Friday Night Life

Welcome back to the wasteland!

Summer is on so let's go back in time for this week's post. Let's travel back to rediscover that nebulous time between the week and the weekend that has been muddied over the decades: Friday Night. More than anything, I want to touch on what it was and why it mattered more than the nostalgia that remains around it.

First, watch the video above to get a handle on what exactly we're talking about. It's not an easily definable thing we're going to be talking about from here on in.

You might think that Friday night is still a big deal these days, but it isn't to the same extent it once was. This is for multiple reasons. "Friday Night" was a cultural institution when everyone had more or less the same work and school week, with the same promise that weekends would be for you and those around you and no one else. It was your time. This is what made Friday Night such a powerful force. Everyone was off at the same time, with the same options, and in the same communities, and that knowing shift is what drove a lot of what made it all so enchanting.

Work exists for leisure, not the other way around, which means that leisure has to be more meaningful than work. Therefore, once the weekend actually comes, it is anyone's guess as to what happens next. It's a whole other world divorced from the long week being left behind. The actual activities on the weekend itself don't matter as much is the reality that it's time for you and yours, and the world comes in distant second. But that's the weekend: not what lays between it and what was left behind.

Friday Night, however? That's where the magic is.

Friday is a lot of people's favorite day of the week because of more what it symbolizes than what might actually occur during it. A Friday symbolizes a coming break from work and a retreat into leisure. Nights are already seen as the leisure time (it is when most people sleep, after all), but when you add in the weekend ahead and (usually) the lack of no big plans ahead, it makes Friday Night a time of endless possibilities. You can do anything, and anything can happen.

It isn't so much what you do, but the knowledge that you can do it. This is your true reward for getting through the week, and it is what made the work truly worth getting through. Friday Night represents real freedom, the kind we tend to get less of these days regardless of your age or station in life. Everyone had the same shared experience, which is what made it all the better. you could also meet anyone, and you were all on the same equal ground and in the same mindset.

No one really says this anymore.

I try to be careful with these subjects on here, mostly because it is easy to fall into the nostalgia trap of thinking old things were better simply because they were old. It's what I and many others my age did when we were young, but I think at this point the conversation has moved beyond nostalgia arguments when industries are collapsing and the online space is rotting away at faster and faster speeds. We're trying to find that place we lost before we lose the chance to rediscover it for good. What people are looking for is that intangible space between the past and the present, the spot that we can't seem to find, and put something down there to begin building on.

A sort of new monoculture? Who can say, but it's something we know we lost and something we know we need to regain.

Nostalgia isn't really an argument anymore as much as it is now a Brand like everything else, and you already realize that, as does everyone else. You don't actually want the 1980s or the 1990s or even the 2000s back. You want that cohesiveness and sense of belonging and wider societal purpose they had in spades compared to now. You want to be able to go out and find things with other people as curious as you are: someone to connect with and something to find. The loneliness epidemic is not just for single males, after all. It effects everyone living in a world where fragmentation through consumption is the end goal. This world is the end state of striving for perfect individuality, after all. The perfect individual is alone.

But perfection isn't possible. Convenience doesn't necessarily make things better, either. Those were things taken for granted back then, and now we can't even entertain going back to it again. However, the Friday Night experience we all want and desire, is not possible in a world of easy convenience. It requires being able to go out and find people who think, act, and believe, at least a little like you do: a cohesive communal experience where anything can happen. That is a big part of the magic.

That requires risk, but it requires risk of a different sort: where putting yourself out there doesn't result in an internet video from someone who thinks so little about their neighbors that they will toss them to the sharks and be rewarded by those around them for doing so. It requires a world where you can talk about the same things with people you barely know and find yourself at least a little better off for it. You can't do that if your neighbor has nothing in common with you and has no desire to even try to connect. It's a two way street, and that isn't where we currently are now.

Perhaps this is why the past is currently looked at with more curious eyes beyond the nostalgia, and why Zoomers and younger are hungry for it despite having no memories of that era. We all know the way things are isn't sustainable and is not ideal, but we don't know how to retain what we lost without pretending the clock is a different time than it is.

The point is that making everything more convenient hasn't really made anything better. Yes, we still get good books, video games, and music, but we were already getting those before. What it hasn't done is made our quality of living better as a whole. Life itself hasn't benefited from these changes, which is how a nebulous feeling like Friday Night became a pale shadow of what it once was. Yes, you can go out somewhere, but Everyone won't be there which means Anything can't happen. The magic is no longer there, just as the majority no longer is.

It's gone, but the hunger for it remains.

And that's what we need to get back.

So the next time Friday Night rolls around, think twice about what it really means, and what makes it truly so special. Perhaps if we try to reclaim that feeling, we can come that little be closer to reclaiming that certain undefinable quality we can't seem to nail down. It can't hurt. In fact, it'll only bring us closer, in the end. What else can be better?

