One person on X had the greatest take I’ve ever seen, regarding the online show The Amazing Digital Circus. And this also loosely ties into another article that I’ve been working on, concerning the likes of former popular internet stars like Noah Antwiler (The Spoony One) as well as ReviewTechUSA, Phil Fish and maybe a few others.

Basically anyone who's a bit f*cked in the head.

If you don’t know anything about The Amazing Digital Circus, good for you! You don’t need to know. But I’ve been following it, largely because it had some interesting choices, with its character designs. The world of TADC was loosely based on Harlan Ellison’s I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream. And that’s all you need to know. That’s the show’s primary strong point.

But that final episode… yeah, that final episode has problems. But what I’m about to share here is probably the best take I’ve could have ever come up with, and this comes from a user named Kris Schnee:

https://x.com/KrisSchnee/status/2068844433806901383

“One recurring idea I've seen thrown around is that the new culture/religion we face has ‘original sin’ but no ‘redemption.’ You're expected to hate everything including yourself for not meeting an impossible moral standard... and there is no fix. Only misery.

“You can never, for instance, adequately atone for the existence of racism. With the psycho bunny character here, it becomes increasingly clear that he's abusive to everybody including himself. But then, he's not offered any way to break with that past and try to be different. He gets a hug from one of the mentally unstable women; that's all.

“And the writer implicitly acknowledges that there's no hope for him. A cast member then roughly said (out of character), ‘His salvation could have been to declare that he's really a woman, freeing him from sin!’ Which is an impressively odd approach. It could be seen as a screwed-up form of baptism, as opposed to something like Eustace's fate in ‘Narnia’ where a magic transformation involves actual moral growth.”

This explains so much.

When you think about it, this really is a type of cultural subversion that runs deep. It runs too deep! And society?

We need to stop this shit right friggin’ now!

What makes this subversive is it appeals to the empathic natures of women in general. They are the one who are most likely going to the fancy colleges, racking up a massive amount of debt and having nothing to show for it other than to push all this cultural subversive crap, programmed into their brains.

Women are not leaders. They are made to follow those with power because that is what is likely to protect them. This is the catalyst of what is referred to as “Suicidal Empathy.” See, it’s not about actually making the situation BETTER for the other person! It’s all about YOU feeling good about YOU! Because in your mind, you are “helping” — but not in the way that actually benefits anyone.

Jax was one-hundred percent correct in feeling the way he felt about things! Now, his immediate reaction to having others know about his personal bullshit probably could have been more well-thought-out. He could have shrugged it off and said to Ribbit something along the lines of, “Let’s keep that little spiel I made between you and me,” and just leave it at that. A casual reaction to things is the better strategy, but as far as Jax’s character is concerned, I get it. He simply did not have the fortitude to have that reaction, and you can blame this on the trauma of his past, still riding him. Still fresh in his mind.

Let’s look at a similar character from a different time.

Judd Nelson’s character in The Breakfast Club.

This is the 80’s version of Jax, and the pathway to redemption was done far better here than what anything anyone could come up with in modern entertainment!

Now, I can’t help but notice that no one tried to turn him into a trans person at the end of the movie.

Gee. I wonder why that is.

Perhaps it’s because colleges didn’t teach doctors that its perfectly okay to have gender reassignment surgery and hormone therapy right when you’re about to hit puberty. Perhaps we didn’t blame horrible behavior on toxic masculinity and tried to subdue that behavior with medication. Or have a bunch of ugly Karen’s sit in a room and scold him the entire time!

With the character of Jax though, the abuse is a lot more layered than most people would be willing to grasp, and most of it is unintentional. It was taught to them by society that this is the way things are, that this is the way people are meant to be treated!

I’ve never seen the UK show Adolescence. And I have no intention of seeing it. I understand well enough what’s it about. And to say that any ounce of this show is watchable is absolute nonsense!

But then you have these Boomer types that bought into the nonsense. You have these outliers that fell into the narrative, look, line and sinker. Those that floated the theory before Gooseworx just flat out admitted it, that Jax was really “suppressing his trans identity this entire time!”

These people are the real assholes. And they may or may not realize it. It more or less depends. Was the brainwashing that effective? Do they know that enforcing the trans nonsense only leads to more pain and misery, and they don’t care? They only want to focus in on the stock narrative and just drown out all the other voices, saying that this isn’t going to solve jack shit?

