Masked criminals are roving the streets of American cities, menacing the public and destroying private property. They’re kidnapping whole families, trafficking children across State lines and out of the country. They’re even murdering citizens in broad daylight.

I want to talk about something they’re doing that you might not have heard about, but physical safety is priority one.

Avoid them if you can and create as much distance as possible. Lock yourself inside, and if they come knocking, remember that — citizen or not — you don’t have to answer the door or let them in without a warrant for your name or the specific address that’s been signed by a judge.

Here’s a more expanded rundown of what to if they come to your area.

But unlike vampires, these leeches don’t always play by the rules, so in my opinion the WIRED write-up doesn’t go far enough — there’s never been a better time to learn your Constitutional rights and know that if masked men who refuse to identify themselves or show a warrant start breaking down your door (a violation of the Fourth Amendment), you are in very real physical danger and you have every right to defend yourself by any means necessary (you already know which amendment that is).

I’m not going to tell you to stay calm (because you should not be calm), but what I’ve just described is the worst case scenario. Most of us aren’t going to be directly targeted in this way. But even if we don’t all find ourselves threatened by immediate violence, we’re all still at risk of constant surveillance.

Tinfoil Is In Fashion This Season

The criminals in question have been using sophisticated surveillance technology for years, not just on their targets but on everyday law abiding folks like you and me. And it’s only gotten worse as they’ve started to patrol and spy on entire neighborhoods.

One of the more well-known devices is the StingRay system (represented in the image at the beginning) which intercepts cellular activity on its way to the network tower. They aren’t able to see everything you’re doing on your phone, but it’s still far more than they have any right to — location and metadata are most commonly captured, but in some cases they can even get the contents of unencrypted calls & texts, even web activity.

You can read more about this particular kind of “man-in-the-middle” attack here.

Luckily, it’s fairly easy and painless to defeat: turn off your phone’s cellular data when you’re not using it.

Oddly, the professionals talking about these issues in some of the sources I’ve linked seem to skip this one simple way you can avoid being spied on with this tech. Putting your phone on airplane mode has been a best practice when attending protests for over a decade. Now, whether you’re genuinely concerned for your privacy or just want to give these wannabe Gestapo as many 🖕 as possible, it’s become necessary at home too.

As long as you’re on Wi-Fi and your phone allows for Wi-Fi calling, turning off your cellular data will not affect the way you use your phone or inconvenience you in any way. It will not affect your phone plan. You will still receive calls and texts as normal, just using your home internet (which is still mostly secure, for now) instead of your 5G/4G access.

"But Darren, what if I go out and need to use my phone but I don’t remember to turn it back off when I get home? I don’t want to have to change a bunch of settings every time I leave and come home.”

Don’t worry, turning it on and off is fast and easy no matter what kind of phone you have, and if you have an iPhone you can even automate it in less than five minutes so that you don’t even have to think about it in the future.

iPhone

You can always turn Cellular Data on or off manually form your iPhone’s Control Panel. Swipe down from the top right corner of your screen and you’ll find it there, near the Wi-Fi, AirDrop, Bluetooth, and Airplane Mode options.

To make sure turning Cellular Data off doesn’t affect your ability to make and receive calls and texts, make sure Wi-Fi Calling is on. You’ll find this in Settings>Apps>Phone. Scroll down and make sure it’s toggled on.

You may have to set up an emergency address when you first turn it on, so that EMS/first responders know where to go if you ever dial 911 while your cellular data is turned off.

Next, let’s automate the process of turning cellular data off whenever you come home using the Shortcuts app that came preinstalled on your phone (if you deleted it at some point, redownload it from the App Store).

1. In the app, tap “Automation” in the menu at the bottom.

2. Hit the “+” in the top right.

3. Select “Arrive.”1

4. You’ll have to allow Shortcuts to access your location data.2 Tap “Allow Once” so that it can access your location even when the app is closed.

5. Input your address.

6. After inputting your address, you’ll see a map where you’ll have the option to widen or narrow the radius around your home (this is often called a geofence). Once you’ve set your radius, hit the checkmark in the top right corner.

   1. Make it smaller if you don’t want to potentially drop calls as you’re driving home from work or don't want your music to cut out as you drive out of Wi-Fi range when you leave.

7. Keep “Any Time” selected in the second box, then choose “Run Immediately” in the third box. Hit “Next” in the top right corner.

8. Select “Create New Shortcut.”

9. Type “Cell” in the bar that says “Search Actions.” Choose “Set Cellular Data.”

10. You will be taken to a screen with a box that says “Turn Cellular Data On” — both “Turn” and “On” will be blue. Tap “On” to change it to “Off.”

11. Tap the blue check and you’re done!

If you wish, you can also automate the process of turning it on when you leave home by creating a second automation but choosing “Leave” instead of “Arrive” in step 3 and “On” instead of “Off” in step 10.

Android

Your connection to your mobile network is easy to disable on Android devices as well… though after consulting with my local expert on Google’s mobile operating system, it turns out there’s no simple way to automate the process as there is on iOS.3

Nevertheless, turning “Mobile Data” (as Android calls it) on and off on Android is just as simple as doing so via the Control Panel on iPhone: swipe down from the top of your phone screen to open your notifications.

We’ll be looking at the options that appear at the top:

If “Mobile data” doesn’t appear here for you (it’s the little up and down arrows on this version of Android), try swiping down on the little bar to access more options. Just be sure to leave Wi-Fi on, of course.

As with the iPhone instructions, you’ll also want to make sure Wi-Fi calling is enabled. Research indicates that this may vary a bit from one phone manufacturer to another (Samsung vs Nothing, for example), but can generally be found in the vicinity of Settings>Connections>More>Wi-Fi calling.

Obviously, you can’t keep your cellular data off all the time. But keeping it turned off while you’re at home where you can stay connected to Wi-Fi protects your data while you’re in the place where you spend most of your time, and that counts for something.

Consider repeating the process for trusted friends’ houses or anywhere you have a reliable internet connection.4

Following these instructions won’t stop them from tracking people of specific interest (they have other methods) but it will stop at least one method of un-Constitutional snooping and preserve your data privacy while you’re in places of relative safety.

If you’re at higher risk of being targeted, considering learning more about how to avoid being tracked from organizations like the EFF or start using a burner phone.

If this little act of technological defiance feels good, there’s more where that came from and more to come.

These goons were just a couple miles south of my house a few days ago. While things haven’t gotten as out of hand in Columbus as they have in Minneapolis or some of the other places you hear about online, I expect things to get worse before they get better — and feel it’s our duty to resist in any little way we can, even if it’s a simple cell phone trick to deny them some intel.

Based on the last few posts and the next couple I have planned, this blog has accidentally turned into a tech-focused dissent rag, but that’s just a natural intersection of two of my key interests and main focus this last year for obvious reasons. There’s more coming (the next one may even take a slightly more hopeful look at our relationship with technology!) and I will eventually touch on other topics and I hope someone will find them interesting. I’ll be writing them either way.