A new episode of Letters from the Wasteland is available on the Patreon! In this one I talk about the downfall of the video game industry!

Goodbye 2025!

Welcome once again to the Wasteland!

We finally made it to the end of 2025! It's been a long and bumpy ride with a lot of surprising twists and turns (especially if you were me), but now we can finally close this one off for good. It's the end of the year!

For this last post of 2025 I merely wanted to thank everyone who stuck with me through it all. It's been a strange one, and next year promises to be even stranger, so you will definitely have much to look forward to from me. However, it probably won't be as much on the blog.

You probably already noticed less posting this year, with a shift to the weekends, and those posts will still continue, but there will be less of them. I need to refocus my efforts on writing stories, especially after everything that has happened in my personal life. Of course I'm going to keep posting here, but it will just be much less of a focus in the near future. That said, I do thank you for every post you've read this year. I am still surprised that anyone reads these at all, since back when I first started writing posts a decade ago I didn't think anyone would be reading them, never mind a full ten years out. It's been a crazy experience.

In 2025, I put out a story in Cirsova Magazine, a new novel serial on the Patreon, and had tales in two different anthologies outside of that. All of them are some of my best work, so please check them out! It's been a weirdly productive year, though not in the way I am used to. Perhaps that's just a sign of the changing times.

That aside, there is still the Patreon where you will get the most bang for your $5. There you will get over 40 episodes of 2 ongoing podcasts, two serials (with a third in planning stages), exclusive posts and updates, and more to come. In fact, there is an end of year episode of the podcast up today about the future! Check it out here.

There are multiple projects in the works for 2026 still to be revealed. I have a story coming in Cirsova Magazine in 2026 (a new Galactic Enforcer tale!), a full-on book that will be released, and a large project that is not mine to reveal yet but is currently deep in the works. On top of that there was a huge shift in my personal life outside of writing that will definitely change how I operate going forward, though I will have to wait and see just how that will happen. Until then I will do my best to continue as I have been.

Regardless, I am not going anywhere.

2025 was also the 30th anniversary of the events in Y Signal, as I've mentioned before. In fact, right now we're living through the 30th anniversary of "Snow Out", the Christmas story in the book. I actually did an entire podcast episode both reading excerpts and talking about it here. But next year will also be the 30th anniversary of the conclusion of the book, which took place in summer of 1996. All that to say is that it will also symbolically be an important year as well. One of the projects I hope to be able to start on is the follow-up to that very book. No, not a sequel: Y Signal has a pretty definitive ending, but a follow-up to it. You can learn a little bit about the background of all of this on the podcast, if you desire.

These specific stories are meant to be both a reflection of a specific era currently being (perhaps deliberately) forgotten and a document of the people who lived there and what they were like and thought at the time. I've mentioned before, but part of the reason these tales came to fruition was due to how the mainstream and Hollywood have been attempting to dilute that period, if they ever address it at all, and are attempting to rewrite it for their own ends. There has been a concentrated attack on the past, and I will not have it. As a consequence, there is nothing like Y Signal or this upcoming project, and there likely never will be.

But beyond that, what do we have to look forward to in the wider culture? The wild west days of the internet are over, Hollywood is bottoming out, video games are shifting away from AAA, and publishing is still a complete mystery. Nothing is solid, especially publishing.

While OldPub is dying, NewPub is still in growing pains. Amazon is quickly fading out and the crowdfunding model is becoming more common, but then what comes after that? We're still trying to figure that out. There are a lot of question marks ahead and there still has yet to be a clear path forming in the haze. We'll just have to see where 2026 takes us from this point on. I can't even begin to guess where we're heading.

The world is a very different place from when I first published the first post on Wasteland & Sky over a decade ago to now. It certainly doesn't feel like it if you only look at the surface. Most of the buildings and sights in every day life are the same, if not rusting and falling apart from a lack of maintenance, but compared to previous decades the stagnation on the surface is obvious. Underneath, however, much has shifted and will continue to shift until the outside matches the current state of the interior. We've got much to look forward to after that.

Once again, I wanted to thank everyone reading my posts, or anyone who has ever read my posts, my stories, my books, or whatever I've put out there. It means a lot that I was able to reach anyone at all from my obscure position on the fringes of life and this scene. I hope to continue for as long as I am able to.

Thanks again for a wild 2025, and let us all look forward to the 2026 ahead. May it shine bright and show us the way forward.

Thank you for reading!

Find out what really happened 30 years ago in Y Signal! The end of the world came sooner than everyone realized!

Weekend Lounge ~ Epistemic Journalism

Welcome to the weekend!