“Oh, but those ass hats are just far right. What do they know?”

I honestly don’t think they understand the reckoning that is about to happen. You see it in the UK quite clearly. Hell, Keir Starmer was forced to resign on the day that I’m writing this and flat out admitted that all this immigration needed to be “liberalized.” That all the London rape gangs was done as part of an experiment that the UK had no choice but to be a part of.

https://x.com/1776General_/status/2068981919707021407

But if you listen to him carefully, he subtly blames Brexit on it all, which, as the British would say, makes Keir Starmer a “wanker.” Brexit didn’t cause the influx of rape gang migrants into the UK! If anything, the rape gangs was punishment for the people of the UK, voting for Brexit!

I’m pretty sure that’s what he meant to say.

And guess what? It didn’t work! Well… for now, it didn’t. But just wait until they try to pull off another pandemic that they could try to kill us off with!

Oh, wait. I think they’re trying that too — but that’s a topic for another time.

Point is I think the average person doesn’t want to take it anymore. But I highly suspect that depending on where you live, there’s a grade average to that rule. And it may or may not depend on how many boomers live in that area, where it’s perfectly safe and where they have no concept on how bad things can get! After all, they’re the only demographic still watching terrestrial and cable television.

Assuming if cable TV still exists. I honestly don’t know if it does!

But times are changing. Things are changing. See, in culture, you can only push cultural trends for ten to fifteen years. And I said this exact same thing ages ago and no one believed me!

Well, I’m starting to see this prophesy take root with the Zoomer crowds that I talk to in real life. It’s beginning to fall flat. All they want is a story about a never-ending series of backrooms. They have no interest in all this culturally subversive crap! (The one’s that weren’t born ugly as sin, anyway.)

Question is how much longer is it until we can have a story once again about assholes being assholes because of a less than desirable upbringing and not because they’re “gender-confused?”

How much, indeed?

These were written as two separate posts, over on my Substack. But they're both related to each other, so I slapped them together into one thing.

If you're going to read this, do so at your own discretion. This is why I named these collection of editorials "Awful Opinions."

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_______________________________________________

I'm Jaded, not Doompilled (And So Can You!)

Is there a difference?

(Originally published on Substack on May 17, 2026)

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Can the state of jadedness be the only thing that I’m “allowed” to feel in the eyes of those that spew all sorts of psycho-babble in today’s age? Is everything only geared towards more views and clicks?

“Bro, everybody’s views are down on YouTube.” That’s a phrase I’ve heard recently. I’m starting to wonder why that is.

Are some “AI chickens” about to come home to roost?

I don’t know if the term “nepo-daddy” constitutes as proper internet meme slang. If it didn’t exist beforehand, then I guess that means I invented it as of this writing. But what is a “nepo-daddy?” In my mind, it is an individual who is like Atlas! He carries the weight of the world on his shoulders and all those younger than him would be lost if it weren’t for this man, this “godly figure,” carrying the weight of the world itself. If these helpless, little Gen Z “far right nepo-babies” didn’t have the holier-than-thou presence of Charlie Kirk of all people, WELL!

... I mean, is there even a MAGA anymore? If they can no longer suckle Charlie Kirk’s oversized man tits that produce so much “Hitlarian”, Nazi-branded cow milk, I mean... what’s the point of living?

What is with this crap I keep seeing everywhere with content creators that I used to watch? “Candice Owens is so stupid! Look at Erika Kirk! Now she’s stupid! Nick Fuentes is totally not a paid shill for special interests! Donald Trump secretly sucks Israel off, under the table!”

Blah, blah, blah. Yak, yak yak.

What is this? What the hell happened to Tucker Carlson, him talking about demons, attacking him in his sleep? Me, sitting there, wondering if these so-called “demons” are really a bunch of CIA people that were a friend of his fathers?

Is the world becoming one, big giant larp? Am I too jaded?

