Allow this author a slight descent into madness:
This newsletter-cum-blog is a miserable, dismal failure and will never become anything of note in the publishing world.
And I’m fine with that, so let’s examine it closer, shall we?
BUT FIRST! LOOSE TOPICS GALORE! AVAST!
Music criticism, much like satire, is dead. As is perhaps well-known, I’m not a big fan of Pitchfork, previously having declared the site to be on palliative care and like that family member that just keeps coming back from the brink, this infernal website is still here. They recently ran a bracketed tournament of best albums and OF COURSE it was two fucking Radiohead albums in the last round. Out of the entire history of recorded music, that it had to come to this.
To prove I’m not just a raging hate machine, here’s something nice that also came out of Pitchfork: Mero talking shit about Tool. Just watch the clip, it’s very funny and he’s right.
If you care to listen to some good music, you’re in luck because it’s a hell of a week for awesome albums from great bands. Lemme rattle at ya real quick:
Fall of Messiah - Green Lands (post-hardcore, screamo).
At The Gates - Ghost of Future Dead (death me… you know what, it’s fucking At The Gates, you know what it is)
Terror - Still Suffer (face-pounding old school hardcore, but again, you knew that already)
Portrayal of Guilt - …Beginning of the End (sludgy post-metal, nasty, filthy hobbitses)
Aesop Rock & Homeboy Sandman - Miami Lice (inventive, chill, old school hiphop, came out last month but uh, I forgot)
While we’re doing quicker quick hits, two movies that came out on 4K Blu-Ray recently, both from Arrow:
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Trilogy (yeah, those rubber suit movies. They’re great! Well, two of 'em anyway)
Falling Down (watch Michael Douglas completely fucking lose it over having a bad day)
'Complicated' is probably the best word to describe my relationship to archiving culture. On the one hand, I of course fully understand the value of saving music, literature, film, video games and so on so it’s possible to chart a path through and render it accessible to newer generations. On the other hand, what’s gone’s gone, man. I’m alright with loss. Anyway, here’s a collection of over 2000 great live performances from Chicago from a duuuude named Adam Jacobs, with shows by Nirvana, The Cure, The Weakerthans and way, way more. And before you ask, yes, the quality is actually quite good.
Psssst. Hey kid. Have you heard of… Unicode? If you haven’t, Unicode is a standard for character encoding, making it so that you can use regular-ass letters on all your text fields on all your computers. But did you know Unicode supports way more characters than you thought even existed? Bet you didn’t! Well, thankfully, here’s Charcuterie, a very cool website that lets you click through bunches and bunches of characters in a very satisfying way, and of course copy and paste them into your own fun text fields.
If anything, I’m a sucker for a niche interest convention. So last week was the watch industry’s yearly shindig, Watches and Wonders in Switzerland and while I don’t have much to say about it, I just want to show you this ridiculous watch from Patek Philippe, known for watches so expensive you could buy a very nice house for the price of one of them. Have to admit it’s gorgeous craftsmanship.
Now then, where were we? Ah yes, scathing verbal self-flagellation! What a failure this venture has turned out to be! So few subscribers! So little in the way of page views! Such a paltry amount of followers on the socials!
Shame, Rolf! Shame!
Except, of course, as you, dear astute and perceptive reader, must have already surmised, I couldn’t give less of a fuck about stats like that.
Okthat’salie.
Of course I care, to an extent. Everyone wants to be liked, I’m not a bigger man1 than most. The only difference is that I don’t care enough about it to feed the Content Machine™
The CONTENT MACHINE! Quelle invention! A machine that thrives on ENGAGEMENT. A machine that continuously screams "Look at me! Look at me!" And because of this, it incentivises only the most reactionary, un-nuanced, nasty thoughts, just to get that attention.
Because attention = $$$. It always comes back to capitalism.
For the attention seekers of course, should they be able to convert a sizeable enough part of their audience into something that actually makes money, like selling this audience something. Not that it matters to the platforms, of course, as they are making money for showing you a bunch of ads while you’re outraged at this stupid asshole’s dumb take (which they purposefully made as dumb as possible so as to MAXIMISE ENGAGEMENT).
This is not news. I’m not telling tales out of school here. But the negative feedback loop is horrendous and it’s why I’m not on Twitter anymore, and hardly on places like Bluesky or Threads.
(As an aside: Threads really makes me feel icky. The algorithmically determined feed there just seems programmed to only show me the most banal stupidity. Usually it will take me a minute or two to realise it and bounce off. Small mercies.)
The funny part about the influencer lifecycle is that of course it’s predicated on constant engagement. Once the attention of the masses is within your grasp, there is only one way to continue to keep engagement up and that is through constant and unrelenting escalation. Keep saying the stupid thing! KEEP DANCING, MONKEY!
(As an aside: the feeling creeps up on me that people who are popular on social media are, in most cases, incredible sadsacks. Here’s an experience I’ve had more than once: you see someone’s opinion on an app and think "that’s interesting". Then you click on their profile and in the last 24 hours they’ve posted dozens, if not hundreds of posts and are just arguing nonsense with other dumbasses.
WHO HAS TIME FOR THIS. GO OUTSIDE AND TOUCH GRASS, YOU TERMINALLY ONLINE WEIRDO WHO’S ARGUING WITH STRANGERS YOU DON’T EVEN RESPECT!)
Anyway.
Constant engagement! It’s a tale as old as time on a platform like YouTube, especially around review videos. "Here are the five best pens! Seriously, they are so great!"
"Great," you might think to yourself, "I love a good pen, let me buy one and then I’ll be DONE FOREVER." But then, what’s this, two months later? The same penfluencer poking their stupid head around the proverbial corner to state once more "These three pens are of world shattering beauty!" Well, what is it? Which are best? Better click that video to find out…
A high level of genius is not required figure out that the constant cry for more content undermines the actual trustworthiness of the content in question. But the Machine requires sustenance to capture attention!
To be clear, I think the concept of an exchange of ideas isn’t bad. Hopefully that’s not a radical thing to say. I do like reading blog posts and newsletters and watching videos made by people whose opinions I appreciate. I like getting recommendations from folks with similar taste to mine about things to read, to watch or to listen to. It enriches my life! But I can’t trust the recommendations if they’re made from a position of creating content.
It’s why I started a blog! Well, first I started a Substack, but not only is that platform still hosting nazis, it’s also turned into another algorithmic Content Machine™, so I left that behind quickly.
Not gonna lie, pal, it’s been a bit stale here in terms of new visitors. But I’m just not in the market for talking shit to get someone to click on a link. I’m not even making money off of this. I don’t have that many opinions that could be classified as rage bait. If I don’t like something, I’ll just shut up about it.2 In the long run that’s always the best option to get something to go away anyway, as talking about it, even in a negative way, will just make it grow.
So I’ll just be here, in my little corner, bloggin’ away and recommending you some fun stuff to check out and sharing some thoughts on topics big and small.
1 Hehe
2 Ok I did talk some shit about Pitchfork and, by association, Tool. But I think they can deal.