People are Cashing in With This Controversial But Super Easy (and Still Growing)YouTube Niche

On June 4, 2022June 4, 2022 By Dean BrooksLeave a comment

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels: https://www.pexels.com/photo/collage-photo-of-woman-3812743/

Man, it’s 2022 and hustling a substantial side income has never been so easy.

How easy are we talking here? How about watching movies and TV easy? That’s not too hard to do, is it? I mean, it doesn’t get much easier than that, except maybe for sleeping. And no way would anyone catch big bucks while catching some big Zzzzs, right?

Oh, wait, nevermind. Someone did just that.

Anyway…this niche does not JUST involve watching movies and TV. It’s also about reacting and providing some commentary, and preferably doing so at least somewhat humorously, and maybe with a little personality.

That’s right. I’m talking about the Movie/TV Reaction niche on YouTube.

People are recording themselves reacting to everything from new episodes of TV shows like Better Call Saul, to classic action films like Terminator 2: Judgment Day, to even recordings of kid’s show hosts. Watch this young woman almost have a meltdown watching a message from Steve Burns, former host of Blues Clues.

By the way, if you prefer to watch someone else react to a video from a TV host who retired decades ago, there are a dozen others for your nostalgia-mongering pleasure. Seriously. And they all have thousands to even tens of thousands of views. That’s bonkers.

Really, just type in the title of any movie/TV show or any type of media into YouTube and then put “reaction” afterward, and there are bound to be tens to even hundreds of accounts. Many of which have tens of thousands to even hundreds of thousands of subscribers, and fresh uploads. That means they’re literally getting paid to watch movies and TV.

But wait. How come YouTube hasn’t banned reaction channels for posting copyrighted content?

Obviously you can’t just upload a whole movie or show to YouTube and throw in some occasional observations due to YouTube’s copyright rules. So reaction YouTubers skirt around this issue with good ol’ fair use. Shaun Poore, a popular blogger and software developer, provides some non-lawyerly guidance about fair use, which shows how these types of channels have proliferated in the last few years due to this loophole:

1. Playing an entire episode of Rick and Morty and videotaping yourself laughing isn’t fair use. At a minimum, you need to be providing serious commentary on the episode.

2. The video’s focus needs to be on you and your commentary, not the copyrighted material.

3. You should always be on the screen.

4. The copyrighted material shouldn’t be full screen or played in its entirety.

The reaction video racket is not without its risks. Which is why you’ll see YouTubers blur out the movie or TV show, or only show short segments, to avoid YouTube demonetizing them, or striking their account down altogether.

To be clear, if you’re interested in jumping into this reaction niche, make sure you do your own due diligence on copyright and fair use, and be sure to always follow all of YouTube’s rules.

Of course, this low-effort easy-peasy type of “content” creation has attracted its share of haters and controversy. Redditor KingLordship posted this in /r/NewTubers:

I just really hate the fact that people spend days to create something then a reaction channel sits there and says two words throughout the video, gets monetised, paid and gets a crap ton of views for no effort at all.

Far be it from me to argue with a guy named “KingLordship.”

Then there’s this dude Tanmay Pendse from Quora, a self-described “High Tier Cinephile,” who responds to the question, “Why are there so many ‘reaction channels’ on Youtube?” with this bit of blunt honesty:

This is the stupidest from these trends. “Reaction Videos” they suck.
It is literally someone sits in front of camera & recording the reaction of what they are watching.
“I REACT GOOD” ISN’T A TALENT.

And Tanmay said that three years ago in March, 2019. Poor guy must be raging 24/7 now, as the reaction video trend has only increased like ten-fold since.

Hey, no one said side hustling had to be hard or contribute to the advancement of society. Don’t hate the player, hate the game. Just make sure to record yourself reacting to the game with outrage, so you too can cash in on this still growing niche.

Besides, science says it’s not your fault you like reaction videos. This 2016 article says “mirror neurons” in our brains could be responsible for triggering empathetic feelings. So when you’re watching your favorite YouTuber react to Freddy Krueger ripping a teenager apart, it’s like you’re bonding. Well, sort of. These feelings help to give (or at least simulate) a sense of communal involvment, even acceptance. The idea that “You’re just like me,” because you like the same movie/TV show I do.

In other words, watching a reaction video gives the illusory sense that you’re watching and enjoying something right alongside someone else. A sort of self-induced hypnosis form of socialization. It’s no surprise that many reaction channels saw explosive growth during the Covid-19 quarantine. Many of the accounts I examined for this article started around 2020, or saw a hockey stick spurt in viewership around that time.

Reaction channels have been around almost since YouTube’s inception, afterall. Starting out with the infamous maze scare prank that was big stuff back in the day. But it goes back even farther than that. Remember America’s Funniest Home Videos? As host Tom Bergeron used to say, “If you get it on tape, you could get it in cash.” Words to live by.

Now that we understand the history, the science, and the controvery behind this reaction channel phenomenon, let’s get down to what’s most important here:

Money.

Do reaction channels make money? That’s a Kool-Aid Man-level “Oh, yeah!”

I examined five of these reaction channels, ranging in size from small to medium. From only a few tens of thousands of subs to a few hundred thousand. Making sure to pick ones that were concentrated solely on “reaction.” Many reaction channels incorporate lengthy reviews of the movies or shows watched. I tried to stick with ones that were more “spur of the moment.” Review channels like Red Letter Media or Chris Stuckmann are obviously a seperate niche altogether. I also did not include movie news-centric channels that only have some reaction aspect, like Beyond the Trailer.

I also tried to pick channels with “average” people, as opposed to people with colorful “YouTube personalities.” I wanted to see what kind of success a “typical” person might encounter with one of these channels. Of course, the more engaging and friendly you are on camera, the more likely you are to attract subs, even for a low-effort niche like reaction videos. And if you’re an attractive female, you’ll have an even bigger advantage. It’s not to say anyone can’t land pay dirt kicking back and watching flicks. As I found, this niche has a huge mix of different types. But the two keys I found are that being funny and genuine led to the best results.

It’s even better if there’s a bit of a culture clash, or “fish out of water” angle in your reaction videos. Take Ashleigh Burton of Millennial Movie Monday, a “millennial who has been sheltered from every classic movie you can think of.” Ashley first started posting regularly in February, 2020, and offers lively reactions on her channel. Here’s a screenshot of her Social Blade details:

For an active two-year old channel with very simple content, that’s not a bad haul from Google Adsense. But as I found, Adsense is hardly the best revenue stream for many of these reaction YouTubers. Check out what Ashley’s bringing in with Patreon:

Patreon gives content creators a chance to earn an additional revenue stream by offering their fans a monthly membership. From what I found in my search, the most lucrative Patreon accounts offered exclusive perks, like behind-the-scenes insights, early access to new content, polls to vote on which movies to watch, or livestreams. Just looking at some of the Patreon accounts was very instructive. If you want the best results, you need to be active about not just producing new content regularly, but also building a community with your fans.

So, if we take the average of Social Blade’s estimated monthly earnings, $2,283, and add in the Patreon revenue, we come to $10,236 a month. That’s over $122,000 a year for watching movies. That doesn’t count any donations Ashleigh’s fans send to her P.O. Box. Ashleigh posts a Monthly Live Unboxing livestream where she opens up gifts fans have sent her. She’s received everything from shirts, scarves, cards, books, to Little Debbie Birthday Cakes. In adddion, I’ve seen fans pay as much as $200 for Super Chat donations in Ashleigh’s livestreams.

When you add in Adsense, Patreon, and the donations, it’s possible Ashleigh could be raking in close to $15k a month or more. Not a bad side gig.

Next up we have Popcorn in Bed, whose husband one day pointed out to her that she’d been “hiding under a rock my whole life with how many ‘amazing’ movies I haven’t seen (according to him).” Cassie, who runs PiB, started just a little over a year ago, in January, 2021, but since then has racked up substantial subs, and has some decent monthly ad income:

Like Ashleigh, Cassie has the Patreon hustle down to a science. Check her page out:

While Cassie’s Patreon page above doesn’t show her exact monthly income, there’s a way to get a rough estimate. Going back to Ashleigh’s page, if you divide the number of monthly patrons into the amount she makes each month, you come to about $8.18 per person. Ashley has a membership tier of $3, $8, $10, $20, and even $100. The $100 one is actually sold out. So, at $8.18, it shows she has a pretty committed and engaged audience.

Now, looking at Cassie (Popcorn in Bed), she has four membership levels at $3, $6, $10, and $15. It’s reasonable to think each Patron might be in the average of those numbers, if Cassie’s results are similar to Ashleigh’s. That would mean each patron comes out to $7 a month. Seven bucks times 2,587 total Patrons comes out to $18,109. So, that plus the Google Adsense results (an average estimate of $5,897) equals $24,007 a month. Then you have donations and Super Chats. Cassie also does regular livestream gift unboxings. Oh, and then there’s PiB MERCH.

All told, Cassie could be getting paid $300k+ PER YEAR to watch movies.

Excuse me while I sit here with my mind blown for a minute or two.

To put that sort of income in perspective, according to Medscape Physician Compensation Report, 2019, Pathologists earn an average annual income of $308,000. According to U.S. News, the top 25 percent of lawyers in the U.S. make $189,250 a year. But unlike going to law school or medical school for years, being a movie reaction YouTuber doesn’t involve going into potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars of student loan debt.

Now, to be clear, individual results will vary when it comes to YouTube. Ashleigh and Cassie’s success with reaction videos may not be typical. But even doing a cursory glance through YouTube at the numerous reaction channels that exist out there, you’ll find dozens that have north of 100k subs. If you post regularly, engage with your audience, and leverage various revenue sources like Patreon or merchandising, you can make a substantial income with this niche.

But let’s look at a more “down to earth” example.

Shanelle started her channel two years ago in June of 2020, and like many other reaction YouTubers, saw some growth during the Covid lockdowns. Shanelle is also an actress and wants to work in comedy.

