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Not The Sort Of Person I Want To Be Online

It would be so so easy for me to open my blog editor every week and vent and rant about the state of the world. About how crazy everything is, how detached and divorced from reality so much of the media is, how the Internet isn’t real life. But I don’t.

Back in 2018 I made an episode of 301 called ‘removed excess salt‘ it was an ‘angry rant about having opinions on gammons’. At the time I said the following about it:

I really am not very happy with the podcast this week. Both with its content and execution. I didn’t have a hook or a topic when I started which hasn’t been the case since i started marking like 25 weeks ago – ish.

It is an interesting that this week I experienced the feeling of ‘knowing you can put something out and not like it at all’ but nevertheless you hit publish and it’s out there in the world.’

I actually feel really good about the fact i did that, even if the episode itself i think its meh. I’m going to be really focusing some reflection time in on this for the week.

In retrospect this episode was a turning point in my relationship to ‘posting stuff on the Internet’. The first is that its ok to put stuff out on the Internet that your not 100% happy with. If you worry about it you’ll never post anything. The second came a few weeks later when I made another episode at the end of 2018 and never put it out. It was another rant. After making/editing it I decided that it didn’t add anything productive to any conversation so I never put it out.

It’s not that I wasn’t 100% happy with ‘the lost episode’ its that it was entirely negative content. Was of no value at all to anyone.

Now, lets acknowledge that a large proportion of the Internet’s bread and butter content is being negative and scathing about things for clicks, likes and attention. But I honestly think being negative about things all the time is unhealthy. Both for the creator and the audience. And at the end of the day that’s not the sort of person I want to be IRL or online. I’ve been that person and it did me no favours.

It was that around the time of excess salt, which was after my first year back blogging weekly and making Permanently Moved that I decided that I wanted my website to be my homepage on the World Wide Web. If you wan’t to know what I’m up to head to my website.

On the one hand this was a massive strategic error as it was exactly the time that the social platforms started to turn the dial down on referral traffic – a trend that got progressively worse during the pandemic era – and now if you have a blog you can basically ignore social media as a place to drive people to your site.

On the other, going back to blogging multiple times a week in 2018 was the best decision I’ve ever made. I was in a conversation recently and ‘I wrote about this on my blog back in 2021, here’s the link/social proof’ was a far more powerful line than ‘I tweeted about this‘ at the time.

Which was the main argument in one of my most popular posts Please for the love of Blarg, Start a Blog

That smart important take blasted out in a Twitter thread is going to quickly sink down though the chummy social media seas into the deep never to be seen again. Yes, some people might bookmark It. Others might bookmark the thread reader version. But this is no substitute for hauling those important thoughts out of the private social seas on to dry land of your own Blogging Island. Safe. Permanent. Secure. And most importantly – Linkable and Searchable.

I don’t want to be part of a negative Internet, so I choose not to add to it. I don’t see any value in doing cynicism as a service. There’s enough negativity out there without me piling on. Instead, I aim to post things that I think is going to be beneficial for both my readers and myself.

I want to only have things online that I can stand by. The thoughts I’ve had in public should be useful to me and others 3/4/5 even 10 years down the line. Referenced, revisited, and built upon. I don’t write anything here thats written specifically for clicks and likes. Which being negative an Internet cheat code for.

Of course it’s nice when other people do link to my writing and when people share my blog with others – it’s always a thrill – and of course I’m interested in growing my audience online – who isn’t?

I bring all this up not to blog about blogging, but because I want to reflect on social media for a moment. I’ve been more and more disconnected from it for quite some time now.

But – to echo a friend in a similar position in my DMs this week – When I do log in to social media to ‘check the post’ I glimpse the feed in the same way as you see a moment of linear programming when you turn on the TV before the games console boots.

And it just seems all so mad. An alternate bizarro world of negativity, full of ranting and raving. I can’t belive I marinated myself in it all for so so long. It doesn’t matter what platform either. Take your pick: Bluesky, Threads, Twitter, Mastodon, and to a far less an extent (ironically) Tumblr are all full of unhinged over-posters and vicious swarm outrage and petty beefs. Its wild.

I don’t ever want to participate in (or tolerate) that sort of behaviour in the online spaces I frequent. So I’ll just keep blogging here. In fact I’m doubling down on ‘the personal website vibes‘. If you want to ever know what I’m up to, you’ll know where to find me online, I’ll be here.

To everyone who has found me here. Wether you reads this blog via e-mail, web browser or rss a really big thank you.

