I personally have only bought crypto on Coinbase, which I have used since 2013, and Robinhood, which I had a little bit of extra money on.

9. Do you believe in God, if No then why? and if Yes then why? ~ imamzama12

I didn’t grow up with any organized religion in my life, so I don’t have any kind of standard religious beliefs, just kind of my own random spiritual ones.

I do think there is right and wrong, and I don’t think the world tends to “waste” things - i.e. whatever our “life force” is that seperates us from living and being a useless sack of meat, that energy I don’t think just goes away. I could more imagine it going back into some big blob of energy to be reused at some point. Maybe that blob is “God.” I don’t know.

I was more of an athiest as a know-it-all teenager, but now I think being a full out athiest requires a certain amount of hubris that I don’t have. I’m more of an agnostic, except I don’t think it’s “unknowable,” I just don’t personally know.

10. Are cats a net good or evil and why? ~ Elizabeth Kincaid

Oh, cats are terrible. They literally go kill things for fun, not even to eat. They’re naughty, they do whatever they want and don’t care what you want, they’re super entitled little buggers.

But they’re so cute though.

Net good.

This story is a life lesson, from the game World of Warcraft.

Warcraft was a huge addiction for me, and a good 6-7 years of my life were spent with it being one of my main hobbies. When my friend originally introduced me to the game, though, it looked incredibly corny.

“What’s that?”

“Oh, that’s my summon,” he said, referring to the large purple blob near his tiny gnome that was moving toward a monster. “He gets aggro and then the monsters hit it instead of me.”

“Looks like they want to hit you though…”

“What the… C’MON VOIDWALKER! WHAT ARE YOU DOING!”

“You’re getting wrecked…”

“C’MON VOIDWALKER!!!!!!”

[His gnome takes too many hits and dies]

“YOU SUCK VOIDWALKER!”

Needless to say, after seeing that introduction, it didn’t look like something I would spend most of the next several years on.

But some time later, a group of his work friends made a guild, and adventuring around in a fantasy world with a group sounded too appealing to miss out on. I just wasn’t going to use a Voidwalker.

In World of Warcraft, there were multiple types of servers in two main archetypes: PvE, or Player vs Environment servers, which didn’t allow players to randomly fight each other unless they chose to (these were also called “carebear servers” by the player base), and PvP servers, where players can fight each when they are out adventuring. “Ganking” was the term used when someone sneaks up on you while you’re out in the world, minding your own business, and beats you up.

Our group didn’t wanna be on a lame carebear server, of course, cuz we’re all like, y’know, totally hardcore gamers, so naturally we picked the PvP server and were off to the races. We were gonna gank so many people.

And oh boy, was it an amazing experience. Adventuring with friends, exploring the massive world, was the time of my life. I loved going around the cities, I loved completing the quests and getting new abilities, I loved exploring the dungeons and fighting giant bosses with my friends. It was the most amazing game I had ever played in my life to that point. All I needed to be happy was an internet connection, my computer, food and shelter, and my entire maslow’s hierarchy was complete.

One thing I didn’t like, though, was participating in the world PvP. I did it once and just ended up feeling bad. Ganking people just felt… Rude. And pointless. The game was actually a lot more zen than I originally thought it would be, you would go out questing and fighting monsters and picking up loot, getting into a flow state similar to sitting around pushing buttons on a slot machine, and when someone interrupted you by fighting you it was jarring and not particularly fun. You didn’t even get anything for ganking, just a tiny bit dopamine from “owning” some other player.

Occasionally, people wouldn’t just gank you, they would also do something called “corpse camping,” where they would gank you, wait for you to revive, and then gank you again, over and over.

It was annoying.

Generally, though, it was just a small part of the game, some mild annoyance that happened occasionally, and it was relatively easy to get over and move on. But one day, when I was out trying to gather some rare materials to level up my alchemy, a duo of players decided to grief me, killing my character over, and over, and over, making it impossible to get the materials and get on with my quest. And I got triggered.

I ranted to my Voidwalker hating friend about the situation. “These stupid losers have been camping me for an hour! I’m not even fighting back! What is wrong with them.”

“Ah that sucks, maybe do something else for a bit?”

But I didn’t want to do something else. I wanted to get those materials.

“It’s just so pathetic, you know? These stupid losers are just sitting around killing me over and over. What kind of horrible people would do something like that?”

My buddy could have tried to appease me and had a mutual crap-talking session that I was looking for, but instead he said something that stuck with me ever since.

