Factual Dispatch #61 - Intermezzo With the Abyss

This has been a placeholder in the “Drafts” folder for almost…two years now. To everyone reading this, after being laid off twice in 370 days, pivoting from W2 to Contract, and leaving NYC for good…

So…yeah…how’s it going? How was your…2022? Was it better than your 2023? They say if you gaze into the abyss long enough, the abyss gazes back. My abyss? Thousands of hours digesting manmade horrors beyond comprehension, converting the terror into memes & snark. The fintech startup life, combined with being a part-time Suffering Digestor, was mentally annihilating. This wasn’t helped by the fact that I joined the fintech startup sector at the worst time since the dot-com bubble. But, I kept on trying, as I knew the alternative (isolation & withdrawal) would have been much worse.

Over the past two and half years, the abyss didn't just gaze back, it caused the way I researched, consumed, and reprocessed information to mutate beyond anything I could anticipate. Flow for internet writing usually goes: topic selection, research, word vomit, editing, formatting, publishing, promotion. This is the process everyone uses, from the columnists you hate in the New York Times or WSJ to the writer pool at Barstool, the Daily Caller, or your favorite Loki fan site. Some use SEO to pick topics, some have sponsored content or brand priorities to cover, others use AI to remove human choice or effort from the chain, but that's pretty much the process.

To cover daily events, the creation process pivots entirely to data collection, constructing an information feed, and building a production schedule that is sustainable for the team. The “team” in this case? Le Moi. The shift from commentary to reporting is a vast gulf, one which I'm still exploring and only now starting to understand. My information consumption patterns changed completely. My filters prioritized "what the people needed to hear" or “would be entertained by,” not what I needed to learn, especially if it required immersion. My capacity for measured, comprehensive analysis dipped, while it became much easier to create "snackable" content. Daily consumption & production mutilated my ability to textually meditate on complex topics, such that I’ve only been able to produce 60 Dispatch posts since starting this thing before COVID. However the mutation did come with a few advantages. 

After producing news-adjacent content 4x a week for months, patterns emerged. When starting out, breaking news would happen, I’d parse the writing & biases, then start to dig. After digesting commentary from the same 24 sources, 7 days a week, you know exactly which way the wind will blow from that source weeks, or even years from now. Whether it’s cocktail liberalism from NYT/WaPo, restrained capitalism from WSJ, unrestrained capitalism from Bloomberg, varnished leftism from Jacobin/Slate, unvarnished leftism from The Nation, every publication plays its position. Which led to me being an expert witness in a criminal trial in Florida, explaining SEO and social media algorithms to a jury. But, I wasn’t made for this life.

You can only stand in front of the firehose for so long. Even on my best days, absorbing multiple feeds simultaneously to parse bias (Chromatic Doomscrolling), was depressing, and just not that fun. Pretending that you’re a troll or a newsroom stalwart is much more difficult when you don’t have the time or salary to do so. And it’s gotten much, much worse in the last 18 months.

Twitter went from amusingly awful to fascist & corrosive. Instagram has metastasized from the place to go for photos to a spectral, globally super-sized game of “Keeping up with the Joneses. TikTok is powerful, but easily one of the most disorienting media experiences humanity has ever created. Facebook resembles the hollowed-out worlds you see in “Dark Souls” games, a shadow of its former self with all of the ghosts and fiendish echoes you’d expect. Reddit, Bluesky (& other X clones), and Discord will never replace what was. With Gen Z getting its news almost primarily through TikTok, IG Reels, and YT Shorts, the situation is moving from untenable to hilariously impossible.

The reason I survived was Noama, the best thing to ever happen to me. After she convinced me to leave Gotham for the Bluffs of Weehawken (Editor’s Note: leaving NYC is the best decision we’ve made in years.), I was laid off, less than 90 days after we signed the lease. After taking almost six months to find a non-trash fulltime job, I built up the courage to propose, and she said yes!

Her brilliance, infectious smile, unshakeable values, incredible compassion, and dedication to making the world a better place has been utterly critical to my soul and mind. Also, she’s super hot :D. Without her, I’d probably be staggering around Shallow Queens like Steve Martin at the end of The Jerk.

So what now? I’d been deeply anxious about paywalling content, as the liberal media paywall has driven millions into the arms of Fox News, Zero Hedge, and Daily Crank Caller. But, this post is the proof that I can’t keep giving this away. And, enough of you have pledged to pay for FD if/when that happens, that it’s time to gird loins and make this happen. To be clear, news, and educating segments/newsletters I’m cooking up, will always be free. What might get paywalled is sections in them, like the music, poetry, art, and longer-form content that isn’t education.

There will be more than one tier of paid subscription, if I can manage to set up the levels properly. Also in the works is a scholarship fund that subscribers will be able to donate to, so students, adjuncts, and others of modest means can get the good stuff even if they can’t always afford it. My aim is to add features as paying subscribers accumulate, adding more newsletters, playlists, a Discord, or even MST3K-style commentary for debates and terrible movies, if that’s what you kids have a hankering for.

There are no rules anymore, this space won’t ever have to answer to advertisers, and if it isn’t viable, I can close up shop knowing we tried. So, what does a news & commentary service without ads, brand pandering, or neoliberal newsroom mandates look like? I don’t know but I’m excited to find out with you.

Looking forward,tn

P.S. Your 2023 link wrap is coming next week. We’re closing for the holidays to build out the site, pay stuff, and do the general clean & spackle renovation you’d expect from a service you give real money to.