We are on the verge of physical technology creating an upheaval of never before seen equality or inequality depending on how things end up being utilized. Yet, with trust, we are not much far off from the caveman.

Seeing Red

Imagine being born into a world where you, and only you can see the color red. As a child, you are seen as having a vivid imagination. As you progress into adolescence, it starts to become a part of your identity – for better or worse. Maybe it’s something that makes you feel cool and different. Your friends think you’re special or ‘edgy.’ Or, maybe you are ashamed of it. Something is wrong with you. You try getting help from a doctor or clergy.

“It’s just a purple-ish gray color,” people say. You know what you are seeing is different from everyone else, but it seems like such a trivial part of life that you just press on trying to ignore it. With each minor argument about color, you begin to train yourself to simply stop talking about it. You avoid employment in creative or scientific fields that may put too much emphasis on the subject of color.

Moving through life, it continues to itch at you. You start becoming cynical and bitter. Why can’t people just believe you? Eventually, maybe you go through a rigorous process of measuring light. You find your own way to prove that red exists; however, you do not have a degree. You do not have connections in the scientific community. You do not have anything other than your word and your work. The work should be enough.

Still, no one believes you. Maybe you can’t show your work to the people with the expertise to know you’re right. Maybe they feel threatened by the fact that a lamen discovered a new color even though they made it their life’s work. Maybe you lack the social skills and they simply don’t like you, so they say you’re wrong.

Submitting to Powerlessness

Eventually, you give up. Maybe you make a few inventions that leverage your ability to see red when others cannot. Maybe you move on with life, forgetting this part of you. Maybe you become socially withdrawn and generally hostile toward authority and institutions.

…Or Not

Maybe you keep pressing on with your Red cause. Maybe you’re lucky enough that there were people before you that also saw red. Maybe they also went through the same struggles as you. Maybe their collective effort brought the concept of Red into the Overton window. Maybe you’ll be hailed as the genius who proved what many before you could not.

If you look at many innovations in our world that is adopted by the masses, a story like this can be found and repeated over and over. Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake for his claims of the now widely accepted infinite universe and supporting Copernicus’s heliocentric model. We now know the Copernican model to be wrong, but not completely wrong. Just as the universe may not truly be infinite.

Just as you know Red exists, you may not be able to communicate that there is many different types of red. Perhaps you identified an orange-y red of some kid as the ultimate red. You weren’t completely right, but you did the best with the tools and words you have available to you in your time.

Trust and Blockchain

Bitcoin/blockchain and the solving of the Two General’s Problem will likely eventually be seen as slightly incorrect as a system of trust. Even so, it is the first most profound solution for our society’s trust problems. I had a friend who lived in the midst of some of the most important innovations at a breakneck pace. Mass adoption of electricity, nuclear fusion, the internet, the list goes on. He remarked to me how AI is one of the few innovations of late to be truly world-changing. He did not include blockchain in this list of recent innovation.

I don’t blame him. Blockchain is boring. It’s rife with scams. Ironically, the system has been built as a system of trust yet overrun with untrustworthy people. Our sun may be the center of the solar system, but it is not the center of our universe. Blockchain appears to me as the equivalent of the invention of steel. Steel can make a great sword. Eventually, steel can be used for so many technologies. Used for architecture, machinery, tools, and so much more.

Is blockchain the center of trust? I doubt it. The Copernican model isn’t correct, but it was a start. Blockchain may not be correct, but it’s a start.

Innovating Trust Is Our Greatest Imperative for the Future

It seems likely that within our century, artificial intelligence may reach a singularity event. I wonder what that may look like if humans still cannot trust each other? What will we do when we yet again shut down someone who is seeing red? What if that red is the future blood spilled from the misuse of AI or other civilization-ending technologies? Many cynical fictions say we are cavemen with nukes. This is because we still do not know how to trust or be truthful.

It’s Not All Doom and Gloom, Though!

The wonderful thing is we can all as individuals be a part of the solution. In the climate crisis, you as an individual can save the world by reducing your waste and emissions. In our trust crisis, you can start being more truthful. Start by facing truths within yourself. We all lie. If you think you do not, you are likely right, but only half-right. If you are truthful to others, that might be correct, but chances are quite high you are still lying to yourself.

When you identify that you are capable of lying to yourself, you will begin to see that you have been lying to others all along. Whether you are a liar or not, start calling out the lies you tell yourself. This will make you surprisingly honest. Life gets easier. Harder in some ways as well, but there is a net gain. I know this because I have done it myself.

We will defend it to the death because ego is all we have left after it strips us. Strips us of our family, money, and basic sense of dignity. Anyone who is not a white man already knows this about their relationship with white supremacist patriarchy. The only difference is they are not entitled to have an ego like us.

Lately, I’ve been contemplating the idea of what I’ve started to call ‘dogmatic literalism.’ As I explore my personal relationship with god, people who are dogmatic in their religious practice unconsciously dismiss me. With dogma and religion, it’s their way or the highway. It is unfathomable to be a servant of god without religion. Not unless I am a servant of god of their religion. Some are not as picky, as long as I am a servant of god of any religion.

Dogmatic Literalism

This idea of dogmatic literalism is simply a generalization of biblical literalism. An example of Biblical literalism is Adam and Eve being real people, the only humans that exist, that Adam actually sacrificed his rib to make Eve, that Eve was seduced by a real talking snake into eating an apple. It’s an interpretation of scripture that fails to apply an interpretation that very clearly requires an understanding and application of metaphor.

Let’s take the most god-lite religion we know about. Twelve step programs. My suggestion of dogmatic literalism is that Al-Anon, a 12-step program – a religion, requires one to go to Al-Anon meetings and to read the Al-Anon book to have any hope of living harmoniously with someone that is in a relationship with an alcoholic, drug abuser, etc. Yet, it is just a religion. Another iteration of teaching someone the core nature of reality. The core nature of reality is like a song. Religions and their teachings are simply remixes of that song. Anyone can hear the original. All they need to do is listen.

When a religious person suggests that my relationship with god is invalid because I didn’t use religion to find it (god), it is not helpful. They think they are being helpful. But, all it does is expose themselves as dogmatic. Dogma prevents one from seeing a road parallel to their’s. I let go of that, but it makes me sad because being dogmatic can have negative health and social consequences. I empathize with the fact that they potentially hinder and harm themselves through dogmatism.

There are many studies about the negative health and social consequences of dogmatism. Here are a couple:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28435818/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33214149/

White Supremacist Patriarchy

Dogmatism is one of many forms of indoctrination. Dogmatism is quite powerful because it internalizes indoctrination much deeper than traditional forms of indoctrination. Indoctrination is, of course, a social and cultural toolset to make a person behave a certain way through all sorts of social manipulation. The white supremacist patriarchy is an excellent example of it because it still exists today and has been pervasive for centuries.

In the end, it is all lies. Delusion. A delusion is mostly just a lie that you believe. A fabrication of reality that you have made real for yourself. This can happen as a natural protection mechanism of your brain. In schizophrenic people, that protective mechanism goes haywire.

I have spent almost my entire life sorting through delusion. I did it because it’s a symptom of schizophrenia. But somewhere along the line, I accidentally started dismantling societal delusions inside of myself because I confused them for being psychotic delusions. After over two years of doing this, I’m starting to feel like I’ve become a literal example of Akira Kurosawa’s line from Ran:

• 狂った今の世で気が狂うなら気は確かだ
• English: in a mad world, only the mad are sane

I don’t have any conclusion to this writing. Just sharing my observations in this moment. Thanks for reading.

Recently, that company was acquired. Our payout? $1 million, maybe more.

But, we said NO.

My co-founder would be stuck in a job where he would not thrive for TWO YEARS. He’s a young man, two years would equate to 10% of his entire life.

He is an astonishingly masterful salesman, not even for his age, but in general. Being stuck in one company would stifle him.

