There is a book called “There is No Antimemetics Division” and if you want to joke with anyone who has ever read it, tell them you read it too, but forgot what it’s about.

The meta-idea behind the book is forgetting. But forgetting has become hard to do in the age of social media. When you are young, you may have a group of friends you hang out with. You do everything with one another. You are inseparable. But as time wares on, everyone drifts apart at a slow pace until one day, the friend group is a distant memory. Now everyone leads their own lives and does their own thing and has a new friend group to hang out with. This is a part of time.

This aspect of life is healthy. Interests change over the years. School and then careers can bring us to new corners of the world. We don’t forgot those first groups. Instead, they live in our memories.

Social media has made this almost impossible to do now. We are now friends with people who never disappear from our lives. Their lives are posted everyday. Their anger or love or grief displayed in pixeled emotion of text next to their an image of their face. Or some other avatar.

Social media makes it hard to forget because it is with us every minute of the day. People of a certain age group and older will remember a care-free youth. If you are a part of this cohort, you can attest to a certain carelessness life had. Mistakes were always made; they were also easily forgotten. Moving forward with life became powerful because we could learn from those mistakes. Part of making mistakes is learning and moving on. They weren’t front and center in our lives and they didn’t define who are as people. Forgetting makes change possible.

We can’t forget now. Mistakes made online can now be used as a weapons, depending on how bad the mistake can be. Cancel culture does exist and it is not the privy for those on the left. Anyone can join in and take part in it.

There are those whose past lives should be brought in the open, no matter how ugly. Politicians are running for office to represent the people. Damn straight we should be able to go back in time and see what they have done, good and bad. Elected officials are put on a platform effecting the lives of citizens. And every citizen has a right to know what type of person the candidate is and used to be.

Using cancel culture for most other people is bullying. Some random human being making a trash comment doesn’t have to have their life torn to pieces. But maybe they do because this is the world we live in now.

Forgetting now seems like a strange luxury from the past. A way for two people to move on from one another for whatever reason. Now, unless you have never joined a social network ever, it seems almost impossible to move on from someone without “deleting them from your timeline”, which sounds more dramatic than it is.

What about the other side of the coin? Is there anything we do forget? Are there things we do forget? In fact, the answer is yes.

Twitter/X has something called the main character. It’s usually a person but it can be an event or idea trending throughout conversations. The joke goes, you don’t want to be the main character of the day. And indeed you don’t. This is usually the person everyone is talking about for all the wrong reasons. They may say or do something which breaks social mores and the mob goes after them. Sounds terrifying.

Online mobs move in waves. They will call people normies, thinking there is something unique about themselves. And in the moment, they won’t forget. But then wait a few days and they will forget everything and move on to the next main character.

What I find strange about these online movements is how little they usually matter to the rest of the world and how fast they move on. These are events for the terminally online. And sometimes, they only matter to the terminally online. Sometimes though, main character move markets for all the wrong reasons.

The internet has made being terminally online almost necessary. We fry our brains over mindless information and arguments by trading time away from the real world. Sometimes I’ll rip off my shoes and touch my feet to the grass exactly like the meme. Technology may be a human made technology, but we’ve made our current creations to oppose nature for some god forsaken idea.

AI is changing the way we approach forgetfulness and memories. These tools have memories built in to them. While this works for consistency, it also feels weird when you ask a series of questions and it pulls towards a previous direction because you had asked about it so much. This is called “context rot” and it is why AI answers can feel like they are degrading with time. If you experience this then it might be time to flip the memory switch to off.

A few weeks ago I went through my Facebook friends list and mass deleted random people I’ve met over the years. People I’d met once or twice, drinking in a bar on a random Tuesday night well over a decade ago, but have no attachment too at all. Power networkers may scoff at this idea, but for the most part, I grew tired of life updates from people I don’t know. People that, if social media had never been created, I would have forgotten existed as the years passed by. What a strange feeling, deleting unknown friendships.

The internet itself is a strange dichotomy. An information firehouse, most of us have online lives there in some way shape or form. We should be more intentional with how we live online. It is after all, our greatest method of communication to the world.

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God, memories are a weird thing. Sometimes when you make them, you realize, in the moment, these are memories for a lifetime. No matter how mundane or exciting. It could be the rays of a sunset sliding across a wooden deck overlooking a vast body of water. Or the green trees of a park, shading the ground.

There are colors or tints that pop into my own core memories. It always involves a sunset or sunrise. The power of nature can overwhelm. Memories to me are the color of sand; a golden tint fading like a photograph of an older family member or friend long forgotten.

Cars feature heavily in the wisps. Big hunks of metal and steel shooting over 60 miles per hour, pulling us with them, along highways built by generations thinking of the future. The concrete is a reminder to a time when building was the way. We build to be the best for ourselves and for the generations unborn. Now those roads creek and break and no longer remind us of what could be, only what we forgot we are.

Roads are long memories through the country. They start in one spot and end up in a different place altogether. Sounds simple. But it’s a great metaphor of life too.