“Eh, maybe it’s not like they’re bad people or anything. They’re just playing a different game than you are.”

He explained that we’re on a PvP server, and some people just start fights with guilds, and then maybe their guild buddies come defend them, and then it just escalates until there’s a big war that breaks out in the area. And that’s how they enjoy the game. That’s why some people join a PvP server instead of a PvE server.

It’s just a different game than the one I was trying to play at the time, which was collecting stuff for making potions. Their game was trying to start a war. Or, y’know, maybe not, maybe they were just beating me up because they could, like bullies in middle school. But that’s also just playing a different game - in fact, it’s the one that the guild originally thought we were going to be playing when we joined the PvP server in the first place - it just turned out to not be fun for us, and the “carebear” game turned out to be a lot more fun.

The lesson here applies to all sorts of things. It’s a way to not immediately assign malevolent intent and strong negative judgements on someone for their actions. And the most important thing it can help with is just being less angry, so it’s easier to think more rationally and move on rather than escalate the situation. To think, “well, dmaybe, they’re just playing a different game than I am.” To think, from their perspective, based on the rules of the game they are playing, what they’re doing is expected.

For a lot of people acting obnoxiously online, this is the case. That’s just how they do social media, arguing with random people. That’s their game.

Now, by no means does that mean they’re innocent - they might in fact be horrific people with terrible, evil intentions. And sometimes another way to be less mad is to yell and hoot and holler until the chemicals start dissipating and we can act more rationally. But usually that escalates the problem and makes us feel triggered and irritated for much longer than necessary. It’s just overall healthier to find some reason to keep playing the game you want to play, either by disengaging and moving on, or doing something else altogether.

Because sometimes, they aren’t bad people. Perhaps they’re just playing a different game.

10 years ago, and 2 months after myself and Jackson made dogecoin as a dumb joke, I made a post on reddit. There was a lot going on at that time - those 2 months were a blur, and the excitement was off the charts - there were so many people creating things, running contests, fundraising for charities, tipping each other, etc.

It was incredibly stressful time, for me, being the main programmer on a project that completely blew up unexpectedly, especially considering I had no idea what I was doing. We were just trying to make the best of this crazy situation we found ourselves in.

But it was also, in my opinion, by far, the best time to be a part of the dogecoin community - and honestly, the cryptocurrency community in general. It felt like something unique, weird, and cool. People were super generous, and mainly just wanting to do fun and absurd things with this fun and absurd cryptocurrency.

Here’s what I wrote:

Enjoy this moment: An open letter to the Dogecoin community from co-founder Billy Markus

Dear Community,

This currency is only 2 months old, and already an amazing amount of things have happened. Right now we are coming off the most exciting times in Dogecoin's short history, and what I personally think is the most wonderful thing we have done, which is help fund the Doge4Kids charity. There is absolutely no way I could have foreseen any of this happening when I threw together the client code for this coin on a late Friday night. Amazing kudos to u/ummjackson, u/Laika1954, u/NeutralityMentality, u/42points, u/mohland, u/langer_hans, and countless others for putting so much work and energy into making things happen and getting us to where we are.

The reason I am making this post is because this is such a high time in the community, and I have no way of knowing how transient this all may be. I'm a lifelong gamer -- I've seen communities rise and fall around all sorts of games as the novelty wore off. My first 2 months playing World of Warcraft was the absolute best gaming experience of my life, and even outside of the game that people poured their time into it -- people were making beautiful art, funny comics, hilarious and entertaining videos in abundance, the community was excited at everything...and I watched that community slowly change to one of complaining and obsession, gear scores and egos, and completely lose track of why the game was enjoyable in the first place. The first year of Starcraft II was so full of optimism and excitement, and as time wore on the community has moved toward drama and stagnation (though it seems to be on an upswing now!). It's happened in most communities, but not all communities. It's organic for communities to rise and create massive excitement at times, and go through lulls other times. But if it's worthwhile, people will continue to work to make it great.

There are two things I wish for. One is I would like everyone to remember this moment. Remember when the popularity of Dogecoin was rising so incredibly quickly, when the community banded together to help send the Jamaican bobsled team to the Olympics, when 300+ people came together in New York to celebrate the coin, when people made 75 amazing videos for a video contest with awesome songs and great animations, when the community funded service dogs to help children in need. No matter how transient it all is, my hope is that Dogecoin will always be remembered fondly.