So, what did we do after hearing the news? We high-fived each other. Why? Our cash-out from the deal was much more valuable for us.

Value that is eternal, not fleeting like money. He honored his soul, and I honored his choice. We did not waiver then and we do not regret now.

Why is it that the feeds in my social media communities are filled with people going viral touting easy money? Without proper context, most people would think our touting is insane or some humble-brag ploy.

The former may be true, but for this reason: We drew a line in the sand for anyone who wants to truly know us in future dealings. We do not sell what is eternal — time spent, family, friends, brotherhood.

We are patient because we have faith that our creator — whatever that creator may be to you — will provide us the prosperity we seek without compromise.

We chose happiness and life. What greater gift than to have your happiness affirmed by missing out on a life-changing amount of money and not even batting an eye?

Meta Commentary

My hope is this post can take a genuinely beautiful moment in both life and business and twist it into something with an asterisk. You may have seen posts like this on Facebook or other social media. A tale of perceived success, grit, and the underdog winning in an unexpected way. And now you are hearing about it. To what end?

To buy something, of course. And what are you buying? Most times, a course, of course. This ad copy is ultimately selling a story. The story sells the course and the course rarely has any value. The value was in the story.

It reminds me of when my mom would justify giving more money to a homeless man than the average homeless man. He would weave an intricate story for her and she would pay them for taking the time to do so. When you buy these courses, you are compensating people for their time putting that story in front of you because anything after that does not yield any further value in the transaction after reading the ad copy.

The Asterisk

So, what is my asterisk? I am trying to make connections with people. I want to be able to reach into a pool of like-minded people and provide them with something, whether they pay me or not. I’m not selling anything now, but I may in the future. If you feel like we jive, give me a follow or sign up to my newsletter on this website to keep up with all the weird stuff that will pop up in your feed/inbox.

I try to provide high value thoughts, software, jokes, memes, designs, and more. If I start spamming low-value stuff, consider giving me a chance and call me out on it before unsubscribing. Constructive criticism will be met with gratitude. I want to provide value for you, not my ego. I am still learning how to identify the difference, still identifying how to best serve.

P.S. — No, I’m not actually selling a course, and yes, the story at the beginning was 100% true.

You are fat, angry, ugly, lonely, and tired (FAULT). You’re like this because evil is in your head and you punish yourself for it. Being evil is not your fault. But, evil is your FAULT.

Within me, forgiving anyone is now possible without restriction, exception, or hesitation. I unlocked this superpower from recognizing the lie.

A Sensory Moral Compass

Seven years ago, something changed in my body. I began to sense a tingle in my scalp when I would do something that my brain considered ‘good’ or ‘evil.’ When I was evil, the left side of my scalp would tingle. When I was good, the right side of my scalp would tingle. I somehow developed a physically sensed moral compass.

I learned that I was generally more ‘evil’ than I was good. How could that be? I was not an arms dealer, rapist, oligarch, addiction peddler. In my mind and the minds of most I knew, I’m an honest, kind, and hardworking person. I was once even described as a ‘gentle soul.’ Yet, my brain told me I was evil.

In the following years, I sought to understand why I was supposedly evil. To put it simply, most young white men in my position are at the whims of nurture over nature. We live, relatively speaking, comfortable lives. This comfort affords us to fully engage with our culture. Our culture tells us every day that there is good and evil in the world. With the pervasive growth of social media, we see it now more than ever.

Yet, good and evil is a lie.

“Of course there is evil, what about…”

I’m sorry, but I need to stop you there. The most heinously ‘evil’ people, in my mind, fall into two categories:

1. People who justify heinous acts with preserving the greater good
2. Sociopaths (or a combination of sociopathy and #1)

Okay, so what about them? I do not see evil here. I see:

1. Someone who truly believed the concept of good and evil and felt so wronged (either personally or on behalf of their group) that they would destroy their soul and place in history to ensure their perception of evil is never carried out again
2. Someone who was so severely traumatized in their formative youth that their brain wiped out any possibility of humanity from their brain permanently

“But, Ian, these people would not exist without people committing acts of evil.”

Perhaps, but, evil is an egg. It can only hatch if you acknowledge in your mind that it deserves life. When you do this, you make yourself susceptible to committing or enabling acts of evil. This leads to more acts of evil carried out by anyone else who does not realize that the idea of good and evil is a lie.

Ethics vs. Morality

Ethics is real and identifies violations of a human beings’ time

The word ethics and the word morality is considered interchangeable. Setting aside the fleeting and useless nature of words, this interoperability is also a lie. Why? Because ethics as it stands now appear to fit parameters centered around respecting each others time. If you do anything that takes time away from someone without their consent, you are acting unethically. How does this work? Think about anytime you are wronged. One way or another, your time was violated:

• If someone stole from you, you lost the time spent earning your stolen item
• If someone physically hurt you, you lost the time it took to heal
  • Immediate-term, to heal the physical damage and to pay for medical treatment
    • With paying for medical treatment, you lose the time related to earning the money spent on that medical treatment
  • Short-term, to heal from the emotional damage
  • Long-term, to deal with the symptoms of your injuries (if applicable, such as a broken knee)
  • Lifelong-term, time lost from reduced lifespan (if applicable)
• If someone emotionally abused you, you lost the time in a deceitful relationship, as well as time needed to heal during and after that relationship or interaction

I think those broad examples cover most ethical violations in one way or another.

Morality is not real, it obfuscates the fact that good and evil is a lie

Morality is the personal practice of measuring what is good and what is evil.

• Marijuana is good
• Homosexuality is evil
• Inserting a vodka soaked tampon in your anus is good
• After reading the line above, you now think the writer of this article is evil
• Killing an ant is evil
• Bacon is good
• Fire is good

According to who? Morality is completely useless as a cultural or societal practice because no one cares about your individual morality. You likely don’t care about anyone else’s morality either. Sure, maybe you’ll care if someone has the same morals as you. That feels good. You may care if someone is an affront to your morals. That feels bad, evil.

Unfortunately, this is all a circus your brain puts on for your amusement as you continue to blind yourself to the fact that good and evil is a lie.

How to identify for yourself that good and evil is a lie

First and foremost, any example or instructions I give will likely not work for you. This article is a hypothesis for you. After reading this, it is up to you to test this hypothesis. You may never find evidence of confirmation, but I suspect you will die a miserable person if that happens. However, I believe you will find evidence if you actively seek it out. If you find understanding in this idea, you may find positive physiological health effects, including improved mental health.

The best way to identify that good and evil is a lie is to seek out confirmation. Make it a daily practice.

When you have a moment of mental silence, you may find yourself picking up your phone. Use this as your prompt. Put your phone back down and think about people in your life, your community, your nation, or online, that are evil. Why are they evil? Put yourself in their shoes as best you can. Right from the beginning when they were a drooling baby. Do this every day, even if you don’t see the lie.

Practice this seeking. For me, it took years. I hope it does not take you as long. It may take longer. Seek it out.

The idea of good and evil is a lie. It is your FAULT. The beauty of something being your fault is that you can take responsibility for it and start the process of healing.

I recently found through MarketWatch (https://www.marketwatch.com/story/adobes-20-billion-figma-merger-reportedly-facing-doj-scrutiny-2022-11-03) that you are investigating the Adobe acquisition of Figma. I am glad to hear this and would like to provide my insight as both an Adobe and Figma customer, and why your investigation is important. In particular, as a dual citizen of both the United States and Canada, why this investigation is not only important to American citizens, but to creators all around the world.

My relationship with Adobe began in college where the company had a strong hold as an industry standard for creative learners and professionals in the digital space. My college chose the Adobe Creative Suite (now known as Creative Cloud) because of this. A side effect of this very common story across nearly all college campuses is that the cost of our education in both time and money, are heavily intertwined with Adobe’s products. At the time, I liked the software, and it did exactly what I needed to do. To this day, the ladder still holds true. However, over time, my use of these products began to become increasingly unacceptable to a professional like me for several reasons:

Disclaimer: I know these things are not illegal, but they are evidence to point for legitimate reasons for me to find a competitor.