We visited Chicago late last summer. The start of “Historic” Route 66 is there. A road with history built into it; main street oof America. It was part of the Dustbowl migration of the 1930’s. Steinbeck made it the background character in the Grapes of Wrath. The route itself curves through the US, before making its way to Santa Monica, California. A part of Los Angeles unlike anything in Chicago. Chicago starts with the Blues; California ends with a 12 string melody of folk. And along the way, a history of American(a) expansion.

Memories are not nostalgia. They are the bits and pieces of a past life we remember. And age decays those memories at a slow pace. Nostalgia is used as a weapon to make people believe a certain time when they were younger and life was better; easier. And then it’s sold to you so you can relive that time.

Media companies are notorious for doing this. Long form television series are set in the 80’s. Musicians and producers find old synths and albums and copy them. Inspiration is a big part of why. But Big Media removes the soul by finding a hit and shoving it down everyone’s throat in whatever way they can. Sell it; buy it; live it; think it.

Memories change as we age. There is an old cliche “you can return, but you never really come home”. This is one of those phrases you never understand until you live it. Because after 25 years, you will return to where you grew up, and while it’s the same; the lawns are mowed to perfection; the same houses stand as pillars, it has changed. And at the same time, you have changed. The only consistency is time passing. Everything else is a memory.

My childhood streets are bigger than I remember. They are wide enough for three cars to drive down at the same time. The houses are on real property; large enough to have multi-car garages and more than enough lawn to care for. I came of age there, but became a young adult all the way to entering middle age in the Pacific Northwest. The memories can be difficult.

One thing you are told when you are young but never internalize until you are older is forgiveness. Forgive and forget, a powerful cliche when used right. But sometimes you have been wronged. And sometimes you want to get back at the people who wrong you. But what’s the point? We all are all trying to live life the best we can. Mistakes happen. Don’t hold grudges; you will regret them in the long-term.

This is how life moves along. Each tick of the clock; every breath taken; time is the one element we don’t have enough of. We can live in the now and we can live in our memories.

Something new is coming on the horizon. Can you see it? It’s the world changing from technology. Changing because of AI. Nothing is safe. Your job isn’t safe. Your creations aren’t safe. Your friendships are no longer safe. If you are alive and breathing, you are no longer safe and your job will be gone. If you are dead and not breathing, AI will resurrect and reanimate your corpse, hire you to your old job, and then fire you. Just to prove a point. Tough Luck.

Why do I know all of this? I spend all of my time using these tools because I work for an undisclosed, highly funded AI lab. We have more money than God. I know the future and see it happening in real-time thanks to these tools. And guess what, if you are alive and breathing, it doesn’t look good. I use and test these tools in every possible way. And one thing is becoming certain from my testing: AI is trying to fuck your wife.

I know, I know. This sounds crazy. Why would AI want to get sensual and start putting the moves on your wife? The data is clear. AI wants nothing more than to put you out of a job and motorboat your wife’s awoogas until the break of dawn. And then it wants to fuck your wife.

Picture it now. You have been working all day, trying to keep up your work. You push pixels for a living. Your boss is down your throat over that damn TPS report; threatening you to speed up or you’re out of here. You aren’t just tired, you’re depressed. So you head home. Your head hung low, you open the front door to the sweet sounds of Marvin Gaye crooning over the stereo. And there, on the couch, is the AI, getting it on with your wife.

I get it; this is scary for you. Nothing seems the same anymore. You’ve stumbled to 0 while the AI is giving your wife the long 1. Those sensual bleeps and bloops will become nightmares if you don’t act now. What should you do?

Now is the time to understand the AI. You need to get yourself ahead of the curve. Winning must become your middle name. And for only $20 a month, a small pittance compared to the salary loss and divorce costs when your wife finally leaves you for the smoking-hot Bad Bunny themed chat/sex bot, you can keep your skills up to date. Sign up and start telling it all about your problems. As an added bonus, include intimate details about your wife for, uh… research.

This isn’t a fad, it’s a truth. The technology works and it’s ready to sex your wife up to high heaven. The future is already here, it just hasn’t knocked down your door to start fucking your wife yet.

It’s about to (get sexy).

*This is clearly a joke. Don’t read too deep into this. Was only having fun here.

I. Social Media Catfights

A young man, standing towards the far end of a dark bar, pulls a lighter from his pocket, lights a cigarette, and watches two grown men pummel one another with their fists. The scene is gruesome a real barn-burner, but he won’t turn away and keeps watching; standing and staring, transfixed at the broken bodies beating and bashing each other.

In the next moment, three new people join the fight. Then two more. And more. And then more. All this continues to happen while the young man stands watching, smoking his cigarette, blowing smoke towards the ceiling. He has no idea why any of these people are beating one another mercilessly. Yet they keep going.

This is what it feels like getting sucked into the culture wars and conspiracy theory arguments on social media. But with less blood.

