The Messenger’s Plight

[TL;DR – “The Challenges and Risks of Sharing a Message“]

It’s not easy being a Message Man.

The Back End

I have been focusing on the “back end” of this site for the past few days.

Another aside but try to bear with me because this will circle back around – If you weren’t aware PBS has been running a lovely adaptation of All Creatures Great and Small. It’s very sweet and heartwarming, but you could structure a drinking game around scenes that feature a character up to his elbow in the back end of a farm animal.

My overall impression of the experience is that it’s quite unsavory, though necessary and performed out of love. (Hopefully you’re picking up on my analogy).

The Challenges and Risks of Sharing a Message

A Strident Reproach

“I disapprove of this modern electronic world with which we are catastrophically overinvolved!” he scolds, hammering the keyboard of his laptop as he prepares his social commentary for upload to his personal website on the internet.

[Obviously a special risk faced by anyone trying to share a message is that at some point they are bound to come off as hypocritical]

All this to say (to summarize a digression from a digression) – “I don’t enjoy computer work, programming, website maintenance, or Search Engine Optimization (SEO).” Though I confess a lot of this is just a matter of personal taste, temperament, and aptitude.

It’s the fields of marketing and advertising that I hold in the deepest contempt. It’s not that these fields are manipulative – my philosophical paradigm classifies an almost unbelievable scope of life activities under that category – it’s because these disciplines are surreptitiously manipulative. And as if on queue…

[My SEO plugin flashes an alert to the declining readability rating for this post. It helpfully notes that word complexity may be an issue. “Is your vocabulary suitable for a larger audience?” it inquires suggestively. “Our Premium upgrade will tell you!”]

Sigh. And I was just about to identify the single point of redemption I’ve found in the experience.

The Challenges and Risks of Sharing a Message

The Single Point of Redemption I’ve Found in the Experience

This otherwise unrewarding exercise has compelled some much needed meta-analysis regarding my target audience (YOU), and whether I’m doing a good job connecting with said target audience (YOU).

Well, who is the (largely theoretical) reader of this site? And what is it that they are experiencing?

I suppose they would be the sort of people looking for some kind of multidisciplinary performance engineered to convince them that they are somehow living their life wrong, while communicating how they ought to try to live it instead.

So now I am forced to ask, “how many netizens conduct a google search for the term ‘preachy variety act.'”

As you can see, we have the technology to satisfy just such a research query.¹ Let me save you the trip:

Apparently the market is thin. That’s a tough turd to polish, and no mistake. But when it comes to a stinker like this, I’m just the hoss to gloss it!²

For starters, it looks like I am targeting a niche market! I’m told this is a good thing, as it furnishes the opportunity to establish a loyal audience. Hell, with results like these I stand a good chance of cornering the market!

Secondly, I am categorically trend-averse. When I see a trend start to form I walk the other way. As far as I’m concerned trends begin where independent thought ends.³ Humans are emotionally rather than rationally motivated. While for some people, at some times, their rational minds can drive emotions and thereby influence their motivations, I’m convinced this is the exception. We don’t respond to trends because suddenly all of our conceptions of reality converge. No, it is social/emotional motivations that drive the herd. The herd behavior is the expression of the Hive Mind. I highly prize independent thought. I am not on good terms with the Hive Mind, and I do not endorse its offerings.

The Challenges and Risks of Sharing a Message

The Preachy Part of the Show

So far I don’t think I have said anything too blasphemous. But consider (and it is so fundamentally implicit that it isn’t even mentioned), that the primary objective of EVERY website creator performing site enhancement and Search Engine Optimization is to generate maximum traffic/clicks/followers.

Well, that’s just us in a nutshell isn’t it? The ultimate product of Western Industrialized Capitalist Civilization is the primacy of quantity over quality. This is so thoroughly pervasive that we are no longer conscious it is just one of multiple pursuits. Like consumer materialism,⁴ it is taken completely for granted. It is simply the water though which we swim.

More is better. Most is best. That’s the fundamental assumption of the will to greatness.

But what if more isn’t better? What if most isn’t best? What if more and most aren’t even good?⁵

When such a challenge is presented on any significant scale it presents a treasonous heresy against Western Post-Industrial Capitalist civil religion. While an enlightened teacher espousing anti-materialist restraint might have gotten away with amassing a substantial following in the ancient East (I’m looking at you, Buddha), we do NOT put up with that kind of shit in the West.

All Beings of Lightness are Unbearable to Western Civilization. As individuals, if they attract a significant following they are murdered or their message is co-opted, or both. And never forget that the United States of America enacted a policy of de facto genocide against an Unbearable continent-wide RACE of Lightness because they presented an economic inconvenience.