1. Adobe uses what is called in the user experience design sector as, “dark patterns,” which can be a combination of deceptive design techniques intended to maximize the user to spend more money on the product at the expense of the software being more difficult to use in the process
   • An example of these “dark patterns” is to make certain features that, on the surface, look like a great value-added part of their offerings, but are designed in such a way that the design makes the offerings prohibitively difficult and frustrating to use compared to virtually all other competitors. An example is Adobe’s cloud storage, where basic features like downloading multiple files (2 or more) is not possible when compared to similar services offered by Dropbox, Google, Microsoft, and others.
     https://community.adobe.com/t5/creative-cloud-services-discussions/how-do-i-download-multiple-files-from-assets-adobe-com-web/m-p/12355771
2. Adobe has designed their Creative Cloud software in such a way that it behaves exactly like malware. In other words, it is malware. I am not using hyperbole in this statement, I am using the literal definition of the word malware.
   https://community.adobe.com/t5/creative-cloud-services-discussions/how-do-we-remove-this-malware-virus-called-quot-creative-cloud-quot/td-p/12232204
3. Lastly, when I went through the appropriate channels to express my concerns/frustrations, it led to someone routinely insulting me – often in such a way that attempted to use my public disclosure of my disability against me. I reported this behavior 2 to 3 times to their moderation team and action has not been taken after over 2 months (thus far).

As I say in my disclaimer, these 3 primary examples (of many) in my experience with Adobe has led to me finding other creative software to flee these constant disruptions in my workflow. This is where I decided to finally move on and began spending 3 months learning and using Figma, at which point I found out Adobe was acquiring Figma. Figma was known in the creative community as an Adobe alternative, with the more enthusiastic Figma fans calling it ‘the Adobe killer.’ This narrative was often leveraged and promoted in the company’s marketing strategy. An example of this can be found in a deleted Tweet from its founder and CEO:

It is my opinion that Adobe’s acquisition of Figma is a clear case of anticompetitive behavior that puts people like myself and many other creatives in a position where

1. we stopped doing business with one company
2. that our strong distaste for that company led to us doing business elsewhere
3. find ourselves returning to that same company through said company acquiring its competitor
4. finding ourselves going to another company once more costly to us due to the time and money it takes to learn a new creative product

Thank you for taking this time to read this and/or forwarding it to the appropriate individuals within the antri-trust division regarding this matter.

—Ian McKenzie

In the last year, I’ve been doing a deep dive into understanding crypto as part of my partial shift in career change. In a sense, this is a continuation of my delve into blockchain learning about NFTs. I am not a wizard, nor is anyone else in tech. Do not put us on a pedestal, our egos certainly do not need it. So, here it is, Bitcoin for Boomers, an act of attempting to help my family understand parts of what I do.

Why does Bitcoin exist in the first place?

The launch of Bitcoin came soon after the 2008 financial crisis. We all saw the negligent and/or malicious exploitation of our banking systems by wildly unethical financiers. Combine this with the aftermath of the majority of said financiers (at least in USA) getting out not only unscathed, but insanely wealthy and unpunished. The cherry on top was one decade prior. This was when the first iteration of the cryptographic/mathematical solution was created. This system, called Hashcash, laid the groundwork for making Bitcoin possible.

You don’t really need to understand what or how the cryptography or math works, but in a nutshell, it empowers a systemic design of being controlled by no one. This design is intended to harden Bitcoin as a currency against any artificial manipulation. In particular, manipulation against the collective will of the currency’s holders. In addition, the design ensures that it can be verified by anyone and everyone willing to commit their computer’s processing power toward that cause.

Huh, cryptography, but aren’t my bank transactions already private?

A common confusion with Bitcoin is that it is private because criminals use it for money laundering. It is not private. As the FBI and other law enforcement began to understand this, it became a godsend. This is because it cuts all the red tape out of auditing financial transactions. No more search warrants, just a free blockchain analysis tool.

Cryptography, mathematics, and criminal activity aside, I’ll put it in Bitcoin for Boomer words. Bitcoin has one purpose as a currency: remove the corruption and mismanagement seen in traditional centralized currencies from the hands of select, unelected individuals of questionable competence.

So it’s just a random currency with no nation and no paper notes to back it up?

Yes. But, keep in mind that most financial transactions of the modern world happen electronically anyway. The distinction between Bitcoin and other national currencies is that it is not controlled by anyone other than other Bitcoin holders maintaining a system of consensus. The consensus being that from one block to another, no one has manipulated the blockchain’s ledger along the way.

In other words… or, shall I say, Bitcoin for Boomers words, when the Federal Reserve prints more bank notes or changes a number in their holdings system, they are artificially manipulating their ledger. They can do this because they control the whole system and no one can stop them, even if the American people and its leaders protest. With Bitcoin, no one can artificially manipulate the ledger without consensus. No one.

What do expert economists have to say about all this?

The first argument I agree with whole-heartedly. Bitcoin and all other cryptocurrencies are virtually insignificant compared to the amount of press and attention they get.

He also talks about the measures of a good currency and all the ways in which it does not fit those parameters (yet), which are currently all unassailable points (except for being unable to transact with it — I am slowly able to replace many of my online credit card purchases with BTC instead). As an investment, he is right — anyone who buys Bitcoin because ‘number go up’ have purchased it for all the wrong reasons.

It seems like there is a philosophical disconnect between Bitcoin and Boomers

Any true Bitcoin holder has Bitcoin because of Dr. Damodaran’s main cynical point of view about its value proposition: Created by the paranoid for the paranoid. But, to me, this will eventually be seen as an extremely antiquated view much as if someone today was to say, “Doors with deadbolts are created by the paranoid for the paranoid.”

Imagine you lived in a small village where everyone trusted each other. The village one day grew to become a city. Consequently, one day the idea of a deadbolt becomes necessary. Look at it from a philosophical and ideological standpoint. It can be extremely difficult for many of the older people to wrap their head around.

Imagine growing up and living in that city when it was a small, interconnected village. The concept of a deadbolt truly is absurd. Having lived in a small town myself, it was exceedingly rare to lock the door or use the deadbolt. I only ever understood the concept as a child because of my consumption of television and film.

That all just sounds like Libertarian hyper-vigilance.

In a perfect world, it likely would be. In the real world, especially post-2020, we are seeing a cascading series of institutional corruption, mismanagement, or outright failure. Bitcoin’s premise is being hardened against the very corruption mismanagement, and failures we are suffering. For anyone digging any deeper than ‘number go up’ with Bitcoin, it becomes an exceedingly attractive value proposition.

In this sense, investing in Bitcoin is very much the currency version of a Libertarian investing in firearms, land, and self-sufficient electrical and plumbing systems. It is an ideological distrust of systems that can have critical global impacts. It’s like gold without the physical burdens attached.

What about the environment?

Bitcoin by design is intended to be a burden from block to block. As a result, it uses a lot of energy. With its widening adoption, the energy burden is becoming measurably concerning. It is important to keep in mind, however, that traditional banking uses a lot more energy than the “credit card energy” comparison many people make.

If we were to genuinely compare Bitcoin’s energy use, we can’t count Visa, Mastercard, and American Express’ megawatts used and call it a day. Why? Because backing these companies are not just computer servers using electricity. There are thousands of employees, multiple office buildings, and all of the other overhead that comes from running these companies. Taking everything into account, the comparison seems a bit less drastic.

Yeah, but two wrongs don’t make a right…

Bitcoin for environmentalist boomers

You’re right. Comparison aside, it is still a lot of energy. Recently, Bitcoin developers have released the Lightning network. This is a way to reduce the energy burdens. In not-so-Bitcoin-for-Boomers speak, it reduces this energy burden by circumventing some of the consensus mechanisms. To many, this goes against the entire philosophy of Bitcoin, but it does give its holders a choice: faster transactions or sound money.

