Black boxes and such

Hello Yorkshire Terriers,

How are you? Full disclaimer, not notifying you you're being charged this month or anything of the sort, just thought I'd check in.

It's currently spring-winter here in Bulgaria. We've all been waiting to emerge from December, and December never quite got the message to remember to fuck off. I'm currently staying at a friend's place looking after her dog, and frankly the joke is on her because she left her alcohol cabinet open and with a number of nice things in it. Gives a certain fun sheen to the rain. Still, there's a very easy way to identify Brits in Sofia when there's bad weather out, and that's all of them walking around with umbrellas at their side and nervously surveying the heavens. (All British people grow up with rain trauma.) I'd prefer not to think into if this weird weather is an anomaly or part of a larger climate trend.

So, for whatever reason, some of you have kindly signed up to my stuff on Patreon recently in rather unexpected numbers (thank you in buckets), and while I commend your lack of taste, I thought I'd use the opportunity to go on a rant about why some of us put stuff out on a regular schedule, and why some of us don't. I imagine it must be a bit opaque on the other side of the stage. Myself, I can see creators making stuff, I can see they've put enormous effort into whatever it is, but I have fuck all idea how much time it took, and how much of a team they have behind them. Sometimes I receive emails addressed to 'the exurb1a team' and while I'm very touched, I usually just look to my left hand where the coffee or beer is, and the right where the cat is patiently waiting for head-pats, and congratulate both on what a persistent workers co-op they've both have been.

What I can say for certain is that all of us in the video racket are battling the algorithm. (Who in history saw that creative pressure coming?) The YouTube algorithm (all social media algorithms, really) long ago became a black box to the the users, and even to the engineers who designed them. The game has now grown so complicated no one person can explain why certain videos or posts do well, and some don't. I mean, there probably isn't a human in the world who could build a pencil from scratch to end, but you know what I'm getting at. The art marketing game isn't just out of our hands, it's largely out of the hands of those who might like to have a hand in it. Very strange times. (Have you played with GPT4? The future has arrived so must faster than we were expecting, and it gives simply the best lasagna recipes.)

Most of us making stuff are often very scared is what I'm getting at, since this is our livelihoods, since this is where our passion goes; one never knows whether to spend 6 months trying to refine whatever that weird idea on the train was, or knock out some cheap jokes in a week. When I said I thought I might 'check in' above, what I probably should've written was 'to thank you for combating the fickleness of the algorithm.' The relief of knowing I can disappear for a few months and try and get something as right as it was in a daydream, and even if YouTube punishes me for that, I can still pay rent; words won't allow me to tell you how grateful I am to you for that. Just thank you ever, ever, ever so much. It's a support I never imagined, and a support I still can't comprehend, but thank you.

I can self-gossip a bit and tell you the spaceship comedy thing I've been working on for over a year now is almost finished, and I can't wait to share it with you when it's done. A new book seems to keep saying hi from strange daydream corners and I'll start work on that soon. Every project is a gamble taking sometimes months, and one never quite knows how it's going to work out. Sort of like roulette, but all your chips are your ego, and you bet on black and red simultaneously. Enormous love, enormous thanks, and enormous penguins for sticking around. And when I say enormous penguins I mean absurdly enormous, like 20 or 30 feet high, with lasers for eyes and fire for wings, proto-phoenixes laying waste to any city that might anger them, and feeling no compunction about their wanton destruction. Bad penguins, you know?

I'll make some recommendations as always. I recently read The Girl With All the Gifts, which for whatever reason I assumed was zombie horseshit – are there really that many new directions to go with zombie apocalypse stories? Yeah. Yeah it turns out there are. It's written with such grace and care even the villains' motives are understandable, and isn't that the mark of a good villain, really?

And in case I haven't ranted about it before, Disco Elysium blew my socks off completely a few months ago. I'd played it timidly years before, noticed it was clearly a mindblower, but actually finishing the thing...? Zero doubt in my mind when video games are finally inducted into the same art-space as literature and film that it will have its place on the altar beside them. If you haven't played it yet, I must say that you're doing yourself a disservice. It is probably some of the best literature the 21st century has come up with yet. Promise.

I'll throw a wildcard in here and recommend Dresden Dolls too. They were a huge part of my musical education when I was a teen, and listening to them again now twenty years later, they're still fucking great. I can't really hear whether they've aged because I suppose I've aged with them, but this is a great place to start if you'd like to. Also, a friend sent me this a few weeks ago. Ignore the title, I've listened to it at least 10 times since I first heard it, and I refuse to believe it applies to just men; young women seem as destined to get a kick out of it. Your mileage may vary, but I can certainly say as someone with a few grey hairs now, it struck a number of chords.

Again, was just checking in, hope you're doing well, and I promise stuff is in the works, but these days I'm more afraid of putting stuff out half-finished than I am of letting a deadline go by. If I could summarise the last 7 years of doing stuff online, really, it would be to say: compromising on daydreams is a little death that builds into an infinite one. I have finally learned not to do it, and I hope you'll come with me for the thing. What a massive privilege it is to say that, and what a strange thing it feels to admit. 

Ever so much love, and thank you enormously for sticking around; new stuff coming soon, promise,

Ex.