Month: June 2025

Links To My Recent Articles, A Quick Comment About Medium, and Other Updates

On By Dean BrooksLeave a comment
Photo by Pixabay from Pexels: https://www.pexels.com/photo/black-vintage-typewriter-163084/

Here are links to a bunch of articles I’ve written on Medium but just haven’t cross-posted here on my personal site. In order of recency:

Women Are Willing To Sell Their Bodies To Pay Off Student Loans

“You Must Be This Tall To Ride This Ride”

Some Very Disturbing (And Gross) Stats About STDs, Especially When It Comes To Black Women

River Is A Solid Bitcoin-Only Exchange

Three Cold Hard As Fuck Truths For Why You’re Single

They Sang Along To Ye’s “Heil Hitler,” Now They’re Getting Doxxed, Harassed, And Threatened

She Calls A 5-Year-Old ‘N-gger,’ Now May Cash Out With A Million Dollars In Online Donations

Medium

Medium continues to be a massive disappointment this year. Due to either an algorithm change or some kind of shift in how it distributes traffic, I barely get the engagement in years prior, and substantially smaller payouts and fewer followers, consequently. Though some of my articles caught on in Google’s rankings, I see zero money for non-Medium members who read my stuff. That’s really frustrating, as some of my “stories” (as Medium likes to call them) have caught tens of thousands of views.

It’s not that I soullessly write for money. It’s just that I would like to see commensurate compensation for when I do write something that lands.

Still, I’ve kept plugging away. Either foolishly or just out of stubborn persistence and the desire to maintain stasis. Medium is a solid platform, for sure. But it has a low ceiling. Whereas a platform like YouTube will (assuming you are monetized) at least pay you for ALL the views you get, not just Medium members. As such, YT has basically uncapped potential, though it too has its issues.

YouTube

As much as I love YouTube and the idea of being a YouTuber, I don’t know that it’s the right venue for me, either. Nor do I care to contort myself into the tortuous content creation pretzel shape that YT demands if you want to have a shot at gaining traction. YT seems to favor TikTok-style shorts anymore, and such snappy, soundbite quippings are not in my wheelhouse. The few videos I’ve posted this year are long, thoughtful, and reflective, which is not really conducive to YT’s dazzling discothèque guppy-attention-span content that seems to predominate on there.

I’m a writer at the end of the day. A fiction writer, specifically. I try to be. While I like dropping spicy op-eds from time to time, Medium and this whole “content game” thing often just proves a procrastinative distraction and a futilely unfulfilling endeavor. I get so little satisfaction out of writing even a “banger” article that gets a good traffic spike it’s not funny.

Whereas, a good fiction writing session puts me on cloud nine.

I don’t care to just crank out a bunch of noise, trying to surf the trend waves. I’d rather spend the time on my books. I have a lot of them in various states of editing, and I have a lot of ideas for more.

My latest will be out soon.

Conundrum

Which brings me to the conundrum. To be a successful fiction writer, you need a platform to help market your work. But to get a platform, you have to play the mind numbing algo/traffic/pretzel twist game I just talked about. A successful writer is a successful salesman, not just a good tapper of keystrokes. Like many writers, this rustles my introvert jimmies. I hate “putting myself out there,” though I’m not a wallflower by any means.

I see many other writers, especially self-published ones, market themselves via YouTube and social media, either by book or movie reviews, or by being (usually godawful) cultural critics and posting daily ragebait commentary on whatever headline caught their ire that morning. I don’t care to waste the time being a “culture warrior.” That’s very cringy to me. And there are frankly certain audiences I just don’t care to attract.

I will never be a fucking “writing coach.” I will never sell a fucking course or some bullshit consulting like so many of those hustlers out there do. No. Just no. I will never make “writing about writing” my thing. Never going to happen. I don’t care to waste the time, and I sure as hell don’t need to do it for the money.

I could see doing long form book or movie reviews, however.

And even though some of my finance-themed articles have actually performed the best, I think I’m done with that niche. Save and invest your money. Stay out of debt. Control your spending. Slow and steady (i.e. boring) compound gains will make you wealthy, not get-rich-quick crypto/stock/real estate/side hustle schemes. Stop listening to stupid influencers and their bullshit products. There, what the hell else needs to really be said?

Conclusion

As a compromise, I’ll keep posting non-fiction stuff, but likely just focusing on books, movies, and shows. Since Medium has proven near pointless to continue with, I may just go old school and post stuff on here exclusively instead. I blogged a lot way back in the day, and I see that era of the internet returning. Content has become far too siloed on digital slave farms like Facebook and other social media. It’s time for it to decentralize like it used to be. A.I. slop has ruined a lot of content sites also. In fact, I think A.I. is part of why the algo machine has completely broken down across the web.

