Recently, I completed the first draft of a slasher novella I’ve titled CUTTHROAT that I began in early September.
The premise is stupifyingly simple, though, like many of my works, it’s riddled with satiric malice and dark humor:
A group of job applicants arrive at a sleek highrise for a coveted position, but find themselves trapped and fighting for their lives against a psychopathic assessor known as Cutthroat, who wields a briefcase full of nasty weapons and is out to kill all of them.
This first draft clocked in at around 31,000 words, and it proved to be both exhausting and grossly liberating at the same time. This was one of those “cutting loose” sort of writing experiments, where I didn’t feel bound by the ordinary constraints of storytelling. Though there are two character arcs, a strong mid-point shift, a late reveal, and a twisty plot with some inventive kills. Thematically, it’s centered around the tortuous difficulties attendant with job hunting, with the whole ugly process personified in the form of a psychopathic killer known as Cutthroat, who poses as a job recruiter performing interviews, only to hack his unawares applicants apart. I really tried to go for the economic malaise zeitgeist’s jugular here that mainly desperate jobseeking Millennials and Gen-Zers are suffering through or at least might relate to. Armed with briefcases filled with all kinds of nasty weapons, Cutthroat sadisticallly plays his own twisted “assessment” games with the group of twenty-somethings, and it’s up to the protagonist to figure out a way to stop him, or at least escape with his life.
Writing a slasher is brutish work, to say the least. I’ve written my share of horrors, such as The Devil’s Throne, released a few years ago, but a slasher is another beast altogether. Slashers, obviously, are less known for their elegant exploration of human themes through a lens of supernatural or psychological chills like traditional horrors, and more about delivering a certain graphic and visceral effect on the reader/viewer.
Cutthroat is sort of “Terrifier in a business suit,” as I’ve come to refer to it as a means to sum up its ethos in a pithy “elevator pitch” manner. The slasher franchise set around Art the Clown is a real phenomenon for its cult following. Walk by any Hot Topic store in a mall and you’re bound to see Art T-shirts and other merch. He’s as big as Freddy Krueger or Jason Voorhees were in their day. I’ve only seen the second film and the first half of the first one. That’s literally all I could stomach. From a writer’s perspective, I found them shockingly bereft of any “story,” even for a slasher series. The Terrifier films are more a bunch of gory vignettes strung together. A bloody highlight reel of makeup and special effects. Even Friday the 13th, with all its clumsy and meandering “plots” had a semblance of mythology what with Jason and his mommy issues. Not so for Terrifier, which seems content to just freak out audiences with new methods of bodily mutilation. Hellraiser seems tame by comparison, which seems not possible.
Honestly, I found writing my first slasher disappointingly mundane. How many ways can you really butcher human beings on paper? I found myself straining to somehow “make it more interesting.” I did this by interjecting a backstory for the villain in order to make him believable, and by adding humor wherever possible. At one point I gave up for a few days, put off by the whole thing. Only to return days later determined to finish the task.
Now that it’s done, like often happens when I’ve finished a writing project, I find myself wracked with a post-partum malaise. Though there is always the long and tedious editing process.
I remember reading about how John Carpenter, while struggling to write Halloween II (1981) hit some bad writer’s block. I wondered how in the hell could that happen. We’re talking Michael Myers here. Pehaps the most simplistic masked killer there ever was. Just set him loose in a school so he can stalk another group of dumb horny teenagers. How hard could it be, right? But after writing my first slasher, I can see where he was likely coming from, and how unfulfilled he probably felt trying his hand at the sequel. It’s no wonder he wound up throwing in the bogus development about Laurie Strode being Michael’s sister as a way to liven things up and add motivation. Something he later regretted adding to Michael’s “mythology” due to its inherent silliness. The whole point of Michael Myers is that he doesn’t need a “motivation.” That’s what makes him scary. But I can see how sheer boredom probably drove Carpenter to want to throw in anything, no matter how nonsensical, to make the writing process more palatable for him. At least The Thing had the intricate puzzlebox mysteries of “Who’s the Thing and who’s not?” “Who can you trust?” With Halloween, it’s more just about coming up with new ways Michael can kill people.
On the surface, writing a slasher is “stupidly easy,” sure. Kind of. We’re not writing a dense Cormac McCarthian Western here, even if Anton Chigurh is like a Mexican Michael Myers with a shotgun. But it takes a piece of your soul. There are also the tricky mechanics of coming up with a bigger than life villain. Something iconic. A Nightmare on Elm Street, to me, is the gold standard when it comes to slashers. It’s probably the most intelligent of them. Certainly it’s the best high-concept horror idea. A killer that stalks you in your dreams. The kind of idea that makes you go, “Why didn’t I think of that?”
Overall, I enjoyed attempting the slasher genre, though it’s not one I’d quickly want to return to. Technically, it’s not actually my first stab at it. I handwrote a short story about a group of masked killers stalking a school way back when I was a teenager in high school. It was a story obviously ripped off of Halloween as I’d just seen that film on cable, though I added a “clever” twist by not having one, or two, but three killers. Genius, obviously. With this latest attempt decades later, I like to think I’ve grown and matured. I feel I made Cutthroat suitably gory and satisfied the demands of the genre with all the requisite tropes, while putting my own touch on things and bringing something new. If anything, it was a fun writing exercise that felt perfectly appropriate with Halloween right around the corner. 🙂
Medium continues to be a massive disappointment this year. Due to either an algorithm change or some kind of shift in how it distributes traffic, I barely get the engagement in years prior, and substantially smaller payouts and fewer followers, consequently. Though some of my articles caught on in Google’s rankings, I see zero money for non-Medium members who read my stuff. That’s really frustrating, as some of my “stories” (as Medium likes to call them) have caught tens of thousands of views.
It’s not that I soullessly write for money. It’s just that I would like to see commensurate compensation for when I do write something that lands.
Still, I’ve kept plugging away. Either foolishly or just out of stubborn persistence and the desire to maintain stasis. Medium is a solid platform, for sure. But it has a low ceiling. Whereas a platform like YouTube will (assuming you are monetized) at least pay you for ALL the views you get, not just Medium members. As such, YT has basically uncapped potential, though it too has its issues.
YouTube
As much as I love YouTube and the idea of being a YouTuber, I don’t know that it’s the right venue for me, either. Nor do I care to contort myself into the tortuous content creation pretzel shape that YT demands if you want to have a shot at gaining traction. YT seems to favor TikTok-style shorts anymore, and such snappy, soundbite quippings are not in my wheelhouse. The few videos I’ve posted this year are long, thoughtful, and reflective, which is not really conducive to YT’s dazzling discothèque guppy-attention-span content that seems to predominate on there.