The second thing is I want everyone to know how important they are to the community. Cryptocurrency is incredibly volatile and changes happen incredibly quickly -- I've only been with it for 8 months, and I've already seen countless massive swings that can trigger all sorts of emotions. This is why it's incredibly important to me that the community can maintain the levity, fun, and good nature which is what makes Dogecoin worthwhile in the first place.

The moment that people stop trying to participate in making positive things happen and start complaining that others need to do things for them is the moment a community starts to get sick. When no one is trying to make things happen and everyone is complaining that others do those things for them, that is when a community dies. Let's not let that happen.

Dogecoin is meant to be a fun cryptocurrency, one that encourages people to tip and to learn and teach this technology. It also, like every cryptocurrency, can have a maddeningly capricious nature. The novelty will not last forever, but if you want the community to last, that is where you come in. Stay positive. Keep doing awesome things. Lead by example. No matter what happens, never lose sight of the things that make Dogecoin worthwhile for you.

So enjoy this moment. Remember it, and cherish it. You made this happen. Keep it up.

Thank you all for being a part of this magnificent community,

Billy Markus

What struck me was the response - people generally took it as an inspirational piece of writing, celebrating the dogecoin community and how awesome it was.

But it wasn’t meant to be inspirational. It was meant to be a warning.

The message I wanted to impart was that good times - at least in all communities I’ve ever been in - were ephemeral, and we were in a good time, so we should appreciate it while it lasts. And it’s not going to stay good unless people somehow keep the positive attitude, energy, and contributions up when the price inevitably does what crypto prices tend to do. Which seemed particularly unlikely to me.

So it was unsurprising when the community eventually devolved into a much less positive, much more greedy one. Eventually, a fraudster infiltrated the community and made it into one I didn’t want to be part of. People stopped doing fun things and started acting entitled, acting like the volunteers who worked on the coin and other parts of the community owed them. The fun, amusing, light-hearted community was dwarfed by an entitled one. And it wasn’t one that I thought was worthwhile anymore.

We’ve seen this now play out enough times (literally thousands of times) in the cryptocurrency community that I, personally, would just say that I don’t think it’s a great idea to have a community solely based around volatile financial instruments. There has to be something more permanent and more resilient than potential monetary gain to keep it going, which is why I felt “Do Only Good Everyday” would make a good ethos. And more people need to participate - actually participate in building or in creating things, not simply buy something, and then complain about how others don’t want to buy it from them for more than they bought it for.

So how do I feel, 10 years later?

I’m happy with many of the cool things the dogecoin community accomplished when it was properly motivated. The straight up good things like building water wells in Kenya and sponsoring service dogs, the silly absurd things like sponsoring the Jamaican Bobsled Team and the dogecoin sponsored Nascar, and just the overall good vibes that came from the community tipping others. I most enjoyed the creative contests, like the video contests, that got the community participating and making awesome things.

So, despite all the negativity that came afterwards, I choose to remember those moments fondly. And I hope there’s more creativity and fun to come in the future.

I think the main message - that good times are fleeting, and that we should make deliberate efforts to appreciate them - is still core to how I feel about life in general. I find life to be like a sine wave, where bad times and good times both come and go, and that’s the most comforting thing I can think when times aren’t great, and helps bring me back down to earth other times.

So in either case, in bad times or in good, I can think:

I was always terrified of public speaking, so when I first started my professional career, I joined a Toastmasters club so I could try to be less freaked out about it. Toastmasters, for those who don’t know, is a club that has weekly meetings where people tell jokes, give prepared speeches, and give off the cuff short speeches on random topics, and give each other feedback and support.

People are very nice at Toastmasters, since everyone is trying to improve a skill that is quite intimidating. After every speech, long or short, people applaud. The role of Jester is given to a single person each week, who kicks off the proceedings with a joke. No matter how crappy the joke, people generally politely laugh and applaud afterwards.

So one week, I was given the role of Jester, and decided to tell a joke that I think is hilarious. I finished my joke, paused, and went back to my seat.

No one laughed.

No one applauded.

The General Evaluator, who wraps up the meeting with a generally positive and encouraging recap, said that the meeting was great… Except for my joke, which was just horrible.

I still thought it was hilarious.

So, without further ado, here is how I tell the joke - the “Orange Head” joke.

A man walked into a bar. His head was an orange. He sits down and asks the bartender for a beer.