Until then, thank you for reading. Stay safe out there!

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Special thanks to Grant for advising on the Android section and for checking over this hasty writeup on such short notice — check out his Substack for a nuanced analysis of how we got into this mess as a nation.

*It’s already been two years since the Will Smith-Chris Rock incident. Simpler times.

In my last post I attempted to pull back the curtain on mainstream social media, detailing how even the simple act of scrolling your feeds—at scale, with millions of users engaging in the same behavior—enriches the billionaire class through exposure-based advertising that gets them paid whether you buy anything or not.

In short: platforms have designed their apps to be addicting little dopamine traps that keep you coming back so that they can serve you more ads and add extra zeroes to their bottom lines—a diabolic siphoning of precious hours from each of the remaining days of your life for the sake of profit, some of which is then funneled into funding for the fascist regime we find ourselves living under. If you check social media as soon as you wake up, or you’ve ever found yourself closing an app and then immediately reopening it moments later, it’s working. And the fact that oligarchs like Zuck and Musk continue to get richer and have so much sway in politics shows that you’re not alone in your predicament.

My hope was to elucidate the business model and reveal that rather than memes and pictures of your grandma, YOU are the true product in the attention economy as your awareness is sold over and over again to the highest bidder among hordes of unknown companies in the most eldritch of all capitalist marketplaces.

But the post got a little out of hand. Parts of this one were originally cut from that one (I’m still calling this “part two” in my head), I constantly felt like I needed to somehow reel in the scope while also adding more details, and I’m still struggling with why I feel I’m the one who should be telling you these things in the first place.

But hey, things are weird right now and I’m still trying to get used to posting anything online again. Anywayyyy…

The bottom line is that the only solution—the only ethical thing to do regarding mainstream social media in the current political landscape—is to delete your accounts, uninstall the apps, and encourage others to do the same.

Getting off social media is a good start, the #1 thing on this expanded to-do list (hence the first post dedicated almost solely to that), but unfortunately it isn’t enough.

In an online world, whether you’re on social media or not, virtually any interaction you have with connected technology generates some kind of information that can later be used to profile you/profit off you in some way. And with the advent of so-called “AI,” it’s only getting worse.

Data is currency to these people, and if you share my goals of stickin’ it to the man, we have a duty to deny them every penny.

Prior to the internet, being under the level of surveillance most of us are subjected to online meant you’d caught the attention of a federal agency. Today, corporations like Alphabet and Meta and other advertising conglomerates know more about you—what your kids like for breakfast, your daily routine and whereabouts, even your porn habits and who you’re sleeping with—than the CIA or FBI ever bothered to know about MLK or JFK or KFC.

Luckily there are a few things we can do about it, so in this post I’d like to turn our attention away from the For You page and instead talk about some easy, actionable ways you can shore up your privacy on the rest of the internet.

Now more than ever, we can’t count on robust privacy legislation to protect ourselves—it’s not coming from this administration. We have to take things into our own hands.

The Owls Are Not What They Seem

First, a basic explanation of how they collect this data— and no, they’re not listening through your phone or reading your texts1, the truth is more boring than that.

Not to victim blame, but some data you’ve supplied yourself: filling out your Facebook profile back in ‘09; decades of liking memes, commenting on relatives’ political rants, posting your meals; by the pages you follow, and even by the other apps you have on your phone (be careful which permissions you grant to apps you install). All of this equates to easily compiled data that reveals a lot about your beliefs, interests, opinions, habits, and who you associate with… and even if you delete your accounts, they will retain this data and sell it to others who will attempt to use it to reach you in other channels.

Profile pictures can be big, and there are even third-party agencies now that run facial recognition software on advertisers’ segments to predict (with quite some accuracy) demographics about someone that they might not normally post outright, such as actual age (I don’t know about you, but my Facebook says I was born in 1900), race, sometimes even sexual orientation or social status.2

Location data is another important one; allowing apps to have your location just so you can have place names on a filter is the digital privacy version of selling the family cow for magic beans.

But another way they collect data that you’re not directly in control of is by looking at more technical things you might not have thought they could see, or cared to cover up. Most websites create a profile of every person who visits their website, based on their device’s IP address (which is kind of like your device’s license plate number as you drive through the web).

Some websites will now try to pay third-party data brokers to cross-reference these IP addresses with data collected elsewhere (like other webstores where you’ve purchased something, meaning they have both your IP address AND your name, email address, etc) so they can market to you without your consent (now considered a spam practice, but it’s been done).3

They can see more than that though—the type of device you’re visiting on (desktop, tablet, phone), its operating system (Windows, Android, macOS, iOS, Linux), whether you’re in an app or browser (and which browser, and which add-ons/extensions you’re using), and more. More data points that can be used to build a profile on you.

Though they’re finally starting to go the way of the dodo, it’s very common for websites to attach cookies to your device. Some of these do nothing more than improve your quality of life (remember your settings from your last visit, or keep you signed in) while others report back to their creators on other things, what other websites you’ve been visiting. This is one of the ways Facebook is able to show you ads from L.L.Bean after you’ve been shopping for dorky-looking boots.

You can thank our European cousins’ GDPR for all of those cookie banners, by the way—they may be annoying, but they’re there to make you aware of how the site you’re visiting wants to track you. Always think twice before clicking “accept all!”

A lot of this is done on the backend of a website’s hosting platform, and even consumer-grade website hosting services like Wordpress and Squarespace will collect web traffic data. Hell, Substack tells me how many people have read a post, where my audience is from, when and how you’re reading this post, and more (all fairly innocuous, I will only use it to exploit you a little).

Most major online advertising channels also have plug-ins that companies install on their websites that allow them to easily aggregate visitor data and funnel it to their ad platform for use in segmentation. With tools like Google Analytics, a company can see that you’ve been searching for cars and target you with ads the next time you’re watching YouTube. Combine interest-based data points with certain other demographics, factor in repeated exposure/time, and suddenly you’ve blacked out only to wake up in a Mazda dealership (but maybe that’s just me).

Most of the time this data is semi-anonymous when it’s collected, and it’s used in impersonal ways; there are almost never cases where a company specifically targets individual consumers personally. But that’s not the point! When these companies are actively lobbying to make our lives worse for their own gain, we shouldn’t want to allow them to benefit from us at all on principle.

And beyond the obvious invasion of privacy, tracking and tracing can get even more nefarious. I’ve really only talked about data collection for the purpose of marketing and advertising so far, but in the right hands (government, scammers, hackers), the aforementioned datapoints can be used to target you in much more personal ways.

Evading law enforcement goes beyond the scope of this post (and falls outside of my area of expertise, as cool as that would be), so instead we’re going to focus on how you can insulate yourself from these capitalist scum and do the bare minimum to protect yourself from other low-level ill-wishers on the web.