The benefit of the Lightning Network is that it does not replace or override the underlying system. It acts as a layer on top of it. In that sense, a savvy Bitcoin user will have a Bitcoin wallet dedicated to a larger pool of funds and what crypto people call a ‘hot wallet’ for Lightning Network transactions.

You can think of a traditional wallet like a savings account, whereas the hot wallet would be a checking account. With banks, checking accounts insulate you from too many transaction fees. With Lightning Network, your hot wallet insulates you from slow and expensive transacting. Better yet, businesses can run their own Lightning Node instead of paying credit card fees that many small businesses consider to be the equivalent of extortion.

Okay, you’ve covered Bitcoin for Boomers. What about Crypto for Boomers?

The difference between Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies is that Bitcoin functions like an actual currency. Most other ‘crypto’ are not currencies. Instead, they look and function much more like securities. Much as you would see in the stock market. As the United States government catches up with all of this technology, you can verify this for yourself. Dig into the SEC’s classification of many crypto coins. You will find that the majority are labelled as securities, not currencies.

I am better able to document the positive health effects of lifting weights thanks to the medication changes increasing my ability for sensory observation and processing. I don’t know exactly how this improved sensory experience came to be, but I suspect it is a combination of my new medication on top of my rigorous pursuit of spiritual development and prioritizing my health above all else in my life.

Reduced Stress Leading to Physical Benefits

Jaw is popping less frequent

Back when I was taking a different medication, it caused severe jaw clenching that caused permanent damage. From this damage, my jaw began popping at seemingly indiscernible times. Over time, I began to learn the popping became more frequent during periods of high stress. This likely ties into my bad posture from being a technology worker, which causes shoulder problems. These shoulder problems, when most severe can also cause tension in my jaw area. This jaw popping can be a precursor warning that a migraine is coming due to shoulder strain.

Shoulder pain is less all-encompassing

Speaking of shoulder pain, lifting weights, I suspect, put my posture in better alignment. As a result, the cause of my pain is reduced and makes my day-to-day less filled with pain. I am more productive, present, and engaged, which will of course inevitably make myself and everyone around me happier.

Eczema in the face is less severe

I’ve always had issues with eczema, but prior to lifting again, it was getting worse to the point of great concern. As I began lifting more, it became much less severe. In combination with more regular bathing using Head & Shoulders shampoo, my eczema tends only to flare up when I forget to shower for 3-4 days at a time.

Reduced Stress, Increased Confidence Leading to Mental Benefits

The enjoyment of and ability & desire to work has started to come back

Time and time again, I am finding that my ability to exist in this world is intimately tied to the frequency with which I move my body in large busts of energy. Obviously lifting weights is the best way I’ve found to do this. The less I do this, the harder it is for me to be productive and doing the work that I want and need to do.

My enjoyment of work is often hindered by what the work is. The worst work I do is centered around “keeping up” or worse, “catching up.” When it comes to fulfilling work, I absolutely hate living in the present or the past. My fulfillment comes from work focused on the future. When I am stressed and feeling left behind in the world, doing work that ‘catches me up’ is defeating and does not build resilience. If anything, it chips away at it.

Lifting weights builds my resilience against this. As I work through the “keeping/catching up” backlog from this built up resilience, I can get myself back into building the future. As a result, my ability and motivation to work more often and be more productive ends up skyrocketing. This brings me back to myself at my best. Fulfilled and optimistic about the future, regardless of external forces in many cases, or even internal forces in some cases.

My Openness to Spirituality Returned

I find that when my body is healthier and more in tune with itself that it enhances my ability to be one with my environment. When I say ‘environment’ it is an all-encompassing definition of many environments. My social environment, my physical environment, my mental environment, even the environment that is my corpse (in the archaic definition). From this, I am able to better sense all things that I perceive to be ‘god.’

More confidence/success with coding

Like many jobs, especially engineering and creative ones, is the resilience to solve unexpected problems as they come up. For me, I had a huge gap in time where I wasn’t coding because of my shift into a more managerial role when I was scaling (now scaled back) my web agency.

As I was getting back into coding before I began lifting again, I was crushed under the weight of the lack of resilience I had. Even doing a simple environment setup was a harrowing experience. It took over 4 months to simply update my compliance with the Google Play and Apple App stores. After returning to lifting regularly, all of these things now seem trivial once again.

General Physical Benefits

Finger and wrist joints feel stronger & less sore

One thing I began to notice as I stopped lifting as much was how weak my grip strength was. I think this may be true for many men, but I find we tend to have a strong tie from our masculinity to our grip strength. There are many cultural associations, such as having a ‘firm handshake’ or comments about ‘strong hands.’ As a result, a weaker grip strength has a lot of subtle questions and self-talk about ones confidence and place in the world as a man.

On top of all that, I’ve had prior injuries. One from snowboarding and another from repetitive strain working in retail and subsequently in technology. After lifting once again, my hands and wrists feel much stronger. The typical strain and pain have gone away, and again, overall quality of life has improved in so many subtle ways because of this.

Finger tips have moisture again

This one might sound a bit weird, but any retail employee will likely have noted this observation. Trying to flip pages in a chequebook or split open a grocery bag from its boxed state can be a real pain if you have dry fingers. My entire retail career, I was blessed to have fingers that seemed to have enough moisture (without being a sweaty-palmed weirdo) that it was never a problem for me. For my colleagues, though, they had to rely on a wet sponge at the register.

As I reached my 30s and was lifting far less as I prioritized work and career at the cost of my health, I began to have the same problem. As I began lifting again, the moisture in my fingers returned. For some reason, even just being able to change the kitchen trash bin makes life so much easier for me. I’m laughing right now at how silly it sounds, but there you have it.

In this casual rabbit hole, I was curious about Supreme. I thought of the idea of a parody using an antonym like “Inferior.” With a brand so widely known, I thought, “Surely this has already been done.” Indeed, it was.

For reference, this is the Supreme Logo:

Needless to say, the parody felt off. The kerning seemed to be non-existent, and the red box’s height is reduced because none of the letterforms have a descender. I personally didn’t like it. So I made my own attempt.

My only beef with my version is I couldn’t find the proper Futura font. It seems to be somewhere in-between medium italic and bold italic. But, as a meme/shitposting project, I don’t want to put any more time into it. I think I may get this printed and wear it just to make zoomers laugh. Here’s the PDF (vector format) if you want to print your own shirt:

I don’t know if I can claim this design as my copyright, but if I have a legal precedent to do so, I am putting it in the public domain.

If you don’t feel like figuring out how to print your own shirt:

There’s already a zillion articles out there that tell you what NFTs are. Here are a couple:

What Is An NFT? – Forbes Advisor

NFTs, explained: what they are, and why they’re suddenly worth millions – The Verge

Instead, what I want to do is tell you what they are not/what they will not do. One of the best ways I know how to describe the concept of NFTs is to compare them to Pokemon trading cards (Caveat: I should say, NFTs as they exist today). I like this comparison because they share 3 key features:

1. NFTs and Pokemon trading cards are artistic in nature (even if some hesitate to call it ‘art’)
2. They are collectible through scarcity in their prints (with NFTs, they are instead scarce through their mints)
3. They have functionality of some kind (with Pokemon cards, it is a set of rules that govern your Pokemon’s attributes for battling other Pokemon)

The Key Misconceptions

1. NFTs will not protect you from digital theft of the art that the NFT is associated with
2. NFTs are an opening to a paradigm shift in the conversation (and perhaps definition) of value

Spoiler alert: it may not align with your values specifically.

Many people take “non-fungible” at face value as it relates to the art. This is where a NFT holder may inadvertently embarrass themselves. So, try not to get huffy when someone “right-click, saves” your NFT.