The bartender turns around to ask him which kind of beer, but then stops, nonplussed, upon first seeing the man.

The man notices the reaction and lets out a sigh. “Yeah, yeah. I know. My head is an orange. It’s weird. I get it. But can I get a beer? Any beer. I could really use one,” the man says.

The bartender slowly approaches him and squints his eyes. “…Your head really is an orange.”

“Yes, I am quite aware.”

“I… Okay. I’ll give you our house IPA.” The bartender pours the drink and hands it to the orange-headed man. The man gives a nods and starts drinking his beer.

The bartender thinks to leave the poor orange-headed man alone, but curiosity overcomes him and he can’t help himself. “Hey so uh, is there a story behind your uh… Orange… Head?”

The man sighs. “Well, yeah, but I don’t wanna get into it. It’s pretty embarrassing.”

The bartender presses on. “Hey look, I’m not judging or anything. Your drinks are on me today. I just… I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep tonight if I don’t get the story.”

“No really, it’s just so stupid.”

“I’ve heard a lot of stupid things, trust me.”

The man could tell that the bartender was not going to give up. “Fine, fine. But only if you get me another one of these,” and lifted his cup. The bartender nodded, and the man started the story.

“So, I was cleaning out my garage, and in the corner I found this weird lamp I hadn’t seen before. And I rubbed it and a genie popped out and was all ‘blah blah I will grant you three wishes’ and I was like, what the heck? But then I thought, well whatever, I’ll bite. So I wished to be the richest man in the world.”

“Ah, but the lamp was actually cursed and turned your head into an orange?”

“What, no, no, I’ll get to that. No, I’m like, filthy rich. Here.” The man reached into his pocket and took out a solid block of gold. “I have like, a million of these. Here, you can have this one.”

The bartender was shocked. He picked up the gold bar. “This… Is real?”

“Yeah. It’s only worth like 50 grand or something. Just take it.”

“I can’t accept this…”

“Just take it, man. Seriously. I have more of these then I know what to do with. See, I have 5 more of them on me.” The man took out 5 more gold bars from his pockets and presented them to the bartender.

The bewildered bartender placed the gold bar next to the cash register. “Okay. Well, thank you. That’s incredibly generous.”

“Don’t worry about it,” the man said, and continued drinking his beer.

“Er, but then, how did you get an orange for a head?”

“Oh, right, that. So, then, after the genie made me filthy rich, I was like, oh hey, for my next wish, I wish that I was the most desirable man in the world to every woman.”

The bartender’s eyes lit up. “Ohhh okay, I see. Then he made you the most desirable man, but with the cost of having an orange as a head.”

The man rolled his eyes. “No, no. That’s not it. He granted the wish and it worked. See, look.”

The man got up from his seat and walked toward a woman and started chatting her up, and she basked in his attention. He asked for her number and she immediately gave it to him. He came back and showed the bartender, with a told-you-so expression on his orange face.

“She didn’t care about your orange head?”

“They never do.”

The bartender stared at the man with a disbelieving look, and there was silence for an awkward amount of time. The man’s orange expression started to darken as he stared at his drink. The bartender grew impatient of waiting for the story to resume.

“So… Then your third wish?”

“Yeah, you know, I really don’t wanna talk about it. It’s really embarrassing. I’ll just leave another gold bar and leave.” The orange-headed man reached to grab another gold bar, but the bartender stopped him.

“Seriously, I can’t accept another one of those. I just need to understand what happened…”

“It’s just lame, man.”

The bartender tried to sound as reassuring as possible. “No, trust me, I’ve heard so many things over my years here. Hell, I’ve done all sorts of embarrassing things. My wife left me over some bad choices. Could have had a fortune, but made dumb investments. I won’t judge anything you say. Trust me.”

The man let out a long sigh. “Fine. Fine.”

He took a deep breath, and began to tell his story again.

“Yeah, so this is where I fucked up. For my third wish, I wished to have an orange for a head.”

Best Video Game

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

I don’t think this one is much of a surprise. Tears of the Kingdom is a marvel. A sandbox that rewards creativity, a massive world to explore with all sorts of delightful and surprising things, story beats that were actually emotional (which is a rarity in Nintendo games)… It’s a masterpiece.

I don’t think anything is going to surpass it, though I have yet to play Final Fantasy XVI. But still. It’s everything I would have wanted, and more, from a sequel to one of my favorite games ever.