Once More Unto The Breach, Dear Friends, Once More

Growing up in the 90s and 00s, we were told to be careful on the internet. “Don’t share your information, because people could use it to hurt you.” It was advice given to dodge creepers who traded in their white vans for chunky Gateway computers, but it’s still applicable today.4

Things have changed, but the average citizen doesn’t need to go full dark to minimize their digital footprint and reduce the amount of data that can be scraped about them online. There are other ways to minimize your exposure without inconveniencing yourself.

My Dead Horse

Again, with feeling: getting off social media in the single best thing you can do. It’s the most direct way that they can reach you and pump you for profit, and the most direct way your everyday actions are funding the oligarchs’ power.

And besides the data privacy thing, a great analogy I’ve heard going around lately is this: "If a bar lets Nazis in, it’s a Nazi bar. Why are you hanging out in a Nazi bar?"

The same applies to social media. If a platform (like Twitter) allows and even celebrates fascists (it’s owned by one), it’s no different from posting in a KKK forum or your local Proud Boys chapter Discord.

Stop hanging out in Nazi bars.

Use A Better Browser

If you’re not already, you should be using a better browser and definitely some kind of ad blocker.

I’ve already gotten too technical in my explanations above, so I’m going to streamline this part to keep it simple: we know that Google (Alphabet) is one of the most aggressive advertisers, so we can assume that Chrome has been compromised. It’s widely regarded in privacy-conscious circles that any Chromium-based browser (which is most of them) can potentially leak data to them.5

Your best options right now are Safari on Apple devices and Firefox on Windows or Android machines.

I am primarily an Apple guy, so let’s talk Safari first. As a browser, Safari has quite a few privacy functions baked in and does a fair job of blocking most tracking attempts with no extra add-ons required.

It even sums its work up in a Privacy Report; here’s my last 30 days’ browsing on just one device(!):

Here’s a rundown of the privacy settings available in Safari. They’re pretty straightforward. If you switched to another browser at some point, you can import your bookmarks back into Safari and start using it within minutes.

Firefox has long been an underdog to Chrome, but works differently on the backend in ways that better protect user privacy. It’s run by a non-profit (Mozilla) so there’s no profit incentive to their services, and though they’ve recently gotten into hot water with the privacy-obsessed crowd for some terms of service technicalities, they’re still one of the best, most accessible options for everyday users on Android or Windows. I still use a version of Firefox on my old PC.

You can read more about Firefox’s privacy options here.

You can also bolster your web browser’s protections with a robust ad-blocker. AdGuard is great on Safari (it’s an extension on macOS, or its own app on iOS/iPadOS), and UBlock Origin is the best option on Firefox (it’s so good that that Chrome no longer allows it because it was cutting into their YouTube profits). There’s not much setup to do on either one, just install it and let it work its magic.

Buffy Got Us Into This Mess

The next best change you can make is to change the way you use the web a little.

For my part, I haven’t used Google’s search engine in months.6 They’ve fallen so far from their “don’t be evil” roots, and the ads, AI, and general bloat they’ve added to their previously clean interface is atrocious.

Instead, I switched to Ecosia last year—a carbon-negative, non-profit search engine based in Germany who uses their meager ad dollars to plant trees and reforest places like the Amazon7—and haven’t looked back. They run a similar search algorithm as Bing and they’re working on their own thing to further distance themselves from the other search engines.

So far they’ve planted over 228M trees, and you can set them as your default search engine on Safari (they have an extension on Firefox too).

DuckDuckGo’s search engine is widely considered one of the most private (and one of the default options in both Safari and Firefox), but as a certified tree-hugger I’m willing to get the occasional search ad from Ecosia in the name of fighting climate change.

Anything is better than Google.

And Another Thing!

Deleting social media, using a better search engine, choosing a privacy-respecting browser that keeps trackers off your tail, and blocking as many ads as possible is already more than a surprising number of people online are doing. Pat yourself on the back.

But you can always go a little further to protect yourself and your data.

This write-up was never intended to be that advanced, just a nudge in the right direction for people less paranoid than I am (and something I can point to when I inevitably have this conversation over and over again in person), but here are a few more things you can do that either don’t necessarily warrant their own paragraphs OR need more explanation than I’m able to give here.

In no particular order:

• If you’re on iPhone, enable RCS messaging and never send an SMS again if you can avoid it. Blue-bubble conversations are end-to-end encrypted and RCS will soon be encrypted as well, so you can safely chat up your Android friends without third-party apps (no shade to Signal, still a great option). Ditch WhatsApp completely.

• Turn off telemetry and analytics (usually an option in settings, but exact location depends on your device). The manufacturer of your device doesn’t really need anonymized data from you, and there’s always a chance it could be more identifying than we think. Better safe than sorry.

• Break up with Alexa. Starting last week, Amazon Echo devices no longer offer the option to keep your voice requests private. That means that everything you say can and will be used against you in a market of capital.

• Lobotomize your smart TV; i.e. don’t let it connect to your internet. They send an enormous amount of data back to their manufacturers (incredibly disturbing on newer models with cameras), and most of them are just billboards in your living room with all that bloat on their home screens. Use another device instead—a game console, an Apple TV, even a Chromecast (if you must).

• Disable the built-in GPS in your car and minimize its connectivity. Some auto manufacturers are now selling drivers’ location data, and while using GPS always means that someone is getting your location, the one on your phone is probably better anyway (and you have more control over its privacy settings).

• Limit the number of smart devices connected to your Wi-Fi in general (especially the cheap no-name ones you bought on Amazon). These are often not built to withstand outside connection attempts and are an easy target for hackers who might want access your network (unlikely, but hey).

• I mentioned this briefly in my last post, but if you’re a fellow Apple user, get at least the base-level iCloud plan so that you can use Private Relay. And make sure to turn on Advanced Data Protection while you’re at it.

• Get a reputable VPN and use it whenever you’re connected to public Wi-Fi. The only viable free option that I’ll recommend is the base tier of Proton VPN. Beyond that, AdGuard has their own (as does Firefox), and NordVPN is still a good option. Importantly, none of these are based in the US.

• Set up a good DNS on your home network/router. AdGuard has one that can block ads and malicious websites for any device on your Wi-Fi (an extra layer of protection on top of your others discussed earlier), whereas Quad9 (benefitting from robust Swiss privacy laws) is probably the best option for privacy and security (but no ad blocking).8

• Turn off biometric sign-in on your devices (unfortunately, this includes FaceID on your iPhone). Your face and fingerprints are not protected under the 5th Amendment, and you can be compelled to open your devices with them.

• I’m not sure if it will help, but you can blur your house on Google Maps (which I don’t use anymore, because Google). We did it because we have at least one stalker and would like them to be as ill-prepared to invade us as possible, which includes cutting off one potential way they could see the layout of our place and/or case it from afar.