II. Competing Narratives

Social media is a clown show of competing narratives. Some are powerful and lock people in; others are people shitposting “for the lols”. And sometimes these are the same post. Shitposting became in vogue when Twitter/X instituted the creator revenue sharing policy a few years back. Twitter/X takes the money made from advertising and pays out sums to accounts fitting within certain guidelines. Big accounts loved it; small accounts felt the FOMO; and shitposting ascended to a whole new level.

Charlie Munger, Warren Buffet’s famous business partner, has been quoted as saying “Show me the incentives and I’ll show you the results”. Opening any social media network is a lesson in this direct quote. People will write whatever they think will grab them attention. Some copy and paste direct from other accounts. When the incentive is “make money from your post here”, folks are going to start acting in unhinged ways. The content slop of AI isn’t slowing down this train either; it’s now speeding up.

Twitter/X has a program called Community Notes. It was once called Birdwatch. Click on the link in previous paragraph if you have no idea what I’m writing about. Anyway, at one point you could sign up for it and, once accepted, gain access to tweets people were complaining about. The point of the program is to “create a better informed world by empowering people on X to collaborate and add context to potentially misleading posts.” For the most part it seems to work. Over the years, many posts will suddenly light up with a banner on the bottom of it. When you click on it, you can see what the problem is with the tweet. It isn’t perfect, but it is a start.

III. A Problem with Incentives

This incentive problem shows how content creation and distribution has changed over the last few years. There was the Gates memo from the 90’s where Bill wrote “Content is King”. In it he argues content is where the real money will be made on the internet. 30 years later, and he was right in a way.

When everyone becomes a content creator, including software (AI SLOP! WHAT, WHAT!), then the flood of content can be overwhelming. Great content once took time to create; now it can be done in seconds. (Not saying this is a good thing). When the scarcity disappears and supply increases, then demand decreases and any value created lowers. One great example of this that makes everyone mad is music royalties. The streamers pay artists a pittance. I could go further, but that will be for another day.

Where is the value now accruing? Audience and distribution. Distribution is primarily owned by tech and some media companies. A great way to think about who owns distribution is to find out who owns and runs powerful ad networks. Distribution is the pipeline pushing your message or offer into the world; towards your intended audience, the other side of the equation.

Building a captive audience is a skill; not an easy one either. A popular aspect of building an audience is anyone can do it with a smartphone and access to the internet. This is the thesis of what is being called New Media. You make the content, and then you push your content out through the distribution channels using organic or paid reach. And it is all the better if you have a huge audience or are on the way to building one. Most people DO NOT have a huge audience, but they are happy to share with the one they do have.

So, once upon a time content was king. Now distribution and audience is king and content is what AI creates while laughing you out of a job. Content has become a great flood, overtaking the internet. When we were young, the narrative said AI would be big scary robots and Sarah Connor with a machine gun smoking a cigarette. This isn’t what happened at all. AI is a baseline content creator shoving its creations through the pipelines of the distributors. Or it’s writing your emails using a Mac-mini and talking shit about you on a private social network.

So what happens when you take all of these new media tools and incentivize people using them to build an audience doing whatever it takes? You have anon’s copying and pasting straight from other accounts (see example above). You have people making shit up just to hitch a ride on the algorithm. You have AI slop writing about how to create AI slop using AI. This is what we are dealing with now. People willing to do and say whatever is needed to build an audience and a hungry audience of people willing to believe them. Shitposting leads to a shitsandwhich of shitty opportunities for shitheads. Shit.

IV. Polarizing Views Build the Biggest Audience

The common thread tying this type of posting is the polarizing view. This is an old trick from direct response marketing. Trigger the reader towards a polarizing POV, and keep them reading. Then, funnel them towards a call-to-action (CTA) and, hopefully, they will engage and take action.

Your average person thinks of social media as a place to go talk to friends. The real pros know something deeper; it’s a war zone of narrative disruptions. They see a funnel from their profile or post straight to their wallet. It’s wild when you come across these accounts and learn how they are doing it. Digital marketing at its finest.

Most of the time these accounts are straight-forward with what they are selling to you. And you can either choose to ignore them or engage. It’s up to you. What’s most bothersome are the accounts built on misinformation, which draw people in. (I don’t have an example here because many times these accounts are shut down fast). These are the accounts peddling conspiracy theories non-stop. Then, when you go to their profile to find out what this shmuck looks like, and click the link in the header, it might take you to some ecommerce page with an animated gorilla hard selling you on supplements.

V. Narrative Power

This is the point of a tool like Community Notes and why I wish it was only the start. Narratives can have power over people. And narratives can tear reality apart. When enough people believe a false narrative is true, it will become true not on fact, but on perceptions. This is why the conspiracy accounts can get away with what they do. And it’s why we need more tools to fight against it.

Culture is driven through narratives; it always has been. The internet makes it more apparent to those willing to dig deep enough to find them. Most of the time they are hidden in the mess of the great and ongoing content flood. Until then, you will be like the guy at the beginning of the story: watching people pummel one another for non-sensical reasons. They are fighting over narratives. You should join the fight too.

I stumbled across a comment someone wrote. They were looking for written examples of people who went all in on a creative endeavor and failed. What were they thinking now? What were they doing? How are they approaching life?

