Questions of Value

6 minutes

I just finished making Issue #004 of my zine for paid supporters this week.

I’ll post the announcement post next week once I’ve cut and glued them all up.

I was ideally keeping my hands busy cutting and folding, on a catch up zoom with a creator this week over zoom. I was basically re-iterating my commitment and thesis about ‘creating things’:

I’m starting a physical zine, a physical newsletter, in 2022 because I belive thats where I belive real value is.

As our culture moves / trends towards ever greater levels of abstraction, making and sending real things to real people is the way forward.

We circled around this question of value for quite some time. Some of our discussion about audience and ‘what to make’ made its way into this week’s episode of the podcast (see below). The last line is the most important line. “Make art for you, and maybe others will like it too.”

I really enjoy making the zine for people. It brings me a great deal of pleasure. I hope people receiving them in the post enjoy them too.

Knowing that you’re making a ‘thing’ for a tiny but engaged audience is very different from making a podcast, or writing for the blog. Making the zine reminds me of being a teenager – in the best of ways. The idea that you can write whatever the hell you want, photocopy it and then hand it out/sell it for 20p never ceases to amaze me.

“Social media” is a catch all term that in 2022 often gets applied to web2 social networks. But blogs and newsletter are part of the social media ecosystem to (as per the dictionary). In my head, having a blog is like having a zine. Only its not printed out.

On the same call we were talking about this ‘punk rock’ attitude to creating and posting online. They told me my decision to start blogging again back in 2018 has more or less born out. *Focus on the blog and give up on playing the Twitter leaderboard* now seems prescient given the collapse of Twitter as a social hub.

“I suppose” I said. 5 years is a long time on the Internet, and a long time in real life.

I wonder how many zines I’m going to make. The better question the person I was speaking to, was how many subscribers do you want? Given that I’m going to be launch a new podcast soon which is (hopefully) going to reach a much bigger audience. When that happens I’ll need to have some where to point them too. Given that I’m leaving my on the table not having a patreon maybe I should reconsider. I should also (apparently) be more assertive in asking people to subscribe in my 301 episodes throughout the year.

As we were circling the question of ‘value’ – given that I’ve coached creators (including them) I was told – I need to get better at doing the ask – especially considering the economic climate.

Should I set up a better subscription/subscriber workflow with woocommerce on thejaymo.net? would this work if I have a new podcast, asking people to head to thejaymo.net? Should I cave and get a Patreon? Substack?

What do you think? comment below.

Maybe subscribe if you feel like?


Permanently Moved

The Internet Means Send AND Receive

Here’s my hot take: If you only download, only consume the Internet and never upload. You’re doing it wrong.

Photo 365

299/365

The Ministry Of My Own Labour

  • I was on a Twitter space talking worldrunning and worlds with the team behind the indie movie the Fringe.
  • Recorded another interview for my new podcast. Super cool guest!
  • Finished writing up a thing about BAYC I’ve been trying to grind on for literally months
  • Had a cool Idea for writing up my ‘The Web was a Side Quest’ talk
  • Expert Interview/ed about web3 ‘stuff’
  • Been working on a personal writing project that will never see the light of day but important for ‘my archives’
  • Bands EP went off for mastering.

Terminal Access

Over on Utopian Drivel (for $ubscribers) Huw Lemmey wrote about his pre-pandemic visit to Dimes Square and muses on the nature of relationships in the digital age.

Aaron Bastani wrote and interesting piece called No, Younger People Aren’t Always More Progressive

Matt Webb made a super cool ‘Map‘ of everything he’s written on Interconneced.org about the multiplayer web.

Dipping the Stacks

Acronym’s cyberpunk techwear has inspired numerous video games – Polygon

“And there’s a person looking at a robot and avoiding all of that other stuff just being like, ‘Wow, cool future.’ It’s exactly that kind of thing, but the fashion equivalent.”

Finding answers to difficult questions

What I’m circling in general is that, on the internet, there is a dearth of beginner content about advanced topics.

Opinion | The Big Sleep – The New York Times

Mass dormancy was practiced in other chilly parts. In 1900, The British Medical Journal reported that peasants of the Pskov region in northwestern Russia “adopt the economical expedient” of spending one-half of the year in sleep

Human hibernation is possible and could boost longevity | New Scientist

hibernation also has the power to combat conditions that plague modern humans, including Alzheimer’s disease, stroke and heart attack.

Churn. Our leaders are too old | by Scott Galloway | Oct, 2022 | Medium

A more physically and mentally robust leadership. A representative democracy that’s better able to shape policies that stanch the record transfer of wealth from young to old. New people, new ideas. Churn.

Reading

I finished reading Stephen Kings On Writing. A real moment for me I can now tell people that I’ve read a Stephen King book LOL.

I finished The Killing Ground by Graham McNeill. The back 3rd of the book clips along at a great pace. I still maintain this book feels like a novella that got turned into a novel. So many weird motivations/one dimensional characters.

Adam over at Heed Not The Rolling Wave blog recently posted that he was working though a workbook called Mastering Your Adult ADHD in his weeknotes. I was curious so grabbed it. I red the whole thing this week. I don’t have ADHD, but I DO think this book is useful for anyone who’s attention span has been shredded by social media. I persaonlly found the section on anti procrastination strategies the most useful. A great deal of the practical information for Adults with ADHD it seems could be summed up as ‘read and implement GTD’

Music

thejaymo.net Spotify Playlist

Remember That You Will Die – Polyphia

I finally broke down and listened to Polyphia. I’m only like… 10 years late or something.

Honestly when anyone says the words ‘Instrumental Prog-Metal’ to me I’d rather lay on the floor than give it a listen. But my friend said ‘Instrumental-prog-rock-flamenco-electronica’ and I said OK.

It’s really not for me to be honest. I can see why millions of teenage guitarists on you tube are going ape over this tho.

Reply in the comments if this is your thing?

Remember Kids:

Further to last weeks meme, Google served up this suggestion the other day. Seems a bit unfair on Warren tbh. He would never buy Twitter.. He was a google reader man surely?

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