I don't know about you, but the sudden winter weather has been quite the pain to deal with. Was hoping for things to ease in a little more, however it doesn't seem like it's going to let up. We're just going straight into cold weather, it seems. What a pain.

That aside, let's get to it.

Today's topic is less about the contents of the above video in question (though not entirely) and about the great message included inside of it. Today we will discuss what truth in storytelling is supposed to amount to and how it can be used to dishonestly divert attention or focus by those who engage in it honestly. This is hard to describe so I'll try to e straightforward about it. Essentially, storytelling is truth telling, it is meant to impart reality on the audience... which is why it can be used to lie about reality instead. And there are countless examples of just that out there, especially today.

In essence, stories are powerful and are meant to present truth to both the teller and the audience, and it takes a special kind of deceiver to weaponize that against the people who are meant to be the audience. And deceiving is almost expected these days.

To sum it up: stories might not be obviously true on a surface level but they are always meant to be epistemically true. When your audience sits down to listen to you at the campfire, they are expecting a true story. If they're not it's only because they've been lied to so much they are skeptical by default. This is not how it's meant to be, but storytellers over the past century have deliberately soured the relationship with their audience due to the antisocial crowd in charge of the large industries. And now stories are seen as completely disposable and throwaway.

So what does it mean to be epistemically true and how did the subversive crowd lie about it? That is a bit complicated, but the long and short of it is that they didn't just outright lie to audiences: they told the true . . . to a point. They used the truth to wedge themselves in to present lies as truth. The way this is done is quite interesting. This process means that storytellers can focus on part of the bigger picture that is True while ignoring the whole, thereby lying by omission and manipulating those they see as beneath them. The thumbnail topic in the above video about the "Satanic Panic" is one such issue that is still bandied about today.

Before anyone rolls their eyes and starts smugly typing their expert opinion, it might be wise to ask why this is being brought up at all in today's topic. The reason is that the "Satanic Panic" is a media buzzword used to distract from the epistemic truth in order to frame a different lie as reality instead. Let's get into how that works.

For example, when one tells a story about how crazy it is to think of Dungeons and Dragons or metal records are satanic, they deliberately ignore the real issues of the time period to frame the entire thing as one large canard about the former subjects instead. This why you were taught to hear the phrase "Satanic Panic" and dismiss everything related to the subject. You won't learn who Ralph Underwager, Gary Caradori, or Marc Dutroux are, or why they matter, but still consider yourself an expert on the subject because your silly out of touch grandma took away your Pokémon cards a quarter of a century ago. You don't know what the Franklin Scandal is or why the Finders not being a one-off project is significant, but it doesn't matter because Tom Hanks was in a silly Dungeons and Dragons is Evil movie back in the 1980s. This is how an audience can be manipulated.

And it still carries on today.

This process of lying by omission is an appeal to emotion using massaged facts in order to avoid considering a larger truth. But this is only part of it. This whole mechanism prevents a sort of epistemic investigation of the larger project, a form of propaganda made to stunt thinking. In fact, it's the most effective kind of propaganda there is, because it it isn't straight out lying: it is using a piece of truth to cover the bigger picture. It is the worst kind of manipulation there is.

Let me explain further, using a similar example we still hear plenty about today. This isn't meant to be directly political, but since it involves political decisions that changed an entire industry, it's unavoidable.

Why does no one ask why Bill Clinton's Telecommunication Act of 1996 enabling Clear Channel to rise and Al Gore's wife persecuting an entire industry then lead those same people who had their careers directly harmed and industries gutted led to those same people to vote for them and enabled their destruction. How does one support those who directly harmed them without even a second thought or doubt? Where does that attitude come from? As we've seen, it did not fall out of the sky: it was constructed.

Why do supposed anti-censorship crowds today still obsess over the above "Satanic Panic" half truths while ignoring the existence of entire organizations like the ACT and people like Peggy Charren who broke the back of the animation industry in the west and eventually allowed Japan to eat their lunch? It's because they were told half a story and never investigated further, because it seemed truth enough, even though it wasn't actually so when one looks into it. The woman who gutted the animation industry and children's programming was awarded the presidential medal of freedom for doing so, and once again no anti-censorship soldier ever speaks on it.

Isn't that amazing? It really shows how effective half-truths are to outright lies, and it's why this has been the way it's been for so long. It's a winning tactic for subversives.

This is the larger point being made. These are all half truths meant to obscure a larger and more important Full Truth, and to this day there is a whole generation that consider themselves experts on all the above subjects despite not knowing half the story. This is by design. It's very diabolical when you think about how it's done. In fact, it's the sort of thing people increasingly hate journalists for today, because they only investigate half truths that look at a small piece of the picture due to being taught the larger one doesn't actually exist at all. Only their pet causes matter, not what led to said causes existing or what supporting them might lead to in the future. What are causes and consequences? They don't matter aside from the one narrow subject. After all, it's about Your Truth, not The Truth, and that makes all the difference. The Self comes before all else.