• Don’t use gen-AI. Aside from the obvious issues around plagiarism, their impact on the environment, and the shoddiness of their results, anything you put into them will stay on their creators’ servers in perpetuity. It’s absolutely wild that some companies are blindly having their employees hand over proprietary information to other companies like OpenAI just to get an intern-level response.

• Pay with cash when possible (especially at small businesses, so they pay fewer transaction fees), but instead of using your credit cards directly at the grocery store or gas pump, add them to a digital wallet (Apple Wallet, etc). Every tap-to-pay transaction gets its own unique, disposable number, making it much harder for your card information to be stolen.

• And fuck it, go ahead and get on the Do Not Call list while you’re at it. Write to your senator and tell them to ban billboards. Call the White House and tell Elon to [REDACTED].

Some of these are pretty basic while others are real tin-foil hat shit. Take whatever you feel might be useful to you and do whatever is comfortable/you have time for.

If this kind of thing is really tickling your brain, you might want to check out Surveillance Self Defense or PrivacyGuides.org for more—maybe you’ll find something in this vein that I wasn’t aware of when I made this list (please let me know if you do!).

Now what?

Without going offline and living a totally analog life (tempting, but impractical), there’s really no way to fully insulate yourself from today’s normalized privacy invasions. But with a little setup, you can make yourself a much tougher target and a less valuable mark.

What does this amount to in the greater fight against the tide of fascism in United States and the centuries-long ravages of capitalism? Very, very little.

But it’s something you can do now, at home, without spending money, and without facing a possible death sentence in a protracted legal fight with prosecutors from the Department of “Justice.”

I don’t know the path forward that will lead us out of all this. I’m not even sure there is one. Some defeats are final, and things are looking bad, but as long as we’re fighting it can’t be over. Whether it’s petty actions like these, continuing to show up at the ballot box, or taking to the streets, it’s up to each of us to find our place in this struggle and push however we can.

If I’ve convinced just a few of you to do just a few of these things, I’ll count that as a small win on my part. And I hope you’ll spread the word to get more to do the same.

Resist, persist, and do not desist!

D.

On A Personal Note

This isn’t very privacy-focused of me, but I hope you’ll allow me to spill my beans for a moment (I’ve said from the beginning that these posts would have some element of “diary” to them).

While I feel that the nature of my work gives me a somewhat unique perspective on topics of social media, data privacy, advertising, etc, and that this post and my last one are important on some level, they’re not really what I want to be writing right now.

I’ve almost felt like I’ve been forced to write them, born out of an awareness that most of my readers right now are people I know and care about in real life, and a belief that some of things I know may help you avoid falling prey to the fuckers ruining our country.

But I do need a little break from these kinds of posts. I know I’m not alone in the deterioration mental health I’ve experienced these last few months, and a little therapeutic escapism might be just the thing. So rather than another protest post, I’m going to work on a couple of short stories I’ve had kicking around in my head and preparations for my next D&D TTRPG campaign.

I’m not sure when or what my next post here will be, but there will be more—and I’m thankful to the few of you who’ve been listening to me yap. I hope you’ve gotten something useful out of these, and I’d be happy to continue the conversation here on Substack or offline.

Until the next one!

We’re now one month into what has been, predictably, a shitshow.

In that time, among many, many things (see Ezra Klein’s explanation of “muzzle-velocity” news overload): Musk kicked things off by going full mask-off fascist (above), they’re starting a new concentration camp at GitMo, Zuck has eaten no less than three babies,1 and earlier this week Trump referred to himself as a king (the tweet was one thing, but check out this executive order if you think he’s joking).

I’ve been fuming (as any reasonable person should be), but I’ve also been busy trying to find ways that I can actually do something and there’s one thing in particular that I hope you’ll join me in.

The Pitch

Social media has been a pox on humanity from Facebook’s first “poke,” but it’s only gotten worse.

For years, the would-be oligarchs behind the major apps have monetized our attention and turned our time into the very dollars and cents they’re now using to fund those in power and profit off of running the country into the ground.

Their platforms promised to connect us and bring us closer together, but we’ve never been further apart. After decades of unpunished data leaks, unchecked misinformation campaigns, and endless propaganda that ultimately led to a plurality vote in favor of a regime designed to strip away our rights and freedoms, there’s really only one solution.

It’s time to get off of mainstream social media.

By now, you’ve probably heard this sentiment from all over… and you’ve probably said, “yeah, I’ll get around to it.”

Maybe you think it’s a hassle. Maybe you actually like what you’re seeing. Maybe you worry you’ll lose touch with your friends, or miss out on news from home or the rest of the world. Maybe you think one person being on or off their apps doesn’t make a difference (how many millions of people think so?).

Whatever your reason for delaying, whatever resistance you’re feeling, whatever’s keeping you from getting rid of it all is by design. Their design.

Social media is intentionally designed to be addictive, and leaving doesn’t have to mean missing out on anything (I’ll present some alternatives below). And while getting off the apps is good for your mental health and a nice form of virtue signaling given everything going on lately, there’s a much more concrete and nefarious reason they want to keep you on their platforms — and it’s the reason why getting off the apps as soon as possible will maximize your impact in doing so.

The Truth

I’ve worked in marketing long enough now to see how the sausage is made, and it’s no good.

You see, you may not realize this but the social media apps you’re checking every day aren’t for you, and they never really were.

They’re for me.

…

Okay — not exactly true but I wanted to feel like an evil villain for a moment.

What I actually mean is that they’re designed to keep you hooked for the sake of people like me working for companies like mine that want to sell you shit. For about two decades, social media’s promise of keeping you entertained and connected with the people you care about has played second fiddle to a profit-driven ad machine the likes of which hasn’t been seen since the advent of network television.

With the exception of legacy brands who can afford Super Bowl spots and double page spreads in Vogue, social media ad spend sometimes accounts for as much as 75%+ of a company’s marketing budget.2 It is the single most effective way to target any given audience in any market, period. The level of granular data available to companies to build segments is, to put it in industry terms, fucking bonkers.3

“But Darren, I’m no boomer, I’ve never bought anything from a social media ad!”

Well, good for you. But. So. Many. People. Do.

Not to mention indirect sales, like when your favorite “content creator” (read: influencer) talks up their favorite… whatever, or from awareness ads that might take a few days to take effect (the kind meant to remind you of a thing, not to directly sell it to you — like a Whopper ad), or even well-crafted content marketing (Criterion’s closet videos have been getting me good lately).

I wish I could say “just don’t buy anything you see on social media!” and be done with it. Pack it in, we’ve defeated the billionaires!

But unfortunately, everything I just said is just the tip of the iceberg — it’s not the whole truth.

It turns out, it doesn’t actually matter whether you’ve ever bought anything from a social media ad or not. Social media isn’t really for companies like mine either.