WTF Are NFTs? Essentially, Like Pokemon Cards.

Imagine this scenario:

Billy has a Charizard Pokemon card. Billy is very proud of his Charizard card because it is rare. It is also very powerful in his Pokemon battles. Charizard looks SO badass. Billy loves Charizard.

One day, Billy battles Kevin. Kevin has a Charizard as well. But Kevin’s Charizard card has ink that is faded. The card is peeling and it looks terrible. Wait a second, Kevin’s Charizard is just an inkjet print that was taped onto a worthless Bellsprout card!

This scenario poses a philosophical question: Is Kevin’s Charizard any less legitimate than Billy’s Charizard? In Billy’s mind, Kevin is cheating because he did not acquire a Charizard legitimately. In NFT terms, you bought a Bored Ape NFT, and TwitterTroll123 right-clicks your NFT and saves it to his computer.

Here is the distinction between a real and illegitimate piece of functional artwork: Pokemon battle tournaments will likely not accept Kevin’s illegitimate cards for their competition. Likewise, Billy will likely refuse to battle Kevin whenever Kevin has illegitimate cards in his deck. Moreover, even non-Pokemon enthusiasts could very likely spot Kevin’s Charizard as a fake. To top it all off, when Billy wants to sell his Charizard 20 years from now, he will (most likely) make money. Kevin will be lucky if he finds anyone that will take his Charizard (outside of the owner of a landfill).

The Blockchain Doesn’t Lie Because Humans Programmed Their “Honesty” Into It

The legitimacy of Billy’s Charizard is largely validated by real-world social constructs. Keep in mind, Non-fungible tokens are just that. Tokens. If it was Non-fungible art, they would be called NFAs. The non-fungible token adds a technologically accessible validation to the blockchain of the artwork in question. Kevin can’t fool humans into thinking his Charizard is legitimate, but he could fool machines. Machines use the non-fungible token as a construct to confirm to itself the associated art is legitimate. In other words, NFTs a technological construct that attempts to mimic our social constructs as it relates to value. NFTs are designed to ensure that machines cannot be fooled by Kevin’s Charizard either.

As a note, pay attention to the fact that I put the word “Honesty” in quotes in the above subheading. Ultimately, it is up to all of us, both as individuals and a collective to decide what things are deemed as real or fake, true or a lie, valuable or worthless. We must decide for ourselves, “WTF are NFTs?” There is great danger and great reward in either direction. Thus far, many of us believe NFTs are a path toward a rewarding, safer future when it comes to the concept of value.

“WTF Do You Know About NFTs, Ian?”

First off, I think it’s strange you’re so willing to let me put words in your mouth. Secondly, thanks for asking! I first heard about NFTs back in 2017 and did a bit of tinkering with my Curious Markings project, but nothing manifested into an NFT project. Between everything else I had going on, I walked away from the crypto space for a couple of years with nothing but a bunch of unused knowledge.

After that, I found myself back in the space when my friend Matt began creating his Celestial Tokens. I got to see all sorts of sneak peeks before he eventually minted them on OpenSea along with his Clever Crows. To this day, I still cherish my first ever NFT purchase, Crato Omai. Watching all the amazing art Matt was creating, I began suffering from FOMO and eventually made a few of my own projects for kicks. One of these included a generative project called Ethereal Affirmations, a derivative of my Curious Markings project – a project I have still not found the time to mint the remaining 45 generatives I made back when I toyed with the launch.

Eventually, Matt found himself needing a trusted software developer, and I found myself longing to be of service to someone like him. So, here I am, beginning my writings about hundreds of hours of collective research, thinking, and experimenting.

Cryptography and A No-Trust Society

Today, I learned about Zero-Knowledge Proof. This is part of my work diving deep into my due diligence with data protection with Enderbook. I find the topic of data rights, data protection, cryptography, and privacy extremely intriguing as I get deeper and deeper down this rabbit hole. After some initial contemplation of this idea of Zero-Trust, I began to wonder if these mathematical equations are simply trying too hard to make privacy work.

Of course, as a clickbait professional, cynic, and contrarian, I began to think about throwing the baby out with the bathwater. That is to say, what if we removed privacy from our society entirely? Below is playing with that idea. I am by no means a proponent of the idea (despite how vehement I appear to be in the writings), but I am fascinated by the prospect. In this writing, perhaps I am attempting to convince myself.

Privacy is mutually assured distrust

Scenario: I am private about my affairs because you ignore the context, nuance, and diversity of needs between humans.

However, I am only private because you are private. Because you are private, I have no way of proving that your life possesses context, nuance, and diversity of needs.

As a result, I am left to believe that my existence is simplified into me being a morally and ethically dubious person, and in your perfection, are guiding me to purity as you cast judgment upon me.

But there is no purity in being someone else. Therefore, I need privacy to truly be myself.

The Burden of Proof

In legal systems, the burden of proof lies on the accuser. In this case, I am accusing you of being just as ‘impure’ as I am. I must prove that you are the same as me – someone who lives a life that requires a large degree of taking into account context, nuance, and the diversity of needs between humans.

However, because privacy is a legally mandated right, I am unable to prove this. This is mutually assured distrust. I will never trust you because you will never trust me. Romantic relationships, in theory, have a foundation of breaking down that mutually assured distrust.

I am not a religious person, but my understanding of the teachings of Jesus Christ, the ancient figure that is the most known figure in our society, has a foundation of loving your fellow (wo)man.

To paraphrase a supposed quote from Mr. Christ, “If love is fire, I seek to set the world ablaze. Oh, how I wish I had some kindling.”

Setting the world ablaze

It is my opinion that the kindling that Christ so desired is only acquired through the destruction of privacy. In romantic relationships leading to marriage, it is most often preceded by a period of courting and dating in order to carry out building trust. This trust is required for most people in order to break down their walls of privacy. With this privacy gone, they are now free to fully share their human experience with their partner.

What is so impossible about the world as it is today (and seemingly always has been) is that it is physically impossible for 100% of the human population to be completely devoid of privacy. In a best-case scenario, we are private through obscurity.

Mutually assured distrust is, of course, an analogy to mutually assured destruction. The driving force between world powers that prevented them from ever going to war with each other. It prevented the annihilation of humanity.

Mutually assured distrust is a precarious thought to me. Does it prevent humanity from the annihilation of our social structures as they exist today? If so, is that a bad thing? Something we all intuitively know is that humanity needs to awaken to love each other. Not just our romantic partners. Not just our family. But each other. All of us.

Why does privacy need to be destroyed?

How do we destroy our personal privacy, expand trust with others to the completeness, and begin pacing the road to loving each other?

Privacy is a fundamental right because it levels the playing field between those with power and those without power. A person in poverty can do as he pleases behind closed doors as much as a rich and powerful person. However, the scalability of suffering that can be caused by the lack of accountability behind closed doors is exponential when, behind those closed doors, are the rich and powerful.

Personal privacy is not protecting us from the rich and powerful (governments and corporations). It is a tool. A wolf prowling in our home. They say the wolf is a privilege because it protects our home from intruders. But, what happens when these wolves are trained to serve their true masters that are not you? What happens when these masters use a dead language to command the wolf to turn against you?

We already know what happens. We continue to shame ourselves as the rich and powerful perpetuate the use of privacy with impunity. Privacy is a crime against humanity. It stifles open discourse around uncomfortable subjects. The uncomfortable subjects continue to perpetuate suffering, and we are unable to grow out and away from them.

It is time for exponential social innovation

What if I was schizophrenic 100 years ago? Without sufficient healthy discourse, I would be cast out from my village because my dependence on alcohol would be mistaken for laziness and indulgence, rather than self-medication from a lack of treatment to a serious medical condition.