I’m a writer at the end of the day. A fiction writer, specifically. I try to be. While I like dropping spicy op-eds from time to time, Medium and this whole “content game” thing often just proves a procrastinative distraction and a futilely unfulfilling endeavor. I get so little satisfaction out of writing even a “banger” article that gets a good traffic spike it’s not funny.
Whereas, a good fiction writing session puts me on cloud nine.
I don’t care to just crank out a bunch of noise, trying to surf the trend waves. I’d rather spend the time on my books. I have a lot of them in various states of editing, and I have a lot of ideas for more.
My latest will be out soon.
Conundrum
Which brings me to the conundrum. To be a successful fiction writer, you need a platform to help market your work. But to get a platform, you have to play the mind numbing algo/traffic/pretzel twist game I just talked about. A successful writer is a successful salesman, not just a good tapper of keystrokes. Like many writers, this rustles my introvert jimmies. I hate “putting myself out there,” though I’m not a wallflower by any means.
I see many other writers, especially self-published ones, market themselves via YouTube and social media, either by book or movie reviews, or by being (usually godawful) cultural critics and posting daily ragebait commentary on whatever headline caught their ire that morning. I don’t care to waste the time being a “culture warrior.” That’s very cringy to me. And there are frankly certain audiences I just don’t care to attract.
I will never be a fucking “writing coach.” I will never sell a fucking course or some bullshit consulting like so many of those hustlers out there do. No. Just no. I will never make “writing about writing” my thing. Never going to happen. I don’t care to waste the time, and I sure as hell don’t need to do it for the money.
I could see doing long form book or movie reviews, however.
And even though some of my finance-themed articles have actually performed the best, I think I’m done with that niche. Save and invest your money. Stay out of debt. Control your spending. Slow and steady (i.e. boring) compound gains will make you wealthy, not get-rich-quick crypto/stock/real estate/side hustle schemes. Stop listening to stupid influencers and their bullshit products. There, what the hell else needs to really be said?
Conclusion
As a compromise, I’ll keep posting non-fiction stuff, but likely just focusing on books, movies, and shows. Since Medium has proven near pointless to continue with, I may just go old school and post stuff on here exclusively instead. I blogged a lot way back in the day, and I see that era of the internet returning. Content has become far too siloed on digital slave farms like Facebook and other social media. It’s time for it to decentralize like it used to be. A.I. slop has ruined a lot of content sites also. In fact, I think A.I. is part of why the algo machine has completely broken down across the web.
I’ll invest more time interacting with social media in a qualitatively productive manner. I’ll also continue to experiment with YouTube. Perhaps there are actually people out there who’d rather look at my face and hear me talk than read my stuff. Hey, it’s possible.
If you made it this far, thanks for reading. I’ll have more updates for you soon, including my latest book. See you in the sun. 🙂
I’m a recovering “beat-em-up” fan. Back in the day as a teen I used to love those terrible Steven Seagal films like Above the Law and Marked For Death. Or Jean-Claude Van Damme stuff like Bloodsport and Death Warrant. They were constantly on rotation on USA and TBS and other freemium cable channels in the late ’90s. Films that were passably entertaining for immature adolescent minds, but in retrospect are ridiculously cheesy and absurd. But hey, if you haven’t seen Seagal break a Jamaican dude’s arm in half or Van Damme roundhouse kick a guy into a furnace, you haven’t lived.
Nowadays, Jason Statham is your go-to macho man face puncher and bad guy beater downer. Strangely, actors even higher up the talent totem pole have had a go at their own fistacuffs franchises. Bob Odenkirk is Nobody. A-lister Denzel Washingtonis The Equalizer. And of course Internet Jesus Keanu Reeves is John Wick.
Everyone wants to kick ass these days! Who can blame them? Have you seen the prices of things lately? Going to the grocery store anymore is like going to a Fuck Me in the Ass Parade.
The latest is A Working Man, where Statham plays a former blacks ops soldier turned construction guy who has to return to his face-stomping roots when his boss’s daughter gets kidnapped or something. I’ve not seen it, nor will I ever. Just like I didn’t see Statham’s last flick The Beekeeper, which had pretty much the same plot. The latest edition of Statham Beats Up Some Guys interests me about as much as hanging around a bunch of backwards hat-wearing dude bros talking about their fantasy football picks.
(No man should have a hobby with the word “fantasy” in it. Like, are there sparkles involved? Pink glitter? GTFO of here with that.)
Anyway…
What is pretty cool (and surprising), is that A Working Man is based on a book. Which is part of a book series, actually. By a real author. Not some A.I. trained on Seagal and Van Damme flicks. Chuck Dixon is a prolific author known mostly for his work in the comic book industry. He co-created Bane, aka the villain who broke Batman’s back. So, this guy is well-experienced in creating characters that know how to kick the crap out of people.
Dixon’s series is called Levon Cade, and features the vigilante going on various quests involving revenge and likely crushing a few throats. There are twelve books in total. The first, titled simply Levon’s Trade, premiered in December, 2021. The others came in rapid succession, sometimes as little as three weeks apart, over the course of 2022. The eleventh published in August, after which Dixon took a sabbatical before dropping the twelfth and final (?) in February, 2024. Not bad. Guy banged it all out in roughly a calendar year.
Look, these are not labyrinthine literary feasts like A Game of Thrones. These stories are Fisher-Price simple and Neanderthal stupid. No shit. But when you get down to it, there are really only two genres — “Man with Gun” and “Girl Bangs Guy.” That’s about it. James Bond, for all his British sophistication, is just another “Man with Gun” story. Titanic is the ultimate “Girl Bangs Guy.” The classics usually combine the two in interesting ways. Double Indemnity, for instance. There are some exceptions, often seen in experimental or prestige award stuff, but nobody cares. People only pay attention when someone’s fucking or getting murdered. Can you name the book that won the Nobel Prize for Literature four years ago? No? Have you ever heard of Fifty Shades of Grey? My point exactly.
I am not a fan of simple vigilante series, in either book or movie versions. I read Killing Floor once, the first Jack Reacher book, a long time ago, and the experience was akin to tattoo gunning my eyeballs. I am a fan of writers, however. Especially ones who put in the effort to carve out their own success, in whatever genre they choose. A Working Man has likely done well enough at the box office to merit a sequel. Who knows. It could even be a franchise like John Wick. I have no idea. I’ll never see the films anyway. I outgrew the need for them a long time ago. But I do appreciate them and the writers who make them.
