There’s a three part golf course in the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea that has active land mines on it and if you ever played a game there, you’d have a 70% chance of dying. This single golf course makes golf the most dangerous sport in the world. Just this one course, along with another one in Florida that has a lake with alligators in it near a sand bunker.
There’s a town in America called Centralia that’s been on fire since 1862.
There’s a Catholic Chapel in the Sedlec area in the Czech Republic made entirely out of human bones.
There’s a ski resort in Bavaria that has no snow. The snow is made out of some sort of fluffy sand. An industrial silicate, and people ski on that.
In 1518 in Strasbourg, there was a plague of dancing that lasted one month and 400 people died from not being able to stop dancing.
In 1858 the river Thames smelled so badly of shit, that the British Government had to shut down.
In Ancient Greece, the most elite fighting force was made up of 150 pairs of gay male lovers. They were ferocious in battle because they fought to protect the person they loved and not themselves.
There was a 17th Century leather seller from England named ‘Praise God Barebone’ who’s full name was ‘Unless Jesus Christ Had Died For Thee Thee Hath Been Damned Barebone’.
There’s a Dutch Socialist politician named Tiny Cox.
The last black person to be exhibited in an American Zoo was in 1906. His name was Ota Benga.
Shraudinger’s cat is a theory in Quantum Physics which states that if a cat is poisoned in a box, it is both alive and dead if no one is around to observe the cat’s demise.
Quantum suicide is the theory that claims that it is technically possible to achieve immortality by committing suicide. This theory came about by looking at Shraudinger’s experiment from the point of view of the cat.
There’s a three inch sculpture of a Spaceman still on the moon. It’s the only artwork not on earth.
Human male fertility is tested with hamster eggs.
Thousands of toads exploded in Germany for no apparent reason.
Hens have empathy for other hens.
Cows are fed rubber covered magnets, so that bits of metal don’t slice up their insides.
There’s a tree in Athens Georgia that legally owns itself.
These are just some of the facts that I have learned during the presence of the Goblin of Strange and Uncertain Times.
Welcome to my blog you gorgeous boys and girls.
Thank you for the terrific feedback for last week, I enjoyed that one.
So I’ve been demonetized again for the third time for my use of profanities. This time I actually got an email from Clickbank telling me that I need to re-evaluate my content if I wish to be paid for my work as an ‘Influencer’. They offered the services of a moderator at a small fee.
Fuck that.
I’m not doing this for profit at all, but I do want to make some money with it. Just enough to pay me maybe $10 an hour so that I can support my hobbies and habits.
Moreover, I am not aspiring to be an influencer. I’m just a cunt who writes a blog to get rid of some of his thoughts while putting out some creative work. This is easy for me. However, I am writing both a novel and trying to publish a book of short stories. That part is fucking hard.
It is kind of a two part blog this week.
I will explore the role of an influencer in both the old days and now, and how the culture of the industry shifted from talent to marketing.
Another thing I want to touch on is how we challenge our true selves by portraying our ideal selves online.
We all know what Influencers are, but what does the job actually entail.
An influencer is an individual who uses their popularity to influence or change the purchasing choices of consumers.
This is what it is now, but it wasn’t always this way.
The first obvious influencers were Religious painters, Michelangelo, Leonardo and those lads. The Turtles basically.
Back then Religion was a big deal, it’s still a big deal now, but much much bigger back then. These artists were the rock stars of the day and had massive influence on society. I know that it is hard to comprehend now with our overexposure to media, but back in them days, a class painting was a big fucking deal. You could spend months not seeing any kind of art and then suddenly see these masterpieces in a church.
The Turtles were not religious men at all. In fact many of the artists of the day were horrible people. Pedophiles and murderers. My favourite Baroque Artist, Caravaggio, was charged with murder.
These men were paid by rich patrons in the Church to influence the thoughts of the people who had a bounty of the best commodity of the time, their faith.
A posh and expensive painting was not just seen for what it was, it also bore the insignia of the painter, thus turning them into influencers.
Remember in those Churches, the Priests would only speak in Latin or some shit, so quite often, the parish would just sit and look at paintings as nobody understood Latin.
Islam identified this, and that is why art in many forms is frowned upon my followers of the faith. But art is important, and non-appreciation of art leads to a whole other set of issues. This one is for another blog I guess.
Anyway, aspiring painters would buy the paints and equipment that they endorsed and the artists would take a cut for the sales. This was a time before connectivity remember, so the artist would often be physically involved with every sale. Essentially meaning that the Artists were being paid for their influence on society in two ways. The same goes for sculptures and other forms of iconography and items of influence.