I Have An Ask

This website is not sustainable.

Blogging and making stuff online is expensive.

I very rarely make this direct an ask on my blog perhaps I should more often.

In the next few weeks, my website hosting is going up, my podcast hosting is going up tp, plus the software I use for making podcasts is enshittifying and the licence costs are about to double for the same level of experience AND earlier this year I had to pay a copyright strike for sharing meme on my blog. It cost me nearly two months rent and lots of stress.

If you like my non-negative online writing or have ever found something of value in my work. Please consider subscribing to thejaymo.net and supporting it.

If you subscribe before Wednesday 26th then you’ll catch the print run of Issue #10 of my postal zine Start Select Reset.

Permanently Moved

Photo 365

The Ministry Of My Own Labour

• AW Floating Worlds drinks in Central London
• Pre-call for a podcast I’m going to be on
• Recording an episode of Agitator with Kelby tonight
• Returned to my mediation book for the first time in months and did an edit pass on the first 6-8k words
• Worked on SSRZ issue #10 – posting this week!
• Noodling on the business idea

Terminal Access

Loved this essay from Alan Jacobs last month on the idea of the ‘Attention Cottage’

We think we should be living in the chaotic, cacophanous megalopolis and retreat to our cottage only in desperate circumstances. But the reverse is true: our attention cottage should be our home, our secure base, the place from which we set out on our adventures in contemporaneity and to which we always make our nostos.

Dipping the Stacks

Traveling At The Speed Of The Soul – NOEMA

Of the three stages of a pilgrimage — departure, initiation and return — the last is the least examined and perhaps most important.

We’ve Gotta Play SOMETHING – Aftermath

Marjaa: The Battle Of The Hotels | Mayssa Jallad | Ruptured Records

“Marjaa: The Battle of the Hotels” is a concept album born of the idea of merging singer/songwriter Mayssa Jallad’s two vocations: music and urban research/architectural history. Written in collaboration with producer Fadi Tabbal, the music builds upon Tabbal’s spatial approach to sound and Jallad’s research on Beirut’s Hotel District.

Flying planes with JavaScript | are-we-flying

Instead, we’re writing a web page that can control an autopilot running in JS that, in turn, controls a little virtual aeroplane. And by “little” I actually mean “most aeroplanes in Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020” because as it turns out, MSFS comes with an API that can be used to both query and set values

Writers and talkers and leaders, oh my! | everything changes

Talkers need to recognize that not everyone loves to think out loud, and that giving space for writing is part of what it means to make use of the best brains around you. Writers need to remember that writing isn’t some perfected ideal of thinking and that making space for the messy, chaotic, and improvisational work of talking things out is often exactly what a team needs to create change. Whichever mode you prefer, it’s not feasible to abstain from the other; doing good, collaborat…

Reading

The only book I finished reading this week is Close Your Mouth: Buteyko Breathing Clinic Self Help Manual by Patrick McKeown. The second breathing book of the year. Its good. I found the focus on breath holds on the exhale to build up carbon dioxide tolerance very interesting.

Apart from that i’m still chugging away on

Dangerous Games: What the Moral Panic over Role-Playing Games Says about Play, Religion, and Imagined Worlds by Joseph Laycock. Its about D&Ds relationship to the satanic panic

As I’m spending less and less time on the Internet for recreation these days my desire to read is only increasing, so in a fit of madness I started three new books this week 😬

Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life: How to Finally, Really Grow Up by James Hollis
Scientologist! William S. Burroughs and the ‘Weird Cult’ by David S. Wills
Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age by Michael A. Hiltzik

The only one that I’ve finished is Dealers of Lightning. It’s a short compact history and tbh is one of the most frustrating computer books I’ve read. Xerox PARC is a major lesson in corporate inertia and conservatism.

Charli xcx – The girl, so confusing version with lorde

Look, the new Charli xcx album is great. A real moment in her career, vindication maybe, the product of a lot of hard work. There’s not much to say about it other than bravo.

The track The girl Is one of my favourites and there was a lot of speculation online about who it was about, what beef is this, is she talking about Lorde? Then in a crazy move this week the remix dropped and features Lorde! Wild.

OG track Charlie: Lorde do u hate me??
Remix track Lorde: Girl i have DEPRESSION

It’s such a wild move. Love it.

Remember Kids:

Rewriting is a wonderful thing. It’s the only department in life where you get to say something and then take it back and figure out how to say it better before anyone has to see it.

The Artful Edit by Susan Bell