How do you find your missing half when you’re already perfect as is?
Made with Midjourney.
There’s this hilarious scene in Curb Your Enthusiasm where Larry is over a friend’s house eating dinner and he notices that the glass of water he’s drinking is unfiltered from the tap. This petty but not unimportant observation leads to his host being offended, and Larry (surprise, surprise) getting kicked out.
You just can’t win with people like Larry. You serve them a nice dinner in a nice apartment with good friends and fun conversation, and they’ll still find some unforgivable flaw in your presentation that crumbles the whole affair.
What does this have to do with the point of this article? Well, it would seem many women have essentially become a bunch of Larry Davids, while men are that distasteful unfiltered tap water. Except while Larry David remains cuddly and lovable despite his eccentricities and obsessions with behaviorial minutiae, this whole “men ain’t up to snuff” refrain we keep hearing is getting old and ugly and obnoxious, not to mention making women actually come off looking worse.
According to the Wall Street Journal, “American Women Are Giving Up On Marriage.” A title written as if it should be blasted by a bullhorn atop a castle wall and met with wailing and gnashing of teeth by sackcloth-wearing commoners in the streets below.
However, I think a more honest title would be what I wrote in the sub-title section above: “How do you find your missing half when you’re already perfect as is?”
These types of rah-rah-women articles pop up now and again like herpes sores, and like that STI, they ain’t ever going away. Nor should they. It’s good to be reminded that women are surpassing men and that men are falling woefully behind and that women are so clearly better and have tons of options and that men suck and blah, blah, blah. Afterall, women’s clear superiority may not be readily evident to us boorish and ignorant men with our thick skulls. We must be constantly reminded of women’s superiority and our unfiltered tap waterness lest our puny male brains forget. Frankly, I’d be disappointed if I didn’t see these articles constantly.
I’ll spare you the details of this latest update on the state of the Überfem. It’s your standard, “women are making more money and graduating with more degrees while the pool of men in similar economic positions is shrinking” celebrat — or, lament. Basically, we’re suffering from an epidemic of unworthy, unmarriagable male losers! Meanwhile, the number of elite world-beating boss babes has never been higher.
A 29-year-old woman says of house hunting and having kids:
“I’m financially self-sufficient enough to do these things myself,” said Vorlicek, a Boston-based accountant. “I’m willing to accept being single versus settling for someone who isn’t the right fit.”
Well, given the absurdly low-barrier to qualify for mortgage loans, virtually anyone is financially self-sufficient enough to “buy” a home if they have a job and a pulse, so I’m not sure how much of a flex that really is anymore.
But let’s examine the glaring contradiction in her statement. This lady is NOT okay with settling with a full-grown man who “isn’t the right fit.” Okay, fair enough. However, she IS okay with giving birth to a child, who could end up being any random personality, good or bad, and to whom she’ll be legally and physically responsible for, and unable to extricate herself from without severe difficulty.
I mean, at least with the man you can dump or divorce him and make him go away (eventually). A kid is kind of stuck in your life FOREVER. Or at least for 18 years.
I could be wrong, but what I’m picking up subtextually from this almost-thirty-lady is a pathological need for control. What kind of a person is incapable of managing the vagaries of an adult relationship, but feels they are finely suited for taking on the rearing of a child? Children as we know never present any difficulties whatsoever. They are houseplants, really. Stick them in the corner and just forget about them.
No, seriously, you’d have to be some kind of anti-social asshole control freak to actually think that.
This next lady was confronted with a simple directive from her mama bear: Get a boyfriend by Christmas. But she ran into complications:
Katie spent the first half of 2024 going on three or four dates a week with men she met on apps, such as Hinge and Bumble, in the hopes of finding a husband before turning 30. By the end of the year, she had ramped down the search, calling it “the only thing you can put 10,000 hours into and end up right where you started.”
[Bold-face above mine]
Three or four dates a week? For the first half of the year? Hmmm…let me break out the abacus for this one. Thirteen weeks…three or four a week. That adds up to anywhere between 39 to 52 dates in total.
Mind you, these are NOT just random men. These are the men that SHE chose from the vast sea of spermatozoa via the apps. These are the cream of the crop, no pun intended. Yet none measured up after a real-life meeting in the flesh? Seriously? None?
NOTE: If you can’t find an acceptable partner amongst a pool of prescreened applicants that YOU chose for fifty dates, most likely YOU are the problem, not them.
But no, let’s hear the cope:
Many of the men Katie met, she said, either seemed turned off by her ambition or weren’t career-oriented enough for her. She felt discouraged by just how many of her male friends similarly said they expect their future wives to prioritize their families over their jobs.
By the way, Katie’s big professional ambition is running Lume, a “leadership coaching startup” in NYC. I tried looking it up and the only companies I found with the name Lume were a cannabis dispensary in Michigan and some site that sells women’s deodorant. Since I’m sure Katie’s Lume is a highly lucrative elite consulting empire and surely not just a couple gals gabbing away in a rent-by-the-hour office somewhere, I’ll just assume this glaring oversight on Google’s part in not ranking it on the front page is due to sexism and misogyny.
This next young, er, middle-aged rather, lady, laments a failed relationship, saying:
“He wanted the white picket fence and me at home with the kids,” Jones said. This despite the fact that her salary was nearly 50% higher than his.
Jones is 38, and from her picture, bordering on obese. In other words, she likely has a narrow chance of becoming pregnant and carrying a child fully to term without luck or expensive IVF treatments anyway. So, I’m not sure where her former BF got off thinking she was going to be having kids anytime soon. I’d say that ship has sailed. And since we don’t know her salary, we don’t know how much more she makes than her ex-beau. But it’s not like she’d have to become a dreaded stay at home mom forever. Likely just for a few years until the kid is old enough to go to school on their own. Then she can return to work. Millions of women do this every year. It sounds like her former BF was just concerned that his child would have a committed parent there for him or her for the first few critical years of their life. I say good on him and hope he found someone better.
This next lady is 33 and has a five-year-old from an ex, but she frets she won’t be able to find anyone because:
She has yet to date anyone else in part because she worries about living in a red state with a six-week abortion ban. “I have a child that I can’t leave behind to drive to Virginia if I had a pregnancy scare, and I definitely can’t afford another child as a single mom,” she said.
LOL. Fucking LMAO.
In addition to the litany of criteria men must worry about qualifying for in a relationship, now we must contend with being rejected solely because some lady can’t run to the nearest kill-a-kiddo center in the offchance our rigorous premarital boning results in an unexpected pregnancy?