But what accounts for the lower revenue and subscription numbers compared to Ashleigh Burton and Cassie of Popcorn in Bed? I suspect this may simply boil down to fewer postings. Shanelle’s updates average out to almost once a week for the last two years. Ashleigh has uploaded 223 videos in about the same time span. While Cassie has done 210 in almost 18 months. YouTube really does reward higher consistency, and this is also the case with reaction videos. This is a niche with a lot of increasing competition. So if you’re not posting heavily, it’s going to be harder to hold onto and build an audience.

But even if you want to pursue the reaction niche on more of a part-time basis, Shanell’s channel shows you can still make a decent side income. Hey, not everyone has the time or interest to sit around watching movies all day, even if it might pay ridicously well. She does not have a Patreon page, a P.O. Box for donations, and does few livestreams. However, in a recent livestream, I noticed she did make some high-dollar Super Chats.

But what if you and a friend want to do a reaction video? Or if you’re in a relationship, and both you and your partner want to score some sweet reaction video cash? You’re in luck, because there are plenty of profitable channels that do just that.

Frankenstein’s Lab is a reaction channel run by “Frankenstein” and his cousin Rondo, who react to “movie trailers, music videos, sports, tv shows, and everything in between.” The two cousins have been at it for almost five years, having started back in May, 2017, and have built up a decent following since then.

I included this account to show that some reaction channels stretch back from before the Dark Times, before the Covid-19 lockdowns. And also to show that starting a reaction channel is not always as simple as going for the obvious choices, like Marvel movies or Star Wars. You have to stretch out and diversify the types of content you’re covering. Frankenstein’s Lab started to get some traction about a year after starting. It still saw really inconsistent view counts, ranging anywhere from a few hundred to tens of thousands. Then they did really well with a few videos reacting to comedian Bill Burr, as well as other comedians like Theo Von.

What’s cool about these reaction channels is you’re potentially exposing people to a lot of content they might not have seen otherwise. So don’t be afraid to get really eclectic with your choices, and mix it up. Just because an entertainer or film may have a limited following, you might strike gold reacting to their videos because you’re introducing something different to a new audience. You can also ride the coattails of a new trend or person, too. It was around the late teens era when Theo Von was starting to get popular, so Frankenstein’s Lab rode some of that wave.

Frankenstein’s Lab is a real “workman’s” channel, having consistenty posted for almost five years now. It didn’t seem to benefit much from a “Covid Bump” in popularity. It was already well on its way before then. The two cousins have a small Patreon following. But they do utilize PayPal and CashApp, so it’s hard to say what their channel’s income might be. It obviously pulls in enough to be worth it to keep going.

Finally, there’s ScreenSlurp, run by Australian couple Nick and Em. They started their channel in September, 2020, and have built up a pretty solid following.

While the couple has been successful in monetizing their channel like many others in the reaction niche, and have a modest Patreon membership, Nick appears to be using their growing internet platform to help get a creative project of his off the ground. Their Instagram page has a link to a Kickstarter for an epic fantasy comic called “Creature Dwells” that Nick is trying to produce. As of now, the Kickstarter has already surpassed its funding goal. That’s a pretty cool double win there. You make a living watching movies, and help launch your own artistic career.

So, if you’re an artist or writer, and you’re looking to gain exposure or build a fanbase for your material, consider starting a YouTube channel.

Finally, these five channels are just a very small sampling of the vast number out there in the reaction video niche. Despite its controversy, there are no signs the trend is going away anytime soon. If anything, it’s growing and evolving.

If you’re considering getting into this lucrative niche, here are a few quick takeaways I learned in my research. Some of these tips overlap with what you’d need to do starting any YouTube channel, while others are specific to this niche.

Brush up on YouTube’s copyright and fair use policies, and be sure to follow the rules at all times. No sense in starting a channel if you’re just going to get banned.
Post regularly and often. Hey, you’re watching movies and TV. This shouldn’t be too hard, right? Yeah, I know, there’s this thing called the “outdoors” and “having a life.” But if you want to build an audience these days, you’ve got to rifle content out there like a World War II turret gunner.
Use Patreon! Make sure you offer plenty of extras and exclusives for your audience. You can post full-length movies on Patreon without having to cut them up to satisfy the fair use rule. Ashleigh and Cassie use that feature for their accounts, and it’s done great for them in raking in memberships.
Build a community with your subscribers. That means livestreams, lots of interaction, and maybe even tiny glimpses into your personal life. Remember “mirror neurons.” You want your subscribers to think of you as a cool friend they want to watch movies with. It’s all about building that sense of empathy and connection.
Don’t be afraid to cover stuff that’s not “popular.” You never know what might land. Or maybe your particular take on something is really unique and humorous, and that triggers the YouTube algorithm in your favor. Think of Frankenstein’s Lab when they did the Bill Burr and Theo Von videos. They went from a few thousand views on average, to millions, for those comedian-centered reactions.
Don’t forget about “Merchandising! Merchandising!” Every little revenue stream counts.

And that’s it. Good luck. I look forward to seeing your reaction channel, if I’m ever able to find it.

This Simple YouTube Niche is Faceless, Easy to Start, and Monetizes Quickly

On May 20, 2022May 20, 2022 By Dean BrooksLeave a comment

Photo by Matej from Pexels: https://www.pexels.com/photo/inspirational-qoute-on-a-paper-698324/

Oh, and competition doesn’t seem to matter much for this niche, either. The YouTube ecosystem is so massive, there’s room for all sorts of similar, competing channels.

All of the channels I found in this niche have thousands to even hundreds of thousands of followers, and were all started within the last year. Some even had videos on virtually identical topics.

So, what niche am I talking about?

The “famous quotes” niche.

Basically, it’s just a slideshow of quotes by a famous person, usually against a black or decorative backdrop, set to copyright-free music, and read either by a human voiceover, or an AI voice that sounds pretty close to human.

That’s it. These videos feature quotes from all kinds of people. From celebrities like Marilyn Monroe, to writers like Oscar Wilde, philosophers like Confucius, to scientists like Albert Einstein. This niche falls mostly in the educational category, though it also crosses over with the historical, motivational and self-development niches as well.

This niche has undoubtedly been around for many years, both on YouTube and on boring old static websites. But it seems to have recently experienced a bit of a resurgence. I researched four channels, and all of them have experienced significant growth in just the last few months.

As a YouTube enthusiast, and someone who tries to be a “student of markets,” as legendary copywriter Gary Halbert says, I love discovering new niches. It’s fascinating to me to see the kinds of things people like. What sorts of trends suddenly become popular. And then seeing opportunistic YouTubers take advantage of those latest trends and start channels that become sucessful.

Oh, and another thing. This quotes niche is also one that could be easily outsourced and automated.

The biggest channel I found was the appropriatly named Quotes channel. At the time of this writing, this channel has 454,000 subscribers. The screenshot above was taken about a week ago. That means in just the last seven days, this channels has gained over 10,000 new subscribers!

According to Social Blade, a site that tracks and ranks different forms of social media, and estimates advertising income, Quotes currently makes somewhere between $950-$15,200 a month. Even if you take the lower estimate of that, say, closer to $2000-$3,000, that’s still pretty good, considering this channel generally updates every few days. And that’s just from Google Adsense.

The Quotes YouTube channel was started only last September, and in the eight months since has built up almost a 500,000 subscriber base. Not bad for a channel with only about 80 uploads.

Here’s another fast growing quotes channel: Wisdom of the Ages. The above screenshot was also taken about a week ago. Since then, Wisdom’s subscriber count has increased to 109,000, for an increase of almost 15,000. This quotes niche is really exploding recently, and shows little signs of slowing down.

Wisdom mixes it up by making the video titles more descriptive and engaging.

As you can see in the above screenshot, Wisdom of the Ages makes somewhere between $365-$5,800 in monthly revenue from Google Adsense. That’s pretty decent for a channel that generally only posts about once a week. The channel was started almost 10 months ago. Its most popular video features quotes by Confucius, with almost 3 million views.

Well Said! is another quotes channel I found. This one has garnered over 2,000,000 views since its inception in February. However, according to Social Blade, this channel has set its subscriber and info profile to private. It does not appear to be monetized, either. I opened up the channel in incognito mode, and played several videos. There were no bumper ads or overlays.

Given the channel’s impressive viewer count in only four months, and the fact that its most popular video has over 600,000 views, it’s quite likely this channel has surpassed the threshold for YouTube monetization (1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours in the last 12 months). It’s possible the channel creator has decided to forego monetization. Currently, the channel is updated every few days.

Lastly, there’s Quote of the Day, a channel actively started only about two months ago, but now has almost 14,000 subscribers. Like the other screenshots before, the one above was also taken a week ago. That’s 6,000 new subscribers in just seven days.

Quote of the Day has been very busy, even as a brand new channel in what seemingly might be a “saturated” niche. In its eight short weeks of life, here’s what this channel has accomplished according to its Social Blade profile:

Quote of the Day takes advantage of YouTube’s Shorts, as well. One thing I noticed that’s really cool about this niche, is that it’s very transferable. You could easily upload quotes videos to other places like TikTok and Instagram to increase and diversify revenue streams.

Quote of the Day also makes use of Amazon affiliate marketing, as seen in the shot below:

Quote of the Day is inspiring to me, and not just because of its content, but because it shows you don’t have to be the first, the second, or even somewhere in the middle, to start a successful YouTube channel in a growing niche. You could even be dead last, and still build a decent following. There are millions (billions, probably at this point) of people watching YouTube everyday. These four channels show that there’s enough room for everybody in even the smaller niches.

Two Crazy Self-Published Books I Found on Amazon, and What I Learned from Discovering Them

On April 18, 2022 By Dean BrooksLeave a comment

Troll: Special Edition, by Emma Clark

I first learned about this book courtesy of the YouTube algorithm, which one day randomly served up a video by popular nerd culture vlogger Jenny Nicholson. Jenny devotes over 23 minutes to discussing Troll in a vlog titled, “I Did it. I found the Worst Book.”

Now, call me an optimist, but if the supposedly “worst” book on Amazon can get someone talking about it for 23 minutes, then hey, there must be something special about it. It’s like what Jack Sparrow said when told he was the worst pirate anyone’s ever heard of. “Yeah, but you have heard of me.”