In almost all their autobiographies, they mention that they did not enjoy doing those religious paintings, they much preferred painting the riff raff of society. Pretty amazing thing to say for people whose talents are said to have come from God.
The next round of influencers surfaced when theatre became a thing. William Shakespear is probably the best example of someone who got paid to influence the thoughts and emotions of the general populous.
It is blatantly obvious by looking at his earliest work, like Henry VI and Comedy of Errors, that the years of losing creative control made his work less authentic.
Shakespear was a revolutionary, he even made up words and expressions along the way. But it is extremely evident and well documented that his latter work had him pandering to Patrons and the work was only an approximation of what he intended it to be.
Then a few hundred years pass and a cunt called Edward Bernays is born.
This is an extract from my book Tainted Pictures to tell you a little bit about Bernays.
“The father of modern day advertising is a man called Edward Bernays. He was an Austrian-American who specialised in public relations and propaganda. After the Industrial Revolution, the demand for items and consumer products were so freely available that technically everyone had everything they needed in life.
It was simple. If you had a head, you needed a hat. Once you had that hat you didn’t need another one, so you wouldn’t get another one. What Bernays did was genius.
He started advertising things by using successful or beautiful people. Essentially saying to the consumer ‘buy this, it will make you a better person’.
By doing this you would buy a lot more hats, I mean, who doesn’t want to be a better person?
Incidentally, Edward Bernays had a very famous uncle too, Sigmund Freud, basically the creator of modern day psychology. Bernays undoubtedly used his uncle’s psychological work to help manipulate his consumers into buying better versions of themselves.”
By using the theory of Edward, the next batch of influencers came from TV and Music Stars. Elvis Presley, Marlon Brando, Marilyn Monroe, you know the ones. They became the Influencers of the time, and there is a reason for this.
They had a platform.
Then it went all fucked up.
Social Media allows anyone with an Internet Connection to have a platform. And unfortunately, everyone is interesting.
So when celebrity cock sucker Kim Kardashian opened the door to the fact that brashness and boldness is more important than talent, it didn’t take long for modern day Influencers to pick up on the analytics and strategies of what is working today.
The interesting thing and the thing that makes me happy is that many of these influences, because of their platforms, are getting opportunities in other areas. Many of them find their talent in their fame. Good on them.
The only really bad thing about being an online influencer, is that both love and hate has the exact same effect on their bottom line. So narcissistic self aggrandising is a totally significant technique.
So here is a tip. If you don’t like what someone is doing, it is best practice to not engage with them at all. As someone who relies heavily on engagement, I’ll prefer someone calling me a Marxist Beta Cuck in the comments than someone who doesn’t click on the link at all.
I don’t follow many typical Influencers online, I do have a few on my Instagram. I like Dan Bilzarian and Joe Rogan. I do have some fitness models on there too for the aesthetic beauty of them.
I don’t necessarily think it’s a bad thing to be an Influencer if you want to make money that way, but I can guarantee you that they don’t even like much of the shit they shill.
But this is a route I am unable to take because I don’t want to lose any of the creative control of what I want to do with this blog.
Maybe I’ll go that route when I’ve published my books, but for now, I’m quite happy not to be pandering to the Illuminati.
So it is that simple. If you want to be an influencer, just simply sell your soul for the Queens Shillings and you are on your way. I don’t have a problem with the cunts.
At this point of the blog, I will commence with my weekly begging.
Seeing that I am unable to conform to the requirements of affiliated advertising, I am only able to push my Patreon this week.
This allows me to blog content that is not compromised by moderators or outside interference. There are many blogs that pander to advertising, but they seem to get nice, wholesome links. I think it’s based on your SEO and for some reason I get loads of ads for Dick Pills or links asking you to join the Army. I’m in favour of neither of these.
So for the price of a cup of coffee or some Pringles once a month you can subscribe to my Patreon and have access to my book.
The blog stuff remains full access. The Podcast will be the same.
https://www.patreon.com/Blacksheepwriting?fan_landing=true
So into the second part of the blog.
The first part was a bit long so feel free to split it into two and read this part tomorrow. You can also read it now if you’re a greedy prick.
I use Social Media a lot.
Mostly for entertainment, but also to promote some stuff.
However, since getting the idea for this blog about three days ago, I started monitoring my own consumption, as well as some of the people I know personally.
I found a pattern that was consistent throughout. I won’t mention the names of my test subjects, but I will take the cues from my own utilization mostly.
Liam Gallagher calls Twitter ‘The playground of the idiots’, and this could not be closer to the truth.
