A moment of clarity
I forgot for a moment why I started writing my newsletter. I’ve re-remembered.
It took a post from Edward Nevraumont about no matter much you write and publish in newsletter publishing, it’s never gonna be enough and that creating content as an independent is somewhat of a fool’s errand. I didn’t start Tarnished Pennies to be creating original content for Substack — I did it as a place to curate other stuff I was flinging around the rest of the internet — so even if you missed something I wrote, you would have an index of sorts. That said, you may find some weeks, everything looks familiar. That’s ok, you can skim.
From LinkedIn
I’m a natural skeptic. If someone claims something is true, my first thought is almost always “how do you know?” The more fantastic the claim, the more I really need to know how you know.
This is quite different from the contrarian who assumes you’re wrong and wants you to prove it. I’m not Ben Shapiro sitting at a table on a college campus with a sign that says, “Something is true. Prove me wrong.”
That guy is an asshole.
I watched a 60 second TikTok yesterday of a guy filling a mold with resin. Dead boring, really, but his voiceover said something like, “Only 5% of you will watch this to end. At this point, 30% have scrolled away. Now, 50% have scrolled, etc...” I think his point was most people will give up before giving it their all.
But what if YOUR all was just feeding HIS all? At the end of the 60sec, I wasn’t any smarter. I didn’t really learn anything and HE got more from me than I got from him. He got 60sec of my life; I guess I got content for this LinkedIn post. Not a fair trade.
What if all this advice about never giving up on content creation is just a huge gaslighting exercise by LinkedIn to give LI free content? When are we allowed to give up because nothing will ever come of any of this?
Just today, Felicia Sullivan posted on LinkedOn about how content platforms are keeping us working hard to fill their insatiable appetites for content. My gut reaction is ... if it takes a pandemic to throw millions out of a job and the gig work still isn’t enough to sustain them, maybe the gig economy isn’t healthy ... maybe it’s just wickedly exploitative!
I don’t mean to discourage you from creating and posting content for the social channels. You may well beat the odds to become the next Billie Eilish or Justin Bieber. Just remember; the house always wins.