The largest issue with the 20th century was exactly this obsession with fragments at the expense of the whole. Investigation for the cause of half truths, not epistemic ones, and this lack of care for the whole is what lead to the alienated culture we live in today, and the loss of a high trust society and shared language and customs. We are currently living in the late stages of this way of thinking, and still repeating old half truths constantly to keep us locked there.

How do we get out of this? There isn't an easy answer to that. Much of this is simply decay and entropy not being fought against. Much like the so-called "Quiet Revolution" in Quebec, it's just a fancy name for moral laziness and lack of care for the wider picture. Unless decay is actively fought against and reversed, the state of things will not get better, and everyone knows it. Whether they accept this Full Truth or not is another story. However, it will change. Much like how the younger generations now think the status quo from the past quarter century is lame.

Here are some examples of this happening right now:

Whether you agree with the language or specific examples in the above is not quite the point. It's more that the younger generations are not as satisfied with half truths as ours were taught to believe wholeheartedly since the 20th century established its new reality as default. The younger generations know something is wrong on a deeper level and that the answer is to not shut up and do what those in charge say to do. Whether that is due to generations of broken promises and dead end thinking is to be seen, but the status quo will not continue on this way.

They want to keep digging for a better truth than the ones they were told to accept. This is going to lead to something quite different than the 20th century we've left behind.

If anything, this should all be an encouraging sign. Whatever we think is coming is probably not what is actually on the way, but it hardly matters since Truth always eventually wins in the end. Half truths and lies eventually fall away to the mists of time even if we don't care to discover them for ourselves. It just Is.

And after that? Well, that's when the real building begins.

Until then, keep your chin up and eyes forward. December is almost here and so is the cold pushing in. Let's get through it same as we always do, and see what lies ahead.

Have yourself a good week and I'll see you soon!

What happened in 1995? Learn it in Y Signal!

Weekend Lounge ~ Lonely Days and Nights

Welcome to the weekend!

As we head into August and the later days of summer (where hopefully the heat finally begins to taper off), lets take one look back at the loneliness epidemic plaguing the modern world. We've discussed it plenty of times before on this blog and elsewhere, and have gone through plenty of examples both in the arts and in general where it remains prominent, but I don't believe we have ever compiled it in one easy to digest source like the above documentary from ColdFusion has. Where did it come from, and where is it going? And how do we escape?

Suffice to say, everyone is aware of the overall problem on some level and many even realize the cause, but attacking the source is a whole other ballgame that is going to take some time. It's not going to vanish overnight. It's not country exclusive either, as it has roots in not only the West, but also other areas like Japan, China, Korea, and is even starting to grow in places like Africa. Alienation and atomization is quickly becoming the legacy of the 20th century, and it's not one we should be proud of.

At the same time, there has been a vibe shift in the overall culture. This goes beyond politics and voting habits, though those have obviously changed as well, and moves more into the space of the intangible. As someone who was around in the nadir of materialistic nihilism (the '00s) it is very easy to see the change in the way the average person sees meaning and the purpose in their lives. The snark and the irony poisoning is finally falling to sincerity and hope, something we have all needed desperately since the pit that was 2001. Sometimes it has to get worse before it gets better, after all.

Part of admiring the past today comes from hating the present, but it should never be forgotten that said era is also what lead us here to where we are now. We cannot mindlessly ape it, but take what we need to move forward and understand the context for it all.

It's over and gone.

It's been said before that the middle is disappearing, but outside of the context of the middle class it also refers to the neutral ground on the purpose of your existence. Lines are forming everywhere that we had once deliberately blurred. You either believe your life has meaning and that we can fix things, or you don't believe it does and will fight to destroy everything while fooling yourself into thinking you're helping. The two attitudes are very different, one straightforward and one backwards, but the latter is dying as materialism has been exposed to be a dead end ideology. Only by realizing what we lost can we hope to make it better.

I don't tend to talk politics here because I don't have much to say on the topic. There are too many talking heads, grifters, and opportunists to count, most of which share and don't share aspects of my views. However, the default in that segment of modernity has changed so much that I think it is worth mentioning at least a little in regards to this topic. It's also another area where neutrality has disappeared which is probably a good thing because no one caring about the overt self-destruction of everyone and everything is how the problem outlined in Bowling Alone went unaddressed for over a quarter of a century. We all saw it coming, but we did nothing.