Best Movie

Spider-man: Across the Spider-verse

Another sequel to one of my favorite things that did not disappoint! Spider-man: Into The Spider-verse was one of the most visually dazzling, creative, stylistic, clever, and original pieces of media back when it was released in 2018. The sequel jumps in right where the previous movie left off and continues to be impress with its inspired storytelling. By far and away the best superhero movies, in my opinion, and it’s not even close.

Best TV Series

Silo

I’m a sucker for suspenseful, mysterious sci-fi series, ever since Lost came out way back in 2005. Silo is less fantasy sci-fi than Lost, more dystopian - closer to a mix of Snowpiercer, The Platform, Station Eleven… That type of vibe. If slow building mysterious dystopian shows are your jam, Silo will be quite engaging for you. I won’t say too much more because it’s definitely one of those “the less you know the better it’ll be” type shows.

Best Song

I have literally no idea I still just listen to 90’s music

I have no idea what’s popular in music these days. I think the most contemporary song I’ve been like “ooh that’s a bop” is “Blinding Lights” by The Weeknd and that came out like 3 years ago.

Best Meme

France

Lots of ones with potential, but France recreating the classic “This is fine” meme during one of its many protests is an instant classic.

Best Overall Thing

Nobody cares about covid anymore

Vacations are happening again! I don’t have to wear stupid masks and fog up my glasses all the time! Traffic is back! …Er, well, that’s less good, but at least that means people are going places again.

Covid seems so quaint now that we’ve almost forgotten how annoying it was, and how nice it is to just go to a restaurant and eat like normal, go to the gym and work out, hang out with friends, and all the other hundreds of things that felt just slightly worse when covid was on everyone’s mind.

Thank goodness.

I hated visiting my grandma when I was a kid.

We took family road trips to Montana every year growing up, and it wasn’t a trip that I looked forward to. Partially because she smoked, and the smoke smell would always stink up my clothes for many days after we left. But it was mainly because she didn’t let me play my gameboy. And she forced me to finish all my vegetables. Cooked carrots and cooked green beans are gross, man. She was stern and very rule oriented, but never harsh.

Sometimes I would sneak off into the bedroom and play my gameboy and she would come in and say, “nope, nope. No games. How about you read to me?” And she would take out some difficult, non-video game magazine book without any pictures, like “Huckleberry Finn” or “Tom Sawyer,” and I’d struggle mightily through it, while she’d sit by patiently and correct any mistakes and define words I didn’t know. So boring, right?! I wanted to play mario.

She had an old bike and insisted I learn how to ride it. I don’t want to go outside, though, I wanna play video games! Riding a bike is hard. But, after enough scrapes and bruises, I would ride around to the nearby park and back. Sometimes, she’d even give me a few bucks, and I’d ride over to the candy store and pick up some salt water taffy and flavored candy canes.

Every week she’d have her sister and brother come over and some play complicated card games that I didn’t understand. I only liked playing “Crazy 8’s” and would ask them if we could play that instead, but no, Bridge was their game. I did use that opportunity to escape and get some gameboy time in, at least.

Aside from our visits, she’d send letters, pretty frequently. They were all written in elaborate cursive and I could barely make anything out. I’d give them to my dad to read to me, and he’d put his glasses down on his nose and start narrating them, and tell me that I needed to write her back. I would always push back, procrastinate, but he’d keep nudging me until I’d eventually write some one page “Hi Nana I am doing good school is going good here is a drawing of a shark” type letter back.

My parents divorced when I was 12 and my dad moved out, and after that we stopped taking our yearly trips to Montana, and letters became less frequent (or I would just reply less frequently as my dad wasn’t around as much to nudge me about it). I was a pretty emo kid at the time and mostly kept to myself, trolling people on AOL or playing video games.

When I was 15 my dad took me on a long road trip where we visited my grandma, which was the first time I’d seen her in 4 years or so. Her sister had passed away, but since my dad and I were visiting we had enough players to play Bridge again, and they were willing to teach me how to play, and I was willing to learn. I held my own and felt like something resembling an adult.

The last time I visited, I was 18, the summer before college. My grandma was struggling a lot more this time. She had developed glaucoma and wasn’t moving around as gingerly as before. She still was fiercely independent, though, and even insisted on driving, but uh, that was completely terrifying and we did not let her drive us again…

I drove us back from the grocery store after my dad and I concocted a plan to say that I wanted to practice driving more, and she taught me how to cook burgers by taking a chunk of ground beef, rolling it into a sphere, and then smooshing it between two pieces of wax paper into a nice, flat, round shape. She also taught me how to make mashed potatoes - which, well, was just mashing potatoes and putting a lot of butter in, and prepare corn by putting a bunch of butter in. This was the first time I had made anything other than eggs. I did… Okay, I think? No one complained, at least.