It’s for them.

Even though it’s free and you never actually pay money to be on social media, the ones running the show profit off of your presence there, whether you’re organizing protests or just sharing memes. There’s money to be made on social media, whether you buy something or not… because someone is buying. A sucker is born every minute, and as long as social media advertising remains profitable, companies will continue to participate in it.

And if it weren’t, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.

At scale, most of the money made on social media is going to the top. A small to medium sized company like the one I work for can make millions by advertising their products or services to relevant audiences… but when thousands of companies are doing exactly that, billions of dollars are going to the company that owns that advertising channel (Meta, X, Google, etc).

The reason for this is that the way most social media ads work is based on impressions — that’s how many people actually see an ad.

Advertisers define their audience based on demographics (for example, a company like Stanley might choose to target women, aged 25-50, living in the United States), set a budget cap, then start running their campaign and pay the channel they’re running on whether prospects buy or not.

There are other types of campaigns based on conversions, but for many brands it’s a numbers game — more impressions usually mean more clicks which usually means more conversions. As long as they maintain a positive CPA (cost per acquisition, for those taking notes), they will continue pumping dollars into this money making machine… and once again, the channel gets paid no matter what.

A disruptive, industry-redefining startup trying to make waves by bringing eco-conscious dog turds to market might not make a single sale from serving 10,000 ads in a day, but Musk or Zuckerberg can make a profit every time a user sees one of these top-of-funnel ads from WÜF or whatever the San Franciscans (it always seems to be SF) who started the company chose to call it.

Your attention is valuable. It’s a product of your time, the most valuable thing you have. Not only does being on social media cost you both time and attention, but even seeing an ad directly benefits the (likely fascist) owner of whatever app you’re on.

Getting off social media is the only way to fully deny the channel owners their ad dollars AND remove yourself as a potential target for future ad campaigns (meaning that not only does deleting your accounts and uninstalling the apps help you stop indirectly funding their lobbying and support for their puppet in Washington, but it’s also one of the most anticapitalist things you can do). Social media wasn’t always like this, and the smaller, more niche ones aren’t so bad (we’ll get to those later) — it’s the ones that have gotten big enough to support these kinds of ultra-invasive, ultra-capitalist, ultra-dystopian ad networks are the ones we have to worry about.

Bottom line, what’s important is this: they would be nothing without us, their users. We fuel the machine. If there’s no one to sell to, there’s no reason for companies to advertise. If companies stop advertising, the money stops flowing up. They’ve been profiting off of us for a long time — and if enough of us stop using them, it really will matter.

We the user base made them, we the people can break them.

So what now?

Time to get to work. Below are some steps I’ve personally taken that you can do too, and none of it takes that long to do.

I’m going to avoid going into the technicalities of how to delete your accounts (I have faith in you to figure that part out), but rather why getting rid of each will help.

I’ll also share some suggestions for what you can do instead to fill the void.

X-odus: Get Off Twitter RIGHT NOW

Delete your Twitter account, like, yesterday.

This was the first of mine to go. Musk is arguably the worst of all the puppet masters right now — he’s done so many heinous things in just the last month alone that I’m not even going to waste time explaining all the reasons why you shouldn’t be letting this man profit off of your smartphone screen space.

There’s really no excuse to still be on this dogshit Nazi-enabling platform. You have the option to download your data first, if you’d like to keep a record of your tweets, but this should be your first to go too, pronto.

If you like following people who read too deeply into New Yorker cartoons or sharing every random thought that pops into your head in short form text format, I highly recommend Bluesky instead. I’m there (anonymous for now) and it’s pretty good so far.

(Side note: I plan to do a full case-study into why the Twitter-to-X rebrand is an all-time L on my business-focused blog, Marketing At The End Of The World, sometime later on. I hope you’ll check it out.)

Meta, The Many Headed Hydra

I expect this one is going to be a little harder for my age demographic and older; some of us have been on Facebook for a majority of our lives and have made Instagram a key form of expression since early adulthood.

Rip them off like a band-aid.

If it weren’t for Musk’s recent antics, taken as a whole I’d be tempted to say that Zuckerberg is historically the worst of the social media moguls when it comes to profiting off of your data and attention — Facebook (now Meta) practically invented invasive online overreach.

I can tell you from experience, you really won’t miss scrolling though Facebook or Instagram as much as you think.

Chances are, you’re already in touch with the people you really care about from high school. You have your grandma’s phone number, and Craigslist is alive and well if you’re a fellow Marketplace fiend.

Exchange numbers with the people you really want to stay in contact with who aren’t in your immediate circle. Talk or text each other, like adults (and if you’re using WhatsApp to text like one of those Europeans I’ve been hearing so much about, it’s time to switch to Signal). Get on Nextdoor if you want a more local-based option for various groups or whatever.

Getting Away from Google

Another tough one if only because of how ubiquitous it’s become in our lives (wherein lies the problem). Google isn’t just a social media platform like the others, but it gets attention here because they practically invented targeted ads, and they’re one of the largest data mongers in the world.4 Also, their current CEO, Sundar Pichai, was right next to Musk at the inauguration.

Google’s motto used to be “Do no evil.” Now, they’re planning to start building AI-powered super weapons.

I will go into detail on my detestation for AI at a later date, but I think we can all agree that Google’s AI search results suck. I ditched their search tool in favor of Ecosia months ago — a Germany-based carbon-negative non-profit that uses their search ad revenue to plant trees in the Amazon and elsewhere around the world.

Google’s been getting naughty even before they went full SkyNet. It took me years to realize that when a service is free, I’m the product, and their tracking has only gotten more invasive ever since.

Take Google Maps for example — they sell your location data to advertisers (ask me how I know) and serve you ads within the Maps app and elsewhere for places and things you didn’t even search for. I use Apple Maps instead for now (it got me to California and Maine and back in 2022), and have minimized my usage of Google services as much as possible.5

Not to go full Apple fanboy (I don’t approve of many of their actions either, just their products) but I’ve found that iCloud Mail is a great alternative to Gmail, and the apps that came on my Mac (Pages, Numbers, etc) are actually better than Google Drive’s services.6 And with Apple’s Enhanced Data Protection, not even Apple can see my stuff. If you’re a privacy conscious Apple user, I highly suggest you look into it (whatever you do, just don’t lose your recovery key).

BONUS: More, If You Feel Up To It

I’m going a little off topic now because I’m done ranting about social media for the moment, but these are a few more things I’ve been doing and how they might help the situation we’re in.

You’re Probably Doing Email Wrong

You’re an adult, it’s time to treat this like your IRL mailbox — and it’s a great alternative for getting news now that you’re not on social media. Hell, you might even try dropping a friend a line (let’s be penpals).