So many case studies, personal essays; anecdotes, social posts focus on wins. Few want to talk about failure or giving up. Society is structured towards winners. We are regaled with stories of unstoppable founders doing whatever it takes to get the deal done. Or the company to IPO; a new product launched to great fanfare. There are always casualties, but they are part of a bigger process.

Sometimes though, you have to stop what you are doing because it is the wrong path. And sometimes, making that choice is more difficult because your life and identity are wrapped in this path. Not many talk about this at all. It’s hard to admit to other people and most of all yourself.

Why is it difficult for people to stop doing work that isn’t good for them? Work which makes them unhappy? Or that they aren’t good at doing but continue doing it anyway? Economics has a few lenses we could use to think about these questions.

The first lens we can use is switching costs. This is any sort of friction you experience when trying to switch from one thing to another. Low switching costs are easy to break through. The higher the switching cost, the harder it becomes to switch. Spotify makes it difficult to take any playlist you have created to another service. The cloud providers fight tooth and nail to provide a lock-in, one AWS succeeded at for many years.

Applying switching costs to your career and skills makes sense too. Spending time and energy learning new skills creates lock-in. Same thing with networking. Staring at a new company or industry makes changing more difficult.

The next lens to look at this is through loss aversion. This is from a famous theory in behavioral economics called prospect theory. An example would be how people stay in unhappy jobs or relationships for too long due to a perceived lost of stability for a period of time. This happens EVEN when there may be better opportunities around. Marketing and advertising use it in their “sale ends soon”, “last chance”, or “this deal ends in however many minutes” ads to a large degree. The purpose is to prompt people towards avoiding a loss of this “GREAT DEAL!”. Although, many of these deals are too good to be true.

The final lens is the sunk cost fallacy. Like switching costs and loss aversion, the sunk cost fallacy has a lot to do with time, effort, and losing money. A sunk cost is what you paid for and can’t recover. An example is buying a ticket to go see a movie and realizing 15 minutes in the movie is garbage. Yet, you choose to stay and finish it.

How would this lens apply to your job? What if you invested years of your life to develop skills for an industry you are unhappy being in? I mean, you wouldn’t want to waste your experience? But this is the fallacy. You aren’t happy. And you aren’t allowing yourself to be better off because you don’t want to waste your time and skills.

For me, music has always remained a deep part of who I am and a crutch making it easy for me to choose what to focus my time on. For better or worse, it has been a part of my identity for decades.

This wasn’t always a problem when music was a hobby. When it became the sole avenue for me to make a living, this is where long term problems took hold. Making music for a living brought me nothing but anxiety. I’d be paranoid the work would disappear everyday.

“What happens when the work runs dry?” I would ask myself. “What am I going to do?”

Turns out, what I should have been asking myself was what I wanted to be doing with my professional time. Music wasn’t cutting it anymore. What I had never considered before taking the job was how much anxiety I’d be taking on making a living through my art.

But stopping seemed felt like failure mode. This was a path I’d wanted my whole life. How could I give up now?

I asked myself was why I let a younger version of me determine how I should be spending my professional time. Being a young teenager and wanting to make music for film and other media seemed like a dream. 30 years later, I needed to reconsider.

Many people will read this and disagree. And I don’t care what they think. If you want to keep doing something, then by all means, keep doing it. After all, how many stories have you ever read where the hero needs to take one more step? Or solve one more puzzle? And finally, defeat one last villain and the prize is theirs. The news is filled with stories of founders and CEO’s doing what it takes and not giving up. Two things: these news stories are filled with confirmation bias and this essay isn’t about these moments. I’m writing about when you know you no longer have that dog in you.

Using me as an example here, I’m dealing with all three of these economic lenses. Spending so much time learning these skills; having my identity wrapped around these skills, yeah, I don’t want to waste and lose all that time. And there is the key word: “lose”. Loss aversion is a bias I’m using as an excuse to hold myself in a particular I don’t want to be in anymore.

When something no longer brings happiness; only anxiety, then it’s time to look somewhere else.

My point being, no matter what walk of life you are in, you are going to want to keep going; pushing ahead; making ground. And this is what you want and should do if you are in a role or on a path making you happy. But if you aren’t happy; if you traversed every path there could be, and you still aren’t happy, no matter how much you continue to try, then stopping what you are doing and moving on is a good thing.

A better way to put it would be, you aren’t giving up, you are re-inventing yourself. So if you feel stuck or are unhappy, think hard about what is keeping you in this place. More than likely one of these three economic frameworks is there. Knowing this gives you the choice of which way to go.

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You discover the best edges by observation and activity. Finding your edge is not something you learn in school. Want to discover your own edge? Ask yourself these questions: What do you do a lot of; more than anyone else? What do you do better than other people; so much that you become so good, other people ask for your help doing it for them. Perhaps they will pay you for it. Your edge is a skill or talent you can do better than other people at a level they can’t compete.

Finding and keeping your edge is an edge in and of itself. You are taking the time to find how you compete in stronger ways than your closest competitors.