“Hey Bob, why’d your last girlfriend dump you?”
“Because Planned Parenthood was two states away!”
Imagine hearing that.
What kind of low lifes is this lady fucking? No, let me put it another way. Why would you be okay with fucking a guy but not okay with him babysitting your kid for a few hours while you dash across state lines for the ol’ vag vacu-suck? That’s essentially what she’s saying here. If he’s not responsible enough to babysit your kid, then maybe you shouldn’t be fucking him. Just a thought.
Here’s the deal. When you’re consistently presented with dozens of partner options; when you’re in your late 30s and you’ve sampled a buffet of male suitors for two decades; when you’ve been through college and had one opportunity after another to partner up; when you live in a fucking major city and you still can’t find a guy who “measures up,” it’s not because there aren’t quality guys. It’s because you’re a picky, unsatisfiable asshole. You’re a female Larry David. That is who you are. Only not funny. Not cuddly. And not lovable.
And to quote the hostess from that Curb scene, “I think you should leave.” Thank you.
I’ll often see people post on book review sites or forums marveling over an author who churns out multiple novels every year. Popular authors like Stephen King, Dean Koontz, Danielle Steel, and others who are well known for spinning doorstops with apparent ease.
How do these writers do it? It seems impossible.
Some cast doubt that the authors actually wrote their novels on their own. Often they accuse them of using ghostwriters. For sure, some brand name authors, like James Patterson infamously, employ an army of co-writers for their many projects. But many actually do it all by themselves, braving the blank white screen every morning. As David Baldacci says on his X account:
I live to write and write to live.
I recently finished my 11th novel. A book I started on March 23rd of this year — after almost 18 months of false starts — finally completing the first draft on August 27th. That’s a little over five months, or 157 days. The first draft is about 90,700 words.
That comes out to only 577 words a day. Some days I only managed a few hundred. Those were usually the days I worked. Toward the end of the novel, I picked up the pace (as I usually do nearing the exciting conclusion of a book). I probably wrote about 5,000 words in just the last three days before finishing.
Still, my average daily output comes out to a mere 577 words. A simple email might be 500 words. The average person probably texts their friends more than 500 words a day. It’s about the length of a two minute Medium article. A few tweets. Five hundred words is not a lot. Yet 500 words a day comes out to two 90,000 word novels a year. One thousand words a day equals four adult novels. Writing a “little” can really add up fast.
Of course, there’s the editing process. It’s not like once you finish typing that 90,000th word you’re all done. Editing is sometimes a lengthy, complicated process with its own messy timeline.
Then there’s outlining and idea generation. This last novel of mine was a struggle, unlike others in the past. But I found that by sticking to my daily writing regimen, I was able to push through a lot of supposed blockages. It’s usually best just to keep ploughing ahead anyway, even if you think you’re “stuck.”
If you are a prolific writer, sometimes it’s not enough for fans. Baldacci recently had this exchange with a reader:
Baldacci publishes multiple books a year, some of which are well over 400 pages. He certainly writes thousands of words a day. But you don’t have to write that much to write a lot. Even “just” 250 words a day is 90,000 words. That’s an adult novel a year. Or two novellas a year. Which is not bad at all.
We’ve all got to go sometime. Just hopefully not like this.
Made with Midjourney
With Halloween just passed, death has been on my mind lately. It might be due to the changing fall season. Or it could be due to recently watching horror flicks Barbarian and the latest Scream films.
How in the world does the Scream franchise keep chugging along? I thought it ran out of gas 15 years ago. Guess audiences will never tire of watching a dude in a mask stab people in the face.
Of course, if I have the choice on how to die, it’s definitely NOT going to be via some psycho going stabby stabby with my vital organs. I’d much rather die peacefully and in my sleep, with loved ones gathered around.
But sadly, not everyone gets to go out that way. Some people have died in freakishly weird and distubing ways. Ways that keep me up at night. Here are a few of them.
Guy Dies Accidentally Stabbing Himself To Death Trying to Separate Frozen Hamburgers
Made with Midjourney
This story is why our moms warned us to always cut away from our bodies when using a knife or a pair of scissors.
Barry Griffiths, age 57, lived alone, and apparently was in the process of making himself hamburgers for dinner. His freezer door was left open. Thawed meat left on the counter. Police say it was an “unexplained” death, but that while separating the burgers, he inadvertantly stabbed himself. He was found on his bed several days later. Griffiths lived alone, and by all accounts was a “private” man. He also had limited use of one arm.
This death disturbs me because it’s so mundane and random. All the guy wanted to do was eat his dinner. You could easily imagine this poor fellow eager to make himself a meal, only to wind up slowly bleeding to death from the stomach. Blood was found throughout the kitchen and hallway. Making matters worse, he died alone. Who knows if he could have been saved. Many times people who are injured are in shock. If someone had been there, he might still be alive.
Guy Gets Himself Trapped Upside Down In A Cave And Dies 27 Hours Later
Why people go cave exploring where it involves squeezing themselves into VERY narrow crevices without knowing if there’s even an exit will never ever fucking make sense to me whatsoever. Why do that? Just why? Seriously, why?! I know there’s nothing good on Netflix to watch anymore, but that’s no excuse.
I say this as someone who liked doing bike tricks off ramps as a kid and has gone skydiving. I’m okay with some unnecessary risks. But not that.
John Jones was all of 26 when he and a few friends decided to go cave exploring at Nutty Putty Cave in central Utah back in 2009. They were in search of a passageway called “The Birth Canal.” Only Jones mistook an unmapped passageway for the correct one, and wound up becoming permanently stuck. Rescuers tried to pull him out, but the angle in which he was trapped made it almost impossible. At least not without breaking his legs in the process. Just look at the above diagram to see what I mean.
Actually, don’t look at it. That shit is pure nightmare fuel.
Still, rescuers were able to get Jones partially pulled up, before their rope and pulley system collapsed. Joned eventually died later. They were forced to leave his body there. The cave was sealed to prevent anyone else from accessing it in the future.
Man, what a way to go.
Danish Astronomer (And Guy) Dies Due To A Burst Bladder After Refusing To Leave A Banquet
Made with Midjourney
Look, we’ve all been in social situations where suddenly nature came calling, forcing us to quickly find a place to do our business. When I was a little kid I once went number two at a hardware store when I found a row of display toilets that I evidently thought were working models. They were not. No, were not.
Tycho Brahe, aside from having probably the coolest-sounding name ever, was a prominent scientist in his day. He also famously lost part of his nose in a drunken duel with a fellow academic over who was the superior mathematician. Nerd fights were hardcore back then.