Late at night, I had a fight over the phone with my girlfriend at the time, over some nonsense. I made a big ruckus and woke up my grandma, who came out to tell me I was being loud and to go to sleep, but noticed that I was an emotional wreck and checked up on me. I remember asking her, “am I making a big mistake?” as I was going off to college and my girlfriend and I were going try to do long distance. She said, “I know you, you’ll do the right things. Don’t worry so much.”

I didn’t know my grandpa - he passed away before I was born. I didn’t really even know my grandma’s life very well either - at least, other than my personal experiences with her. On the drive home from that trip, I asked my dad about them. My grandma grew up during the great depression, which explained how she was generally conservative with money, and eventually became a school teacher, which explained why she was always wanting to teach me things. During World War II, she actually temporarily stopped teaching and worked as a codebreaker for the war effort, and met my grandpa, who was a fighter pilot, somewhere in all of that. They fell in love and married, had my dad, and lived a suburban life in quiet areas of America. They made sure my dad had a strong education and worked hard.

My grandpa, unfortunately, passed away quite young - suddenly, from a blood clot, when my dad was in college. My grandma never remarried - never even dated again. But she was determined to never be a burden to my dad. She saved her money, she paid off all her debt, she took care of her siblings, and she always vehemently insisted that she could take care of herself just fine, by herself.

And she did.

While I was off in college, I got a call from my dad. He said, “your grandma was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer, the doctor says she has maybe a year left. We’re going to visit now, and we’ll assess the situation, but we want to come pick you and your sister up in a few weeks for a full family trip.”

“But you should write her a letter.”

I agreed, and that night, I went to my computer and stared at a blank word document for what felt like hours. What do I even write? I hadn’t written a letter to her in many years. I made the font really big and bold to make sure she could read it, and eventually just started writing… Something. Honestly, I had no idea what I wrote, I just wrote whatever came into my head. The letter ended up being 15 pages, and I crammed it into an envelope, which looked rather silly and bulbous, and put it on my dresser.

I addressed it and it was all ready to go, but I only had one stamp left, and thought to myself, “this is too big for just a single stamp… I’ll go pick one up tomorrow and then send it.” Tomorrow became two days, three days, a week. I would make a mental note of it every morning when I saw it, but then I would think, eh, you know what, maybe I’ll just bring the letter to her when we visit. But the truth was, part of me didn’t want to send it. It was embarrassing. It was just, like, so long. Like… Sooo looong. What did it even say?!

My dad called me the next week. “Your grandma passed away peacefully last night, in her sleep,” he said. “It was just her time.”

She lived to 88 years old.

She had a military funeral. All I really remember was my dad spoke, there was a three-volley salute, and my sister was crying the entire time. It was probably the first time I had ever seen my dad nearly cry, though he held his composure well.

But I didn’t feel sadness. I just felt numb.

I thought I was a broken.

I went back to school, did my midterms, and just kind of kept going through the motions. But every day, I would see the unsent letter. That massive bulbous envelope on top of my dresser. That stupid letter. What an idiot. Why didn’t I just send it? Why was I such a stupid lazy idiot, who couldn’t even be bothered to buy a stamp, while my grandma was dying? A stupid, lousy, lazy, ungrateful, broken moron, that’s what I was.

I still hadn’t even really felt sadness about it all - just numb, with some self-loathing sprinkled in. I would feel that pang of guilt each time I saw the envelope. You idiot. You could have just sent it. You should have just sent it! Loser. Jerk. Why were you so scared to send it? What did it even say?!

One day, I was fed up with myself. I grabbed it off the dresser and stared at it. “What the hell did this stupid say letter anyway?” I said out loud, to no one in particular.

I sat on my bed in my tiny studio apartment and ripped the letter open. All 15 pages spilled out. I collected it, and started reading it, out loud, as if I was reading it to her.

And all the emotions finally came pouring out. I was a blubbering, sobbing mess.

What did it say? Well, I talked about everything. My life, my school, my girlfriend, random things I was thinking about, my goals, my hopes for the future. I talked about all the many nice memories of visiting. I told her about how my dad was the “grandma translator” for all her letters. I talked about how I taught my college friends Bridge, and how we would play every few weeks in the dorms, and would think of her.