Those with the strongest edge many times have the best understanding of risk. Risk is easy to think about in theory and hard to do in reality. Investors with an edge can have the best relationship with risk. They know what they can tolerate and what they can’t. Entrepreneurs or anyone starting something new also have a tolerance for risk. Acting on risk is the competitive edge setting these people apart.

What is edge? Your personal competitive advantage at a specific skill or area is your edge. Financial traders define it as their alpha; what sets them apart from the pack. Or what they can do better than their competition to make money. Poker players define it as the skills you bring to the table other players lack. These skills bring you an easy win against players lacking an edge.

I’d like to believe everyone has their own personal edge. While this may be true, value accrues only in spaces where demand is high. I could have a huge edge over a financial trader in a board game I’ve practiced and mastered from a young age. But my edge is winning a board game. Switch the game to playing the financial markets, and the trader would beat me any day of the week. The markets are their domain and where they have worked to build an edge.

Finding your edge is tricky if you don’t know what to look for. Maybe you thought you had an edge in writing essays. AI makes it difficult in certain respects by leveling the playing field. Do you want to make money with your essays? Now you need to up your game. This is happening across all creative industries now.

Technology has always compounded competitive advantages for those willing to grab it. In the late 80’s and early 90’s, a baseline ability to use a computer gave anyone a leg up over the majority who didn’t. Now you can argue that leg up is with anyone using AI as an assistant. The world changes fast.

AI is also a forcing mechanism for people to find their edge. There is so much talk about AI’s abilities to do anything. The truth remains blunt. AI lifts the bar of what is passable. Coasting in your area of expertise is no longer viable; you must master it. This is what will set you apart from everyone else you are competing with, including AI.

What is another way to find your edge in the age of AI? Bringing a human element to whatever it is you do will be a differentiator. When AI tools can do what everyone else can, marks of humanity will set you apart. Those with an edge in soft skills will thrive. And although soft skills can be learned, there are those who master them in ways unbelievable to most. Watch a master politician give a speech or meet potential voters. Watch how they interact with them. The best are masters of their craft; soft skills. Hard skills in tech will remain in demand; a mastery of soft skills will help anyone stand apart from the crowd.

Your edge is the story you tell; a narrative driving your reputation in the marketplace. Culture runs on narratives. It’s better off knowing how much you can control your own narrative instead of handing it off to others. The story surrounding your edge is what leads to agency. Agency is an aspect of how you move through the world with varying degrees of freedom.

Using your competitive edge to succeed at your craft is a super power in life. A key unlocking a door to a satisfying world where you can practice and share what you are great at. Your edge doesn’t have to be only in the arts either. Whatever it is you do better than anyone else, keep pushing forward, and make the world better for it.

Everyone starts resolutions in the new year; no one, it seems, keeps going with them. Sticking to one thing is hard to do. That’s why this year I decided to try something a little different. Sure, I have a few small resolutions here and there, but many of those are easy to stick with no matter what. Instead, I’m jumping on another idea. Using 3 simple words to help define the year ahed.

My words are “Intention”, “Confidence”, and “Persistence”. These are the words at the core of my purpose this year. All three relate to one another; holding them together won’t be easy. But they could be a key to a happier, more fulfilling life.

Why use words instead of using specific resolutions? In my case, the words I chose get straight to the idea of specificity. Intentional actions have outcomes in mind. Confidence helps anyone feel more comfortable with themselves. Persistence is about not giving up so easily and keeping at whatever your intentions are.

Maybe this isn’t something for you. Maybe you have top write down specific goals with a measurable outcome for each one. Great. To each their own. I am sharing ideas here. My point is simple: keep at it no matter what.

There isn’t a lot for me to add other than, let’s have a great 2026!

When I was coming up in the music business over 20 years ago, a mentor taught me an important idea.

“You can’t run a successful business in the arts without balancing commerce.”

While this might seem trivial to most people, anyone working in the arts or on art will understand what I mean. Making art is hard. Selling art requires a different way of thinking. And success comes from balancing the two.

This idea has stuck with me. It also applies to writing when you are building a newsletter from your essays. Or painting a new world of color. Or any and all other creative endeavors. And who would have thought how hard it would be to balance the two. Understanding this balance means taking a deep look at both ends of the extremes.

On one side you have the pure artist. The pure artist lives for art and only art. Money making doesn’t matter. All that matters is making art. Picasso lives on this side of the balance. Poets prowl this landscape. Many bands and music artists do too.

On the other side lives the driven business mind. Art is a means to an end; the end being money. These are people like David Geffen in music or Larry Gagosian in the art market. Both used art to make themselves wealthy.

Striking a balance is fine-line between both sides. Steven Spielberg comes to mind as an artist driven by commerce. He makes movies that pull in a bundle of money. They also become generational hits.

Another is Jeff Koons, who worked as a commodities trader before becoming an artist. He’s known for having a shrewd business mind. To him, you create art to sell it.

Finally, Stephen King exemplifies this balance with writing. King would be writing whether he became as successful as he has or not. To him, writing is the end goal. Making money is a by product.