This piece by Dave Greene, also known as the Distributist, outlines in detail how the default thought of the 20th century, materialist progressivism died. I'm not going to go into it here as it is very long and in depth, but as someone who came from that place and knows others still there, he goes over where the ideology is, why it's dead, and why the sooner we finally give up on it the sooner we can finally build something better. Institutions like Hollywood, big business and big tech, and those with skin in the game are also starting to realize it, but they are behind on everything. This is the big reason why independent creators and artists have seized control of the arts and entertainment so abruptly: they see the writing on the wall. It's just up to the people in charge to finally process it.

Of course I'm not claiming to know all the answers, but as someone who has been blogging for over a decade now I can tell you things are most definitely not where they were back what I started. It's been a long time coming and the shift is very subtle, but the small things always add up. Within the next decade we will finally escape the grasp of 20th century materialism and despair and build something better. It's inevitable now, it's just a question of how much you're willing to let go of to make it happen. People like you are already helping with that right now simply by supporting NewPub, independent, and smaller artists, writers, creators, and entertainers, and contributing to the undeniable vibe shift currently occurring in the culture. Again, you might not have noticed it but the change is real. We just have to be engaged in it. Soon enough we will be able to form new connections and leave this present behind for better things.

It's only a matter of time.

In other news, I recently did a podcast on the series Cobra Kai and looked at just why it resonated where just about every other cash grab reboot and remake failed, and the answer turned out to be quite interesting. It might also be a sign of change, just not in the way anyone might think. We all realize what a waste the early years of the 21st century are and now we need to make up for it with something more than we had.

That is what the reason anthologies like Rock and Roll Mercenaries exist for: they highlight part of the 20th century we loved that is currently fading away. Those days are gone, so we must take what we learned, celebrate them, and move on into the new times ahead. We need the past to move into the future, but we also cannot live there, not forever. The last 25 years spent clinging to the previous century has told us that much.

I was also on the Scifi4Me podcast about a week ago with some of the guys in the above anthology. We talk about writing and stories in it! It's well worth the watch though we only show up in hour two the whole thing is worth it. Watch it here!

Like I said, there's a big change coming. Nothing will be the same again.

So what comes next? I guess we're about to see.

Check out Mistcreek Tales featuring my story "Lightning Jim"! 14 stories of weirdness highlighting what makes the world so full of wonder.

Weekend Lounge ~ Internet Implosion

Welcome to the weekend! We're back!

We've been talking about the Dead Internet for awhile, and now we can perceive the form of our destructor. The end of the internet is in view. It might not be tomorrow, but it is coming, and probably sooner than you might think.

Today's subject is a multipart series to show exactly what is happening. ClownfishTV usually spends their time speaking of pop culture news and whatnot, but some of their videos have also been focusing on the growing trend of megacorps slowly strangling the digital space while everyone is busy focusing their time on other issues. The above video focuses on the largest 20 year old video website that basically defined the era of modern media we live in. We are, of course, talking about YouTube. The company that helped create an alternative to dying mass media is now attempting to dismantle it and run roughshod over what made the internet what it was to begin with.

They have become what the once claimed to offer an alternative to.

As is well documented, from the time YouTube was created, it quickly became the site that defined how the video medium would be presented for generations to come. Before the '00s were over, Blockbuster and Cable TV were already on the way out, soon to replaced on the site itself by a slew of different styles from documentaries to original songs to political debates to, eventually, even livestreams, and news. The old paradigm had been completely destroyed. By the 2020s, videos were defined by YouTube's format, and no one would argue with that.

But those dying news corpos, movie and TV studios, Hollywood, and just about every big party in the old media space has hated how instrumental sites like YouTube were in weaning the public off of the mainstream that had detested them for decades, and have been dying to squash alternatives and become top dog again. And as the video above has shown, they are working overtime to do just that. They want the terrible old paradigm back, and the  owners of the new spaces are letting it happen. These shambling dinosaurs (somehow) have lots of money behind them, after all.

It is not just YouTube, either. Make no mistake, they want the entire internet crippled, which will eventually destroy it. They are well on their way to getting it, too.

The second video I wanted to present is what is going on with Google, the world's largest search engine. But make no mistake, it is not just about Google. Every search engine is currently compromised and being demolished as you are reading this.

It did not start with YouTube! This is an issue that has been going on for some time, and does not appear to be stopping anytime soon.

Google Search was first casualty of their play, in the process breaking just about every search engine out there from selling your information to deliberately hobbling certain search terms. It has gone from being highly accurate two decades ago to being unusable today. This is the fate of what was once seen as the immortal internet.

The fall of Google and YouTube has been long documented, but what is gearing up to replace them? That is the main question. What is the purpose in all of this? If it was to gain control of the levers of power in the former Wild West space it is being done in the most incompetent way possible, and will eventually lead to the destruction of the very websites that form a large portion of how the online space worked. It's all going to be decimated.