Troll may very well be the worst book ever written if Jenny’s to be believed, but you (and many others, courtesy of her vlog) have heard of it. I mean, fifty percent of the struggle of being a writer is just getting read. There are tons of books on Amazon that don’t even have a single review, much less a sale. Emma Clark succeeded here, and not just due to the negative publicity from Jenny’s vlog. Even before Jenny’s video, Troll had reviews and some sales. Troll had fans who were fans before it was cool, baby.

So, what’s Troll about anyway? From the author’s own book blurb:

Twenty-one-year-old Kyla Adkins frequents the Internet in search of her soul mate. While online, she meets hot and devilishly handsome Justin Brogan. Dangerous, arrogant and quite psychotic, Justin hacks into Kyla’s computer and soon he controls everything, including her heart and her life.

That’s not a bad concept, really. It’s topical, relevant, and hip for today’s internet savvy audiences. Who hasn’t secretly fantasized about a hot internet troll stalking them? Even though it was published in 2013, you could easily see Troll updated for the TikTok generation.

Troll: Special Edition, is actually an omnibus containing three previously published novels in the, uh, Troll universe. There are four parts to the Troll saga, so you’ll want to buy each edition separately so that you don’t miss out on any in the series.

The author has also written other erotic books, such as Boy Next Door, a sort of gritty Kmart version of 50 Shades of Grey, which contains “abusive themes such as captive scenarios and BDSM.” Hey, you could say the same thing about the Bible.

According to the author’s website, her other books include Drawn to Darkness, a series, Sea Angels: An Erotic Short, and various other erotic/romance books. It seems the author’s productivity dropped off around 2016, as there isn’t anything listed after that year. Can we hope that Troll will return for a fifth installment this decade? I’d like to see Troll take on the Metaverse. People are getting groped in Zuckerberg’s digital Twilight Zone already. So, if you’re out there reading this, Ms./Mrs. Clark, you’ve got a lot of new material to work with for a new Troll book. Just saying.

Most of Emma Clark’s books are short. Troll: Part I, for instance, is all of 18 pages, and boasts a respectable four out of five stars from six ratings. Troll: Special Edition, also known as Troll: First 3 Books, has 2.9 stars from 31 ratings. Though most of the reviews clearly derive from Jenny’s YouTube audience, many of whom sarcastically posted five-star and one-star reviews. Still, 2.9 is like a movie getting a 60% Rotten Tomatoes score. Sonic the Hedgehog got a 63% in its 2020 debut, and that movie did great at the box office, even after all that controversy about Sonic’s weird-ass creepy face.

What I Learned from Discovering Troll: Put yourself out there, regardless of whether you think you’re talented, ready, or not. You never know what will connect with people. You also never know when some random vlogger may discover your stuff, and decide to post a review of your work. While Clark’s book obviously got roasted, there have been examples from the opposite extreme. Andy Weir and The Martian, for instance.

Up next, I’d like to direct your eyes downward to:

Ass Culture: A Short History, by Martin Goldberg

This is another book I discovered via YouTube. Or rather, I discovered the author via YouTube. It goes to show that if you’re a writer trying to promote yourself and your books, YouTube is a great place to build a platform. TikTok, or more specifically, BookTok, is another good one, as I wrote about in this article.

So, what’s Ass Culture about? Gee, I wonder. Actually, little is known about it, as Goldberg never posted a blurb or summary on the book’s Amazon page. However, it appears to be about, based on some preliminary reading in the Kindle sample, the portrayal of the female posterior down through history, and its questionable association with feminine value and fertility.

That, or just a celebration of the ass.

The reason this is an important topic goes beyond the age-old debate of whether you are an “ass guy,” a “breast guy,” a “face guy,” or even a “legs guy.” It’s really about how you judge the opposite sex, and how by focusing on superficial physical qualities (such as a lady’s posterior) you can miss out on the qualities that do matter in a potential mate (character, values, etc.). Missing the forest for the ass, so to speak.

On an individual level, this may not be that important. We all have our kinks. On a culture-wide level, however, a preoccupation with ass can lead a whole civilization astray. Yeah, you thought Sir Mix-A-Lot’s 1992 hit “Baby Got Back” was just a fun pop hit? No, that was actually indicative of Western Civilization’s moral decay. And things aren’t getting any better, judging by Meghan Trainor’s 2014 hit “All About That Bass,” a decisively pro-booty song. Though if we’re going to point any fingers, let’s not forget Queen’s 1978 hit “Fat Bottomed Girls,” which may have gotten the party started.

The message here is shocking: There is a clear conspiracy afoot to poison the minds of Western men with an ass fetish. The effects of this could be calamitous. Will men today, with so much of their precious mental real estate absorbed by “dat ass,” be able to match the feats of men from precious generations? Could the Greatest Generation have landed at Normandy if their minds were warped by visions of bouncing buttocks? Could the brilliant engineers at NASA put Armstrong on the moon, if the only “moon” they were concerned with was the kind stuffed inside bikini bottoms? I think not.

The author, Martin Goldberg, is a YouTuber with 48,000 subscribers, according to Social Blade. He sporadically updates his channel nowadays. In the past, he was much more active, and appeared on camera. He covers a wide variety of topics, ranging from politics, history, culture, the “red pill,” MGTOW (that’s Men Going Their Own Way, for those of you wondering), and book reviews. I first found his channel several years ago when he was updating more regularly.

Goldberg has also written a bunch of other books, including Understanding and Overcoming the Black Pill, How to Suck at Business: A Case Study, and Total Invincibility: How to Crush Failure and Maximize Your Human Potential. Of note is that all of his books are, at minimum, rated four stars, with some five stars. And all with apparently little to no promotion, other than the small amount of notoriety from Goldberg’s YouTube channel.

What I Learned from Discovering Ass Culture: A Short History: Don’t be afraid of exploring topics, however niche or weird they might seem, that are of interest to you. Look for ways to illustrate history from different, or unconventional ends. And post a decent and intriguing blurb about your book on its Amazon page to get people interested. Even your biggest ass-enthusiasts are going to want to have at least some idea of what they’re in for in a book called Ass Culture.

Why You Should Consider Owning Precious Metals

On April 13, 2022April 13, 2022 By Dean BrooksLeave a comment

And some helpful tips if you plan to do so

Last year, I decided to finally purchase gold and silver bullion. Not because I thought the apocalypse was imminent. Or because I thought the economy was collapsing. Gold and silver bugs have long been lumped in with bunker-building doomsayers and economic Chicken Littles. I’m neither of those things. Even if civilization were to collapse, you wouldn’t want to be holding gold and silver anyway. In a post-apocalyptic society, things like food, water, clothing, bullets, gas, and oil represent far great currency than the yellow metal and its gray counterpart. You only need to look at places like Venezuela to see that.

No, it was curiosity and interest, and the desire to diversify my investments. I’ve been in stocks and options for years now. Two years ago, I got into cryptocurrency and DeFi. But last year, I finally made the plunge into the precious metals asset class.

Since then, I’ve accumulated what you might call a good “starter kit” of silver and gold, and the experience has been rewarding and fulfilling.

But why “invest” in gold and silver?

Firstly, it’s not an investment. It’s not even an “inflation hedge,” as gold is often touted as by the late-night infomercials. For something to truly be an inflation hedge, it should consistently outpace inflation. Gold and silver haven’t really ever done that over the last ten years. Going back over their history, there are much better asset alternatives that would have given you much higher returns. S&P 500 and NASDAQ ETFs and index funds, as well as your standard growth stocks, for example. Gold and silver on the other hand will generally just sit there collecting dust as far as the inflation-beating game goes.

Okay, so why would you put any money into them if you’re almost guaranteed to lose against inflation? Wouldn’t that money be better spent in an index or mutual fund, or something like Tesla or Bitcoin?

I think of gold and silver as a specialized savings account.

A traditional savings account offers little to no interest and may even cost you money depending on fees. If inflation continues at its current rate of about 8%, if you put $100,000 into a standard savings account, by the end of the year the purchasing power of that money is roughly equivalent to $92,000. That’s like throwing $8,000 into a bonfire. Gold and silver, however, will maintain as a store of value over the long term. Both metals have had their peaks and valleys over the last twenty years. But relative to the U.S. dollar, they’ve held strong.

They’ve also held up for almost 5,000 years of human history. One ounce of gold during Roman times bought you a nice outfit, a belt, and shoes. An ounce of gold will still buy you that now. Remember, with precious metals you have to take the long view. Don’t think in terms of years or even decades, but centuries. This is another reason I like gold. It’s “eternal.” Apple and Microsoft have delivered exponentially greater gains over the last 40 years of their existence than gold and silver have. But will those tech giants still be dominant or exist at all in another 40 years? Or eighty?

Putting your money into gold and silver is like putting it into cryostasis. You’re saving it for the future, and locking in the value of your hard-earned net worth. Even if gold and silver aren’t measured by the dollar in ten or twenty years, whatever currency they ARE measured by will likely properly match their value. This is why gold and silver are often referred to as “safe haven assets.” They have significant utility. Half of the gold in circulation is used in jewelry. The other half is used in industrial purposes and collectibles. It’s unlikely gold will lose its luster as a form of decoration in the future. And electronics will probably always have a need for gold. Silver also will maintain its industrial use into the future.

I think it’s important to own a non-liquid asset that you can’t just trade away with the swipe of a finger.

This is more of a philosophical rationale. We live in a disposable society in which so many things have become cheap, fast, and easy, like microwave dinners. Retail traders shuffle through stocks on smartphone apps like Robinhood and WeBull with the speed of a Las Vegas card dealer. Most trading on Wall Street isn’t even done manually, but with bots ruled by algorithms. I’ve traded hundreds of thousands of dollars of stocks and options myself to the point where sometimes the money doesn’t even feel real, but more like video game points. Money today, while as valuable and important to have as it has ever been, feels increasingly gaseous and fake. And not just because the Federal Reserve prints it out of thin air. But because it’s often disconnected from the hard labor, work, and risk that used to be required to possess it. For most of human history, if you wanted to make a fortune, you had to conquer someone else who had one. Or you had to be willing to face real danger, like crossing an ocean to seek trade. But capital is generally pretty easy to come by now, and this is only compounded by the ease with which it can be managed on a smartphone. A few taps on a piece of glass and you can move millions. Billions, even. It’s astounding how modern technology, while insanely convenient, has made the act of making money feel devalued and denigrated.