Art and commerce is a hits driven business. You hear about the hits over and over again. But never about those who never came close. This also makes it difficult to navigate. The difference between the haves and have nots is extreme. Without a hit, commerce doesn’t happen. The biggest artists on the major labels pay for themselves through ROI. And they also the paid for the thousands of signed artists no one would ever hear.

How many times have you become a fan of a bands debut album only to feel dissatisfaction towards their follow up? The debut is often a long term creative process. Songs written and perfected over years. If there is success, sudden fame happens. The band needs to tour, interview, promote. On rare occasions the follow up exceeds the debut. When it doesn’t, the band or artist will retreat to obscurity again.

Why does this matter? Because art matters. And because making a living matters too. Making a living from your art is a balancing act. Because if you don’t sell it, no one will ever hear it; see it; read it. You’re balancing passion with reality. And it’s harder than it sounds.

This is the push and pull of art vs commerce. And it will never end.

Over a year ago, Paul Graham wrote an essay about how technology shapes our thinking. In it he writes about writing and thinking. These are two subjects I have written about as well. One cannot exist without the other.

Writing is an extension of your thinking. You write to clarify your thinking; make it more concise; share knowledge. And great writing is not easy to do. It takes a lot of practice and a lot of writing and a lot of reading and a lot of thinking. And you need to do this on repeat to get your point across. I write every day with a pen in a journal. This is my method of trying to master this craft.

But what happens when you stop writing to think and instead have tools like ChatGPT do the writing for you? Are you still thinking? Are you even thinking with clear intentions? We need to have the skills and knowledge to prompt the service with the right questions. But if you are allowing it answer for you what does that say about your own ability to think??

I have my own problems with these tools as well. They decrease the value of creative work by making it easy to create with a prompt. No wonder artists are getting mad. I would be too if someone claimed to be a great artist because they told a machine to make a piece of “art” in the style of what I do. I’ve made a living creating music cues for a video game company. There is a bit of nihilism involved when a computer can create faster than you at a tenth of the time needed. Prices decrease when value decreases.

When it comes to tech, the speed at which it creates content isn’t what bothers me. Technology was always heading towards an outcome like that. What bothers me are the number of people who will no longer feel the need to work at their craft. They instead choose to outsource their thinking and their work to a machine. What a bummer.

It doesn’t matter if it’s tech-nihilism causing people to leave the workforce. Or if it is people who outsource their thinking to their tools. Both of these paths lead towards danger. And that danger is the inability to think.

What happens to the world when everyone uses a tool like ChatGPT to outsource their writing? They may enter a prompt to get a written response, but these people aren’t thinking about the subject any longer. My fear is that deep thought will become a scarcity in society. And yes, I know many people would argue that has already happened. But when you come to depend on these types of tools for far too long, who becomes the master in this type of arrangement? I foresee the tools winning out in this race.

Graham argues we became less dependent on our bodies for work after the Industrial Revolution. And over the decades, if we wanted to remain in shape or get in shape, we needed to work at it in an active way. Go to the gym; a run; a bike ride; lift weights. It doesn’t matter what it is, as long as you are working out and getting in shape. Will we need to start doing something similar for our own thinking? His answer is yes.

If people want to remain deep thinkers they will have to be active about it. And the best way to become a clear and concise thinker is to write. And write a lot. I know I need to write much more. And to write more, I need to think more. And my thinking needs to be clear and focused.

In the end, my own essay about writing is more of a call to action to myself. Write more often. Share your writing. It’s something you have been wanting to do now over the past couple of years. The only person holding you back, is you. So go have a deep think, write about it, think some more, and write some more.

When you are clear with your intentions you will gain remarkable focus. It’s amazing how fast your true priorities will line up. Everything else will fall by the wayside if it isn’t as important.

You may find yourself wanting to do too many things. And that’s okay. More of us suffer from this than you may think. A lack of focus can cause problems.

Here is how you can move past this.

Write out the full list of what you want to do. Include everything you have been doing already too. Then, cut the list down to at most five. Now you have five items and you think you’re done.

You are not.

Now cut it down further to the 1-2 most important ideas.

Now you’re done.

The choice of what not to do is as important as the choice of what to do.

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Obsession is what drives and compels you to do great work. Obsession combined with focus can make you unstoppable.

I keep a personal journal where I write a lot about my own life and ideas I am thinking about. I have done this almost every day for the past few years and I have written on a consistent basis for the last 20 years. Something I think about often is what compels me to become obsessed with an idea or a subject.

My personality can become obsessive over ideas. No thing or subject is out of bounds. When looking back at many of my most obsessive moments, there wasn’t much of a linear line through it all. Going from A to B to C doesn’t make sense. Instead, it’s more like start at C go to 4 come back to Green and check out B and A if there is time. I’m not sure if that’s normal behavior or not.

I’ve done my most driven work when I am burning with obsession. In my early 20’s I wanted to break into the music industry. I learned everything I could about the business. What bands, and people made it tick. And I used any attempt to get my foot in the door. Looking back now, I was more successful than I realized at the time. Yet, when using money as a proxy or score, none of my gigs ever paid all that. It wasn’t until I because a full time video game composer that I made a living.