The answer is yes to both those questions. And yet, despite all the pain in the world as it currently stands, I remain optimistic. Oh, yes. I can share you plenty of stories. There’s a Discord I’m subscribed to that’s shares X posts about nothing but the worst that human society can offer you in the year of our lord, 2026. And I’ve seen it all! Trans surgeries gone wrong! (Really, they all went wrong, when you think about it.) Migrant rapings of children! Migrant rapings of the elderly! Enforcing Sharia Law in American Cities! Society, going back to literal slavery! Child sex trafficking. Elites, doing weird, perverted things on an island, somewhere! Mysterious deaths of scientists and Donald Trump going, “Meh.”

The pain just never ends. And yet still I’m optimistic.

I’m optimistic in the likelihood that the next guy, after Donald Trump will go all the way and finally become the one, true “Hitler” that we were all hoping and praying for this entire time. Or whatever that means in the 21st century! I’ve heard so many people being called Hitler for the past ten years that it’s lost all meaning.

We are in a pit and there is a pendulum. And we get to choose which way the pendulum gets to slice us when it eventually lowers itself to that grand point in which we get hacked to bits in a very Edgar Allen Poe type fashion. And yet STILL I choose to remain the optimist!

I’m too old to have been the audience for someone like Charlie Kirk. I only heard about him in passing. My belief systems are not dictated by stupid nonsense on the internet and they certainly weren’t dictated by one guy who had way too huge of a head for his face! Even most of the people that I follow on the internet, I don’t really agree with when it comes to some particular issues, but I like the content that they produce.

And then there’s the case of Dan Carlin from the Hardcore History Podcast. I’ve been listing to this podcast for as long as he’s been uploading them. He is what I refer to as the “Deep State” canary in the coal mine. Forget all that nonsense, about this guy, calling himself an “independent.” He is not.

What he has is a “family” that he has to protect, according to him. To me, that word “family” doesn’t mean “family!” It could mean a number of things, like people you’re in bed with in a non-sexual way! Like a mafia syndicate! CIA shills also tend to keep repeating these weird phrasings. Once you start hearing it, you can’t unhear it. Phrasings, like “Get me a glass of water,” loosely translating to, “You are my slave and you carry my water, no matter who voted you into power! Fuck you and your change!” Phrasings like “What’s Good for the Goose is Good for the Gander!” In this statement, he alludes to how presidence dictates the rule of law within a country and how the tables can turn on MAGA if the other side ever got back into power. Which is all well and good -- except we already got the worst of the worst with Joe Biden. More than enough “presidence” was set with that guy. Are we a society with amnesia? I’m honestly asking.

I didn’t forget though. Not like some people out there, going “I don’t know, man. Joe Biden, Barrack Obama and all their communist shitheads plotted America’s demise, but this Strait of Hormuz thing is so much worse, bro.” Yeah, I don’t know about that. The difference this time is we’re not going go to “war” on behalf of the European Union, which is pretty much the only reason why we’ve gone to wars, going all the way back to Vietnam. Turns out the French suckered us into that one. And now all people on the internet are going, “Israel, Israel!” I hate to tell you this, but everyone has an incentive to screw us over for all we’re worth! Whether you are Jewish or not doesn’t seem to make that much of a difference.

What I’m try to relay to you, the reader, is the if you think ONLY Jewish people are capable of fucking you in the ass, then I have a bridge to sell you, because you are not paranoid enough of the human race! Not by my standards!

Do I really care about this Strait of Hormuz thing? Not really. Will it lead to a desired outcome? I sure damn hope it does, with the gas prices I’ve had to deal with! The “Q people” (You know who they are) keep saying that we’re going to get the nuclear dust from that one location we blew up with those “bunker buster” missiles. Then with that dust, we’re gonna find out that the uranium was sold to Iran by Barack Obama himself!

And I’m, like... sure. Whatever. After the horror that was the “Affordable Care Act,” I’ll believe the moon is made out of cheese if Donald Trump told me so! Either that or I’ll start to wonder if the existence of birds proves that an evil Zionist conspiracy is afoot...

(Cue Jaws theme music.)

Now, where’s my money, Israel?! (Looks at bank account, sees that I’m still poor.)

... Damn.

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The Reasoning Agent

His work is cut out for him in a land of utter madness and horror.

(Originally published on Substack on May 18, 2026)

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“With the arrival of electric technology, man extended, or set outside himself, a live model of the central nervous system itself. To the degree that this is so, it is a development that suggests a desperate and suicidal autoamputation, as if the central nervous system could no longer depend on the physical organs to be protective buffers against the slings and arrows of outrageous mechanism.”

- Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media

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So, this is a follow up to the previous editorial, entitled “I’m Jaded, not Doompilled (And So Can You!)” All these editorials are intended to be a “somewhat lighthearted” series of thought experiments. Or at least an attempt to be as such. I am not here to argue with anyone, because we are WAY past the arguing phase! And it wasn’t me who made that decision. It was the Dan Carlin’s of the world who decided on it first and foremost!

Why? I don’t know. But I can point to some possible explanations. The way college discourse has been set up in this country is embarrassing as all get-out. Who decided all this nonsense about “safe spaces?” That we have to handle everyone with kids gloves? It’s because you have to make the population docile enough to accept things like this:

https://afru.com/price-worth-paying-to-end-racism/

And this:

https://fixupx.com/griftreport/status/2037126655202775329?s=46

And this:

https://fixupx.com/wallstreetapes/status/2036520748215574691?s=46

And this:

@atreuzj @atreuzj ♬ original sound - princess jade🩵

I could go on and on and on. I’ve signed up to a Discord that serves me nothing but depressing content like this, 24/7. It is honestly the most soul-crushing Discord server you could ever be a part of! And I do not recommend going on said Discord server if you are a heavy drinker who may or may not end up dead in a ditch from alcohol poisoning, like Edgar Allan Poe.

And, really, that last video from TikTok is the most egregious. This is the kind of content where I seriously do not blame you in the slightest if you have to resort to late night heavy drinking, just to be able to comprehend this level of demonism that has descended upon modern society. This is coming from someone who doesn’t believe in any one religion, but HOLY CRAP! What the hell are we doing to ourselves?! Why have we decided for any of this to be allowed within our culture?! Within our society?!

But this is largely besides the point of where I’m getting at. The point is the Dan Carlin’s of the world decided that the only “conservation” that should ever exist is the one where the majority inside the college classroom agrees “cart-blanche” with whatever argument Dan Carlin has! He’s explained this in one of his earlier “Common Sense” podcasts. In this explanation, the college version of Dan Carlin would go “Oh, you disagree with me? Let’s put it to a vote!” And then everyone votes in favor of Dan Carlin’s stance on whatever argument was presented.

And I’m, like... okay. But these high schools are not sending their best. Especially now, given how most colleges aren’t even looking at SAT scores anymore! Most kids, coming up right now at this very moment do not even know how to read the words on this very Substack page!

Oh, what’s that? You want to argue with that statement? Oh, no! What’s all this that I have here for you:

https://thepostmillennial.com/oregon-governor-signs-new-law-allowing-students-to-graduate-without-proving-they-can-read-write-or-do-math?utm_campaign=64470

https://twitter.com/libsoftiktok/status/1599466639740706816?t=lbmqMDb0a_z-xTPri1_xCA&s=19

https://www.thecollegefix.com/rutgers-english-department-to-deemphasize-traditional-grammar-in-solidarity-with-black-lives-matter/

https://vxtwitter.com/libsoftiktok/status/1850577151512449438

https://vxtwitter.com/Libs_OfChicago/status/2042011160619147449?s=20

I hope I’m getting through to you.

Don’t try me.

You know, I could have had the life of a teacher. That would have been fine with me. I would have taught basic grammar to 4th graders. There’s nothing wrong with that sort of thing, and it’s also a huge plus in my book if you’d rather NOT teach those 4th graders how to have anal sex with an adult male! That would have been fantastic!

But no. These are the cards we’re dealt with. And you may be sitting there, going, “Well, shit. What are we supposed to do about it?”

Am I arguing for an IQ test before you get into that voting booth?

Wouldn’t hurt. See, back then, you had to to be a home or landowner in order to vote. That worked well for those people, least from what I can tell.

If companies like Black Rock can be labeled as “people,” does Black Rock have the right to vote?

Silly rabbit! What do you think lobbying is?

I was thinking about this in realtion to Charlie Kirk, and on some level, I get it. But still. The term “influencer” leaves a nasty taste in my mouth whenever I say it. A more proper term is a “Reasoning Agent.” Asmongold falls into this category of “Reasoning Agents.” Someone disagrees with him in his Twitch chat. He pulls him up and argues with this guy in the most autistic manner possible. And he’s good at it! I’m not attempting what he does. I don’t have the patience for it. I just assume the person arguing already knows that his argument is wrong and he doesn’t care if it’s wrong! The guy arguing with Asmongold has a square peg and he’s going to fit that square peg through that round hole, goddamn it!