Keeping your inbox clean and checking your email daily is a good habit to get into (there’s really no reason to be getting paper bills these days, and you really can’t afford to miss anything like that), but I’ve also found recently that signing up for a few short daily newsletters (I like Reuters One Essential Read and AP’s Afternoon Wire, to name two) is a great way to keep up with the times without overloading myself.

If you’re like some I know and have an inbox of 10K+, here’s what you do: start a new email on a secure service (iCloud or Proton are a couple favorites) then change your email with anyone who needs to reach you. Banks, electric companies, phone carriers, etc.

Then just delete your old email address (and all the spam and promotional fluff along with it).

If you’re dead set on keeping your current email, weed out the bloat over time by unsubscribing and bulk deleting based on search terms. Black Friday is a great opportunity each year to unsubscribe from unwanted marketing emails (I shouldn’t tell you that given my profession, but I am first and foremost a man of the people).

Soon you’ll be corresponding with old pals and getting your daily paper like a high-tech grandpa.7

Getting Your Shit Shopping Together

First and foremost, the ol’ principles of “reduce reuse recycle” apply here. Buy less, buy better, don’t buy as often, get second hand when you can (speaking for Columbus, there are so many good thrift options).

General consensus right now is that we’re boycotting most of the mega marts (with the exception of Costco, which is giving the middle finger to the administration on the matter of DEI). Buying local is generally a good thing, and if you’re shopping online, buying directly from people is great (eBay, Etsy, etc).

Obviously you should cancel Prime and minimize Amazon purchases, if you haven’t already (Bezos’s bald noggin was also there in the front row at Trump’s “it’s too cold outside” inauguration, and he’s been a known menace to society for years). I did this months ago, and I would have recommended Target as an alternative (they do free 2-day shipping with their free Circle Card) but they’ve now started licking boots by willfully ending their DEI initiatives. As always, avoid Walmart at all costs.

I can’t get everything at Costco however, and while I don’t love some of what Trader Joe’s has done in the past with regard to unions, they do seem to treat their people fairly well. Germany-based ALDI also seems to be a good semi-ethical option for groceries, but local is best and farmer’s market season is coming up once more (it’s also a great time to start a garden, if you have the space and inclination).

Local family owned groceries are rare these days, but you may still find an independently owned IGA near you (I’m thankful to have Weiland’s on Indianola in my neighborhood).

Further bonus points here, as a matter of supporting labor vs. capital: avoid self checkouts (Costco’s not paying you, so don’t work for them!) and don’t talk to AI drive-throughs. Don’t reinforce labor cost-saving measures at a time when workers at that level are struggling to make ends meet.

Other Platforms, And Alternatives

I have less concrete proof that TikTok is a problem, but I can anecdotally vouch that what it’s done to my attention span is taking me months to undo.8 Not to mention the way they bent the knee to Trump in their “banned” stunt early last month, and the potential data risks of giving ByteDance unfettered access to your photos.9

Snapchat is one of the worst apps I’ve ever used and I was glad to get rid of it. I don’t believe anyone should still have it… for reasons I won’t get into here because I don’t want certain words to appear in my publications. Just commit to your nudes and send them in a secure text (not SMS — use blue bubble iMessage or Signal) like a grownup.10

I’m also not sure of where I come down on Reddit right now — the majority of the community has rallied against X, so that’s good, but the company itself is talking about pushing censorship and paywalls in the near future. It’s always been a wretched hive of scum and villainy anyway, so I’m looking for alternatives.

Tumblr is making a comeback, I hear. A friend of mine has started a blog there instead of invading inboxes like I have (give her a follow and reblog some Loki thirst while you’re there, for old time’s sake).

Depending on your interests, there are other niche, non-Fascist platforms to use as well: I’m personally on StoryGraph for sharing books and tracking reading (avoid Goodreads, it’s owned by Amazon) and Letterboxd for quipping about movies I’ve watched, as well as a couple of other places if you want to stay connected here and there.

Oh, and Substack is cool too I guess (as always, thanks for reading).

Okay, I’m Done… For Now

This won’t be my last time ranting about social media, there are more reasons to be getting away from it than I’ve covered here, but this has already gone longer than I intended it to (a running theme, it seems).

Your focus, your attention, is your reality. Direct it wisely, because you are what you do. Aren’t you more than someone who just scrolls, consuming ads and content for hours a day (much of which is increasingly just AI slush now)? How many of your numbered days do you want to spend on mindless… entertainment isn’t right, it’s not that dignified.

Distraction.

It’s easy to feel powerless right now, and getting off social media might seem like such a small thing in the grand scheme, but it’s a very real dollars-and-cents way that you can affect change right now, and it will ultimately benefit us all in the long run.

The internet is now host to a blurred-lines civil war, and we’ve got to do what we can to fight. Voting with your dollar and controlling how and where others can profit off of your attention are quietly big tactics you can use to enact influence in our economy-centric society.

And it’s a something to hold us over until it’s time for… something more.

I’ll see you offline (and in your inbox again, I hope).

Resist, stay strong, and persist,

D.

But wait, there’s more! (RIP, Billy Mays)

“But Darren, how can you say all this and continue to work in social media/marketing?”

Well, I don’t know – I’m still trying to figure that out.

Marketing is changing. You always have to meet customers where they are, and increasingly, that’s offline.11 Everywhere you look you’ll see people talking about decreasing their screen time, spending less time on their phone, and spending more time logged off is increasingly a status symbol among higher income segments.

Social media isn’t the end-all be-all of selling a product or service, and I personally feel that it’s over-emphasized in most brands’ marketing mixes (likely because it’s the easy channel vs. more traditional media). But if everyone is doing the same thing, one of the easiest ways to differentiate yourself is to go the opposite direction, and I feel there’s a lot more brands can be doing in the world we can touch.

I hope to one day soon use my marketing powers for good, maybe for an environmental org or a social justice group — something where I can change minds for the betterment of our society instead of someone’s bottom line, whether that’s on social media or not.

But hey, if I’ve convinced you to leave Meta or X today, I’ll count that as a start in the right direction.

Thick night blankets the farm where I grew up, smothering the lights of distant homesteads and putting the countryside down to bed.

Eyes slowly adjust to a familiar landscape as ears hone in, eager to compensate. The darkness is almost oppressive this time of year, accompanied now by a thick covering of old snow (surely melted by the time I’m finally getting around to posting) that deadens the howl of the bitter January wind and the distant shrieks of coyotes out to make a meal somewhere in the black.

I often pause upon arrival and before departure to take it all in.

In warmer months these fields ripple with seas of grass punctuated only by modest trees, winding roads, and places of brick and wood where a few lingering rugged folk make a living. Now the air hurts my face and each breath comes in with an urgency to escape the cold — but there’s a certain kind of stillness and serenity here, inhospitable and frozen but still worth a few moments’ consideration.

Hangups about my hometown aside, there’s no denying the raw natural beauty of Appalachia.