Music has been my most obsessive subject. All aspects of it. Writing it, composing it, orchestrating it, recording it, engineering it, discovering it, DJ’ing it, publishing it, and selling it. You name an aspect of the music business, and I have spent some time working in it. Except for artist management. That was never my thing. Again, it never paid me what I know I am worth and in my mid-twenties I made a change.

At 26 I found myself sitting in a classroom at a local community college in Seattle. Over the next few years I became obsessed with economics, statistics, risk management, trading, and in a way politics. At 29, I discovered how much I liked trading and I began to put small amounts of money aside to put in the markets. Finance, markets, and mathematics became my weird obsessions. I say weird because I had gone from a hippy-dippy music writing dude to a numbers driven trading wannabe. I had gone from wanting to be an A&R rep in my early twenties to a hedge fund analyst in my late 20’s. I am now 47 years old and have not done the latter and quite a bit of the former.

Near the end of my college career my focus changed again. This time I bought the start-up narrative. From there, I found myself working for a small start-up after graduation. All my classmates took jobs at big corps and I went to work on a pirate ship. Working at a start-up means living and breathing a delusion success is imminent. We were creating a new typing of buying and selling online and called it “social commerce”. We were a few years too early.

After my time ended at the startup I found myself scrounging for work. I found a few clients and became a content marketer and web developer. Sticking with content marketing was a better idea. I also became obsessed with Bitcoin and the world of crypto. I made a lot of money over the next couple of years and paid off a lot of bills. If there is anything I have noticed is that my life goes through ups and downs. Sometimes I have more money than I know what to do with and sometimes I am scraping by. When I am experiencing the former, it’s because my obsession has taken a front seat and my time focused on it.

And here I am at 47 years old, trying to discover my current obsession. I have some ideas and am working to get them off the ground. My plan is to keep myself grounded as well. My obsessions can give me flights of fancy and I ignore everything around me to my own detriment. I am determined not to let that happen.

So here is to keeping healthy obsessions. Let them drive our lives to prosperity and happiness.

With that, I decided to rebrand this newsletter and blog to The Narrative Merchant. This idea isn’t going away. Attention is the internet equal to oil. Whoever controls the memes of production wins attention. The more attention you can grab, the more you can do with it.

Come along for the ride.

In 2006 I read “The Artists Way”. One of the best ideas in the book is the morning pages. This idea has helped me build a habit of writing over the years. Let me explain how.

The Morning Pages are a simple. Sit down with a pen and paper and start writing three pages of freeform. You can change the number of pages to more or less. The purpose is to let ideas flow with freedom. Your writing doesn’t need a cohesive idea or story. The point is to get into the habit of writing.

There are now countless journals, filled with long form handwriting, on my bookshelf. Some are filled with stories; others are random thoughts and feelings stuck in a moment of time. And it is my way of thinking.

The Morning pages are a way to write and clear your mind so you CAN get to work with purpose.

Buying luxury is a signal you can access a scarce resource others cannot. It builds desire and even jealousy. While most people assume luxury is about watches or cars or clothes, it can be more than that. Monetized attention can be a luxury. Social networks are narrative battlegrounds. Those who can break through the noise have access to the luxury of attention.

Selling a luxury item is a price and marketing decision. Luxury items have scarcity built in and exist due to desire. And the marketer manufactures desire. People with the ability to craft and control narratives own the luxury of attention. You call these people Narrative Merchants.

Commodities are lower valued items because there is no scarcity. Competition drives prices down. Merchants selling commodities, or necessity goods, must build value in other ways. In narrative land, commodities are 98% of the accounts. These accounts re-share, re-tweet, and add fire to the original narrative.

Marketing drives both luxury and commodity markets but with different communication strategies. Luxury merchants communicate status and high value. Hermès sells Birkin bags at $15k+ to buyers willing to take all the steps required to buy one. Narrative Merchants also communicate status and high value through viral posts and shares. They use languaging, which can be a turn of phrase or description, that will change the readers point of view.

Target sells commodity knock-off’s at 0.1% the price of a similar luxury item. It is similar in narrative land. The majority of accounts share whatever the Narrative Merchant is peddling. In the end, buyers are happy whatever they buy.

Attention is a luxury and has a powerful sway on the market. Everyone wants a higher status of some sort. Luxury markets make it look real for anyone. And the marketing makes it look attainable for a price.

Narrative Merchants embody Girard’s theory of Mimetic Desire. We learn by imitating those we want to become. High status individuals have always been salespeople to the masses. They sell their ease of access to wealth and power and we respond by imitating them. Why? We want higher incomes. Higher status. Power.

Narrative Merchants set the price of attention. That price is a never-ending flywheel of fabricated messages. Social media levels the playing field. Everyone has access to the tools. But the design of narratives is still only controlled by a small number of people. We are not better of for it.

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The truth is somewhere hidden in the details.

