Only published once this week on the subject of NFTs - high level of opens, low level of reads. I get it, something that’s either not in your sphere of consideration d/t money, time, tech knowledge, etc. or is just not at all something you could possibly be interested in. I’d like to prove you wrong, but I do recognize that writing about it too much could cause people to start white-noising my emails on assumption that NFTs are all I’m going to write about. I’m not! Although sometimes I might. When I do, I’ll try to add them at my mirror.xyz site and link them here. If you’re still with me, I should probably explain mirror.
Mirror is a publishing platform built on the blockchain, where essays are minted and sold in limited quantity. Anyone can read the essays, but to “own” a unique copy of my essay, you pay a small amount of Ethereum (ETH). “Owners” are listed on the bottom of the page and they can treat my essay like any other commodity - they can keep it, burn it, sell it, buy it back, etc. Because This was my first time giving this platform a go, so I made 150 copies of my essay and priced them at 0.005 ETH (approx. $7.20 as of time of writing this). So far this is one owner! It’s me. I don’t expect to make a lot of money there, but I am intrigued about the type of pressure it places on me to write knowing that my words are commodified. I leaned hard into thinking of my piece as an object to be owned, and the result was I think some cryptic yet beautiful writing. I’m glad I opened up a second writing “shop” there and will form it into a collection with a definitive address soon. However, in the meantime, I’ll try to keep my writings on crypto, NFTs, yada yada over there and keep this space more focused on my sociological/cultural musings.
That all said, here are the things I’m thinking about a lot this week: Post-Authorship, Network Spirituality, Pseudonymity, Deterritorialization. Should you wish to leap down any of those rabbit holes, please feel free to “DuckDuckGo” the terms above.
I’m starting to notice a part of my personally philosophy revealing more and more of itself to be fraudulent. Not sure specifically how to describe it, but it revolves around this fantasy of a “return to nature.” Anyone that knows me personally knows that I dabble in nature from time to time, but I am not someone who readily feels a kinship, equanimity, oneness, etc when in nature. At best, my theories that revolve around a desire for a “simpler time” are bred from reactionary nostalgia and denialism. The truth is that I am and always have been a technomaximalist. I don’t hate the internet and all things digital because they are inherently satanic, but because I believe they are being used in a completely wrong way.
My last essay (yes, the one on NFTs…I’ll move on soon) was well received in the Milady community, however my research since publishing has revealed that the cancellation of Charlotte Fang was far far more insidious than I originally let on, and that all of the “worst parts” of it were definitively performative. I had the opportunity to be on a group call with Charlotte over the weekend and found her to be highly intelligent, thoughtful, charming, and kind. In my previous essay I referred to the charges levied against Charlotte as “hyperbole.” This is wrong - they were completely fabricated.
When I write for awhile under a certain persona or fixate on a certain POV, I begin the extremely unproductive process of poking holes in my arguments and loathing the things that I stand for. I’m feeling a little bit of this with this substack, feeling not happy with the direction I’m going in, and partly don’t want to shoulder the burden of defending some of my more heterodox points of view. Though I am not nearly big enough yet to feel overwhelmed by outside opposition/criticism, I most surely will within time. I’m worried I won’t have the strength to resist this wave of attention and conflict, and when I start thinking this, I usually “abandon ship” by airgapping and starting again with a new identity and writing venue. I’m going to reject this impulse this time around. I am someone who attached onto and sinks deep hooks into new ideas, only to later find them less compelling than I thought. My plan is to continue writing about mental health, masculinity, culture, etc., but I can’t promise I always will. To be subscribed to this is to go along for a ride. Where this ride goes or how fast it goes is up to you, but it’s definitely a sort of “You have no vote but you’re always free to exit” kind of thing.
I have decided I’m not a philosopher or an author. I’m something in between. I’m not sure what it is yet, but none of these terms feel like they fit right on my body. I am sort of like a private documentarian, a reporter that interviews only himself.
I’d like to start pairing music with my posts as I often put the same song on repeat as I write. I think that listening to a song with someone else - I mean really listening - is the closest you can get to sharing a mind space. I’ve been afraid to do this pairing thing because it seems both pretentious and juvenile. I’m done feeling that way. In fact,
I want to be done altogether pretending that I feel sad all the time just so I can pass the litmus test of soup-brained others who feel like one has to feel as though in a constant stage of besiegement. I’ve acted this way so long I believed it. Irony is the poisonous drink of the millennial generation. Endless watching of reruns of the office representing the clattering pot lid of the boiling waters of rage beneath. There are frightening people among us. Resist the bait to engage with them.
I recommend being religious. I don’t care which religion I guess (maybe a few exceptions but overall not really). The next few generations will be difficult and we will need a connection to the transcendent to ford these troubled waters.
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