While at a banquet in 1601, Brahe felt the need to urinate. But he refused to leave, as he thought it would be seen as improper. So he wound up staying. But later, when he did try to pee, he could only go a little, and only very painfully. He languished in his bed for eleven days, before eventually dying from what many modern medical experts deem a burst bladder.
This death freaks me out because it demonstrates how social pressure (real or imagined) can compel people into doing self-destructive acts just to be “polite.” It also shows how even geniuses can be catastrophically stupid.
Teenaged Guy Eats Slug On A Dare, Goes Into A Coma, Becomes Paralyzed, And Dies
Made with Midjourney
Speaking of social pressure, this next freaky death happened because of a stupid dare amongst teenaged boys. In 2010, 19-year-old Sam Ballard, an Australian who liked playing rugby, was hanging out at home on his patio with a couple friends when a slimy snail happened to come crawling by. Prompted by a dare to eat it, Ballard scooped the creature up and swallowed it. Yes, alcohol was involved in this decision.
Almost right away, Ballard began to feel negative physical effects. Before long he was in a coma for over a year. When he finally awoke, he was paralyzed, and required a feeding tube and 24/7 medical care.
It wasn’t actually the snail itself that did Ballard in, however. It was due to a parasitic worm in the snail called rat lungworm disease. This worm is particularly harmful to humans because its larvae can spread to the brain, causing eosinophilic meningitis. This causes the membranes of the brain and spinal cord to swell. Ballard eventually died in 2018.
What makes this death especially haunting is the fact that Ballard retained his mental faculties until his death. He was fully aware of his surroundings. Making matters worse, his friends had to live with the fact that they had all played a hand in his demise. We’ve all done dumb things on dares. Or done stupid stuff while young. Ballard paid the ultimate price for doing something that probably seemed silly and harmless in the moment.
Guy Is Pushed By Jealous Friend Down A Manhole Into Boiling Water, Dies Later From Scalding Burns
In 2002, Sean Doyle, a NYC bartender, went out drinking with his friend Michael Wright and Wright’s girlfriend. At some point during the night, Wright accused Doyle of flirting with his girlfriend. While details aren’t clear, Wright wound up throwing his friend down an 18-foot manhole. Unfortunately, there was a broken main at the bottom leaking out boiling hot water, and essentially turning the narrow confine into a pressure cooker. Trapped down below, Doyle was, according Dr. Judy Melinek, “steamed like a lobster.”
Making this even more horrific, steam burns don’t kill nerve endings the way regular burns do. This meant that Doyle likely suffered all the way until his death. Emergency services arrived to help, but they were unable to retrieve him due to the 300 degree temperatures down below. By the time his body was brought up, his skin was completely peeled off, and his internal organs were cooked.
Undoubtedly, this ranks pretty high on the list of worst ways to go. It disturbs me not just because of the graphic and painful death, but that it started over an argument. Some men can become stupidly jealous and violently possessive when it comes to their girlfriends. Wright was later charged with second-degree murder. But there are conflicting reports about what really happened. His girlfriend maintains that the two men were just roughhousing, and that Doyle only accidentally fell in the manhole. I don’t know about that. If the girlfriend is covering for her boyfriend, that makes the whole thing even more tragic.
Well, that’s enough dwelling on death. I may never leave my house again. From now on, I’ll be staying indoors 24/7 wrapped in bubble wrap and seated on a nice plush sofa.
On August 26th I completed my 100th article on Medium. It’s not the biggest writing milestone ever. There are accounts on there with hundreds, even thousands.
I had a goal of reaching the century mark by the end of this year, only to end up blowing right past it. This one is №118. A pleasant surprise, especially given how I was consumed with another writing project of mine for most of the past year and a half.
My experience with Medium has been decent. I’ve found some success with a handful of articles that got thousands of claps, and earned me some money. I’ve survived not one, but two account suspensions. One just recently, and another back in 2022. Both occurring without any real reason other than somehow my account became caught in the “spam filter.” Okay, whatever. Never had that issue with Blogspot back in the day or WordPress now.
On the positive side, I have over 900 followers. The majority of whom I’d say subscribed due to my finance-related articles. My highest earning month so far was this past July with $291. I’ve had multiple $100+ months over the last few years. I don’t know that Medium will ever be, or even could be, a full-time gig. Not without insane commitment and a willingness to plunge into primarily the most lucrative subjects (personal development and finance). I have too many other writing projects going on and other interests to go that far with Medium. As I’ve stated previously, I have no desire to try to build a “brand” there. I sure as hell don’t do coaching. I don’t do freelance work. I will never sell a stupid course or membership of some kind. I realize that’s how a lot of top writers on here make their full-time income, but it’s just not me. There are enough “gurus” out there peddling their snake oil. I just write novels and on occasion scribble out a usually sarcastic editorial. And a finance article here and there.
Writing on Medium for money is not a primary concern for me. My earnings have paid for the Friend of Medium badge for a few years though. Which is nice. At the least, the site is a net positive.
Overall, I see Medium as a good place to practice daily writing and gradually build a platform.
The other milestone happened to take place the following day on August 27th. That is the completion of my 11th novel. A horror story with a dark and twisted romance at its core. This was a tough one to get through. I struggled with it for years. A sharp contrast to previous novels I’ve written, which largely flowed. The inception of the idea actually came way back in 1999, which makes it the oldest concept I’ve ever maintained and seen through to a completed work. It was just a tiny undeveloped spark of a thing. I didn’t know what to do with it then, so I wound up putting it on the backburner for a few decades.
It wasn’t until 2020 that the idea ignited further. Then in 2022 it started to really kindle. At times it felt like trying to hammer cooling iron into shape. I went down two blind alleys, and almost 50,000 words, before having to start over twice. Daunting and dismaying, for sure. But when I have an idea I’m passionate about, I like to stick with it.
This past March, after revising the outline, I began the third attempt. Six months later the first draft is finally finished, and stands at over 90,000 words. My first drafts tend to be strong. I don’t believe in doing “vomit drafts.” I try to get most of what is needed down on the page in a structured and coherent (more or less) fashion in the first go. Even still, it’s perhaps only 65% where it needs to be. As I typically do when finishing a novel, I let the first draft rest for a bit before returning for revisions.
Even though I’ve written 11 novels so far, I’ve only self-published three of them. This is largely because, while I love writing, I have no effing idea how to market or sell my work. Simultaneously, I have little faith in or concern to play the lottery with the traditional publishing side. I’ve read a lot of articles on here about publishing, and let’s just say it’s a sad state of affairs. Even if you land an agent or a publishing deal, the problem of selling your work remains the same. You have to do all of that yourself.