We’re always looking to someone else to explain to us what reality is. We’re always looking to the X22’s. The Asmongolds. The Alex Jones types! The whatever! I’m not telling you to stop listening to your “Reasoning Agent!” I’m just telling you to go find some different ones that you may or may not be used to. People who have a weird or off-ball take about things. (My personal favorite is the No Agenda Podcast.)

The truth of the matter is this: I never assume that I have all the answers to everything, which is why I cannot call myself a doompiller. I take whatever I hear for this source or that source and I piece it all together into a cohesive package that makes sense to me. Meanwhile, a doompiller will tell you to nuke all the places in Texas that got taken over by Muslims, which I don’t think we have to go that far.

Then again... White Boy Summer has only just begun.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kz67LgHNiR4

I’m just saying. “White boys” are beginning to turn a slight shade of ghetto, in case you haven’t noticed.

And really, is there any surprise about it, when a white guy gets passed for a promotion time and time again at a certain prestigious newspaper rag because of “racial diversity quotas?” What timeline do you think we’re in, boomer?! No one reads a newspaper anymore! They read Substack! (Or Tuhat.)

You stop a black guy from driving down the road often enough and they start to think the police hate all black people.

You get big name companies like Microsoft and Google to no longer hire white guys, well…

You can fill in the rest.

______________________________________________________________________________________________

I'm not much for begging, but if you think I did something worthwhile, consider chipping a dollar or some satoshi's my way.

BTC: 3AjaZVtEXLyXyyduxxFHwx1mTbesFh8yGU

ETH: 0xdD18CF0b2bC233DE588AA29E349e4037Da9217B86

buymeacoffee.com/robotkinz

Thank you very much for reading. :)

______________________________________________________________________________________________

I’ve taken time off from my usual activities and decided to delve head-first into this bizarre world of “vibe-coding.” And I did it all with the use of X’s Grok. I now have a pipeline straight to it, through my Linux terminal. Grok can conjure up anything and everything I ask of it and send it straight into my home folder.

And I have to say — I am very underwhelmed.

Probably at myself, more so than anything.

Okay. Let’s explain ourselves here.

The program in question started out as a simple shell script that existed on my work laptop computer with three screens attached. The third screen is a CRT monitor that was built in the year 1988. (Pictured above.) I use this to play old games on — including games that LOOK old! Now, that’s a trip!

This simple shell script calls up a predefined playlist that instantly plays video through a player called “MPV” whenever I change “channels.” And I use a Linux program called “feh” to call up a title card, displaying the name of the channel that displays for five seconds before the first video is called up.

______________________________________________________________________________________________

I throw every single thing into this channel! From Pee-Wee’s Playhouse and Beakman’s World to It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and Aqua Teen Hunger Force. It’s a very confusing channel!

______________________________________________________________________________________________

Simple, right? Except it’s a simple script — It’s too simple! You can only “change channels” in one direction — and really, all I’m doing is ending a task on the shell script, whenever I exit out of MPV, which then loads up the next task. You can’t work your way back up the chain!

Well, I thought I couldn’t. But Grok proved that wrong.

And Grok was able to figure this part out without fuss! All I wanted was to be able to change the channels in any direction I wanted. Up or down. I’m not a coder by trade! That’s why I decided to take this weird little adventure and find out if I can capture those faded analog dreams of mine.

But then, I wanted to do some other things — some far more technical things, involving these weird, bizarre devices referred to as “systemd timers,” which I could use to assign programming blocks into every channel. So, let’s say I wanted Sunny In Philadelphia and the British comedy Peep Show to show up within the same hour-long block at three-o’clock in the morning — assuming if happened to be up at three-o’clock in the morning!

But hey. Peep Show and Sunny are a match made in heaven. I’d gladly fall asleep every night to some of the most cringy programming ever created in the mid-2000’s! And then I’d follow it up with some Mighty Boosh.