While bots and studio plants have been a problem for a while, the advent of AI learning has made the issue explode all over in a more dramatic fashion. If anything, this has only accelerated the end of the internet that is obviously on the way.

But of course, it doesn't stop there. It has also spread to areas meant for discussion. Yes, even those have been neutered and rendered even more artificial.

For the final piece we are taking a look at, this one is on the meltdown of the last real news aggregate forum, Reddit, and how it has been infested with bots and glowies (unironically) in a last bid to finally break the system down. Reddit has always been a negative influence on online discussion and it has been made considerably worse.

This mirrors how many old BBS message boards would eventually get so flooded with spam that they would simply not be able to operate at all. The difference in the two is now they've learned to weaponize AI in a way that is trained on human behavior to blend it in better. The AI is now trained on the very behavior of the people they hope to fool.

In other words, the more you act like an NPC the more you become indistinguishable from the very bots themselves. Considering the climate of discussion we currently already have on social media sites, this makes them a prime tool to push for engagement. It is only going to make these site worse and more useless.

If you've used any social media in the past year, and you almost certainly have, you have seen this decline in usability first hand. It is not going to get better, and as the internet is flooded with more and more junk, and the human junk becomes just is as unrecognizable as the AI algorithm junk, people are going to begin turning away from the entire mess, simply because there is no other choice. Eventually there won't be any way to engage with humanity at all. We're nearing the end of the road for this once eternal space.

The internet is winding down, and it is a strange site to see. It is unknown how much time remains, it could even be longer than one might think even based on the above information, but it is definitely going to happen in our lifetimes. The internet is not forever, like was thought to be common knowledge even five years ago. The wild west we once marveled at is tamed and currently being broken in. The digital space is very much heading towards that cliff and its speed is only picking up, oblivious of what is coming ahead.

So what does all this mean? Not much, in the long run. It doesn't change what has to be done with what time we have left. Create, share, converse, and do it for the Good, for as long as you can. We have to break through Cultural Ground Zero before the rotting zombie of the 20th century attempts to drag us back into the grave once again.

The internet isn't forever, but that shouldn't stop us from doing what we need to do. We have to use every opportunity we have for as long as we have it. Do what you've have to do, same as always! Just be aware of what is lurking on the path ahead.

That's it for this week, and I will see you again soon. I've got some projects to get to. I promise they will be worth the wait!

Check out the summer issue of Cirsova! Out today!

Weekend Lounge ~ Boomer Blues

Welcome to the weekend!

I hope you've been having a good one. The weather is finally turning around, at least where I am. But enough about that. Let us get to today's topic.

This week I wanted to talk a bit more about the inevitable death of the 20th century and the legacy of the Baby Boomers. Instead of going over the usual points, I wanted to focus on what exactly is being left behind as they pass on. Turns out it won't be much.

It's no secret that as time passes, those of us who are a bit older, the ones who remember the Greatest Generation, as they were called, have noticed a clear difference between them and their children in regards to how they have aged. It's unavoidable, an elephant in the room that they are vastly different creatures, at the end of the day. In fact, it is almost night and day seeing how different the two are. Did they come from different planets?

Yes, obviously, but we already knew that.

When the Greats died, they did so confident in the fact that they did what they could in life (good or bad) and rightfully understood that their time was up and it was their children's turn for being in control and picking up the slack they were leaving behind. So how it always is, and has been through all of human history before this point. They grew old, accepted their time was near, and went into the deep night like we all eventually will, making sure to pass on their work when they were still cognoscente and used their final years to reflect and stand on the sidelines.

The Baby Boomers, however, are a very different story. As a generation, they have done none of this. Almost all political protests are attended by grey hair boomers. Almost all remaining watchers of TV (and news channels especially) are all Baby Boomers. The ones out in public proclaiming the death of all that is good and decent unless we repent of our 20th century sacrilege in ignoring said failed century, are all old people. They still think it's their goal to revolutionize the world. What this is all saying is that the boomers are not acting their age, and they are terrified of doing so. They are not capable of making that last move of acceptance. It's still the Me Generation, to the bitter end.

And boy howdy, what an end it has been! Politicians defecating themselves on stage, Alzheimer's patients being shuffled around to give speeches as if this were serious business, and crusty entertainers posing and pouting like they're still a fresh-faced twentysomething rebel. For something really embarrassing, look up videos of Madonna's recent performances. If that isn't the most embarrassing thing you've ever seen I would be surprised.

What all this is saying, is that it's over, and none of them want to accept it. They don't want to accept it because they have no mind for anything else. All they can do is play pretend at being their version of you. "80 is the new 30" is, unfortunately, not a slogan getting much use. Those old movies and TV shows of grandpa trying to be hip and relevant have nothing on what those "hip" kids from back then have aged into. It's just sad at this point.