Visits have become less frequent as I’ve grown into my life in the flat city at the center of the state, but holidays and family struggles have pulled me back more often than usual in recent months.

Even when I don’t want to be here it feels like I’m coming home. It’s a feeling I can’t shake, that I’m somehow connected to the land. I’ve lived away for near on a decade now and it hasn’t gone away, but maybe when your family tends the same land for over a century the roots go deeper than a mere third of a deserter’s lifetime.

I know it sounds crazy, it often feels like the trees here know my name. The hills and hollows I grew up in aren’t blood, but they are kin. And when stars I’ve not seen in months greet me again as old friends, I’m forced to face that the boy I once was is right where I left him (whether I like it or not).

I’ve always found solace and easy contemplation in the quiet that sets in with the first good freeze of winter. It’s a cozy time, great for staying in to read, write, watch movies, make soup.

But for reasons you likely share, I’ve been on edge these last months. My thoughts have taken a darker-than-seasonal-depression turn, and this season in particular I’ve found my thoughts going more and more to roots, to growth, to decay, to death — looking both at where I’ve come from, who I’ve become, and where I’m going.

And I’ve been reminded this year that every winter is someone’s last. Not all of us will make it through to spring. Everyone has a final Christmas.

This one past was my thirtieth. I can remember as far back as my fourth (unwrapping a Nintendo 64 in 1998, in hindsight more of my dad’s gift to himself I think, but I still have it to this day). Though I was too young for it to register, there was a last time that I celebrated on Christmas morning with both of my parents at the same time. There was a first time I knew the truth about Santa Claus, and a last time my brother and I would wake each other up and run to the living room in excitement at what we might find there, gifts scrounged together by our by-then years single mother.

And as both sets of my grandparents get older (I am fortunate enough to still have all four, rare at my age), there will likely soon be a first without one or more of them.

This line of thought has haunted my winter and was already weighing on me as I made my way south on Christmas morning. So when a thought-vanquished family demon showed its face again that day, I faced it head on when I could have (and maybe should have) much more easily chosen to preserve my own peace — a methodology I often preach when friends bring up their own toxic family troubles.1

Looking at in hindsight, I’ll admit that the way I reacted on Christmas and the conflict that followed were actions taken more out of fear of yet more loss than of selfless magnanimity, but it seems to be working out so far.

I’m not going to get into all of that here, we’ll just have to wait and see if I’m to be fooled twice. But my point, bleak as it may be, is that you and I aren’t getting any younger either. You never know which winter will be your last, or the last for one or more family members you haven’t quite fixed things with.

If you can salvage anything from the wreckage of your childhood, it’s probably worth holding onto.

Don’t take whatever time you have left for granted. Don’t waste the time you have with your aging family members, or the dear friends you count as family; make time away from work (I’ll rant on this another time) and other obligations while you can, both for holidays but also the rest of the year. You should never need an excuse to see the ones who love you.

Not a particularly novel nugget of wisdom I know, but it means more when you’re living it and in writing it out, and I’m hoping to will myself to follow my own advice.

And besides, anything worth saying is worth repeating, remember?

On my most recent trip back home, I arrived to find that the tree that held the swing where I and the other boys in my brood passed so many summer hours had been felled after a long struggle with some unknown blight.

When I think about where I grew up and the strange connection I feel to that place, that tree — a gnarly silver maple — is always there in the forefront of my memory. I still remember the candy cane red-white rope of the swing before it faded to a pale homogenous grey, and the black rubber seat that always turned our butts black. It was, on occasion, the tree from which I had to pick a switch whenever I did something that warranted a little light child abuse2. I know its shade comforted at least four generations in its centennial life, and I truly doubt I’m the only one sad that it’s gone.

As symbols go, trees are about as good as it gets for a literary representation for family — roots, seeds, branching family trees, all that.

I never felt particularly close or connected with my own family growing up, with a few notable exceptions. Didn’t fit in growing up, didn’t share many interests or outlooks (something I was either flat-out wrong about, or that’s changed in surprising ways over time), was even made to feel like an outsider at times. But maybe that strange sense of connection to the land — culminating now in my grief for one tree — is just my way experiencing a different kind of roots.

I’m not sure if the death of the most prominent tree of my childhood is symbolic validation for my winter brooding or a some kind of omen for things to come (or something in between), but I appreciate the strange kind of perspective its inspired and I take a kind of small poetic comfort in knowing that though we lost that one, I have a silver maple of my own growing in my yard in Columbus.

Maybe I’ll hang a swing from it this summer.

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Note from the editor — who is also, of course, the writer: Family is a funny thing, and though mine isn’t perfect (who can make such a claim?), I consider myself lucky insofar as it could be much worse.

I’ve decided not to let this post become such a total trauma dump as it was shaping up to be earlier, but I do hope to write more on my experience navigating family dynamics, generational trauma, and escaping poverty and dodging alcoholism (🤞) someday in a later post.

This is NOT what I had in mind of my second entry here — or even what was going to become the second post! The original second post is still coming, and what I was working on for the weeks before Christmas (which started as a lighthearted argument for the superiority of real Christmas trees but grew to include other commentary on the holiday season) has been shelved for now. Maybe I’ll revisit it if there’s anything left to celebrate by December this year.

With the events of Christmas Day and everything that’s happened since (have you seen the news lately?), it’s become difficult to make light of… well, anything, and as each day passes and we get further from the holidays, the relevance slips away in exponential measures. So instead you get a post about a different tree altogether, about mortality and rural charm. And about a month later than I intended to have something out.

But thank you for reading anyway! I intend not to keep you waiting quite so long for the next one.

This will be an open-air journal for all to read, a platform for topical posts ranging from guides to rants (both hopefully becoming conversations), a stage on which to embarrass myself with public rumination and reflection, and possibly even a place for some occasional short fiction and/or poetry.

I hope to be personal, to be vulnerable, maybe even thought provoking, but above all I hope to bring writer and reader a little closer together in a way you don’t get seeing pictures of my cat on Instagram or passing memes back and forth to each other on one of any number of apps.

Will it be interesting? Insightful? Entertaining? I hope so. But I have to write the things to follow either way (more on this compulsion later), so if only one person reads it and it really clicks, then it’s a million.

At the very least I hope you’ll enjoy the few minutes we spend together as I pour out my soul a little at a time. If not then hey, at least it’s a free show.

So why NOW?

It’s a rainy night on a so-so planet at the edge of the galaxy and we find ourselves on opposite sides of the same screen as my coffee gets colder by the minute and the republic crumbles around us.

No one can say with any amount of certainty where we’ll be in just a few months time. The end of my own beginning is knocking at the door, so I sit and I tap my keys and I make myself believe the sequel can be better than the original. That I can make it so.