I like gold and silver because I like the idea of my money, my labor, and my time, being represented in something physical that’s been around for millions of years. Not just represented by a few digits on a computer screen.

Buying gold and silver can make you more responsible.

Wait, what? Precious metals can do that? Somewhat. It will certainly necessitate buying a safe for secure storage. It will literally force you to take into consideration the best way to protect your wealth. It prompts you to consider how and where you can store your precious metals. Which in turn prompts you to be more mindful of your surroundings, and your future. Even though you’d think keeping valuable pieces of metal in your home might make you worried for their security, in my experience it’s actually been the opposite. It’s a comforting feeling keeping metals under my roof. Just make sure you don’t go blabbing about your gold and silver to just anyone. And make sure you buy a good safe, particularly one that can withstand the elements, like fire and water. Most safes, as I discovered during my search, are actually ridiculously easy to break into (thanks LockPickingLawyer). But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t buy one with some serious weight. The more precious metals you’re looking to buy, the better (and larger) your safe should be. Of course, you can always keep your metals inside a third-party vault, but that defeats the purpose (and to me, the real appeal) of owning them in the first place.

Afterall, one of the reasons Bitcoin is heralded as a valuable asset, is because you can self-custody it outside the control of any centralized entity, like a bank or government. Gold and silver have that same feature. Once that sliver of yellow or gray is dropped off at your door, or after you pick it up at a reputable dealer, it’s yours to have and to hold. Just make sure to keep a good eye on where you put it.

There’s also the diversification aspect to owning gold and silver.

When it comes to a lot of investments, people are quick to look at the ROI. The bigger the better, right? Except there’s a little thing called the risk curve. The greater the return on investment, the bigger the risk, generally speaking. Plain Jane mutual funds and bonds equal lower risk. That latest doggy-themed coin: high risk. Precious metals are closer to the safer side of the risk curve. It’s not a bad idea to own a little bit of every asset class, while focusing on the traditionally more successful and reliable ones. Stocks and real estate are always great. Crypto and Bitcoin are the future. But to me, gold and silver serve as an insurance policy. And even potentially as a “do-over fund,” if things really hit the fan. Bitcoin has the self-custody feature. But the downside there is that it’s volatile. Gold and silver tend to be pretty stable. Should you ever need to cash in your metals, there’s a good chance what you paid for them is close to what you’ll get, minus what you paid over spot.

This next reason is a little morbid, but it’s something you have to think about.

What are you going to pass down to your loved ones when you die?

Imagine being able to give them gold and silver, like you were some Medieval king (or a pirate). How cool is that? Call me a sentimentalist, but I like the idea of giving my future children and spouse something beyond just paper assets. Sure, real estate is fine, but it’s hard to split a house. A business is good, but your heirs may not want to or be able to continue running it. Gold coins and silver bars are easily divisible, and simple to trade-in for cash value.

There’s another smaller and sillier reason that motivates me to buy gold and silver.

I grew up loving Scrooge McDuck, from the Duck Tales cartoon. While I never thought I’d ever have a money bin filled with gold coins (and a Number One Dime) like he did, I always envisioned being able to have at least my own collection of coins.

A few things to consider before getting into precious metals.

Make sure you buy from a reputable dealer.

I use JM Bullion, which is a pretty well-established company. I’ve never had an issue with any deliveries. They have three pricing tiers depending on the method you use to pay. Electronic check is generally the cheaper option, but you can also use a debit card, or cryptocurrency. Be prepared to wait about two weeks if you use the e-check method. It’s worth the wait for the discount, though. Afterall, it’s not like gold or silver have expiration dates. A good dealer should ship your delivery discreetly, but you should make sure that your package requires a signature. If you live in an apartment building with a management office, try to have UPS deliver there, if you can’t have them deliver straight to your door. If you are shipping to your own house, either make a signature required, or make sure you or someone you trust is there for when the package is scheduled to arrive.

Get a good safe.

Or at least one that will withstand the elements, mainly fire and water. You don’t have to go all out and spend thousands, necessarily. But you want one that’s heavy enough to prevent someone from just easily walking off with it. Your safe’s size and cost should be proportional to your expected holdings. For a first-time buyer, a simple Sentry safe with a combo lock might be sufficient. It’s what I use myself. More experienced or higher net worth buyers may want something larger. You may also want to even look into keeping your metals in a vault with a private company. Or even in a safe deposit box. Whatever works for you.

Mind the over spot fees.

This is really important to consider, and it’s even something that puts some people off from buying precious metals in the first place. When a dealer like JM Bullion sells you gold, they add an over spot fee to the trading value of the gold item. So, if gold is currently trading at $2,000 an ounce in the market (AKA the “spot price”), JM Bullion might sell you a one-ounce gold American Eagle for $2,100, which would constitute a $100 over spot fee. Dealers have to collect a profit to stay in business, obviously. But depending on the over spot cost relative to the market price of the metal you’re buying, it can make a purchase more expensive than you might expect. A rule of thumb is that generally the smaller weight a metal is, the greater the proportion in over spot fee will be.

Silver has a much higher over spot cost than gold. A one-ounce American Eagle silver coin currently retails for $38 or more on JM Bullion, while the price of silver is at around $25. That’s almost a 50% mark-up! Yeah, silver coins are generally not really worth it, especially during periods of high demand like right now. It gets worse when you consider that if you were to sell your silver back to JM Bullion (or anyone else), you’ll likely only get spot value ($25 an ounce), NOT the over spot cost you initially paid. So, if you’re buying silver coins, you’re in the hole from the beginning. Not the best way to start a new relationship with a new asset. But again, this is why gold and silver are NOT true investments, but specialized savings accounts.

Remember, you’re also guaranteed to lose purchasing power if you hold your money in a traditional savings account in a low-rate environment (like today). But the value of keeping reserves liquid for an emergency, or saving for an upcoming purchase like a down payment on a house, is worth more than the risk of your money gradually losing out to inflation.

To help mitigate the over spot fee for silver, I purchase ten-ounce silver bars, which in calmer market periods often only retail for about $3 or so over spot per ounce. The larger size you buy, the lower the over spot fee, generally speaking. JM Bullion also offers a discount on over spot if you buy in bulk. Though I don’t think I’d ever buy a kilo or 100 oz. bar of silver due to weight and storage issues.

I also don’t buy silver collectibles, such as silver bullets or figurines, or “junk silver,” aka old coins like quarters that were minted with real silver. I’ve found the over spot fees there especially egregious, to say nothing of the questionable “value” in those silver items. Many people buy gold and silver for emotional reasons over purely logical reasons. Metals are assets that make people “feel secure,” especially during turbulent times in the stock market, or during violent geopolitical affairs. This is why many precious metals dealers like to play on people’s fears in their marketing efforts. Dealers like JM Bullion market a variety of gold and silver products on their sites. JM even has a whole line of Disney-themed coins. If you’re into those sorts of products, fine. But collectibles need to be evaluated differently. You’ll almost certainly overpay not just on over spot fees, but mark-up, as well. For me, I stick solely with gold and silver bullion, and I don’t collect or wear jewelry.

As for things like commemorative coins, rare coins, or “proof” coins and such, you’ll also pay substantially higher premiums. The value of those sorts of coins is more in their scarcity and demand in collector circles, than in just their gold or silver content. They are better used as gifts than as “stores of value.” Last year I bought sealed American Silver Eagle coins for my newborn niece and nephew, for instance.

If you’re really serious about acquiring a lot of bullion, gold is going to be your most cost and storage-efficient option. Silver is nice and cheap to start out with. But its high over spot fees don’t make it worthwhile for the average person. To say nothing of the impracticality of trying to store large amounts of the metal. You can easily stick $10,000 in gold coins in your pocket. You’d need a shoebox to carry $10,000 worth of silver, and it’d be heavy to lug around.

For gold, I’ve found that you want to stick with at least one ounce or higher to keep those over spot fees low. Anything less than an ounce, and you’re overpaying substantially. For example, a quarter ounce American Eagle gold coin on JM Bullion currently goes for about $629, with gold at $1941. That means you’re paying almost $144 over spot, or almost 23%. Whereas if you buy the one-ounce American Eagle, it’ll cost you an extra $130, which represents a more tolerable 6.6% over spot cost. The coin posted at the top of this article is the British Britannia. I bought this coin not just for its beauty and its sensational design, but also because it offered the lowest over spot fee for a gold coin. As of now, the over spot cost is only $84, making it one of the best deals currently on JM Bullion.

The absolute cheapest way to buy gold with the lowest spot price is to buy the prepackaged bars in sealed plastic, either the one ounce or the ten-ounce kind. However, I really prefer the coins. The slightly higher over spot fee is negligible compared to the savings you get with the bars. And they just look cooler, too.

Another thing to consider is the purity of the gold you are buying.

American Eagles, for example, are .9167 purity. The remaining .0833 is a mixture of silver and copper to help protect the finish and make the coin tougher and harder to scratch (gold is a soft metal, remember). Even though American Eagles are among the most popular gold coins on the market, if you’re a purist like me, you may prefer as much gold as possible. Since American Eagles are only about 90% gold, while still having a higher over spot fee, I don’t find them to be a good deal. The British Brittanias, on the other hand, are .9999 purity, not to mention have a sharper design. And since I keep mine locked in a plastic holder anyway, I’m not concerned with it getting scratched. So, it eliminates the mixed-metal toughness “advantage” American Eagles have.

Most silver bullion is going to be .9999, so there are generally no purity issues to be concerned with there.

Lastly, you’ll want to carefully consider portfolio allocation.

This is going to be different for every individual. For me, I probably wouldn’t keep more than one or two percent of your net worth in precious metals. Remember, you are essentially “freezing” any money you put into metals. Money that won’t be potentially collecting dividends or increasing in value like it would in a good growth stock, ETF, or index fund. Money you can’t use to save toward a down payment on an investment property, or a small business. It’s also not money you can easily and quickly make liquid for emergencies. And, of course, you don’t want to have more than you can reasonably hold and secure in a good safe. It’s really not necessary to go heavy into precious metals.