The last page was just thank-yous.

Thank you for teaching me how to read. Thank you for teaching me how to ride a bike. Thank you for teaching me how to cook. I still make hamburgers the exact way you taught me, wax paper and all.

Thank you for being such a wonderful mother to my father, who has been a wonderful father to me in turn. Thank you for instilling in him so many good values, he has carried them over. I hope I make you both proud.

You have taught me so very much and made my life better in so many ways. Thank you for being in my life. Thank you for everything.

Love you, Nana.

I learned a lot of important lessons from my grandma, but that was the most important one - that I should never be afraid to tell someone that I am grateful for them. That, although it may feel vulnerable and embarrassing, I should always express my appreciation to those who have made a positive impact in my life, while I can.

A few months ago, I started a quest - I wanted to see if it was possible for me to be a professional shitposter, working for myself with a sustainable income, enough to be able to take care of myself where I live. I wrote an article here about my status, but there was a lot unknown at the time as all my endeavors were quite new.

I didn’t really have a strategy at the time either, but since everything was nicely growing I thought I would maintain status quo and see how that played out, so I could see what the ceiling of that would be. I think I have an idea of the ceiling now, though, as I’m probably right at it!

The Numbers

April 17, 2023

Substack

• 14 articles, 2771 subscribers, 60 paid, $6,764 gross revenue, $5,817 after platform cut, $5,500 estimate accounting for failed transactions, ~$458/month

Twitter

• 2.15 million followers, 664 subscribers paying $3/mo each, $1,992 gross revenue, ~$1,152/mo after platform / apple / play store / stripe cut

  

Expenses

• None

Total

• $458/mo Substack + $1,152/mo Twitter → $1,610/mo

June 26, 2023

Substack

• 28 articles, 3025 subscribers, 62 paid, $6,850 gross revenue, $5,891 after platform cut, $5,550 estimate accounting for failed transactions, ~$462/month

Twitter

• 2.17 million followers, 819 subscribers paying $3/mo each, $2,457 gross revenue, ~$1,425/mo after platform / apple / play store / stripe cut

  

Expenses

• Squarespace: $21/mo

• Squarespace custom domains: $40/mo

• Squarespace business email: $6/mo

Total

• $462/mo Substack + $1,425/mo Twitter → $1,887/mo - $67/mo Expenses → $1,820/mo

What’s it all mean?

I hit some milestones - 3000 Substack subscribers (thank you!) and at one point I reached 1050 Twitter subscribers, so that was pretty neat!

A few interesting things happened since I wrote the first part of the elusive dream series - first, Substack and Twitter started feuding, leading to substack articles being restricted on Twitter and me considering switching platforms for this newsletter, which I wrote about here. I can clearly see that has limited this newsletter’s growth and reach - growth has been pretty flat since that happened, as the above graphs show pretty clearly.

Another thing that has happened is my Twitter platform has been shrinking. Presumably this is due to bot cleanup (and I am absolutely certain I have a ton of bots following me, due to the amount of spam I get for every tweet), though changes seem to have affected my Twitter reach pretty substantially as well for whatever reason. The algorithm is pretty mysterious and I’m not super interested in “growth hacking” and chasing the ever-changing algorithm around, but it definitely doesn’t seem like I have the reach I previously had while doing more or less the same thing.

April vs June numbers clearly show this:

So, now what?

With growth generally stagnating and my main platform’s reach reducing, it doesn’t seem like we’re going in a promising direction to be able to achieve that elusive dream, and that has been somewhat demotivating. But, there’s some hope still:

• Twitter continues to work on creator tools, with a focus on videos and streaming, which could be a good way to expand my platform

• Twitter is also closer to paying out its revenue sharing, and I’ll share those numbers once they come in

At the moment, considering it is my main platform, it still seems like focusing on Twitter for creative content creation is the right direction, while also maintaining this newsletter for long-form content. I am most interested in live streaming, specifically live streaming some VR endeavors and trying to build up a community, and if I could do that easily on Twitter I think that would be a lot of fun and hopefully grow the platform.

I haven’t really tried anything major in awhile, but it does seem like I will have to if I want to reach my goals! The only new thing I’m attempting is I opened up a business email for potential sponsorships on my website, and we’ll see if that leads anywhere. I’ll do another check-in a few months from now if y’all wanna follow along - as always, I immensely appreciate everyone’s support!