I’ll invest more time interacting with social media in a qualitatively productive manner. I’ll also continue to experiment with YouTube. Perhaps there are actually people out there who’d rather look at my face and hear me talk than read my stuff. Hey, it’s possible.

If you made it this far, thanks for reading. I’ll have more updates for you soon, including my latest book. See you in the sun. 🙂

Seriously, WTF?

On By Dean BrooksLeave a comment

A billboard in Bismarck, ND blew my mind.

Source: Photo by The Glorious Studio from Pexels: https://www.pexels.com/photo/close-up-shot-of-diamond-rings-12427696/

I had to go out of town recently for a dentist appointment as medical service providers are few and far between in the great stupid state of North Dakota. Since there was nobody in network in my town, and my previous dentist office hardly ever has an actual dentist on staff — just hygienists and one moron office manager— I had to drive three and a half hours to go to a new dentist for X-rays and a cleaning.

Yes, I had to stay over night in a hotel, rent a car, and drive halfway across a state just for a one hour appointment. It’s insane, I know.

But that’s nothing compared to a completely fucking insane billboard I saw while I was down there.

I was parked at a Wendy’s eating my actually not bad spicy chicken sandwich when I looked across the road and I saw a big yellow billboard for a jeweler in town advertisting payment plans for engagement rings for as long as 48 months.

What??? I almost dropped my sandwich in shock. Who the fuck is financing a diamond engagement ring for four years? Good Christ, most marriages don’t even last seven years. You might be getting divorced by the time you pay the damn thing off.

My mind was blown. I was utterly floored. Are people — “men” — actually doing this, I wondered. I couldn’t believe it. Then I began to think about the many, many imbecilic male slobs I’d encountered in my life. Slovenly creatures in backwards hats, flip flops, scruffy beards, cargo shorts, forearm tattoos, fast food afficionados, fantasy football betting, sports-enthused, vape-toking, video game playing, Monster Energy drink sipping Neanderthals — yes, I could totally see many of these specimens going “Hur dur, happy wife, happy life,” and walking into that jewelry store ready to sign up for basically car payments on a twinkling rock for their idiot girlfriends.

Am I the only one who sees how insanely stupid this is?

How dumb do you have to be to sign up for four long years of debt just for a rock? There are a million better things to spend money on in a new marriage than a piece of bling.

Dear men, stop doing this to yourselves. Seriously.

No woman who truly loves you and wants to be with you would want you to finance a rock for four years. Only a gold-digging Instagram thot who takes seflies at the gym in her booty shorts would demand that, not someone truly worthy of years of your sacrifice and financial hardship.

A worthy woman would want you to put that money toward a house, furniture, a car, baby things, or other practical purchases that really matter and help build the foundation for a successful marriage and family. Not a shiny stone.

An engagement ring is just a symbol. She didn’t win the fucking Super Bowl, gents. Buy her something modest and within your budget, and move the fuck on in life.

In fact, this makes for a good litmus test. The bigger the rock she expects, the bigger the undeserving asshole she likely is.

This simp epidemic has to stop. I mean, think about the underlying misandry of that billboard’s message. It reflects a societal expectation that men go out and financially fuck themselves royally as a traditional precursor to marriage.

Now imagine the message, but directed at women. Imagine that billboard was offering payment plans on appliances like washing machines, dishwashers, and dryers that women go buy so when they get married they can be good little stay at home housewives. Or imagine it was advertising payment plans on BOOB JOBS so hubby can have a nice set of flesh pillows to bury his face in after a hard day’s work. Imagine all the outrage at that.

Well, it’s the same thing with this silly and frankly asinine expectation that men burden themselves for years for a stupid rock.

Fuck. That.

I could see dropping like $5k on an engagement ring. Maybe even $10k if it’s within your budget. But only if you can pay that in cash and it’s not going to force you into indentured servitude for the length of a presidential term.

Marriage is tough enough without additional and unnecessary financial burdens. Why make it needlessly harder on yourself?

I wouldn’t care if it were Sydney Sweeney. I’d rather be single for life than finance a rock for ANYONE.

Seriously, WTF?

Our Decades Don’t Have Cool Nicknames Anymore

On By Dean BrooksLeave a comment

The Trumpy Twenties? The Terrible Twenties? The Turbulent Twenties? The Spendy Twenties? Just spit ballin’ here.