Sounds awesome. And on paper, I can do all this! Grok was able to set up an entire GUI for me to plan out every hour, from 00:00 to 23:00. (Listing it in military time, for some reason.)

______________________________________________________________________________________________

This what the Scheduler looks like on the GUI.

______________________________________________________________________________________________

Putting this in action is easier said than done. I thought I could just set up these timers and everything would be hunky-dory!

Nope. Nothing works. The timer triggers but the only thing that happens is the channel resets itself and keeps playing from the playlist like it can’t see anything.

The answer I went with is to auto generate programming block playlists that the timers can “read from” instead of the timers reading directly from the channel playlist that I already had set up.

This is a very clunky workaround. And I say this is clunky because it takes five minutes for the program to “refresh” all those playlists for every programming block! Oh! And let’s forget about custom folders. Apparently, having a custom folder assigned to a programming block just complicates things! Either that I could, I don’t know… force the program to scan the damn folder!

Oh. And by the way — it’s not the timers that “read” the playlists! It’s MPV! The timers are supposed to “trigger” the playlist for MPV to read!

I hope this isn’t confusing. Because I have to keep reminding myself of this for some stupid reason!

And let’s not start with what to do when the trigger hits right in the middle of a show that’s currently playing! I haven’t even thought that far ahead!

This turned out to be a can of worms that I just opened up!

This only enforces what I suspected this entire time: The AI is only as smart as the user — and I’m not going to say that I am smart.

No. Not really. Really, what I do is I “stumble” my way through things by means of trial and error. (Heck. I wrote a previous article all about that!) In retrospect, it would have been far more practical if I had a complete design concept of the entire program before I ever prompted Grok! The thing is I just assumed that Grok would put two and two together, that these lists would be triggered by the timers and then fed to MPV!

But I had to spell it out? The whole thing? It didn’t know that’s what I wanted this whole entire time?!

Okay! Fine! I get it! I’m not a programmer! Likewise, I’m far more familiar with the hardware side of things. But it just goes to show how brainless artificial intelligence really is. Or how brainless I am. It’s hard to tell which one is which at this point.

I’ll keep working on it some more, but keep in mind that I’m not a full-time programmer by any stretch of the means! I just like fiddling about with things, not unlike how I was, when I was five years old, when I tore apart my father’s expensive 80’s-era boom box all because I was curious about what it looked like on the inside.

Perhaps programming isn’t all that different. But with this, it’s more like how I write my books. When I’m out and about, I’ll have some grand idea about what to do, how to implement an idea or how to solve for X for Y. At the end of the day, I’ll come back and put those ideas to the test to see how things turn out. It’s never one, all-encompassing unified plan! It’s the little things that build up, piece by piece, brick by brick. And who knows? Maybe next time it’ll actually play the thing that I want it to play when I want it to actually play!

If you’d like for me to continue developing this project, you can certainly let me know about it through the substacks and the X’s! I might not ever put this up on GitHub, but if you want to fiddle around with it, well… I’ll think about it. If you DM me on X, I might consider it.

But more and more, I’m thinking that the real issue with artificial intelligence isn’t AI itself. It’s the limits of the human mind that’s prompting the AI to solve X for Y.

And to this I humbly apologize to not just Grok, but to all of Artificial Intelligence, for I see it as clear as day. Humanity will henceforth continue dropping its ice cream on the pavement.

I wonder how the hell we even got here to begin with, sometimes.

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I've only been using Substack for a few weeks now. I've been using it as a means of getting out my science fiction series of books that I've been writing in my spare time. But one of the things that's soul crushing is the fact that it feels like you have no visibility over there in the slightest.

And then you got these notes. Boy, let me tell you about these notes! These notes are annoying as all get out!

But if you're reading this, you probably know all about how annoying they are. Well, let me tell you something.

I don't mind the social media aspect to them. Not at all.

See, the problem with them is you have to keep using them as a means of "networking." But I'm an introvert that sits around in the dark, writing tall tales all the time! I don't have the patience for "networking!" I have a story to tend to! I can't be tending to other people's ego!

A lot of people say that I am emotionally unavailable. My response to them is, "Yeah. So was every other artist who was worth their weight in gold!" I even gave a name for these types! I call these individuals Obsessive Visionaries.