Few, if any, publishing houses, big or small, will put any money into some no-name like myself. I don’t begrudge the industry. It’s the way it is. Most publishing companies make money on their back catalogue of hits, or on “bread and butter” sales like the dictionary or something. Most authors only sell a few hundred copies of their work at best. Publishing in general is a boutique-style business driven by hits. Hits are random. Even celebrity books have totally bombed. So, until I can solve the marketing side of things and learn how to sell myself, I don’t see much of a purpose in putting my eight finished books out there. Perhaps that’s extreme and self-defeating, but I think it’s important to have a plan of execution and not just go out on a wing and a prayer. My books are like my children. I want to treat them right.
I do love my latest book a lot. I think if there’s one that will finally get me to solve the riddle of the Sphinx of Marketing, it’ll be this one. It’s tough to be a writer these days. You can’t just scribble away in a room and submit to publishing shops. You have to learn to do everything yourself. You have to build your own platform. I suppose that‘s part of why I stick around here on Medium. I probably should make YouTube more of a thing, too. That’s a fantastic digital ecosystem, and potentially, a money-making one.
I’ve also thought about posting some of my fiction on here, though I do like keeping the worlds apart. It’s strange. Even though I enjoy writing articles on Medium, non-fiction never makes me feel like I’m really “writing.” Only when I’m writing my novels do I feel like I’m actually really producing something. Fiction enables me to get into a flow state the best, which is my favorite head space. Nothing else comes close.
Anyway, since I don’t like to spend too much time navel-gazing about writing “successes,” I’ll just leave it at that for now. Two good milestones in the rear view mirror. Onto the next.
It’s 11 p.m. Dark, no stars. Soft rain patters against the windows of the small town corner bookstore. The proprietor, a graying, middle-aged man, old and weary before his time, starts locking up.
Another bad day. Only one sale. To a little old lady who was looking for that “cute sparkly vampire” book for her granddaughter. He sold her Dracula instead. Maybe he could save just one Zoomer.
No else even came inside. All too busy staring down at their phones as they walked past. Doomscrolling TikTok, cat memes, and God knows what else. These glowing screens might as well be crack pipes, he thinks, wiping a distressed brow.
The proprietor lifts his tired eyes to the black abyss of a sky as he closes the shades. He used to be filled with optimism. He was going to change the world. He was going to be somebody. A bookseller. A real bookseller. He was going to nourish the world with the printed word. With physical books. Sure, they were dusty, old, and smelled funny. But they were real. Imprinted with human touch and ownership. A physical book is something that says, “I exist, I matter!”
Except nobody wants real books anymore. They just want their glowing screens. They want their Kindles with their “e-paper.” Ha! As if paper could be mimicked on a screen. What next? E-food? E-water?
Now the bills are piling up. Rent’s overdue. A utility company is howling at the door. Bankruptcy looms. It’s over, he thinks. Time to admit defeat once and for all. The glowing screens won. Damn them. Damn them all to hell.
Then he hears footsteps. A shadowy figure suddenly appears. It sort of reminds him of how Nick Fury came in at the end of the first Iron Man movie in the post-credits scene.
In fact, that’s exactly what it reminds him of.
“You think you’re the only bookseller struggling to keep the lights on? You’re part of a much bigger universe. You just don’t know it yet.”
“No, I’m fully aware bookstores are a failing business model,” he says. “My ex-wife reminded me everyday.”
I step fully into the light. A stack of books under my arm. An eye patch placed crookedly on my face.
“Is that eye patch real, or did you just put it on for effect?” he asks.
“Never mind that. I’m putting a team together. I mean, I’m putting a library together.”
The proprietor glances at my books. Lost Horizon. The Caine Mutiny. Is that really Fahrenheit 451? Asingle tear forms in his eye.
A small smile cracks his cynical, grim visage. His first one in ages.
Maybe there is hope, afterall.
My books. Author’s photo.
Buying physical books may not be as dramatic as saving the world, but there’s nothing like actual “flesh and blood” print over e-books or words off a glowing screen.
Reading words off a screen feels more like scanning than actual reading. Though that’s probably just a generational bias. If you grew up staring into the pixelated prism of an iPad, you might prefer the digital version over the real thing.
I have a Kindle. It mainly sits there and collects dust. I only used it for a few digital books I bought. But the experience is not the same. Even if it is more convenient to hold a thin piece of plastic instead of a heavy, awkward book. Perhaps one I’ll finally get used to scanning the fake paper of an e-reader into my brain like a self-checkout machine.
I keep most of my books in storage these days. I like to keep things simple for the time being. Someday I’ll have a house to put them in. Someday I’ll have them properly displayed in my own library.
Jerry Seinfeld once joked that everything we own is just on an eventual jouney to the dumpster. Maybe having boxes and boxes of books like I do will one day prove a burden to family members. I have new books and old books from childhood. I’ve never thrown a book out. I’ve saved everyone I’ve ever had. One day after I’m gone they’ll be sitting on a plastic table at a garage sale. Donated to a library. Or just thrown in the dumpster. But they’ll have served their purpose, at least for me.
They say you aren’t totally dead until your name is spoken for the last time.
For some it will take longer than others. Much, much longer. I can’t imagine we’ll stop saying Julius Caesar’s name anytime soon. He did pay a high price of admission into Club Immortality, though, what with all those knife wounds in the back.
Or Genghis Khan. Especially when he was such a prolific baby daddy that even today 1 in 200 men in the former Mongol Empire share a common male ancestor — which was almost certainly him. Guy must have had a hell of a Tinder profile.
Adolf Hitler will be hanging around for a bit. History is filled with noteworthy murderers. In fact, that seems to be your best bet for a ticket into the remembrance afterlife. We won’t soon forget Joseph Stalin or Mao Zedong either.
Most of your prominent dictators, kings, barbarians, and major leaders down through history, good or evil, beloved or reviled, will likely live on in the collective consciousness. Ozymandias’ statue may have crumbled in the desert, but hey, we’re still talking about him, aren’t we?
After that, the list starts to really narrow. It’s mainly inventors and scientists like Isaac Newton or Albert Einstein. Influential artists and thinkers like Shakespeare, Socrates, or Leonardo da Vinci. Explorers such as Christopher Columbus or Neil Armstrong. Religious figures like Jesus Christ or Muhammad. Then a smattering of other human highlights. Your Typhoid Marys (Mary Mallon), Rube Goldbergs, and Roland the Farters.