I’ve been giving a lot of thought to my identity as a writer — when people ask what I do, I tell them I work in marketing and I write, but I hate talking about my job and while I feel I’ve written quite a bit, I haven’t actually published anything in years and I don’t have much to show for the time I’ve spent working on my many unfinished projects.

I believe that it’s a fundamental truth that doing is being. A writer writes. And I do.

Art of this sort has inherent value even if it never sees the light of day, but that doesn’t mean it should necessarily earn respect or change the way that someone regards me. Not without giving them something to judge first, a proof of concept.

Writing is vulnerability. I’m no emperor, but my outfit is at the cleaners and I have places to be.

So here we are. It’s a way of turning in my homework, an exercise in exposure (at a time when we’re all already feeling quite vulnerable), and, in a way, the start of a resume of sorts, a portfolio of writing samples that aren’t written expressly for the purpose of selling a product, as the writing I do in my day job is intended to do (though I guess I am the product in this case).

Aside from that, Substack seems to be having a moment and I’ve found myself subscribing to more of them as I get off of other platforms (I started with Snapchat, then TikTok, and now I’m finally off of Husk’s Txitter). My disdain for (and arguments for exodus from) most social media is a topic for another time, but this seems like a much healthier form of online engagement. I hope to be part of that move away from the toxic side of the net.

What took so long?

This part grew a bit too long as I dug deeper and I would like to it the time and context it deserves — I’ve split it off and will follow up with another post on my relationship with writing and my overall modus fingendi (thanks Grant) in a later post.

In short, I often oscillate between feeling like I have nothing to say and feeling like I could be the next big thing if only (…). A bad mix of imposter syndrome and egotism all too common in creative types, particularly among writers.

As I’ve aged I’ve grown to have less of the latter but it’s taken work to tackle the former, including differentiating criticism and critique, understanding the overvaluation of originality, and… well, we’ll get into the rest later.

It’s an ongoing process, but what’s important (to me) is that these words are here for you to read and that I’m promising more to come (more progress!).

What’s the value of a name?

So, the title. The Sum of All Parts.

The name relates to the bit I touched on earlier about why I’m posting, why it’s taken me so long to start, and my belief that "a writer writes."

I’m a strong believer in emergence, the old adage that something can be “greater than the sum of its parts.” I’ve always liked the phrase and see it every day: in the mundane things like cooking, in flawed things like many of the movies I like, in relationships, in life itself.

Like many creative types I struggle with perfectionism and too often let it get in the way of progress. The short pieces I write here will be my attempt to not let great get in the way of good, or even good enough. I may never be a great writer, but to even be judged a good writer I have to put things where people can read them.

The Sum of All Parts is my reminder to myself that "finished, imperfect, and posted" is better than half-written drafts. A reminder that even if collectively they’re never enough to be “great,” a string of “good” is good enough.

No matter how you do the math, the sum of all parts is still greater than zero.

Who am I?

Chances are that if you’re reading this as I post it, you already know me. But just in case…

My name is Darren. A friend recently described me as “trying to have good taste in everything.” It was meant as a bit of a playful insult but I don’t mind it. It fits.

I live in Columbus, OH with my wife and my cat (Alistair Meowly) and I work in marketing for a small tech company (which will remain nameless) based in California. This consumes most my daylight hours (my title used to be just “copywriter” but it’s snowballed into more than that), doing newsletters and social media posts and ads and other things.

I’ve helped launch a couple of start-ups whose success has helped pay for a house, two cars, and a few nice vacations all before I’m 30. I’m incredibly thankful for the way my career has gone so far and the ways it’s improved my life — it can be grueling, soul-straining work, but at the end of the day I’m still paying the bills with words, and it’s one area of my life where I have tangible proof that I’m good at what I do.

Side note: I also freelance from time to time as a copywriter, editor, and marketing strategist/consultant.

I’ve taken 2024 off but I may open my books in 2025, particularly for local businesses and nonprofits with values I can align with. If you think we’d be a good match or know a company I should talk to, feel free to reach out.

I also plan to start a separate business, marketing, and branding-focused blog later on where I’ll touch on topics like ethical marketing, the relationship between rest and success, and why I’m so against AI, even in seemingly harmless applications like customer service — if you see it pop up in my recommended list here, I hope you’ll check it out.

Like other nerds of my ilk I’m also into things like photography, movies, music, and (to a lesser degree) video games — I’ve been calling myself an “avid indoorsman” for most of my life, but as I’ve gotten older I’ve come to appreciate going out more, socializing with strangers, and outdoorsy activities like hiking (a good road trip out west will put that into you). Owning a house has made me a lot handier than I used to be, and I’ve even started restoring a classic car (my quarter life crisis, so I’m told — more on that another time).

As far as writing goes, aside from copy, I’m also working on several things I’m not being paid for: a novel, a couple of screenplays (including some shorts I’m hoping to shoot soon with one of my creative partners), an adaptation of a friend of a friend’s novel, an ever-growing fantasy setting for tabletop games (I’m running one campaign now and I’m about to start another), and some other fun stuff.

I also like reviewing my favorite places around town and in the other cities I visit — mostly gassing up the good places, I think I’ve only ever written one negative review. Aside from my day job, this is probably my writing with the most total readers.

I wish I could say I was making progress on these things every day but that’s just not true; I’m too easily distracted by friends, hobbies, food, and day to day life. On a scale of George Martin to Stephen King I’m somewhere off the coast of Westeros, but I’m trying to paddle my way to Bangor.

And some housekeeping.

1. As you may have noticed, I’ve turned on the option to support this newsletter financially but there is absolutely no obligation to do so — this is just in case I have any well-off patrons out there who want to help motivate me to keep this going.
   
   (I may also occasionally post a more embarrassing thing behind the paywall, just so the whole internet doesn’t have access to it, but I expect that will be fairly rare and likely not worth it.)
   
   I make a more than decent living doing what I do right now, so don’t get sentimental if you’re a fellow artist — it should really be me supporting you.

2. In addition to Substack, I also plan to post concurrently on Medium — both platforms have their advantages with meaningful overlaps in functionality but (seemingly) significantly different audiences.
   
   Read whichever you prefer, I’ll be tickled if you subscribe to either.

3. I am specifically not committing to a set posting cadence.
   
   Progress may be slow at times and there may be lengthy gaps between posts. I have a lot going on AND I have this nagging feeling (aspiration? ambition?) that some of the partial pieces I’m already working on may actually be valuable to this or that magazine… and I’d like to actually be paid for my work if possible.

   
   There may be times when something gets posted here after it’s already gone through rounds of rejections elsewhere, or is delayed because of a mandatory waiting period before reposting it as dictated by whichever publication that may pick it up (fingers crossed).
   
   Either way, I’ll see you when I see you (in your inbox).

4. Last (never least), I’ve already started to curate a list of great writers on my profile — check out the recommended section and give them a read as well!

Thank you for reading — I hope to see you in the next one.

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