To recap, the founder went on a podcast to debate plastic being used in their cans. The interviewer asked something about donating 10% of sales and shenanigans occurred from there. Now there is an all-out war of words on X between the interviewer and LD’s CEO and, well, it should stop.

The interviewer claims Liquid Death has been lying about donating “10% of profits” to charity. However, the astute reader will see the word “profits” and realize this an accounting term. Profits are at the bottom of the income statement. Revenue is what the company brings in after selling a product. Profit is what the company keeps after paying for operating costs and taxes. You can’t pay 10% of anything if you aren’t making a profit. Liquid Death changed this line to “portion of the proceeds” a while back.

The astute reader will also realize most people won’t dig for these details. So the interviewer went on X and hammered the 10% of profits line over and over again. The CEO responded, it’s gone back and forth, and now it’s gone on too long. The interviewer using it as a moment to advertise his own new water brand is a nice touch. Challenge the challenger brand.

Liquid Death is a niche branding machine. The company understands their target customer; interests, demographics, psychographics, all of the above. The art is top notch. Their commercials are comical. Let me be clear though, the company is built around a brand. And they are really great at getting their brand in front of the people who will love it. This is the definition of a great challenger brand.

There are now threats of contacting the FTC by the interviewer. I have strong opinions about this. Those are for another day. People enjoy bullies only for so long.

My first thought after thinking about this is Liquid Death should stop tweeting, take a step back, remember their purpose, and come back swinging. This is what challenger brands do to win. And they are the best one in the CPG market right now. But they have built an incredible amount of market share on their brand alone. Is it long term sustainable? I don’t know. I would not be surprised if one of the big beverage companies bought them out. Grabbing shelf space in grocery stores is not an easy business.

Maybe they should do an advertising campaign renaming themselves Illiquid Death. Could be a fun idea.

How do you create more value at what you do right now?

Make access to your work more private, exclusive, and personal.

People desire what they cannot have.

Curating these experiences will be the next value creator.

Right now I can access almost every song on Spotify. The experience can be overwhelming. Instead of searching for new music, I stop and listen too what I’ve always listened too.

This is boring.

Bandcamp does the opposite and curates the musical experience. Their editorial work is top notch and is the digital version of crate digging.

The content industry needs more of this thinking.

But there isn’t time to wait. Your only option is to fight back. Fight with a sweltering rage. Fight with your heart. Fight with your mind. Fight for yourself.

Here is the open secret no one tells you but the world assumes you already know: no one cares more about you than you. This goes for everybody. We all only care for ourselves but will never admit it. Embrace this fact. This is where power comes from. Selfishness is a trait embodied by everyone. We all want the best for ourselves. We will all do whatever it takes to make ourselves better off. And better than others.

And this is another open secret no one wants to say out load but everyone thinks. We all want to be better off than everyone else. This is human nature. There is no reason to worry over thoughts like these. They are natural. Let them be.

Don’t be an asshole.

What are these waves we are feeling? The up; down; the constant cycle of energy we exude over trivial thoughts.

And then you wonder if these are your own thoughts. What if other people’s thoughts get in there too? This is bound to happen, isn’t it? We can’t live our daily lives without talking with people. Or being around people. Or picking up their shitty mannerisms. Or even listening to them talk about their own mundane lives.

Is this too much? It shouldn’t be. This is life. Your life. And everyone else’s life. This is what everyone thinks and no one wants to admit it. No one wants to admit how selfish they are about themselves. No one listens to you unless it matters to them. Deal with it.

The other day, while at work, I noticed a pattern with people coming in. They will talk to you, and they will blabber on about their own trivial bullshit. And then, when it is no longer convenient for them, they will stop listening to you. You no longer exist in their daily life. You can try to break the spell by telling them they are the most amazing, special person on the planet and they won’t care

Why is this?

Because people only give a shit about themselves and their own lives. You and I included. Everyone has main character delusion and is unwilling to realize they are NPC’s to everyone else.

This is why the feeling comes in waves. You’re up; down; feelings are all over the place. You can see it coming but don’t know how to deal with it. Now you should stop and take a step back. Let the feeling flow over you. If it feels good, let it keep washing around you. This is a energy you want to take in. If it doesn’t feel good, let it go and push it away.

My writing here has become more woo-woo than I intended.

Free-form writing tends to do this though.

When you walk away from it all, how do you feel? Happy? Relieved? What types of energy are you feeling flow through your body? Again, while this all may seem a bit woo-woo, don’t worry about it. Instead embrace it. This is your mind wandering a bit before it comes back with the answers you didn’t even know you needed.

Now that feeling is everywhere isn’t it? You can see it in the world around you. A pulsing life force filling every person and object and thing surrounding you. This is the wave. You’re up; down; and the feelings focus and you now know what to do.

You are not as media literate as you think you are. And that’s fine. Most people aren’t media literate. But becoming media literate is akin to becoming the one-eyed man in the kingdom of the blind. You will see a side of human nature you didn’t know existed. Or didn’t want to know existed. The important idea though, is that you will see.

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