Yes, Roland the Farter was a real person, and apparently, he was gastronomically quite skilled.
Sadly, I don’t think many Medium writers will make the recall cut past even 100 years from now, except maybe Barack Obama and other big names who happen to have accounts here. Sure, some server in a cave somewhere will probably have all of us stored away. But how desperate will those of 2124 be to read through hot takes from the 2020s? How many bestselling books or films do you know of from the 1920s? I can think of one off the top of my head — The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
It’s a sobering thought experiment calculating your “moment of oblivion.” Mine is probably around the year 2135. I was born in 1982. The average male life span in the United States is 80. I’m currently childless. If I were to have two children in the next ten years, my kids might be in their 30s by the time I die.
Everyone remembers their parents and talks often about them. So, at the least, I’d be remembered by my own kids until they pass away, possibly sometime early next century.
If my kids have children of their own, my grandkids would certainly remember me, assuming I live long enough to get to know them. Everyone loves their grandparents. If my future grandkids are born while my kids are in their late 20s or early 30s, they would live until around 2135.
After that, it starts to get real murky. Very few people ever know their great grandparents personally. Often you just know their name and some basic biographical information. Maybe a few family members have stories about them. I have no idea who my great great grandparents even are.
So, that’s it then. 2135. My Moment of Oblivion.
I could improve on my date with nothingness by living longer. Maybe I add ten more years then. Or I could have more kids than just two. Working against me there is the fact that I’m starting late. But if I were to live to my 90s and have five kids, and my kids have a bunch of kids, then perhaps I could stretch my remembered self to the mid-2100s. I’d have to be a real prodigious procreater like Genghis Khan to make it past the next century via genetic legacy alone.
If I don’t have any kids, then I’d be reliant on my nieces and nephews to remember their favorite uncle. That would get me no farther past sometime early next century. Aunts and uncles are rarely remembered past one generation.
Aside from being remembered by family, I’m left with having to do something extraordinary to make a big enough impact. I’m not a king, scientist, or explorer. I’m just a writer. Even if I were to write a huge bestselling book — like the next Jaws or Gone Girl — that probably only buys me notoriety for a few decades. The only two authors living today that I could see still being remembered in 100+ years solely due to their writing and not counting their offspring are Stephen King and J. K. Rowling. I don’t see myself getting that lucky.
Of course, if I were to somehow manage to kill millions of people, that’d be sure to keep me in everyone’s thoughts for centuries to come. But I’d have to really raise the bar there. I’m competing with some heavy hitters. Hitler killed around 17 million. Stalin whacked 23 million. Mao had a whopping 49–78 million extinguished.
How many would I need to kill to ensure I stick around forever? 80 million? 100 million? I think I’d better shoot for 100 million just to be sure. That’s a nice round number.
No, I think I’m okay with 2135 being my final goodbye year. That’s still 153 years of being thought about and talked about. Not a bad run for an average person.
When do you think your Moment of Oblivion will be?
Over the past few months, I’ve found myself increasingly dissatisfied and disinterested with Medium, and have decided to focus my efforts toward building a Youtube channel instead.
It’s not that I haven’t seen some good results on here. Back in September of last year I had my best month ever, bringing in over $170.
Source: Screenshot of my earnings.
Mind you, this was accomplished mostly with an article that wasn’t even published on any major publications. My article “Why I Don’t Drink Alcohol” has brought in $213.43 and almost 2,000 views to date, 90% of which were organic internal views.
Source: Screenshot of my article earnings
I didn’t even have that many followers to help kickstart my article’s views. And the article barely got any views the first two weeks before blowing up later. This proves that Medium has a quality algorithm so that even articles with no publication promotion, and written by writers with only a small following can still get traction.
Medium is a great platform for the most part. I have no intention of leaving for good. It’s just that I think my efforts would be better rewarded on YouTube in the long term. Medium seems to have a low upper limit of success and income. Even if you’re a writer with tens of thousands of followers, you’re unlikely to realistically make more than a few thousand dollars a month sustainably.
Whereas, there are many, many people on YouTube making many times more than that.
Here are a few more reasons why I’m switching to YouTube over Medium for my content creation going forward:
Content Diversity
It’s no surprise YouTube has vastly more content than Medium, as the platform is open to everyone to use. You can find everything from academic lectures, to video essays about Batman, to just some guy who has a channel of nothing but videos of him drinking water.
Medium seems to be a place devoted to subjects like digital marketing, side hustles, and the occasional personal story.
I find myself on YouTube way more than Medium. In fact, I only passively check Medium from time to time, and usually I find the same sorts of articles again and again.
Content is Going Video Anyway
The written word is never going away. People will always be attracted to strong writing, either on the web or in printed form. But there’s no question there’s a growing preference anymore for video over blogs and articles. I find myself consuming information more through podcasts and videos over static articles on the web.
YouTube also has tons of audiobooks, if you prefer fiction instead.
You Can Build a Bigger Audience With Video
There are some people with tens of thousands of followers, and even hundreds of thousands of followers here on Medium. Those are great numbers, and having a big Medium following is a great accomplishment. But I can’t help but think if all the hard work that lead to those figures wouldn’t have been better put on YouTube instead. That guy I mentioned earlier who posts videos of himself drinking water? He has over 70,000 subscribers.
Sure, you can argue that videos of yourself drinking water is low effort content and not the same as a deep ten-minute article on the philosophical implications of AI, but numbers are numbers. I see other writers posting regularly about deeply important issues that don’t have even one tenth the followers as the “internet’s premier water drinking series.”
Better Engagement
When is the last time you saw an article with hundreds, or even thousands of comments? Never? I see videos of all kinds with immense comment engagement. Sometimes even on videos with few relative views.
Moving on from the humorous example of Jon Drinks Water, let’s look at a Youtuber I enjoy listening to regularly, and who posts the types of content you might see here on Medium, to see what I mean about engagement.
Martin Goldberg posts faceless videos talking about a range of subjects, but generally about society, culture, gender relations, politics, and other opinion and commentary type stuff. His style is like the soft-spoken “smart friend” who always has interesting and witty insights to share. His latest video talking about Vivek Ramaswamy only has 3,600 views, but has 107 comments as of right now. By constrast, my alcohol article has 2,000 views, but only 8 comments.
While I’m very appreciative of any comments or engagement on my articles, as well as for my 398 followers, it’s clear that if you’re interested in reach and engagement, YouTube is the way to go.
Medium is Strictly Leftist
My personal politics is hard to pin down and I’m agnostic about a great many issues. There are some things I agree with on the left and the right. But overall, I tend to fall on the conservative and traditionalist side of things.