We live with the privilege of exponential technological advancement through the Turing machine. Yet, we all know, we are essentially cavemen brains with keys to the nukes and supercomputers. Now more than ever, it is critical for us to have exponential social advancement. It is my belief that this exponential advancement is not possible without annihilating the idea of privacy is a good thing. It is not. Privacy is not a good thing.

A small update

When I first wrote this post, everything above was quite novel to me. At this point, I think it’s extremist thinking. Extremism always leads to opportunists enchanting and subsequently oppressing the masses. In a perfect world, we should not have to be private about anything. We should have open and honest conversations. But, we are idiots. Well, maybe only I’m an idiot. Maybe I couldn’t possibly fathom that everyone isn’t as dumb as me. It’s hard enough to tell myself that I’m an insufferable hipster that doesn’t know what he’s talking about whenever I start ranting about light roast vs. dark roast coffee.

Which, you know, fair.

So, of course, in true hipster fashion, I was a good little patriarchal alt-right sigma male BEFORE it was cool.

I was attracted by the contrarian views against the largely left-wing community I grew up in. It was amusing watching the pundits and personalities ‘own the libs’ in the countless instances of hypocrisy, straw man arguments, and other logical fallacies the alt-right actively employed to, ironically, justify their views as well.

But as I became more versed in conservative and libertarian views, I began to see the flaws in my own newfound views as well. Particularly as it relates to personal responsibility.

Very often when I bring up the topic of gambling ruining lives, the usual argument is that it’s up to YOUR personal responsibility to not gamble your life savings away.

As I began growing my business as a digital agency, I also began getting the occasional business opportunity that would have been extremely lucrative for me and my business.

The problem with these opportunities, however, was that all of these people wanting to build an app were exhibiting symptoms of mania. Growing up with a mother that is diagnosed with bipolar disorder, I was already experienced in being able to identify the key symptoms, especially with having a disorder myself that is also in the psychosis family of symptoms.

Mental illness aside, however, the app ideas were unoriginal, extremely derivative, and the people willing to fork over their life savings to my bank account almost had either no experience in business, software development, user experience, marketing, sales, advertising, or any other critically needed skill to get a return on investment on what I would build for them. By the time the app was finished (ps, apps are NEVER finished), they’d be well past bankruptcy before they could even get a chance to hire someone to sell or market their app.

Long story short, I gave them every single detail I could to let them know how big of a mistake it would be to hire me based on what they are able to spend on the project.

Not only that, but if they insisted on moving forward, I refused to work with them. If they want to go with someone else, that’s up to them. However, if I take their money and build their app, I am essentially getting hundreds of thousands of dollars for building something that is of no value to me, my customer, or anyone else in the world. Literally, the only value is six figures in my bank account and a giant lie I am telling to this person that makes them feel good about themselves for a few months until the crushing reality of their choice collapses onto them.

Does that sound familiar? Of course, when someone gambles their life savings, that is a personal choice they are making. They are choosing to ruin the lives of themselves and their family.

However, when you participate in that process, knowingly or not, them making a personal choice doesn’t mean you’re not also complicit.

If your friend murders a pedestrian while driving intoxicated, that personal choice will land them in prison. However, if you’re in the vehicle with them and help them bury the body, you are an accomplice and will be sent to jail as well.

When you aid someone in the process of ruining their life, you are an accomplice.

At the end of the day, the term “buyer beware” is essentially a cop-out that people carelessly toss around in order to absolve shitty behaviour because their livelihoods – often lavish to some degree – depend on it.

Through all that learning, I eventually came to the conclusion that both sides are flawed in their own ways. And as I got deeper into newsfeed binging and conspiracy theory evangelizing, I found one objective truth to it all: the left AND the right in America have both gone insane. Literally insane.

I should know, I’ve been diagnosed with schizophrenia since I was 17. If you REALLY want to make the world a better place, start with yourself and detach from this mass hysteria. Eat better. Exercise more. Quit news media. Unfollow everyone. EVERYONE. Repopulate your feeds with those you want to follow carefully, and cut out any of the ones that excite or alarm you unnecessarily. But most of all, SLOW the FUCK DOWN.

Now, there are some people that spin it as their questionable behavior being a ‘realist’ or pragmatic, but again, it’s simply an excuse for not challenging yourself with seeking out success in a more sane and ethical way. You are sacrificing your humanity to appease your fears. Look up the definition of cowardice. You might see some similarities with where I’m going by saying that.

One of the most sparsely found resources on the internet I can find is how to be successful as a creative. If you are the type of person that has endless ideas, you may know exactly what I am talking about. The type of person that would need immortality to see all of your ideas to fruition. The moment you have finished creating one of your ideas, you already have at least three more. You probably have also started one of those three ideas before finishing the first. But, you need to make money, and working at a coffee shop for even just a couple of hours to pay the bills is like choosing to let someone waterboard you for money. Poverty is usually a better option. Hence the starving artist stereotype.

A quick disclaimer before we dive in: My spellchecker keeps yelling at me for my use of the word creative. For some, it may make more sense to replace the word creative with artist. However, many artists like me use unconventional mediums like software/code which often seems like a contradiction to people of conventional cultural bias about words like coder and artist. This is why I say ‘creative’ rather than artist.

A quick rant about society accepting, even celebrating artists living in poverty

How fascinating it is that a stereotype such as the ‘starving artist’ exists. Yet we as a society cannot acknowledge that a creative like this has a form of disability. I should acknowledge that I sometimes place the limitations from my ‘actual’ disability on other aspects of who I am. However, I will put a big !OPINION ALERT! disclaimer to my disability to artist equivocation. Either way, my schizophrenia diagnosis makes my outcomes as a creative slightly less dire. Disabled people in progressive countries enjoy certain entitlements that the ‘disabled’ label grants them. Undeniably, living with schizophrenia is certainly not a desirable way to live. Even so, I have a great degree of compassion for creatives that do not have a physical or mental disability. Without the ‘disabled’ label placed upon them, society is not nearly as lenient with their true expression of who they are.

A creative’s profession is at odds with their opportunity for a positive financial outcome. Keep in mind, this is not a profession they choose. It is a profession deeply engrained in their physical being. A feeling as profound as gender identity, sexual orientation, or the desire to bear children. It is a part of who they are. Much like homosexual and transgender people, that way of being will make them an outcast to society. Certainly, the plight of all these groups looks very different from each other. The degrees of suffering vary wildly between them, as well as the individual. My point being, the common thread between these circumstances. Large parts of our society deny them a dignified living simply because of who they were born to be.

The difficult choice between conventional comfort and true self expression

More recently, I have become more comfortable with being a straight white man that has adopted masculine traits. Specifically, I have become more comfortable with the ‘white guilt’ shame that many progressives often face with this admission. Being such a painfully conventional eurocentric person can result in the delusion that such an admission translates to being racist. (Side note and spoiler alert: saying I’m not racist is the strongest expression of unknowing racism among progressives). This has led to more comfort around conversations like the one I had with my friend, a gay man. One of our conversations observed that many gay men express feminine traits more often than straight men do.

Being comfortable with my masculinity led me to own my various expressions of femininity. My friend and I made an anecdotal conclusion about why gay men have this same comfort. Our theory is that expressing homosexuality can be so dangerous, that a gay man expressing their natural femininity is inconsequential, comparatively. Much like my sharing a schizophrenia diagnosis makes the small ways in which I express femininity largely inconsequential. If someone has come out as gay – a part of their true selves – it leads to them being able to express their full true selves. Who cares if your parachute doesn’t deploy while skydiving if you have stage four lung cancer?

Most people don’t have a choice, just a variable duration leading to acceptance

When who you truly are has a profound negative impact on your safety and security outcomes like a transgender woman, or on your financial security opportunities like a creative, what do you do? Ultimately, the choice lies between denying who you truly are, or exposing yourself to tremendous risk and adversity. For some, denying showing who they truly are is beyond excruciating.

