It would be a shame if you stopped. You have great ideas. But I’ll criticize you a bit below. I hope it’s ok.
The problem of minor dissent is that it’s creator is intelligent and authentic, but evidently hates marketing:) It’s like being red-pilled on religion being not real and then losing all the good things it brings (and, fundamentally, losing the potential of recognizing that it might even be more real than one thinks).
This blog is a product. We consume products because they have utility to us. When I want outrage, I go to twitter, when I feel soul-crushing guilt for wasting half a day on Twitter outrage and need to numb it down - I’ll go watch The Office on repeat, or something.
Due to your idea that you don’t want to be a “nichefag”, Minor Dissent becomes a product of unknown utility. It is about everything, which is cool in theory, but in practice you can’t sustain it.
The way you write posts requires a lot of time. Since you’re trying to nurture many audiences at the same time (like, five or so?), you just don’t have enough time and energy to do right by any single one of them. For instance, I have a pretty rare alignment of interests with yours. I’m interested in a lot of your topics. But even I have my preferences among these topics and therefore get a bit discouraged waiting for the last part of MBTI series and then getting a message - “hey, I’ve been working hard, not getting what I want, so I might as well stop”. As one of America’s early presidents used to say: “C’mon, man!”
The result of trying to serve so many audiences at once is that no one knows what to expect from the blog at any particular time. It’s hard to create a habit of consuming it if it constantly changes (and blogs are all about habit formation; if you want to create something not habit forming - write a book).
Let’s say I’m cooking dinner and I need bay leaves. I remember that I have bay leaves in a magic jar. I pick their jar from the shelf but now it says cumin. I do like cumin. Cumin is good. But I’m making Italian minestrone and it calls for bay leaves, not cumin. I decide to wait till it’s bay leaves again. The contents of the jar change and now it’s rosemary. Or nutmeg. Dill. Turmeric. Himalayan salt. Since I currently don’t need cayenne pepper, I don’t open the magic jar. The magic jar threatens to quit.
At this point I marvel at the authenticity of this unique magic jar of spices and go buy a spice rack so I can have what I need when I need it.
The gayest thing is that you want the audience to care about you before you cared enough for what we, your audience, need and for why we are reading you. We spend our time and mental energy reading your verbose poasts, and you claim that giving us what we came for - is inauthentic and you’d rather shut down.
Well, I subscribed for a year. You’ll have to refund me if you quit.
I enjoy everything you write but I probably wouldn't pay for it because it's just not in my budget to subscribe to anything. You may want to just reduce the energy you spend editing and what not. You could also speak these ideas into a podcast.
I recognized a lot of what you said about agonizing over how the world works and I'm curious if you think it was worth it. I often think it would have been preferable to just focus on fitness and getting laid as a young man. As an older man, my knowledge about the world doesn't bring me any meaning, only my children give me that.
Whether you formulate your thoughts well, or spunk them on a page, being able to read them is valuable to me.
As in, your descriptions of reality upgrade my own.
Partly because I'm too lazy to actually think.
Partly because I prioritise other work.
Partly because you're a better thinker.
If refining your thoughts is becoming too big a burden, finding a way to air your thoughts in as time-minimised a way as possible would still has positive externalities.
love your blog. dont mind the "poor writing", just here for the ideas.
It would be a shame if you stopped. You have great ideas. But I’ll criticize you a bit below. I hope it’s ok.
The problem of minor dissent is that it’s creator is intelligent and authentic, but evidently hates marketing:) It’s like being red-pilled on religion being not real and then losing all the good things it brings (and, fundamentally, losing the potential of recognizing that it might even be more real than one thinks).
This blog is a product. We consume products because they have utility to us. When I want outrage, I go to twitter, when I feel soul-crushing guilt for wasting half a day on Twitter outrage and need to numb it down - I’ll go watch The Office on repeat, or something.
Due to your idea that you don’t want to be a “nichefag”, Minor Dissent becomes a product of unknown utility. It is about everything, which is cool in theory, but in practice you can’t sustain it.
The way you write posts requires a lot of time. Since you’re trying to nurture many audiences at the same time (like, five or so?), you just don’t have enough time and energy to do right by any single one of them. For instance, I have a pretty rare alignment of interests with yours. I’m interested in a lot of your topics. But even I have my preferences among these topics and therefore get a bit discouraged waiting for the last part of MBTI series and then getting a message - “hey, I’ve been working hard, not getting what I want, so I might as well stop”. As one of America’s early presidents used to say: “C’mon, man!”
The result of trying to serve so many audiences at once is that no one knows what to expect from the blog at any particular time. It’s hard to create a habit of consuming it if it constantly changes (and blogs are all about habit formation; if you want to create something not habit forming - write a book).
Let’s say I’m cooking dinner and I need bay leaves. I remember that I have bay leaves in a magic jar. I pick their jar from the shelf but now it says cumin. I do like cumin. Cumin is good. But I’m making Italian minestrone and it calls for bay leaves, not cumin. I decide to wait till it’s bay leaves again. The contents of the jar change and now it’s rosemary. Or nutmeg. Dill. Turmeric. Himalayan salt. Since I currently don’t need cayenne pepper, I don’t open the magic jar. The magic jar threatens to quit.
At this point I marvel at the authenticity of this unique magic jar of spices and go buy a spice rack so I can have what I need when I need it.
The gayest thing is that you want the audience to care about you before you cared enough for what we, your audience, need and for why we are reading you. We spend our time and mental energy reading your verbose poasts, and you claim that giving us what we came for - is inauthentic and you’d rather shut down.
Well, I subscribed for a year. You’ll have to refund me if you quit.
I enjoy everything you write but I probably wouldn't pay for it because it's just not in my budget to subscribe to anything. You may want to just reduce the energy you spend editing and what not. You could also speak these ideas into a podcast.
I recognized a lot of what you said about agonizing over how the world works and I'm curious if you think it was worth it. I often think it would have been preferable to just focus on fitness and getting laid as a young man. As an older man, my knowledge about the world doesn't bring me any meaning, only my children give me that.
Thanks for writing, I have enjoyed it.
I read most of what you write.
Whether you formulate your thoughts well, or spunk them on a page, being able to read them is valuable to me.
As in, your descriptions of reality upgrade my own.
Partly because I'm too lazy to actually think.
Partly because I prioritise other work.
Partly because you're a better thinker.
If refining your thoughts is becoming too big a burden, finding a way to air your thoughts in as time-minimised a way as possible would still has positive externalities.