The doctors is in! Except, instead of a doctor, it’s a cartoon dog that doesn’t know what he’s talking about. But never fear, you came here for some crappy advice, so that is what I will impart!

Without further ado, the first question on the inaugural column:

Hello Cartoon Dog,

I'm a clinician and lecturer during the day time. I've always wanted to become an Opera singer because I can sing. I started doing work shops and teaching myself Opera around probably around 9 years ago. Then my midlife crises kicked in, you know that one where you say to yourself 'Golly gosh, I haven't done this yet and it needs to be done. 2021 and 2022 I've done professional opera training with this guy that moved to our city (professional voice coach and tenor) and I've developed this voice and I know all these arias but I have nowhere to go.

I'm following Web. 3 and NFT's closely (especially music) to see how that can apply to me (how I can get my work out on Web. 3) but I have NO CLUE where to start. Maybe the Cartoon Dog has some advice? Any advice will be greatly appreciated!

Sincerely,
Aria Stark

Dear Aria,

First of all, how cool that you started singing opera while still doing your day job! Taking steps to chase your dreams is all sorts of badass. As someone who has generally only dabbed his toes in his dreams, it takes a lot of bravery and gumption to really go for it. Good for you, earnestly!

In terms of my actual advice, though, there will be a general theme - and it is this:

Keep your expectations low.

Now I know very little about the music / music performance industry, other than that it’s quite difficult to break into it, and like most things, it’s a lot about networking and grinding. But it all really depends on your goals. Do you want to do some smaller scale performances? If, say, you’re part of a church, perhaps you could arrange something with them. Do you want to become world famous? Well, that’s when you want to look at the picture and keep your expectations low.

But for most things like this, keep your eyes and ears open for opportunities and/or try to make your own, through your own network or by expanding it.

These days, though, there’s an immense amount of ways to try to “do it yourself” in terms of fame - as in, if you’re willing to put yourself out there or do something creative, there are opportunities abound! Again, it all depends on what you want to accomplish. For example:

• You could start a Twitch stream where you perform various things for a live audience

• You could start a fiverr and do specific paid requests for people

• You could start a YouTube channel and perform some of your favorite songs for the world to discover

There are also opportunities depending on your general interests - let’s say you love video games and would enjoy being part of a soundtrack for that - there may be a handful of indie musicians looking for someone who can sing opera for a track they want to make. These are unlikely to be easy or lucrative, and would take expanding your network to those circles, but if your expectations are properly placed, any gig would probably be exciting!

What about web3 and NFTs?

Now, you did ask about web3 and NFTs related to this kind of thing. Here are my general thoughts on that:

• Web3 is mostly just useless hype

An NFT is simply some data on a blockchain that a wallet can virtually own. The actual art / music / etc. isn’t stored on the blockchain but via some other service, usually IPFS, that the NFT data points to. You can think of NFT ownership as something similar to receipt.

Can you make money selling your music as an NFT? Probably not. The people who make money selling their NFTs are either already famous or made a name from themselves within the scene, and thus their NFTs are thought more of as collector’s items. In terms of the rest of web3 culture, well, it’s basically just rich kids playing clout games. I wouldn’t recommend it for a normal, well-adjusted person.

This video by @TheBaphie on Twitter explains the culture pretty well:

So my general advice here is, unless you want to subject yourself to all of that, it’s probably better to try to make a name for yourself in another way. But, if you really really want to still, it’ll be a grind like everything else, with the supply heavily exceeding the demand, trying to build your platform and stand out among everything else. Here’s an article with a bunch of hype and buzzwords about it. You can set up a metamask wallet and upload an mp3 you record to opensea if you want to create a music NFT the easy way. Then you gotta figure out some platform to advertise it, like Twitter.

But, y’know, if you go that route... Keep your expectations low.

Want some specific crappy advice from a cartoon dog? Leave me a comment or send an email to billym2k@substack.com, if you are a paying subscriber. Keep in mind that anything sent gives implicit permission for publication, but I’ll of course not include your name or email address in the article (I’ll make up a name for you and potentially edit a bit for clarity).

Hi folks! I am starting a new section as part of this substack called “Crappy Advice From a Cartoon Dog.”

At first, I’ll be limiting who can send me questions to paid subscribers, who can send me an email with their query (billym2k@substack.com). Keep in mind that anything sent gives implicit…

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