Fortunately for the creative, the best works of art can come from constraints. Regardless, this is why when a creative takes the risk of making their need to create their sole source of income, it’s important to know what you are getting yourself into. This is ultimately the purpose of this post. To share my experience and hopefully provide what fleeting guidance I can share.

Are you serving a niche, or are you creating one? Either way, the creative is at risk.

I have done a lot of foolish things in my career as an entrepreneur. One that really stands out to me is building a brand without really knowing what that means. Not only that but building that brand as an original, stand-alone brand. One that can’t use the glory or star power of another product or service. One thing a well-known and respected marker, Louis Grenier, says in his newsletter emails is to not create a niche. Serve a niche, sure, but do not manufacture one.

Of course, when I started my art project called Curious Markings, I was unfamiliar with Louis’ works. Even retrospectively, it was a forgivable mistake. Curious Markings is art, and art is almost entirely all about creating niches. Art is an ancient form of innovation. Creating a niche is a primitive way of identifying and serving a niche. Louis suggests not creating a niche because most of the time it is a one-way ticket to failure.

Success is not always compatible with the act of innovation

In the sense of aversion to creating niches, Louis is empowering his brand and reputation as a marketing guru by driving his audience toward success. They will become more successful than other people consuming other marketing guru content because the foundation of his advice drives his audience away from larger risks. The downside of this way of doing things is that he is unknowingly stifling creativity. I do not fault him for this. In his own way, he has innovated a way to communicate marketing much more successfully than many other marketing gurus. Most people learn marketing because they want to make money. They want to create or work for a successful business and to create success for themselves.

However, the unfortunate reality of someone like me is that I am not intending to be a marketer by trade. I am not even intending to be an entrepreneur by trade. I am creative. A true creative. From how I have come to understand what I know a true creative to be, it is not a career. It is a visceral need to understand the truth, beauty, suffering, and ugliness of the world through the act of creating something. I am an innovator through the act of creation.

Being a creative isn’t a choice, it is a biological need.

The reason I have chosen to do marketing of any kind is that my visceral need to create is so all-encompassing that I cannot reasonably balance my act of creating with my other needs. Needs such as earning income, exercising, or sometimes even feeding myself. I am marketing my innovations to sustain my needs. My innovations are largely creating niches, not serving them. If I am lucky, they will do both.

So, what happens when my innovation is only creating a niche, not serving a niche? Well, that is exactly the experience I had when creating my Curious Markings project and attempting to market it. It was a massively uphill battle. I was doing social media, paid advertisements, getting an article in a magazine, working 40+ hours a week on various aspects of the project. Over a span of two years, my primary goal was to get people to sign up for my website/app.

Accepting the failure of a business while honoring the success of a piece of art

I ultimately ran out of energy with the project. Any additional efforts always ended up being contrived. The project failed. It took me a long time to accept that. But, eventually, I did. What helped me get there was recognizing that the project itself was not flawed. People loved my works. It was simply something that needed an established brand for a sustainable business model, and that building a brand is not my chosen career. Creating is my career.

So, I put the project in an indefinite suspension with approximately 300 sign-ups. To say that I was ‘once burned, twice shy,’ with putting that much fervor into a project ever again is an understatement. A couple of years and several volumes of journaling and mental gymnastics later, I finally had the courage to do a project again. One with an extremely limited scope, and a clear beginning and end to my goals. This project eventually became to be known as Enderbook, the social app for Minecrafters.

Why many artists find solace in fan art

The entirety of my marketing efforts with Enderbook was a couple of posts on a couple of subreddits, plus a few links through messages sent in a few Discord communities. Within months of largely non-existent marketing efforts, Enderbook had just as many sign-ups as the mentally back-breaking efforts of two entire years marketing Curious Markings.

Was Enderbook more successful because it was serving a niche, rather than creating one? Maybe. To this day, I’m not entirely certain there is an existing niche for a social platform specifically catered to Minecraft players. Time will tell on that one. I do know, however, that leveraging the brand of a globally known sensation makes things easy. Minecraft is such a sensation. Because my creation was a Minecraft service, the task of getting 300 sign-ups felt effortless. It virtually was effortless.

I often found myself marketing Curious Markings not because I was trying to grow it as a business, but because I wanted to share my creation. I would say maybe 5% of my sign-ups were from sharing that personal excitement around Curious Markings. Sharing my excitement about Enderbook yielded 100% of sign-ups in a fraction of the time with zero dollars spent on advertising.

Are you truly a creative? Maybe you’re an innovator or businessperson

At the end of the day, your marketing strategy as an entrepreneur needs to be very clear on who you are as a person. Are you an innovator, a creative, or a businessperson? In my experience, being a creative can often be in direct contradiction to being a businessperson. While I am extremely proficient in both fields, my lessons over the past years have led to being able to discern which of my creations I should choose to be financially dependent on.

If you are a creative trying to sustain your visceral need to create, it is important to ensure financial outcomes. If your creation has a niche of unknown size, you are at risk of being a creator of that niche. The only reason I was able to survive Curious Markings was that I was also working parallel to my other business, Objektiv Digital, a more conventional business creating websites for small businesses. In my case, I got lucky. If you are a creative, starting a profitable, parallel business (or creatively inclined employment) should be your business strategy from the get-go.

Business models: Research & Development vs. Manufacturing

I originally had the concept of this post as being about how enormously easier it is to create a piece of art or technology that leverages the power of another brand. I also wanted to write about how difficult it is to create a brand from scratch, and how crushingly depressing it can be when a brand fails – even when your creation is well received by anyone that discovers it. Ultimately, if you are a true creative, focusing on a single product or service as a business model for your art is doomed for failure. Why? Because your job is to create many things. Many things that may be vastly different from one creation to the next.

If your career is creating these vastly different things, then taking one of them and turning it into a single product or service, you end up inadvertently prematurely ending your career. You find yourself locked into indentured servitude to your single idea that you had already created and moved on from. Imagine Picasso if he created a business from his Blue period and centered his entire career around manufacturing these works and growing his brand as ‘Blue’ artist.

A surreal alternate universe is created when creatives deny themselves

Through manufacturing, Picasso would have destroyed any possibility of exploring cubism, surrealism, or any other phases that made him the wonder that he is. By pigeon-holing his creativity into a conventional, largely capitalist business model, he ceases to be an innovator. Silicon Valley taught us that innovation and capitalism can play nicely together. We have clear evidence of that with Steve Jobs, the visionary CEO of Apple. What we often forget, however, is that without Tim Cook as Steve’s COO, the undeniable success of Apple may have come into question.

Then, you get a creative like me that has yet to find a co-founder, a collective, or enough capacity to collaborate with others in general. People like me have to be careful about how we make a living from our creations because there is only so much time in a day. I have said this before, but the visceral need to create is often at odds with other, more basic needs like feeding and shelter. We have to be extremely pragmatic with our time.

My point in all of this is that if you create a business with your creation, you need to do so in a way that does not hinder your capacity or availability to keep creating. When I graduated college, my visceral need to create was initially satisfied by making websites for small businesses. Much like Picasso has moved on from his Blue phase, I have moved on from creating websites to fulfill my creative needs. However, I continue to do it for now because it keeps me relatively stable with my finances. At least, more so than if I were continually trying to make Curious Markings a viable business model.

Conclusion

The lesson I learned in this entire process is that building a brand as a creative like me ultimately means that my brand is me. Sure, I created the branding for Curious Markings, Enderbook, Grindset Factory, etc. However, my overall brand strategy as a business, as a creative, must be centered around me. I have fought the idea for so long because of how narcissistic it seems to me. But, again, creatives like me need to be pragmatic with our approach, and especially with our time. The best way to utilize my time is to build the IRM brand.

