THE GOBLIN NEWSLETTER 50

This is the fiftieth Goblin Newsletter! It has been good to write this much, I haven’t written like this for a long time, decades. I used to write like this, more personally, more off the cuff, more frequently, all the time, when I was young. I’d write to process & express my existence, & now I do this again. It feels good, natural. So I recently decided to change up what I was being fed on various platforms via their various algorithms. I was just tired of being fed stuff that satisfied my most base interests. I’d rather be challenged & have my attention diverted to things that actually benefit me instead of just distracting me. To do this has required discipline. Not to just click on things I want to see in the moment, but things I want to be repeatedly shown. Part of what I’m doing with everything is trying to approach all things in life realistically instead of letting my idealism get in the way of actually improving things. That whole “don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good” still applies to so much of the way my brain works. Even though rationally I have known this & operated under this assumption for decades I still have a core that is very idealistic & petulant. It’s because of this core that I have better taste than most, because I feel these things strongly, but, I would like to achieve more. In my ideal world there is no Instagram… but here we are. I have never lived in my ideal world, probably never will. In saying this I realize that so much of desire for power when I was younger came exactly from not having to experience things I found distasteful, it sounds ridiculous to be said so plain, but it’s true. I find the more tolerant I have become of things I find distasteful, the less desire for power I have. It is far easier for me to just let things be. That said, I still like the things I like & I especially like expanding boundaries & growth, so I’m training these platforms like the dogs they are to serve me the things I really want, not the things that I want in the moment. These platforms prey on your simple selves without trying to actually help you to grow or challenge what seems like your regular self. Any leader is supposed to challenge the people to grow & develop & be bigger than they are. Instead these platforms have devolved people into wearing pajamas all the time & becoming totally spineless, emotion-driven, dopamine addicted, easily manipulated electro stimulation porridge people. Not me. Not you. Thanks for being here!