But this is all they have. They never strove for anything else.

As the most materialistic generation of all time (and there is some steady competition!) they do not believe in legacy, hope, grace, or anything that isn't cold hard cash or property. They never grew out of the world as a toybox stage the TV taught them way back when it was still relevant. As a consequence, the thing they are most terrified of is not being the one dying with the most toys. They are running out the clock by tightening their geriatric grip on the control levers they were gifted nearly half a century ago, to prevent the 20th century from ending. They do this because they know as soon as they do let go (regardless of the age demo, religious beliefs, or political affiliation of the ones under them) everything they fought so hard to do will be undone overnight. Everyone knows it, and it is their worst nightmare to be forgotten.

Baby Boomers can't bear being alive to see that inevitability. Therefore they will hold fast to the failed ideas and structures of the previous failed century and force it in place, even as their dying corpses are dragged into the clockwork to jam it up to prevent anyone from even attempting to fix it. They'll be dead by then, their toys securely with them (or so they seem tot think) and damn whatever comes next. That is their highest aspiration as a generation.

The above video is a good example of that mentality. the other younger generations might blame each other for stuck culture and the inability to create something new, but the problem is how deliberately jammed all the machinery is right now, and things won't change until it is fixed. We're all still dealing with ghosts of a past that some of us alive today weren't even alive to see. It goes without saying, they will be gone sooner than later. No one will be around to do otherwise. That's just how the passage of time works.

The good and bad news, is that it won't be that way forever, and we are destined to move on in as little as a couple of decades from now. This is unavoidable. The question is--will we be prepared when this shift finally happens? And when it does occur, how will we be able to move on from the dead era that is long since passed? What vision of the future will we have untied from the failure of the previous century? We're going to have to ask ourselves hard questions and accept some truths we were told to avoid. It will not be easy. Prepare accordingly!

That's all for this week, folks. I hope you've picked up the Rock and Roll Mercenaries anthology, and if you didn't know, I also recently finished the Psycho Mission serial on the Patreon. I also put out another episode of the podcast, this one on endings. There is no shortage of fun to be had over there, if you want it! There's still more to come after this, so hold on tight.

Summer's almost here! It's gonna be great.

Check out Rock and Roll Mercenaries here!

Weekend Lounge ~ Full Collapse

Welcome to the weekend!

Much has been said over the years about how the entertainment industry is currently suffering. Much has been written about how those on the inside, including actors actors and unions have destroyed both themselves and their credibility. However, I'm not sure there is a direct and obvious example to point to in order to really nail down the trend.

Until now.

I've mentioned this before in works like The Last Fanatics, and I'll say it again here. There is a certain breed of person that gets into the arts and entertainment not because they wish to connect with others but in order to put themselves at a higher class over them. A long time ago you could get past this for several reasons. The mainstream being the only viable choice and having a monopoly, putting yourself at the head of subcultures by weaseling your way through and saying the right platitudes, and the old favorite of simply buying credibility (like Bethesda saying they invented the First Person Shooter), were all popular choices.

However, it doesn't work anymore. Not in a fractured culture where no one really belongs anywhere unless your personality is to consume or to listen to people who consume more than you or to obey the company throwing its consumers pet treats every now and then. Too many people see this and have turned away, and the the ones with the power either don't notice it or are too far deep up their own rears to realize the problem. As a result, it all just implodes on itself.

Take the recent Writer's Strike, the strike you had to support no matter what or else you hated art. Remember that one? You weren't allowed to question what the terms really were, or how it benefited you as someone outside the industry, customer or artist yourself, or even if it was all just for show. As I covered in an earlier post, it was all more or less a shadow play. And with today's example you're about to see it unfold for what it is.

You will also see where the more recent vitriol around voice actors comes from. Again, it didn't fall from the sky. See how they involved themselves in this and only made themselves even more disliked by the people they are supposed to entertain. Lies, ego, unreality, and hate, are all plentiful, all to fight a cause that shouldn't threaten them in the first place. However it does because the audience have been pushed against them and they have to choose a side. Obviously, their employer is going to come first, but many don't want to accept it. These aren't valiant warriors doing battle for the Cause, they just want to look noble while making money.

All of this combines to make an industry of people that customers simply don't want to support. And, increasingly, they're not. The only way to turn this around is to overturn everything as it is. Unfortunately for them, it's looking less and less likely that it's ever going to happen. Not when there are too many alternate options.

Regardless, watch the above video and discover more details of the strike you were not supposed to know (because they didn't think anyone would bother looking) and understand just how little those in charge think of you. If you didn't know it before, you'll sure learn it now.

That's all for this week! June's here and summer is on the way, and with it, hopefully, the heat. We've got a lot coming to be excited for!