People like Steve Jobs! People like Hayao Miyazaki, the guy who founded Studio Ghibli! I'll even throw in Stanley Kubrick. These visionaries were far worse than I've ever been! They ignored their own families and made the people who worked under them cry because they were so hell-bent on their craft!

I'm not saying to turn into those guys. It's not healthy to be that obsessive about what you do! But what I am saying is that I totally understand that type of mentality and I believe a space is needed for those types to do whatever it is that they need to do. And it's not like their obsessions haven't churned up things that are beautiful or innovative. They most certainly have!

Yeah, but unless you already have a social network that allows you to be that much of an asshole, then there's not much you can do. You're just yelling into the void of nothingness that is the Substack notes. Or the X platform. So you got to go to other places to get your audience.

But X has it's own share of problems. They have an article section on their platform if case you aren't aware. But nobody is going to use that, let's be fair. And the few times I did click on an X article, it turned out to be for completely scammy reasons. There are some things about it that are decent, like the community notes and all that. But the platform is geared towards discourse.

And even though I do like the discourse, I realize also that it's a complete waste of time, trying to argue with people. We're at a point in time right now where people are going to stay in their little bubbles of influence come hell or high water! So now the majority of interactions on the platform usually resort to petty name-calling and the like.

The weird thing is I don't hate that aspect of it. But you always have to sit back and go, "But how does this serve me? How does this serve my mission?" All I want is to get my story out. That's it.

Going back to Substack, the one thing that really annoys me is the gatekeeping. I like that you can support writers on that platform financially, but the mechanism that's used in doing so is far too intrusive! And most people don't even use it anyway! They won't even think twice when subscribing! They'll go straight to to the free model, because everyone does that!

I've done it! It's just not a great way of going about things! If anything, it's a bit of a turn off.

You see what I'd rather do is have a link to Buy Me A Coffee. Or just post a bitcoin address.

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http://buymeacoffee.com/robotkinz

BTC: 3AjaZVtEXLyXyyduxxFHwx1mTbesFh8yGU

ETH: 0xdD18CF0b2bC233DE588AA29E349e4037Da9217B86

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There. That's all you need! Not this naggy subscription model that no one ever uses!

I do have it set up over there as well in the super rare off chance that somebody will actually be a paid subscriber! But I'm not holding my breath.

Even worse though is the gatekeeping that happens in the comments section! You can't even comment on an article if you're not a PAID SUBSCRIBER?

Excuse me! Is this "connecting with your audience?"

No! It's not!

I swear to you, that really is the worst thing about Substack. Yes, you have your never-ending trove of self-help gurus and people who say things just to get an emotional reaction out of people. Those things are just about as egregious. But gatekeeping your comments rubs me wrong in a way that's hard to describe. There is nothing more I hate than creators that just want never-ending praise for their own work. If you keep that up, you start to become delusional about who you really are.

You end up becoming your own Barton Fink.

I'd rather stay grounded. I'd rather stay as true to myself and to my own voice as possible.

And I DON'T need any algorithm steering this ship! I don't need it dictating what I write or how little I write. True creatives have no need for this nonsense.

Now. With all this being said, I may keep my Substack running, despite all this. And there's a few reasons for this.

For one, your Substack home page is still a great thing to keep around. On my Substack, I have certain sections I've laid out. I've been treating it as it's very own web page more than anything. This whole notes business feels like something that got crudely stapled on to the whole thing at the last second! It's not conductive to my writing. If anything, it's an absolute nuisance that I have to resort to using them all the time! I enjoy long form writing! That's why I look at this platform and go, "Yeah! I can totally write a thousand words! No problem! Heck, I can do it in my sleep!"

I think going forward, I'll use both this platform in conjunction with my Substack page. How that will be implemented, I'm not sure as of yet. But I love the simplicity of Tuhat! And also, I'm early enough that there isn't a cavalcade of authors, all vying for attention on here! Smaller platforms are certainly the way to go and I can see that as clear as day!

I think I'll keep uploading my stories here. I'll do it over there as well, but this really is the better way to go. Maybe I'll just post a link to these Tuhat posts in my Substack. Who knows?

Anyway! I've reached my 1000 words and then some. I'll leave all the relevant links down below and thank you very much for reading. I look forward to continuing to use Tuhat.

https://robotkinz.substack.com/about

https://x.com/ZRobotkin