It is as simple as that. I can spend 100 hours on the IRM brand. Or I can spend 100 hours on each of the brands of all of my creations. Throughout the duration of my career, that can be up to thousands of hours depriving me of my visceral need to create. That is unacceptable. It will starve you creatively, perhaps financially, and even literally as well. I wish I could say that being who you truly are will allow everything to fall in place as all the motivational gurus seem to profess. But, we both know that many artists suffer their entire lives and are only revered decades or even centuries after their death.

Based on my experience, not embracing your creativity will ultimately lead to more suffering. So set some of that creativity aside for surviving the reality of your existence.

I’d like to open this article with the acknowledgement that I am not an expert in economics or criminal law. However, I am an expert in managing time (aka attention) via my business Objektiv Digital and an expert in managing my mental health due to my schizophrenia. You can find evidence of that effective mental health management in my writings on MSN, Yahoo, my blog, and elsewhere.

Nearly all publishers are guilty of this assault and robbery

First, let’s look at the title of the blog article: “The Attention Economy: Robbery and Assault.” I start with a novelty. Something that is fairly new in our vernacular, the “attention economy.” Next, it includes an exciting claim, you’re getting assaulted and robbed. I am by no means an expert in clickbait, but I’ve gotta say, I think I did a good job with this one. However, this title is part of what’s hurting you. I am attacking your psyche to get your attention. The title claiming that you’re getting assaulted and robbed — which you are — in order to get and keep your attention.

I am assaulting you with these words because I’m hoping it will be the last time that it happens. Words like this excite you. They should excite you. You’re being told you’re in danger. We are hardwired to keep ourselves away from danger. If we see something that tells us we’re in danger, we pay close attention and stop being in the present moment. Instead, we look for information that is going to cause immediate harm.

You’re being assaulted in the attention economy

The problem with the title of this article is that it is being inserted amongst dozens or even hundreds of article/video titles that you’re going to see today as you read the news, scroll social media, watch TV, etc. You are being put in a persistent state of alertness, and it is literally killing you. It is making you anxious, depressed, neglect yourself, and an endless number of other things that you probably aren’t noticing.

You don’t even know it’s happening

One of the biggest problems with mental health is that other people usually can’t see that you’re sick. An even bigger problem is that you often don’t know that you’re sick. This is because these mental health issues creep up on you slowly. So slow, in fact, that you thought they were always there. Being anxious and depressed is normal for you, and you only know you have it because you’re able to observe its most extreme moments. What you probably didn’t know is that you’ve been anxious and depressed for years, you just didn’t know you were until it reached the extremes.

I was able to observe this in myself with my schizophrenia. I was diagnosed when I was 17. About four years later, I realized I was hearing voices. Yet, something I realized was that I had been hearing voices as early as the age of 13. Hearing voices was such a normal part of my life, that I didn’t even realize that it wasn’t part of a normal human experience. I was deep in the throes of schizophrenia and I didn’t even know it.

We already know that news and social media damage our mental health, right? Yet, we still go to the news every day. We still scroll our social feeds. Sure, we take a social media break every once in a while. Maybe we’ll uninstall an app or two. But it never really goes away. We still need to be informed about the happenings of the world. We still need to keep in touch with our friends and family.

Reduce consumption

What is the solution, then? That’s where it gets tricky. I don’t have a turn-key solution, because much like any psychotropic medication, there is no one-size-fits-all approach for everyone. My methods might work for me, but could be disastrous for others. The only thing that works across the board is much like losing weight effectively — cutting down consumption. Less calories, less weight gain. Less news and social media, less mental health degrade.

Long story short, cut your news and social media diet by half or more. Keep cutting it in half until you start feeling better. Then stick to the volume that you started feeling better. I am by no means saying this will cure whatever ails you, but it will at least improve your condition. Advil doesn’t cure the cause of headaches, but it will make you feel better. Cutting social media may not cure depression, but it will sure as hell make your outcomes for managing it infinitely better.

You’re being robbed in the attention economy

If you’re using a service and you’re not paying for it, you are the product. The service makes money by serving ads to you. In this structure, you are giving the service a portion of your time and in exchange for that time, you receive the privilege of using that service and getting a customized experience. Many people are okay with this. Many are not, especially when privacy issues are taken into consideration.

By browsing the internet and using these services, you are passively compromising your privacy and giving one of the most valuable commodities – your attention – away for free. Most people don’t even realize that their attention is a commodity. They don’t realize that their attention has a dollar value attached to it. If you knew you could earn money from peoples’ attention, would you give yours away so freely to the places that you give it to?

This whole situation reminds me of when I was a teenager play a collectible card game called Magic the Gathering. When I first started out, my friends helped me learn the game and traded cards with me so that I can create a competitive deck. What I didn’t know, however, is that in the trades I was making with them, they convinced me to trade them one of my most valuable cards that I had the luck of opening in one of the packages I bought.

I unknowingly, yet willingly, received pennies on the dollar in a trade. I was taken advantage of. Some might say I was scammed. Some might say I should have known better. Buyer beware, as they say. To that I say, bullshit. ‘Buyer beware’ is the go to phrase for greedy people who lack sufficient ethical and moral thinking that our contemporary society should demand.

‘Buyer beware’ is a cop-out for unethical & immoral behavior

When services convince someone to give up something of great monetary value knowing that they are oblivious of that value, they are what I like to call ‘shitty people.’ In other words, they are scammers, swindlers, two-bit, no-good, ne’er do wells. They are exploiting ignorance for financial gain.

And you, the news and social media consumer, have been getting robbed of your attention – at the cost of your mental health – so that Unilever can sell more bars of soap. Granted, we all need to wash ourselves with soap. I have no personal qualms with advertising. As a business owner, I have personally benefitted from advertising. I will shamefully admit, however, that benefit has been, at times, at the cost of peoples’ attention that they are unknowingly giving and have no way of knowing is at a fair price or not.

Are you spending your time effectively?

So, tell me, when you see 100 ads in a day, are you being sufficiently compensated for that time? 100 ads for about 3 seconds each is 300 seconds (and an extremely conservative estimate). 5 minutes per day. Over a month, that’s two and a half hours. I wonder what you could have done in that 2.5 hours?

You could have gone for 5 half-hour runs. Lifted weights a couple of times. Earned 2.5 hours of wages. Had more family time. Called that friend that you’ve been meaning to call but haven’t because you’re so busy. Learned to draw, play an instrument, or learn a new language. But no, you were looking at ads instead.

Again, you are being assaulted with exciting words that damage your mental health, and robbed of your time because there is no way of setting the price for your attention. Cut your media consumption by half. And keep cutting it in half until you are feeling better.

Solutions are coming

Thankfully, there are many forward-thinking creatives, engineers, and thinkers that are coming up with solutions to these problems. A way to have our cake as advertisers and creatives, and eat it, too. A perfect example of this is the Brave web browser.

Brave blocks all intrusive and invasive ads while serving ads in a non-intrusive way. You can opt out of these ads if you choose to. However, you will earn Basic Attention Tokens if you decide to opt-in. Basic Attention Token (BAT) is a cryptocurrency that can be used to tip creators (such as YouTubers, Twitter users, webmasters, and more). The Brave company itself only accepts BAT as payment for serving ads. This in itself makes the intrinsic value crystal clear and easy to communicate.

Your attention is valued and respected

Using Brave, you are given monetary compensation for your attention. This should make perfect sense. The privilege of using an app is simply not enough of a justifiable compensation for the enormous amounts of time our eyes and ears are exposed to ads. Additionally, content creators should be sufficiently compensated for their work. Getting a little bit of exposure and maybe a follower or two is a pittance compared to what these platforms profit from by hosting your content.

I am by no means a crypto expert. Hell, I barely pass as a novice. When it comes to crypto talk, it all seems like a bunch of jibberish fueled by hype and greed to me. When I did my research on BAT, however, it was the first time I could clearly understand its purpose, value, and potential for being a substantially viable form of currency. It may never become wildly valuable like Bitcoin. But, because its value is easy to communicate, I see it as an extremely attractive option for earning and investing in.