A final word of caution. It’s very easy to get bit by the gold bug. Gold’s a metal that has attracted mankind for over 5,000 years, after all. It’s tempting to start collecting a lot more after you get your first shiny new coin or bar. But try to keep it in moderation.

I’ll leave you with a few interesting and fun facts about gold.

According to USGS, about 244,000 metric tons of gold has thus far been discovered. If all of that gold were to be gathered together into the shape of a cube, it would measure 28 meters (98 ft.) on every side.

That’s a fascinating factoid, to be sure. But it got me thinking. How would one measure all of the gold in the form of Mr. T’s? Mr. T., as in the ‘80s pop icon famous for wearing myriad gold chains. Mr. T as in “I pity the fool.”

Mr. T is reputed to have worn approximately 100 ounces of gold, which incidentally would be valued at nearly $200,000 at the current spot price. That means you would need about 86,068,467 clones of Mr. T, all fully decked out in their gold chains, bracelets, and rings, to carry all of the world’s currently known gold reserves (including already mined gold and some discovered, but remaining in the earth). That’s almost the whole population of Germany. That’s a lot of Mr. T’s, and a lot of gold chains.

But you don’t have to be like B.A. Baracus, wearing enough metal around your neck to buy a Ferrari. You can start with a starter kit. A few “stacker bars” of silver. A gold coin or two. Maybe even diversifying further into alternative metals like platinum and palladium, if that’s your thing. Gradually scaling upward as your net worth climbs over time. Whatever you choose to buy, you’ll find precious metals collecting rewarding and fun.

A Few Reasons Marriage Rates are Falling Worldwide

On March 21, 2022 By Dean BrooksLeave a comment

Photo by **Nghia Trinh** from **Pexels**

As a lifelong bachelor who’s never had more than a passing interest in getting married, sometimes I like to take a moment to examine the institution from an outsider’s perspective.

It’s not that I don’t like or trust the concept of marriage. I’m not some cynical, jaded, red pill doomer/MGTOW misanthrope. Having seen my share of “manosphere” content on YouTube, my overall assessment is it’s like most gangsta rap. Hilarious subverse, fun to listen to, but not exactly meaningful or useful for leading a productive life. Most of the so-called “unplugged” red pillers are really nothing more than just unlikable a-holes with too much money and/or time on their hands.

Yet, many of them do make very valid points in their suspicions toward the institution of marriage. It’s a coin flip. A 50% chance you might lose half your possessions (or more) in a divorce. Who wants to take 50/50 odds their parachute won’t open after they jump out of a plane? You’ve heard all the analogies and seen all the statistics before, I’m sure.

On principle, marriage is a good idea. If it represents a genuine committment and a good faith promise from parties not to screw each other over in the event of a separation. Looked at from a financial and tax perspective, there are many benefits. Given how many Millennials (who are now in the thick of their getting hitched years given their age group) are supposedly broke/unemployed/in debt/under employed/not fulfilling their economic potential, it would seem getting married makes all kinds of sense financially. Two people to share onerous rent or mortgage payments, furniture costs, Netflix subscription fees, etc. Yet, marriage rates globally continue to decline.

So, why is this? The South China Morning Post lists three reasons. The first of which is:

Independent demographer He Yafu said young Chinese women were changing their view of marriage and parenting.
“As their education and economic independence levels increase, the percentage of women who are single is increasing,” He said.

Women becoming more independent and self-sufficient as a cause for declining marriage rates is not unique to China, of course. In all my searches, I found that to be a common theme. It’s certainly a cause here in the West, in the U.S. and Canada, and elsewhere. It’s here that a red piller might posit that feminism will “destroy civilization,” as it reduces women’s interest in having committed relationships during their peak fertile windows, leading to fewer births, leading to governments having to allow for laxxer immigration policies to prop up the tax base, leading to the dissolution of unified national identity, leading to globalization, and ultimately leadings to pods, bugs, fake meat, and mandatory soy injections in the dick, or something.

By the way, if all that does happen, I’ll be happy to admit I was wrong to doubt the red pillers and for not buying a MGTOW coaching session for $20 a minute so I can be told what a loser I am for not being a millionaire supermodel pussy slayer by age 25.

Going back to China, marriage rates have dropped to their lowest rate since 1986, when statistics first started being recorded. Naturally, China’s infamous one-child policy, which favored males, gets part of the blame. And rightly so. Now China has a demographic time bomb going off with excess men, and not enough women to go around as wives. Imagine a whole nation of incels. Actually, you don’t have to. That’s pretty much everywhere now.

However, while China’s lopsided male/female ratio may be unique on the national scale, it’s not necessarily so at the local level, depending on where you live. I currently live in Western North Dakota, having moved here for the oil boom many years back. It’s not as bad now, but certainly back during the heyday of the boom, there were far greater numbers of men than women. And what few women there were, were often already attached, had children, or were not exactly in the dating pool. Western North Dakota is the place where relationships go to die, I like to joke with friends and family. Strangely, it is also the place where your bank account and networth go to live. Can’t have it all, I guess.

That South China Morning Post article also blames the COVID-19 pandemic, as it forced so many young, potentially marriageable people indoors, where they couldn’t have gone on a coffee date even if they had wanted to.

I think if anything the pandemic acted an accelerant on an already growing societal trend, though it doesn’t really get at a big underlying cause: technology. Social media, in particular, which has a way of dehumanizing people. Even good people. This is true whether we’re talking Twitter, Facebook, or popular dating apps like PlentyofTrash and OkStupid. Most dating apps create a sort of digital China experience, in which the men vastly outnumber the women. Women are often inundated with messages from thirsty dudes, while most dudes are left shooting their shot into the void with not much to show for it. That’s not to say dating apps are pointless. I’ve had some anecdotal success with them, even while living on Mars, as I do, and not being some chiseled Adonis. However, I’ve found far more success when I actually go out, and put myself in the right social situations, as I’m sure most people have also experienced. I’d never want to rely solely on dating apps ever, though. That’d be like having to rely on Burger King for every meal.

So, China blames women becoming more independent and delaying marriage, or putting it off altogether, the nation’s disastrous one-child policy that led to too many boys, and COVID-19. I think you also see these reasons playing out in the West, but sometimes in a more localized way. For instance, even in big cities, where the male/female ratio is more balanced, either sex will still complain about a lack of suitable mates. Women may complain that there are too few high status guys who match their income or higher. While many guys who don’t feel they can compete in the dating market anyway (or just don’t want the hassle, period) may simply opt out in favor of video games, movies, or internet porn.

Overall, the falling marriage rate is an alarming trend. But I think it says more about how people today are failing to connect with one another in a meaningful way rather than anything about the failure of the institution itself. Marriage has been around for thousand sof years, afterall, and will continue into the future.

But hey, maybe we’ll all have better luck in the Metaverse. 🙂

Looking for Ways to Market Your Book? BookTok May Be the Answer

On March 18, 2022 By Dean BrooksLeave a comment

For anyone who’s self-published a book, or even had one put out by a traditional publisher, you know that selling your book can prove challenging. Many would-be indie authors might even put off self-publishing to begin with due to not knowing how to successfully market their work.

If you’re an author who’s struggled with this problem, then Booktok might be your solution.

What is Booktok? It’s a very popular, very active, very trendy, and evidently very influential book-loving community within the massive ecosystem that is TikTok.

Booktokers post reviews and reactions to all kinds of books, ranging in length from a few seconds to several minutes.

According to Dr. Brenda K. Wiederhold, who writes in the journal Cybersychology, Behavior, and Networking in her editorial, “Booktok Made Me Do It: The Evolution of Reading,” what makes Booktok particularly unique, as opposed to what you might find on Goodreads or YouTube (BookTube):

BookTok posts usually highlight the reader’s emotional reactions to the plot and characters, often featuring evocative imagery and dramatic soundtracks.

These types of micro reviews might at first appear superficial, silly, or inconsequential, especially to those outside the Gen-Z cohort. As an older Millennial/late Gen-Xer myself, I’ll admit I’ve kept TikTok off my radar until very recently. But as I explored BookTok after reading Wiederhold’s editorial, I found it was better to think of this particular social media not as a some refined mosaic of individualized editorial content, but more as a fluid, on-going conversation. Whereas YouTube rewards more structured and formalized mini-TED Talk-ish type content, Booktok is messier, unfiltered, but also more authentic and conversational.

Writes Wiederhold:

In a way, with its widely accessible, authentic, and entertaining content, TikTok in general — and BookTok in particular — brings storytelling full circle, back to its oral roots.

Okay, so people have found a new social media hangout to discuss their passion for reading, and they’re putting out all sorts of creative, funny videos.

Now for the big question:

Is the Booktok trend actually leading to higher sales?

Uh, yeah. Some publishers, like Bloomsbury, have seen a 220% rise in profits, which they report is due to BookTok. Many publishers also observed that many books on their bestsellers lists were not necessarily new releases, but older books experiencing renewed interests on TikTok’s virtual book club. This is a fascinating trend, as more often than not, a book tends to have its best success right at initial release, then generally fades away into obscurity barring something like a big shot movie deal or an uptick in ad spending.

Unsurprisingly, many of the books that have been elevated on BookTok are in the young adult and contemporary fiction categories. But the BookTok phenomenon has caused many publishers to rethink their marketing and promotional strategies for all kinds of genres.

For indie authors, BookTok could be a possible solution to generate organic interest in a new release, or maybe an old one that’s been sitting there collecting dust with a big ol’ goose egg sales count number that you’re trying to figure out how to put into reader’s hands. But it’s important to keep in mind that Booktok’s main currency is authenticity, not mindless shilling.

As Wiederhold says:

TikTok users tend to upvote honest, personal experiences.

And these experiences tend to be short and to the point. Whereas YouTube reviews usually require a lengthy time committment, BookTok is more like a good friend telling you about a cool thing they just read that you should go check out. TikTok’s overall algorithmic aesthetic seems designed to grease the skids of word-of-mouth advertising rather than the sit-down-and-consume model YouTube and other places seem to have.

