Major Update For Readers
You are about to get a lot more from me.
Hello to my wonderful, incredible readers! Right off the bat, I just wanted to say a huge thank you for being here. I wake up every day, and I am flabbergasted that even a single person wants to listen to what I have to say. The fact that there are thousands of you is, quite honestly, overwhelming.
To show my gratitude, I want to give you more. More accurately, I want to give you better, and I will do that with three things: Focus on higher quality meta-narrative articles, regular video essays, and a monthly Movie Club. Let me explain.
Articles
My best articles from the past few months aren’t quickly written reaction pieces like I used to write but ones that exposed a meta-narrative and had writing flair with pop culture references and humour. For example, rather than just writing about how Tesla’s sales numbers and stock plummeted, I wrote about how these could kill the company.
You guys seem to overwhelmingly prefer these kinds of articles, which is excellent because I enjoy writing them. However, they take far longer to write and take a huge amount of effort. Right now, I am producing about four of them a week, and I am getting close to burnout. Ideally, I’d like to drop the number to three or two per week; that way, I can ensure the quality stays sky-high and consistent. But I need to amass more paid subscribers before I can do that.
So, for the near future, you guys will still get around four articles a week from me. But over the coming months, that number may reduce slightly, but the quality will significantly improve.
Video Essays
I love video essays. I can’t get enough of them. I love how they feel so much more personal than an article and how they engage an audience and take them through a rabbit hole. I have wanted to do them for years. However, health and family issues have gotten in the way. But thankfully, all of those are now resolved. So, I am going to start producing video essays, and my paid subscribers will get them uncensored, ad-free, and 3 days before they go live on YouTube.
These essays will take a similar angle to my articles and look at the intersection of technology, politics and society, but will go far deeper. Some of them will also be far more personal, for example, unpacking what it is like to get an autism diagnosis later in life. The first of these is called “Her, AI & The End Of The World”, it is about how AI has helped create the new wave of fascism, and it will be dropping the weekend this is posted.
As you can imagine, these kinds of projects take time, so there will likely be only one or two each month. However, some articles (like the recently posted Studio Ghibli AI art) might also be turned into video essays.
Movie Club
As I have alluded to in my articles, I am autistic and have ADHD. My flavour of neurodivergence makes internet socialising particularly difficult. I find it massively overwhelming to keep on top of notifications, emails and messages, which I hate, as I would love to connect with you all more.
So, I am also launching a monthly movie club for my paid subscribers! Each month, we will pick a movie, and on the last Thursday of the month, I will do a private live stream from 9:00pm - 10:00pm GMT ( 5:00pm - 6:00pm EDT or 2:00pm - 3:00pm PST) where the first 20 minutes is a Q&A, the second 20 minutes is discussing the film, and the last 20 minutes is an open discussion about anything and everything.
The movies chosen won’t be random but relevant to what is going on in the world. For example, we might do the original Iron Man and how it helped build up the false myth of Elon Musk.
Now, I appreciate that not everyone can make this time slot. So, the Monday before the live stream, I will put up a post about it here, on my newsletter. That way, those who can’t make it can post any Q&A questions, movie insights, or movie recommendations in the comments, and we will go over them in the live stream. And the live stream will be recorded and posted here on Substack for paying members to watch whenever they like.
The first Movie Club will be on April 24th, and the movie will be the iconic 2006 classic Idiocracy (streaming on Disney + or rent on Prime).
See you guys there!
Let Me Know
At the end of the day, you guys are the reason I can put food on the table for my family. I am beyond grateful for that. So, let me know what you think about this in the comments below. Are you excited for the Movie Club?
Less content, more substance. Take your time, stay healthy. At this time, there's not a single sane mind to spare.
For me, I personally skip videos here. But that is my preference, I prefer to read.
Movie club does sound fun though