Having only 140 characters, much of the commentary there lacks any kind of nuance. I use Twitter often, but only to discuss politics. It’s a bit of a weird one.
It is obvious to everyone who knows me or reads my stuff, that I have left leanings in my political agenda, but on Twitter I was almost a Marxist. If I go back to my activity from 2014, when I was so vehemently campaigning for a free Palestine, I could easily be mistaken for a member of Hamas.
And Twitter is dangerous also. Those Tweets can be held against you at some point of your life. Look at what happened to Kevin Hart. He tweeted some homophobic shit years ago and that caused him to miss out on some work now.
I believe that Trump’s tweets are official US documents as well?
For me Twitter is a place where I try to portray myself as someone that is witty and well informed, when in fact I just read articles that already existed. My writing of fiction is something I keep off Twitter as that platform is not the place to share creativity. I don’t have anyone I know personally on my Twitter.
Facebook is another strange one.
Unlike Twitter you might have your family on there, so you try to portray an image of the person you wish your real self to be.
This is where you share your birthdays or your kids or maybe your graduation. Don’t get me wrong, there are groups you can join on Facebook which has a cloud of anonymity so it is a bit like Twitter. But the general Facebook and analytics still apply to these groups, so you still can’t be a complete twat like on Twitter.
To be honest I do try to be as authentic as I can when using Facebook, but without any context, it is almost impossible to do so as most of my friends on Facey I know in real life.
I enjoy Twitter and Facebook for what they are. They are word based platforms and I thrive in an environment where writing is the main source of communication. I find it vain to just plainly post a picture or share a story without trying to give it a funny or controversial caption.
I tend to do the same thing in social environments as I absolutely love banter, and humour and controversy makes for talking points.
I have no experience with TikTok. I see my kids use it though.
After watching them watch those repetitive videos and laughing it up, I’ve come to realize that I may be too old to understand it.
I won’t dismiss it completely for the sake of not being the ‘Get off my lawn’ type, but I will weigh in on one thing, bearing in mind that it is only my opinion.
When I see an adult using TikTok, it reminds me of when I was younger and an old dude would walk into the nightclub. The pure awkwardness of the guy, plus his attempts to fit in with the youth was cringeworthy.
I recommend that if you are over 25 or even 20, please don’t use TikTok. You look fucking ridiculous.
Then we get into the picture based stuff like Instagram.
I have an Instagram.
This one is the literal interpretation of your ideal self. If you jumped onto my Instagram now, you will think that I ride posh motorbikes every day. You would think that I am the best MC mechanic out there and that I have these mad adventures every weekend.
This is 100% bullshit. I take a decent ride about once every two or three months and my bikes are falling apart due to my gross incompetence as a mechanic. This is only a persona I want to portray and it is definitely deliberate.
We only put our good stuff on Instagram and sometimes I feel sorry for people who don’t do things that are Instaworthy.
I do things that give me personal meaning, and riding bikes is one of them. But what if someone gets the same amount of meaning from arranging their sock drawer for example?
You can’t really post that on Instagram ‘Look at how I arranged my drawer. I’ve placed all my mauve socks in a nice row you pricks #socklife’ is not really going to work.
Instagram is not real, please don’t place any of your self worth in it.
Then we have the most corrupt one of all, LinkedIn.
Oh what a shithole thing that is. Since losing my regular job due to the Goblin of Strange and Uncertain Times, I was forced to use this career based platform. I won’t use it anymore.
I write fiction, but fuck me, you find some fiction on that thing.
Your job might have been cleaning up the spunk from hotel curtains, but on LinkedIn, you sound like you ran the hotel.
Even my profile was embellished while I was looking for work, I’ve never felt so disingenuous in my life, and if you use it too, I’m sure you feel that same. You have to.
So in conclusion, social media isn’t a bad thing and quite often people will say that it depends on how you use it. But unfortunately it’s more about the consumption rather than your usage.
Don’t be fooled by the posh pictures, as it is only a highlight reel.
Don’t be fooled by pseudo intellectuals like me also, my only skill is that I know where to find the information I need rather than having it at hand. I’m ace with online banter, but in real life, I could never be that sharp.
Social Media fills a gap, it really does give many people the human interaction that they otherwise would not get. I have met some class people online, people I would probably not get on with in real life. Both parties know this.
Have you ever met a person you met on Facebook in real life? It’s horrible.
The key is to be smart and aware enough so that you don’t invest too much emotion when playing around online. The internet is still new and we haven’t learned all the rules yet.
Ok that’s it for this blog.
Be kind to each other in the real world and online.
Go fuck yourselves.
See you all next week.
Rub a dog.
