The middle road

Survivalwise, the second worst thing that could happen to a person is being ostracized. The first worst thing is being ignored. I’ve been thinking about attention a lot recently because I had a dip in paid subscribers and I need the opposite.

I’m trying to do the hardest thing in algorithm-driven media landscape and extreme polarization. I’m trying to get attention to middle-of-the-road, pragmatic ideas conveyed with appropriate nuance.

The thing is, I know how to get attention. And I have a much, much higher tolerance for negative attention than the average person. I developed a relatively thick skin for being disliked at a very early age and honed it through continuous exposure to hatred over time. That’s what pissed me off the most when people would accuse me of grifting libertarianism. If I were willing to pretend to believe things for money, I would be making a lot of money. I know how to do it.

That’s what really struck me listening to the Behind the Bastards on Andrew Tate. He understood how profitable being willing to be very, very widely hated could be. If I could somehow figure out how to turn being willing to be very, very widely hated into positive social change and enough money to live, I would do it too.

But nooo. I’m not smart enough to figure out how to do that. So I’m stuck walking the middle road of being polarizing enough online to get attention without causing more damage than the good I’m creating by getting attention to my good ideas. And, let’s be real, at 39 I’m having to do it without the assistance of the same level of young, pretty, able-bodied white girl privilege I had 15 years ago. I can at least feel secure in the knowledge that I sure did everything I could think to do to capitalize on that advantage while I had it. Too bad OnlyFans didn’t exist back then. And I’m not saying it’s all completely gone. But it’s not the same.

I got canceled shortly after moving back to Alabama over some very bad, ill-considered tweets about Ukraine.