So, what is the BookTok community like? I went to go check it out for myself, and actually signed up for a TikTok account for the first time ever. I’m also a fledgling indie author who’s struggled with the vexing problem of how to market my books, so this subject hit close to home.

Here’s a few cool accounts I found, and some of he things I learned about in my brief BookTok experience:

“abbys_library3,” 21-year old woman who works at a publisher, has almost 90,000 followers, and has been posting regularly since just July of last year. She’s posted reviews of all sorts of books, particularly in the romance and thriller genres. One thing I learned checking out her videos is the variety of different titles. It isn’t just all Harry Potter and Twilight fans on Booktok. Some of her videos also feature theme music that matches the genre being discussed. For instance, her video “NEW BOOK ALERT: When You Are Mine” has suspense music overlaid with the review.

“charlielovesbooks” is a pretty new channel just started last November by a man based out of NYC. He’s done videos on popular fiction like The Godfather by Mario Puzo, memoirs like The Ride of a Lifetime by Bob Iger, and other non-fiction like Bitcoin Billionaires by Ben Mezrich. Barely five months old, charlielovesbooks has over 4,000 followers, and most of the reviews are under two minutes long. His videos, some of which extend beyond just book reviews, have engagement, also. In his last upload, “My biggest pet peeve when reading,” has 148 comments since March 1st.

If you’re looking for an experience that’s more traditionally “Tiktokky,” check out “booktokbenny” who incorporates a lot of music and enthusiasm into his book reviews. He talks a lot about the adult high fantasy series A Court of Thorns and Roses, and has built up a following of 10,500 in just one month.

Overall, my Booktok plunge showed me that sometimes the places that can provide the best marketing opportunities are counter-intuitive. I never would have thought TikTok of all places would be thriving with book lovers. As an avenue for indie authors, it appears a worthwhile one to explore, that unlike much of Twitter and YouTube, hasn’t been swamped out yet with ruthless and spammy opportunists. It’s still the Wild West, in many ways. Just try to keep it real on there.

Book Review – Apt Pupil

On March 8, 2022January 12, 2026 By Dean BrooksLeave a comment

Apt Pupil is a novella by Stephen King that comes from the short story collection Different Seasons.

It was published in 1982, and tells the story of a young Southern California teenager named Todd Bowden who discovers that his elderly neighbor, a supposed German immigrant, is actually a wanted Nazi war criminal named Kurt Dussander, who was personally responsible for committing horrible atrocities in the Holocaust.

However, rather than reporting Dussander’s whereabouts to the authorities, Todd instead blackmails the Nazi into becoming sort of like his own personal historian. Todd is a bit of a strange kid. He’s obsessed with WWII history, in particular the Holocaust, and instead if being repulsed by Dussander’s past actions, the kid is instead enthralled. Even inspired, to a degree.

However, the blackmail goes both ways, as the Nazi Dussander turns the tables on the kid later. See, the longer the kid has known Dussander, the more complicit he has become in keeping him from being brought to justice. Furthermore, as an “all-American” kid, with potential and college prospects, Todd risks having his future and reputation destroyed forever due to his association with an older Nazi.

With their hands on each other’s throats in a sense, Dussander and Todd are forced into an uncomfortable alliance of secrecy over a period of four years. Ultimately, Dussander’s real identity is found out through a coincidence, and Todd, now age 17, is forced to reconcile with not only how he protected a war criminal, but his own very twisted dark side.

It’s nice to every once in a while be able to read an old Stephen King story. Because, when you ignore all the films, especially the newer ones that have been made of his works, and how slick and clean they all look, you can really appreciate just how good of a writer Classic King really was.

King is at his best when he’s exploring the darkness of the human heart. He may be categorized as a horror writer, but really, his best work looks into human nature itself. But he’s also a great plotter, always ratcheting up the tension like an ever-turning corkscrew.

For instance, there’s a clever sequence when Todd’s grades begin to slip at school where the boy forces Dusaander to pretend to be his grandfather for a meeting with the guidance counselor. I’ll always champion the use of dramatic irony or an opportunity for a character to go undercover. You see this technique used to great effect in Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds, where the Basterds have to constantly bluff their way through different situations, to mixed (and bloody) results.

Apt Pupil is unusual. A story about a young kid associating with a Nazi war criminal on its own would probably be enough. But King throws in the wild card that both Todd and Dussander start murdering homeless vagrants and bums around town. For me, it was sort of like smashing two concepts into one. And I was never entirely sure exactly what precipitated both of them to start killing. I never got the sense of Dussander being a serial killer. For sure, he was a brutal Nazi war criminal. But his crimes were state-directed, not necessarily ones he set out to do in order to satisfy his own desire for bloodshed.

For Todd, his turn toward killing felt like it came out of left field. I was expecting something more along the lines of Dussander influencing the boy into killing, mirroring how the Nazi war machine, and Hitler’s propganda, tranformed Germany into a genocidal state. King, however, doesn’t go for subleties here. So essentially, what we have here is the story of two psychopaths meeting each other, and more or less provoking one another’s propensity for murder and violence. All while ironically occuring in an idyllic Southern California suburb.

Apt Pupil is a worthwhile King novella to check out if you haven’t already. A few interesting facts: King started writing Apt Pupil immediately after The Shining. And the novella is placed right before another King classic, The Body, which of course became the film Stand By Me.

Five Dead Writers Who Would Have Made Awesome Bloggers

On September 2, 2021September 2, 2021 By Dean BrooksLeave a comment

5. Shel Silverstein

Just imagine if the author of The Giving Tree and Where the Sidewalk Ends was still alive today and updating his blog with periodic poems and illustrations. While Silverstein’s current website hosts the latest news about the late artist’s works, I think his subtle and oftentimes illuminating sense of humor would work phenomenally well in today’s blogging climate.

Why he’d be awesome: XKCD vs. Shel Silverstein. I wonder who would win that battle. Dubbed as a modern-day Renaissance man, Silverstein’s work affected other mediums aside from poetry. He wrote the song A Boy Named Sue for Johnny Cash, for which he won a Grammy in 1970. He was nominated for an Oscar for his music for the film Postcards from the Edge. He also published over a dozen books between 1956 and 1998 with posthumous releases in 2005 and 2008, before his death the weekend of May 8, 1999.

Now, imagine that kind of talent applied to today’s internet, which often seems to blend multiple artistic mediums as one. I think “Uncle Shelby” would have created further masterpieces with the tools of the internet at his disposal.

4. Bill Hicks

Irreverent, obscene, but oftentimes breathtakingly insightful. His career may not have lasted that long, but the atheistic arguer who could have been George Carlin’s long lost son, certainly made his impact in the world of comedy by blending religion, politics and personal stories with his own brand of humor. Sadly, Hicks died in 1994 of liver cancer after the disease spread from his pancreas.

Why he’d be awesome: Before his untimely death, Hicks managed to land himself in controversy numerous times. Most famously his entire bit was cut from the Late Show with David Letterman after the producers found it too offensive for audiences. Hicks then wrote a 39-page letter to John Lahr of The New Yorker expressing his feelings of betrayal. The whole incident passed without audiences realizing what had happened, and how CBS had blatantly censored a comedian who’d appeared on Letterman eleven times at that point. But what if Hicks had posted that letter to his own website? Or directly on social media? Imagine the immediate outcry from people all over the country. It’s one thing to write a letter that appears in print a few weeks after the fact, but a blog entry is immediate. It probably would have forced the Late Show to release the segment of Hicks at the very least on YouTube or something.

There was also the time when Hicks declared to a heckler, “Hitler had the right idea, he was just an underachiever!” Hicks later clarified his statement as a reflection of his disgust with humanity in general, but not before charges of anti-Semitism were levied against him.

Over his career, Hicks frequently challenged the censors, challenged conventional thinking, and more often than not tore apart anyone who harassed him on stage. He was a comedian in a time when large corporations and behemoth monopolies solely controlled the dissemination of art. Now, anyone with the right tools and know-how on the internet can entertain their own audiences without censorship and without corporate oversight. The internet has brought artists and their followers closer, and has leveled the playing field in favor of those who desire to create their own material. This is the kind of environment Hicks would have thrived in. He would have had full control and been able to influence a much greater range of people than ever before.

Besides, how many comedians or humor writers are successful on the internet today? Very few. This is where Hicks would have been a stellar exception, and I can only imagine the kind of tell-all material he’d post from the sordid world of comedy.

3. Ayn Rand

If the continued popularity of Ron Paul and his perfectly-named son Rand over the past few years is any indication, there is widespread interest throughout the country in the ideals of the free market and capitalism. People are fed up with a government growing out of control, absorbing more of their tax dollars, and eroding everyday freedoms through such overreaching laws like the Patriot Act and the wasteful wars of whim in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But there’s a problem. There is very little mental muscle nowadays devoted to defending the principles that Ayn Rand espoused in her philosophy of Objectivism. Politicians are mostly divided between the heavy-spending warmongering Neocons of the far right, and the heavy-spending liberals of the far left. That’s not much of a choice considering neither side is devoted to upholding the Constitution or private property rights. If it wasn’t the War on Terror, it’d be the War on Global Warming. Then Covid came along, causing government spending to skyrocket to unprecedented levels.

Why she’d be awesome: Ayn Rand articulated the values of capitalism and private property rights in a way that no one had ever done before, at least since Adam Smith. She took abstract values broadly defined in the Constitution, but bandied about by fast-talking politicians as mere matters of individual opinion, and made them issues of moral certainty. Her books Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead took the abstract and made it concrete.

Imagine a powerful voice like that cutting through the rhetoric and nonsense of today’s 24/7 media. Whether you agree or disagree with her philosophy, she’d certainly have a blog worth reading.

2. Truman Capote

If you think Perez Hilton is a shameless, self-promotional media sponge, you haven’t met his intellectual superior and gossipy predecessor, Truman Capote. Famous in the literary world for his classic books Breakfast at Tiffany’s and In Cold Blood, Capote was also well known throughout the media and intelligentsia as a true-blue eccentric.