Well, this is not the case with Medium whatsoever, which is largely left wing, very feminist, socialist, and generally hostile to anyone outside whatever is considered “progressive” or “woke.” In fact, I’ve seen conservative writers I’ve liked banned for seemingly no reason, even after building an audience in the thousands.
While I’m not an overtly political person or writer — I tend to avoid politics for the most part in my articles—I’m not a strictly technical writer either. Obviously one’s world view and mindset is going to bleed through the edges when writing about different topics. Medium isn’t friendly toward voices outside what I’d call the deep blue “metropolitan sophisticate” cohort who unquestionably embrace the DIE (diversity equity inclusion)/ BLM/CRT/LGBTQ+/ and whatever other leftist belief system you want to throw in there. Browsing Medium is sometimes like hearing a chorus of programmed NPC automotons. I don’t think people in that narrow mindset realize how exclusionary they really are, even while supposedly being all about “inclusivity.”
It’s not to say conservative media is any better. In fact, I think it’s largely godawful and cringe. And don’t even get me started on the “red pill” weirdos.
Increasingly, I value originality and voice, even if I may disagree with the politics of the content creator. I think maintaining a strict political mindset crushes creativity in many ways, whether you’re on the left or right.
YouTube may have issues with censorship in some cases, but for the most part it has the kind of diversity where it matters — in thought and opinion.
For example, just recently I discovered a YouTube channel called “the radical center,” created by a woman who talks about ideological bias in her academic experience. Her channel has the kind of content that would largely be a no-go here at Medium. But with just 86 videos, she’s amassed over 15,000 subscribers, and very active engagement. Something I doubt would happen here. Her latest video has only 1,500 views but 93 comments.
YouTube Offers Better Income Opportunities
Over the past months, I’ve covered a few YouTube channels in my “Niche Knowledge” series. You can make a living doing almost anything on YouTube — talking about comic books, sharing updates on cryptocurrency, making copyright-free music, or talking about controversial figures like Andrew Tate. Not necessarily the case on Medium, which again, seems more focused on things like digital marketing and “city professional” stuff.
And again, while I occasionally hear about people making $10k or so on here, those days seem to mostly be in the past.
I’m Tired of Hitting the Google Lottery and Having Nothing To Show for It
You’d think with me making this big case against Medium that I’d be some disgruntled writer who barely gets reads. On the contrary. Not only am I not disgruntled, I’m not even gruntled.
I routinely get anywhere between 60–75 or so hits daily on my articles, with no promotion or any real effort on my part. About a month ago, on May 9th, I even got almost 1,000 views in one day for my article “Three People Who Destroyed Their Lives in Less than 60 Seconds.”
Source: Screenwhot of my article’s stats.
The problem is virtually ALL of those views were external. On Medium, you only make money when other paying members view your stories, or people buy something through your affiliate links.
Now, it’s not Medium’s fault if a story does not click with an internal audience. If anything, this example shows Medium’s value in helping your articles rank in Google for different key words and topics. But what’s the point of that if any time an article hits the Google algo it doesn’t translate into actual dollars? At best all I’m doing is increasing Medium’s digital footprint, and increasing awareness of the site to other people, for free. At worst I’m short changing myself. Had that article been hosted exclusively on a website, or made into a YouTube video instead, those views might have meant actual dollars.
The majority of my regular daily traffic is external. I know that because my partner earnings increases by pennies. If over the course of a month I’m getting 2000–3,000 views or more, something like 95% of that is external, and therefore goes unmonetized. If a typical ad rate impression for a website or Youtube is around $10 RPM, then that means I’m potentially missing out on around $30 in revenue. That’s pretty small, but supposing in a year I’m getting 10,000–15,000 views a month, and it can start to really add up.
YouTube has its downsides too, in the interest of fairness. You still need 4,000 watch hours and a minimum of 1,000 subscribers in order to monetize your channel. And like almost any other platform out there, you’ve got to be put in the work and upload regularly if you want to see any results. Some niches pay more than others. Most of the higher paying ones, like dropshipping, affiliate marketing, finance, and others, are not areas I’m interested in covering. They are also hyper competitive.
Then there’s the fact that video is a different medium of information, and requires a much steeper learning curve. I can put together an article in under an hour. But shooting and editing a video properly takes time, and a good bit of knowledge. Youtube is more competitive now, and I think viewers are more demanding and discerning now than even just a couple of years ago. If you want to produce professional-looking videos but don’t have any editing skills, it’s expensive to hire a good editor. I’m not talking about AI-voiced “cash cow” video editors, either. I mean the ones who can put together videos you may actually want to watch, and convey worthwhile content. Over on Fiverr I see them usually starting at a few hundred dollars and up.
However, despite the challenges of the video medium, I’ve already seen some results on my Youtube channel. Over the last few months I’ve been mostly turning my Medium articles into faceless YouTube videos with some V.O. and either copyright-free or fair use imagery. A few weeks ago, out of nowhere, my video “Hot Blonde Bimbo Teachers Can’t Stop Banging Kids,” a video version of my article, “Hot Blonde Bimbo Teachers Can’t Stop Fucking Kids” about Marka Bodine, got over 7,000 views in a matter of days.
Source: Stats for my YouTube video.
That video brought in about 24 subscribers, bringing my current total number of YT subscribers to 32. That’s pretty small, I realize, but again, all I’ve been doing is sporadically uploading video versions of my Medium articles. Obviously, I’m not monetized yet. But small successes like this are very encouraging. I posted that video back in November. It took until this May before it got any traction. And that was purely algo-driven. I did not promote my video anywhere, or pay for views or anything. But if that’s the kind of results you can potentially get with no promotion or efforts to build SEO, imagine what you could do if you took YT really seriously. Video essays and humorous commentary on news topics tend to do really well.
In summary, I’m going to focus on making content exclusive to YouTube because I see much more long-term upside on there rather than on Medium. I’ll still going to post here once in a while, but it will be more off-the-cuff type stuff, or announcements.
I still think there’s opportunity on Medium, if you’re a certain kind of writer, and you write for a certain type of audience. But I think YouTube offers opportunities for virtually all audience types and interests. It can also prove to be a great platform for fiction writers like myself. There are many writers who use YouTube as a platform to help sell their books.
I’m certainly not a YouTube personality or a professional video editor by any means. I’m not the best at verbal communication, which is something I’m trying to improve. Except for a few videos I don’t even show my face. I think it will be a challenge to get serious traction on YT, as it would be anywhere else. But in the end I think it will be worth it.
Dean Brooks 