The Challenges and Risks of Sharing a Message

Preachy Part II – What I Am Not Trying to Do

I am decidedly not trying to maximize traffic, clicks, or followers. I don’t even like the term, “followers.” That sounds a lot like disciples and the end of independent thought. While I would love to know that I am providing something that others regularly derive value from, I’m not looking for “followers.” I’m looking for participants.

And I am not trying to “impact society.” I’ve found that a delusional and heartbreaking exercise. I believe that everything that is must be, and all that is not could never be otherwise. There are a lot of times when that is a very bitter pill to swallow. And I can’t speak to any great personal success in accepting and embracing reality as it is. All I can do is try.

I’m not trying to reinvent the wheel. If there are similar outlets advocating a mission similar to my own, I want to know about them so I can learn from them and offer support. (If they aren’t large and oversubscribed already).

And I’m certainly not trying to propagate a trend or attract the attention of the Hive Mind. Especially not to heretical ideas like these.

The Challenges and Risks of Sharing a Message

Preachy Part III – What I Am Trying to Do

All this kind of begs the question – Why even bother with website enhancement and SEO?

It’s a worthwhile investment because it doesn’t have to be used only to boost quantitative measures. I hope these actions will help me reach YOU, an individual human who can be encouraged by the material on this page. I am trying to form a community of human beings that I can know and interact with on some level; humans who share some of the same core perceptions and convictions; who create and share their creations; who can celebrate the authentic and wholehearted creations shared by otherwise uncelebrated humans in their own sphere of influence; who are willing to tune out the transmissions from the Hive Mind; who are intrigued by a challenge like the one posed in Creation for Creators.

The Challenges and Risks of Sharing a Message

The Joy of SEX – (The Final Act of Tonight’s Show)

You see what I did there? That was a crass and manipulative ploy to acquire and sustain your attention. And it works too! Sex sells. And it doesn’t need to have anything to do with what you are selling. The actual title for this section is the ironic and far less titillating – “The Joy of SEO.”

[It was at this point of the essay that my helpful SEO plugin was screaming about the excessive length of my prose. They program insisted there was a dire need for subheadings lest I present the tender reader with a dreaded “wall of text.” I gamely obliged, thus you find this post riddled with section titles, without which you could not have endured the experience.

It had also been nagging about my excessive use of passive voice. “13.5% of your sentences contain passive voice,” it harped,” which is more than the recommended maximum of 10%.” I don’t believe it. After wading through some attractively unhelpful sites (*cough* – Grammerly, Wordtune, et al – *end cough*) I discover the refreshingly utilitarian Passive Voice Detector, which not only provides a percentage (3.7%), but also exposes any guilty party – “Now I am forced to ask, “how many netizens conduct a google search for ‘preachy variety act.”]

This discussion isn’t intended as a complaint. Frankly I’m not sure what it is. But it is something, and if you are still reading this, then you might be in the best position to have an opinion. It would be manipulative of me to tell you that your opinion is important. It isn’t. (The opinions of 99.999% of us – myself included – are not, because they are of no interest to the Hive Mind).

But as far as I’m concerned, just having a personal opinion that reflects independent thought is a beautiful thing.

The Daily Stone

The Challenges and Risks of Sharing a Message

1. Any guess what the #1 trending search query has been over the past 12 months? Chatgpt. Yeah, that’s what your fuckin’ Hive Mind has to offer you. ↩︎
2. Hoss: A big, strong and respected or dependable person, usually a man; one who is large like a horse (Wiktionary). ↩︎
3. I’ll allow that there are occasional exceptions. Every once in a while something I admire is randomly assigned mainstream popularity. I experience this as a “major buzz kill.” Also, being anti-trend can be decidedly unrewarding from an investment perspective ↩︎
4. I read an essay by someone otherwise smart and thoughtful who stated that during his young adulthood in the 1980’s society was MORE materialistic than it is today. I also grew up in the ’80s and I almost laughed out loud when I read that assertion. The author supported his statement with observations about how Madonna sang “Material Girl” and there were bumper stickers everywhere with materialist slogans like “he who dies with the most toys wins,” and some such. So what? All that shows is that people in the ’80’s were conscious of the prevalent materialism in society because they could compare it to a time before when materialism was NOT taken for granted as a valid life expression. The only difference today is that now material consumption is ASSUMED to be the default life philosophy. There is no time in our short memory when materialism was aggressively repudiated as the least admirable of several lifeways. Now it’s the very water in which we swim; like fish, we don’t give it the faintest contemplation – https://www.dirtsmith.com/thoughts-while-driving/ ↩︎
5. (Here I find myself contemplating artists of conviction who aspired to greatness only to be disgusted when it was attained. Consider Kurt Cobain, as he discovered to his chagrin, any significant slice of the population makes for an audience that is, on the whole, completely out of touch with any personal message or core beliefs that you hold dear. Sometimes they even express the horrifying antithesis. ↩︎