Photo by Viridiana Rivera from Pexels: https://www.pexels.com/photo/colorful-2025-planner-with-pen-and-plant-29996971/

I truly believe that in the year 2000 our timeline somehow got diverted into the Shithole Dimension in which we currently reside.

How? I blame Y2K. We were supposed to let that supposed “glitch” play out, not “fix” it. Instead, we collectively ctlr+alt+deleted our way into this nightmare world.

That, or the gods simply hated those stupid “00” New Year’s Eve glasses everyone was wearing celebrating the Millennium, and decided to punish us with two and a half gray mushy mash no identity decades. What is the difference between the year 2003 and now? Seriously. None. If you stuck me in a Delorean and sent me back, I’d hardly notice any changes. The clothes, the tech, the political scene — all virtually the same.

We left the “Go-Go 90s” or the “Gay 90s” or “The Decade of Peace,” for the “Oughties.” Or is it just the “Zeroes?” Or the “Two-Thousands?” Boring and WTF either way.

Even IN the ’90s, we used to say, “It’s the ’90s, baby.” On New Year’s Eve of 1999, I remember partying with some coworkers at a popular resort named after a Roman emperor to Prince’s song “1999” the moment the ball dropped. It was awesome. It was like we knew we’d reached an Apex of Cool and the universe had serendipitously rewarded us with our very own anthem for the year with a song written way back in 1982. How’s that for a pre-expectation of good times? People were excited for the ’90s already in the ’80s. Who the fuck was looking forward to 2009? 2013? 2017? 2023? The current year?

“This the ’80s and I’m down the ladies.”

Then just today I’m driving along and I hear the classic 1989 song “Funky Cold Medina” by Ton-Loc, which includes the line I quoted above. The previous seventies decade may have been the “Me Decade,” but even in Ronald Reagan’s America people were ready to get down. And that was with the Cold War still going on. The “Swinging Sixties” were turbulent, sure, but defined by great music, social changes, and apparently swinging. It was a decade marked by sexual experimentation and liberation. So like the ’70s, ’80s and ‘90’s, it had a certain sex appeal. Then before that you had the “Rockin’ Fifties.” Also known as the “Fabulous Fifties.”

It wasn’t all fun and fornication, of course. You had the “Fighting Forties,” due to WWII. The “Dirty Thirties” thanks to the Great Depression. But before them you had the “Roaring Twenties,” because of the skyrocketing stock market.

Meanwhile, the 2000s, or “Oughts” or “Zeroes” has no real nickname. The “War on Terror Decade?” Too negative. “The Age of Premptive Strikes?” No, too cynical. “The Bush Years.” Come on, man.

Okay, forget the 2000s. Onto the “teens.” Or “twenty-tens.” Or “twenty-teens.” This decade doesn’t even have a proper numerical designation. Can we hope for at least a halfway decent nickname? I’m drawing a blank here. The “Troublesome Teens?” The “Tiresome Tens?” Oh, I know. the “Transformative Teens.” Kind of a catch-all. Plus it subtly alludes to the whole transgender craze starting during the latter part of the decade. And it was a transformative decade, for sure.

Which finally brings us to this decade. The twenties. We’re halfway through and I’ve yet to hear any kind of a definitive nickname. I’ll refer you to my suggestions up at the very top. The “Terrible Twenties” sounds too dramatic. The “Trumpy Twenties” is too specific.

Besides —

We don’t yet know how the next five years will shake out. For all we know, we’re all of us gifted with unicorns that piss gold coins and shit Godiva chocolate in this decade’s latter half. In which case we’d be the “Enchanted Twenties.”

It could maybe be the “Twitter Twenties,” if it hadn’t become X. I like “The Spendy Twenties” best as it alludes to high inflation and the costs for everything getting completely out of control. I went to the supermarket recently and eight chicken wings cost $18. Eighteen dollars. Fuck it, I’ll just eat carpet.

I’m not ready to write off this entire decade just yet. I’m willing to give it a chance. But unlike the ’90s or ’80s, the twenty-twenties has got no vibe. It’s got no aura. No zip. No rizz, as the kids like to say. Frankly, I’m embarassed to be living in it. Especially when I’ve had better. Way better. That’s not good. We need to reset those computers back so they just read two digits again, so we can spring out of this bizarro pocket dimension of identity-less decades and back into our old reality. We should have had the “Duuude-Thousands,” then the “Terrific Teens,” before living smack dab in the middle of the “Friendly Twenties.” Instead, we are lost and adrift, and without a name.