My last substack post

Quite the headline huh?

So this is going to end up being a weirder post, because it’s more about my own admission of willful ignorance as well as my new found attempt to find something more effective for getting my ideas out there without me feeling dirty lol.

For months now, I’ve been seeing the “you should probably leave substack because like every other internet platform these days it’s got a nazi problem.”

And I get it, the INTERNET has a nazi problem, so it’s not like substack is a unique platform in that sense. And that was a very easy excuse for me to just say “whatever I can ignore this problem”. Part of that was just… not reading the detail lol. I didn’t want to know the ins and outs of it. I just wanted to write my silly little blog about being nice to people! Part of it was that I’d ALREADY done the work, I didn’t want to have to do it again! Part of it was that there’s no real good platform anymore because as my current book I’ve started that I likely won’t finish, Enshittification, details because the internet is in its enshittocene era. lol.

Like with everything else, it was just easier to not change and deal. And I’ll acknowledge that I knew better. I should have taken the hint that if nazi’s are being platformed by a tool, it’s probably not one that I should ALSO be using because I don’t know if you know this about me… but I fucking hate nazis. WEIRD RIGHT.

But since that wasn’t the thing that triggered me to finally make the change… what was it?

It was this bullshit.

I don’t have anything explicitly against gambling. I love fantasy football, the march madness brackets, pick’em contests, and all that kinda jazz. It’s fun.

But the world has shifted in a way that isn’t sustainable toward gambling being not just a side thing you can do for funsies when you’re in Vegas or some casino but now it’s something that’s in your pocket all day long. And that’s inherently evil because it’s using your phone addiction and the natural addictive quality of gambling and turning you into a money spigot for already rich people.

And adding in something like poly market, where you can bet on ANYTHING THAT HAPPENS IN THE REAL WORLD, it’s just a bridge too far for me.

It’s one thing to enable the worst people in the world and give them a platform, it’s a totally other thing when you’re then using that platform to make money off your constituent base by having them gamble all their money away on real world events where likely THE PEOPLE TAKING THE BETS CAN DIRECTLY INFLUENCE THE OUTCOME OF THE BETS.

Just imagine, someone bets on the idea of let’s just say toppling the elected leader of Venezuela and does it for a specific day… and there’s no real tracking so that COULD BE someone who is say on the inside and has the ability to say “let’s do this today instead of tomorrow” because they BET that the invasion would happen that day. (no one would ever do that, right?)

Maybe this is just me being cynical - it happens often enough.

But I just can’t be on a platform that does this kind of shit. I should have said it after all the nazi talk. I should have said it when my buddy Josh was like “you’re not gonna like being on substack” (Josh is always right and smarter than me but I don’t always listen lol). I should have when I finally took a break from writing all the 2x/week articles and had a moment of reflection.

But I’m picking now instead.

As the saying goes, the best time to leave was when I first realized I should, the second best time is right now.

So while I’m leaving, I’m not “going away”.

Instead, what I’m going to do is try and be a little better and a little more intentional about everything I do.

The goal of this initially was to voice some of my beliefs and thought processes and most importantly to give people the permission to be more empathetic in their search of being a better person while also seeking out better jobs and better engineering solutions.

And while I was accomplishing that goal, I think that there’s more that I should have been doing. Part of it should have been branding myself. Not that I am important enough to need a “brand” but rather I want people to understand who I am and where I’m coming from.

So… as President Bartlett would say… what’s next?

I’m gonna give you way more detail than you want to know lol.

So my first step was “where should I host my new blog?” I could have just gone to a new platform. Go back to my roots from like 15-20 years ago and just go back to blogspot. Or go to something like a Patreon. Who knows there’s probably 100 different blogging platforms I could have used.

But that’s not as fun. Because I’m still beholden to some platform, and as I’m reading about in this book — all platforms are entering or fully in their enshittified era.

And I don’t wanna be a part of that.

So I thought “what is it that I like about the internet” and I started thinking about what was great when the internet was coming up… I loved shit like strongbad, hyperbole and a half, the bloggess all that type of internet creator owning their own space. Were they using platforms? Maybe! But that was before the internet was enshittified lol.

So I did a thing I haven’t done in YEARS - I went to buy a domain.

Now the next question is… what on EARTH am I gonna do with it. I’m not 100% sure yet.

I know a couple of things — 1) It’s gonna have a blog lol duh 2) beyond the blog, I’m going to treat this like a product, and act as thought I’m building something for a client not just for myself 3) I’m not going to let someone else own my platform — that might mean that I just write a site myself. It might mean that I find some open source platform that makes it so I don’t need to worry about someone destroying what I’m using with their stupid enshittification. 4) I’m probably going to use it as my professional “here’s the info about me” site, that will allow me to not have a resume any more but rather treat this site as a resume.

There’s probably a lot of other things I’ll want to do… we’ll see if I can even do these 4 things first though lol.

I’m not deleting this site YET. I’m going to figure out how to 1) download all the stuff I’ve already done, 2) move all the folks already subscribing to whatever new system I’m using — then after that, this site will be nuked. Sigh.

Thank you for coming along for the journey, there’s more to come but… I won’t let it be on the nazi betting platform that I’ve been on.