Why he’d be awesome: Capote frequently claimed all sorts of wild things over the course of his literary career. Things like having gay relations with all sorts of Hollywood actors perceived as strictly heterosexual (Errol Flynn, for one), and knowing certain celebrities like Greta Garbo that in actuality he had never met. Known for his saying, “All literature is gossip,” Capote riled his adoring public with frequent stays in rehab clinics, drug addiction, and chronic mental breakdowns. One time, while extremely drunk, he confessed in a live-air interview that he might kill himself.

And all this behavior from a guy who was 5’3”, openly gay, and spoke in a high-pitched squeaky voice. Just imagine the kind of gossip a guy like Capote could spread across the web with his kind of writing and Hollywood network. I doubt there’s a single internet entity alive today whose eccentricity wouldn’t be readily eclipsed by this ingenuous master of absurdity.

1. George Orwell

1984. Animal Farm. Two famous novels that boldly warned of the perils of a totalitarian state. But aside from novels, George Orwell also wrote scores of essays, opinions, book reviews and memoirs on everything from politics to the English language. Such material would more than fit into today’s blogging atmosphere.

Why he’d be awesome: Similar to Ayn Rand, George Orwell’s presence on the web would lend incredible intellectual strength to the principles of limited government and personal liberty.

With our nation on the brink of insolvency due to a devalued dollar, deficits, higher taxes and higher government spending, and everything Covid has unleashed, we look around and wonder how it all happened. How our government managed not to stay our friend and helpful neighbor, but become a fearsome uncle, or Big Brother as Orwell would say, that slowly takes our rights away rather than defending them. But is any of that a surprise when our media is unwilling to discuss the real issues during an election period? When the slightest gaffe or misspoken word is enough to send the press pirates into a frenzy as though something of substance actually happened? Who cares whether so and so would raise taxes or accelerate a war, the real issue is does he seem like the kind of guy you could have a beer with?

Like Socrates, any nation is meant to have its own gadflies standing atop a bedrock of reason and willing to call out corrupt officials no matter what the cost. Breathless pundits and self-absorbed experts don’t cut it. A writer like Orwell would matter immensely in today’s blogging world because words matter the most when it comes to motivating people. How is it possible to keep the public informed when there are no intellectual heavyweights around to cut through the thicket of rhetoric?

After all, down through history, it has been the written word that has inspired people. Thomas Paine’s Common Sense inspired thousands of colonists fighting during the American Revolution. Karl Marx provided a philosophical foundation for socialism in his Communist Manifesto. And who could argue about the effects of the Bible, the Koran, and countless other religious and political texts around the world?

Words matter. Whether they are in book form or blog form, fictional or nonfictional, words motivate, change, alter, shape and modify human behavior. It’s all in who writes them, and what they are saying. And the above folks really matter. Sadly, they all passed before being able to fully access the kind of audience the internet can provide today. Their words, though written in decades past, still reverberate. Were they still alive today, imagine how much of an impact a current blog of theirs would make.

—

My novel Nemesis, a psychological thriller, is available to buy on Amazon.

8 Cool Things about Robotics

On August 24, 2021 By Dean BrooksLeave a comment

Robots are perhaps the most polarizing subjects in pop culture. They are either great servants who seek to do us good, like the friendly robot anomaly Andrew Martin in Bicentennial Man, or the hilariously provocative Number Five in Short Circuit. Or, they are malevolent, ingenuous beings bent on the total enslavement and/or destruction of the human race. See such films as I, Robot, the Terminator franchise, and The Matrix series for those types.

It’s possible that in the future mankind will foolishly equip robots with the proper circuitry to enable them to conquer the planet. But for now we are safe because robots are still slow, inefficient, and above all, NOT sentient.

Here are 8 cool things you may not have known about robotics:

1. The Origin of the Word “Robot”

Surprisingly, the term “robot” was not coined by a white-coated scientist hunkered down in his laboratory. It was actually a playwright named Karel Capek who came up with the word for his 1920 play R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots). Think of R.U.R. as a 1920’s version of I, Robot mixed with Planet of the Apes.

R.U.R. centers on a world where artificial humans are created from biological material to become servants. When their human masters begin abusing them, the robots stage a rebellion and massacre everyone. Unable to reproduce, the robots seem destined to eventually die out themselves. But a lone scientist at last redeems humanity and offers the robots a chance to survive by constructing a male and female. Together, this pair wander off to become a sort of mechanical Adam and Eve.

2. The Fearsome, the Terrifying, the Golem

Hollywood producers have played on people’s fears of a global robot takeover for decades. However, the idea of something man-made suddenly taking on a will of its own and turning on its creator is a fear that has long plagued mankind. Today when people imagine a malevolent robot they might think of the T-800 from Terminator. But centuries ago people dreaded the golem, an inanimate clay model that could be brought to life by speaking the name of God, according to Jewish mystics.

One of the most famous stories about the golem came from Rabbi Judah Loew the Maharal of Prague, a rabbi in the 16^th century. He was reported to have created a golem to defend the Prague ghetto from anti-Semitic attacks. But the golem soon became bigger and more violent until it started killing the very people it was supposed to protect. Rabbi Loew finally ended the golem’s reign of terror by inscribing the Hebrew word meaning “death” on its forehead.

As the legend goes, the body of the golem was later stolen and buried in a graveyard in Zizkov, where the Zikovska Tower now stands. It was there years later when a Nazi soldier ascended to try and stab the golem, but was mysteriously killed instead. The attic remains closed to the public to this day.

For a more recent, pop culture interpretation of the golem, check out the Annihilator from the DC Universe. Invincible and fueled by aggression, the Annihilator is the product of both the golem myth and the Greek myth concerning Talos. Talos, as you’ll recall, made a famous appearance in the classic Jason and the Argonauts, and arguably could be considered the first fictional robot that defied mankind.

3. Degrees of Freedom

Writing with a pencil, shaking hands, and waving to a friend are all things humans take for granted when they use their hands and fingers. But when you do those things you are actually exercising up to 23 degrees of freedom. One degree of freedom can basically be represented by every independent mode of motion.

What does this have to do with robotics? Creating degrees of freedom has consistently been one of the most challenging assignments for engineers for decades. Say you wanted to make a robot that could move around. You would have to install hardware equipped with the proper moving parts. These moving parts, or “actuators” as they’re called, could be in the form of wheels, legs, wings, or fins. But whatever form of actuator you choose, for every degree of freedom you want to allow your robot, you have to construct a separate bit of equations for the software that will control your robot’s movements.

A robot that only moves back and forth on the carpet on a set of wheels independently does not require a great deal of computer power because there are only two degrees of freedom involved. But try making a robot that can walk up stairs, carry luggage, or anything else we humans can do, and you’ll find that it becomes increasingly complicated to factor in each degree of freedom.

To give you an idea of the scale of the problem, consider Honda’s Asimo. At 6-foot, 460 lbs, Honda spent over 10 years developing this humanoid at a cost of almost $100 million. It’s capabilities: walking gingerly, climbing a flight of stairs, and even conducting an orchestra.

When you factor the costs involved, and the limitations of computer power, it will probably be decades before scientists create robots that can perform actions even close to what humans can do with ease. And even then, artificial intelligence may not be a reality, in which case robots will still be controlled entirely by human-designed software. So, no need to fear Honda’s Asimo becoming a global dictator anytime soon.

4. Insect Inspiration

In their quest to make robots than can move around on legs, scientists have looked to the insect world for inspiration. Specifically, it is the movements of insects like the cockroach, with its “tripod gait,” that has given engineers a leg-up in their research.

If you’ve ever caught a cockroach scurrying around in your kitchen, your first instinct was probably to crush it before it got away. However, cockroaches, as do other six-legged creepy crawlies, exercise a profound method of walking known as the tripod gait. This gait allows them to lift three legs in the air when moving forward while leaving three legs on the ground for support (thus resembling a tripod if seen from overhead). Not only does this gait allow insects to support six legs, but it gives them greater speed to avoid predators, not to mention the sole of your shoe.

Researchers at Case Western Reserve University have designed hexapods that follow the tripod gait of insects. One researcher, a biologist named Robert Full at Berkley, has gone so far as to put roaches on treadmills to measure the electrical impulses in their muscles while recording them on video. Ever wonder how a roach can scurry away so fast despite its bulk? It’s because, as Full discovered, their muscles operate like a spring, allowing a roach to propel itself forward as though it were on auto pilot.

Is it worth it to create robots that can move around like insects? Consider that after the 9/11 attacks the Center for Robot-Assisted Search and Rescue orchestrated a number of robots for help in exploration and assessment of the ruins, as well as in the hunt for survivors. A robot that could move around like an insect would certainly be invaluable for poking into places where wheels or tracks would not suffice. But again, it is the degrees of freedom and all the computations involved therein that limit this development.

5. Hopping bots, snakebots, and scuttlebots

Insects are not the only creatures that have given scientists inspiration for creating robots of myriad variety. Everything from grasshoppers, snakes to fish have offered researchers ideas on robotic movements and functions.

Marc Raibert at the MIT Leg Laboratory created the famous hopping robot in the 1980s that bounced on one leg like a pogo stick and could even turn somersaults. In 2008, Christopher M. Schmidt-Wetekam won the Rudee Research Expo Aware for inventing a self-transforming reaction wheel-stabilized climbing rover. In the video below, Christopher explains the particulars of his robot creation:

During the 1990s, NASA became interested in using snakebots for exploration on other planets. Its research lead to Snakebot I, which required complete outside control by a user. Snakebot II, however, gained some autonomous control via several microcontrollers that allowed the main computer to focus on more important decisions.

The German MAKRO Project in the late 90s yielded a snakebot with a more commercial application: searching through sewage drain pipes.

Robot fish have been used to investigate Gray’s Paradox. In the 1930s, a researcher named Sir James Gray decided to investigate how much power was required for dolphins to swim as fast as they do. What he found was dolphins required ten times as much power to propel themselves through water than what it appeared their muscles produced when swimming. This paradox later bore his name, and has remained a mystery to scientists for many years.

Starting in 1995 with the robot tuna, MIT eventually came to develop a robot pike that duplicated the flesh and bone structure of a pike with plastic. While the robot pike can turn and swim underwater, it can’t travel nearly as fast as a real pike.

Finally, a US company called iRobot has developed a scuttlebot to hunt for mines on beaches and underwater. Resembling a crab, Aerial, as it is named, is completely autonomous, can walk sideways on six legs, can adapt its gait if one leg gets damaged, and can even adjust its walking if it gets turned upside down.

6. A Robot’s Nose Knows

It’s estimated that humans have anywhere between 5 million and 15 million smell receptors in their noses. Dogs have anywhere between 125 million and 250 million. Installing smell sensors in robots of that number is still far beyond anything that has yet been engineered. But scientists may one day build robots that can detect explosives, rotting meat, or gas—capabilities that would offer invaluable assistance to law enforcement, the military, or in food inspection.

At the University of Portsmouth in England, researchers have created a robot dubbed “Smelly.” Smelly has smell receptors installed at the end of its two tubes, which draw in odors with the use of a small air pump.

The University of Pisa in Italy has built a handheld device that can detect, of all things, the presence of olive oil aromas.

A European Union project started in 2001 aims to build a fleet of artificial chemosensing moths for use in environmental monitoring.

7. Robocup

Imagine it’s the year 2050. You switch on the television, or whatever form of entertainment module is created by then. You surf between a soap opera, a reality TV show (which are inexplicably still popular), and then come upon a soccer game played entirely by humanoid robots. Impossible? Actually, it’s already somewhat a reality.

In 1997 the Japanese roboticist Hiroaki Kitano established RoboCup. His aim was to create a forum in which a variety of emerging technologies could be assessed and integrated within the broader field of robotics. His primary challenge: To create a team of humanoid robots capable of beating the human soccer championship team by the year 2050.

While Robocup may seem like just a place for scientists to play with their robot toys, it actually provides a perfect environment for engineers to exercise various problems related to making robots useful. Each robot must know where the ball is in play, where the goals are, where its position is in relation to the other players, and who its opponents are. Additionally, robots must work together on their on teams to function best. These are all problems that if remedied would make robots practical not just in a sports arena but in law enforcement, the military, as well as in a host of commercial applications.

8. Energy Problems

One thing that has made advances in robotics difficult is the energy issue. Even were it possible today to construct a robot that could function practically, have a high number of degrees of freedom, and act autonomously, how would you power it? Common household batteries barely supply adequate fuel for even the simplest of robots.

Fuel cells have become one good source of power for robots. But they tend to be bulky and can restrict a robot’s movements. They also require frequent refueling for the robot to operate properly. The University of Sherbrooke in Canada has built robots capable of reading red signs that indicate a batter refueling station. So it appears that for now robots will either have to stay plugged in or recharge themselves if they are function. At least until some more advanced form of energy technology comes along.

References

For more info on robotics, check out these sources:

Robots: Bringing Intelligent Machines to Life, by Ruth Aylett.

—

My novel Nemesis, a psychological thriller, is available on Amazon.

The Right Stuff – Book Review

On August 23, 2021 By Dean BrooksLeave a comment

The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe is probably one of the most fascinating books I’ve read over the last few years.

Now, I’ve read Tom Wolfe’s A Bonfire of the Vanities before. A fictional-cultural-commentary novel about a rich white New Yorker who crashes into a young black man with his car, drives off out of fear of attacks, only to deal with exponential repercussions later as he attempts to evade justice.

Wolfe, a “New Journalist,” is, of course, famous for exploring culture in his books, fiction or otherwise, especially as it relates to that of particular institutions. In The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Wolfe delves into the hippy subculture of Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters. In his more recent book I am Charlotte Simmons, a novel, Wolfe peels back the layers of the privileged elite at a top American university.

Carrying the torch of Wolfe as a “social novelist,” these days, you could say is the bestselling author Ben Mezrich, who’s known for The Accidental Billionaires (which inspired the film The Social Network), Bitcoin Billionaires (a sequel of sorts), and the upcoming The Antisocial Network.

The Right Stuff, published in 1979, chronicles the lives of the American fighter pilots who became the first astronauts in NASAs Mercury Mission.

It’s impossible to talk about The Right Stuff without mentioning the timing of its publication in American history. 1979. A time of deep economic stagnation. America had just seen President Nixon resign. The ending of the Vietnam War had left deep scars in the nation’s psyche. Americans were being held hostage by Iranian militants. And at that point many Americans were largely over some of NASAs greatest accomplishments. We’d landed on the moon ten years prior. Had gone back several times, actually. It was the time of the so-called “antihero.”

The Right Stuff went against the grain, by reintroducing the American fighter pilot heroes that the nation had come to love during the early years of the NASA era. When rocket technology was still very experimental, and in fact, oftentimes killed the test pilots who flew new aircraft. A lot of people forget that from the late 40s through the early 60s, we were in a real technological tug of war with the Soviets, and for a time Russia was far ahead of the U.S. It really wasn’t clear during a good part of the Cold War which side would ultimately come out ahead. It was believed that whoever controlled space would come to dominate the globe. There was some real fear amongst our governmental leaders, and the American populace. Some of which was real. Some imagined. All of which was harnessed by the government to fund the early NASA program, in the effort to beat the Soviets into space.

Wolfe’s writing, as always, is evocative, illustrative, and naturally cinematic. And it’s at its best when dealing with social psychology and culture in the hyper competitive, hyper driven, hyper masculine world of the fighter pilots.

Take for instance the way in which Wolfe describes the “great invisible ziggurat.” Which is a metaphorical pyramid of sorts and means to measure a pilot’s status amongst other pilots. One’s position on the ziggurat is critical, and something a pilot is always striving to elevate. Status is gained, essentially, through not only feats of flying, but staying cool under pressure. Being unflappable. Being not necessarily fearless, but not allowing fear to control you while operating aircraft. Performing flawlessly in the most dangerous of situations, while at the same time being unshakably suave about it. Grace under fire. That’s what it meant to have the “right stuff.”

At the top of the great invisible ziggurat, at one point, was Chuck Yeager, the pilot who broke the sound barrier in 1947. Over the course of the early NASA missions into space–known as Project Mercury–the fighter pilots chosen would each have a turn to reach the summit themselves. Each demonstrating their own measure of the “right stuff” as they performed in the different missions into space. Alan Shepherd became the second man, and first American to go to space in 1961. John Glenn became the first American to orbit the earth one year later.

The Right Stuff covers an intense period of American history, and profiles men who, really, were the best and the bravest in the world. Fighter pilots have to be in top physical and mental shape. Able to undergo hundreds, even thousands of hours of intense training. You have to be willing to risk your life every day. At one point, something like one out of four pilots were killed while testing experimental aircraft. Think of the incredible sacrifice that requires, of both the pilot, and his family. These were all young men, in their 20s, or early 30s, for the most part. Almost all of whom had wives and children staying with them on base during their flights. All while being paid a military wage, which was not that much. This was a special group of people who did extraordinary things.

It would be impossible to run through everything Wolfe covers in this nonfiction novel. But there were definitely a few anecdotes and stories I found interesting.

Going back to Chuck Yeager. Did you know he broke the sound barrier with two broken ribs after a night of heavy drinking and horseback riding? Yes, horseback riding. See, Wolfe describes a culture of Flying & Drinking and Drinking & Driving that every pilot was generally expected to live up to, if they wanted to demonstrate that they had the right stuff. It wasn’t enough to do amazing things in the air. It was much better if you could do it on three hours sleep, loaded up with coffee, and maybe still sloshed from leaving the bar at three in the morning.

So, the night before Chuck Yeager was scheduled to attempt to break the sound barrier in the new X-1 at Muroc Army Base, which later became Edwards Air Force Base, he had gone out drinking with his wife, and at some point, decided to go horseback riding. Well, he got thrown from the horse when he crashed into a gate, and wound up with two broken ribs.

Now, having broken bones would obviously be a problem when flying in general. It was especially a problem considering the cockpit design of the X-1. The pilot had to secure the door to the cockpit from inside with his right arm, an almost impossible task for Yeager with his two broken ribs. So, he had a janitor named Sam secretly cut off nine inches from a broom handle so he could use it as leverage to properly shut the door.

I find this story really endearing, because it combines classic American recklessness with classic American ingenuity. America may blunder or fail sometimes, but it always seems to rise up to the occasion with some out of left field solution. Think of the ill-fated Apollo 13 mission, and how the NASA engineers and astronauts brilliantly Macgyvered their way out of that jam.

Another fascinating factoid Wolfe shares in The Right Stuff is the dangerousness and unreliability of the cockpit ejection system in the early, experimental aircraft. And this actually may still be the case now. But in the event of an imminent crash, a pilot was far from safe when they ejected from a doomed aircraft. And that was because when the seat ejected from the plane, it hit a “wall” of air that was almost like hitting a solid substance. Pilots lost limbs, joints, even had the skin torn from their faces. Some were even killed by the force of hitting the air wall itself. Remember, when you eject from an aircraft, you’re still traveling at the same speed, only you’re not protected from the air current as you are behind the thick glass of the cockpit. Ejection was actually so hazardous that most pilots simply chose to stay with the aircraft in the attempt to control or mitigate a possible crash, no matter how lost the cause appeared.

Imagine that for a second. You’re strapped to a giant rocket, basically, with your life in your hands. With no fail-safe. No secure, safe means of exiting in the event of a catastrophic failure, which happened a lot. At the time, there was something like a 56% that at some point a pilot would have to take their chances with ejection. Would you get into a car if you knew you had better than 50% odds of getting into an accident? Now think if you had to do that in a car where the air bag itself had a high chance of killing you. At least in the car example you’d be on the ground. But in the air, things can spiral into chaos really quickly. This is why only the best and brightest were allowed in experimental aircraft. It’s why pilots needed to have the right stuff.

I’ll leave you with Tom Wolfe’s definition of the right stuff. He writes:

“The idea here seemed to be that a man should have the ability to go up in a hurtling piece of machinery and put his hide on the line and then have the moxie, the reflexes, the experience, the coolness, to pull it back in the last yawning moment—and then go up again the next day, and the next day, and every next day…and, ultimately, in its best expression, do so in a cause that means something to thousands, to a people, a nation, to God.”

—

My novel Nemesis is now available on Amazon.