See you soon!

Psycho Mission has been completed! Check out the Patreon right now to read the serial of Book Two of Phantom War! What lies in wait in the corners of Menace Beach, and why exactly is the sky on fire? Read it today!

Weekend Lounge ~ Today the Slop, Tomorrow the World

Welcome to the weekend!

It's been a bit of a weird couple of weeks, and I've spent it in a little bit of shock. This is mostly because I did not realize how much the entertainment industry has deteriorated behind the scenes in such a short time. It's actually amazing to look at, and I wanted to share some of what I've seen today. (Hat tip to Pipkin Pippa and her viewers for some of this knowledge. Their ability to discover cringe kino remains undefeated.)

We've talked a little about what slop is and why it's here, but I don't believe we discussed how it's going to be like living through the era of entertainment its going to bring forth. Long story short, it's going to be around longer than you'd prefer. It's going to change everything, while changing absolutely nothing at the same time. To explain how will take a bit.

For a good summation of how things are now check out the above video. It isn't going to stop there, either. Just as we've accepted deteriorating standards in entertainment over the years, we're eventually going to accept the very things we used to laugh at as parodies on old Mad TV and other sketch shows of the 20th century as normal. It's not just a joke anymore. Now it's real.

We wanted it, and now we've got it.

Again, the era of slop did not fall out of the sky. Audiences did not decide overnight they were fine with automated beltline production fashioned around the shallowest of tropes and clichés to be consumed and then disposed of instantly for the next. They were trained to be that way for decades by an industry that wanted walking wallets instead of patrons. It is a fundamental misunderstanding of art at the heart of it.

Do you want to see what entertainment is going to become? Watch the video below. Do not skip around, do not stop early, and do not turn down the volume: give yourself the true experience of the future and watch the entire thing. This is the exact product the industry has been striving to fashion for decades as it normalizes lowering standards in both creativity and production quality. This is the future of slop.

This isn't a joke. There's no punchline here. It isn't a parody channel or an old sketch from when comedy shows were relevant. This is a real channel with over a quarter of a million subscribers on YouTube, and this is the level of content they produce. This video is only one example of it.

The channel in question isn't alone, either. There are plenty of others, some of which make similar product based on web novels that span hundreds of chapters. Yes, authors are also responsible for the state of things as they are. We can't just excuse it with the desire to "get paid" when we are contributing to things like the above existing and being normalized. Creating is about more than just making money. There isn't any attempt at connection here, just trope lists checked off (or subverted!) to give the audience the bare minimum to swallow before moving on to the next thing on their playlist. It's deliberately designed to be forgotten.

We don't want to admit it, but this is the future of the entertainment industry. We are pushing towards this every day we accept a Borderlands movie or an Avatar sequel. Accepting the bare minimum is not making anything better, and we know this, but we don't seem to want to do anything about it. We've been trained to excuse a downhill slide as an all or nothing proposition, as if the people in charge own us lock, stock, and barrel.

This is the future we chose.

And to be honest, it might be too late to do anything about it now. The genie is fully out of the bottle. It isn't about AI: it's what lead to AI being used in the first place. No one actually cares as long as it gets them their content faster. That's a truth we have to accept, and one we've allowed become reality. It can't be escaped. It has to be faced.

This is what a growing number of audience members want to consume. This is the direction we want to go in, as an audience. It's just slapped together clichés, vague characters and ideas, and the lowest possible quality threshold. What's worse is that they even have member's content.

I'm not kidding. Here is the only comment on the above video:

This is the future of mainstream entertainment.

We all know this, even if we won't say it out loud. It's a completely avoidable future, but it requires the sort of effort we simply do not wish to engage in. That is what makes it inevitable. The slop future is just ahead. 

I wish I had a more positive end result to tell you, but we all know this is the end of this road. It doesn't go in any other direction than this one. All we can do is push for more and support those who wish to do as much. At the end of this road lies normalized slop, and it's getting closer every day. Letting Hollywood take your money is not going to fix it.

In fact, they will make it even worse. They already are.

Unfortunately, that's just the way it is now. Who knows what the future holds from this point forward, but it will only change if we push to change it ourselves. Simply waiting for the old dying industries to wake up is a losing game. We either more forward together, or this continues, and the slide down into the slop only becomes more pronounced.

The future is up to us, so lets build it together. We have to work forward to create something else: a new way forward. I believe we can do it, together.

Have yourself a fruitful Easter and I'll see you again soon!

Psycho Mission is currently running! Check out here!

Weekend Lounge ~ When Movies Don't Look Like Movies

Welcome to the weekend!

We've gone over before the idea that certain segments of the arts and entertainment don't look as good as they used to, but we've never taken a deeper look into how specifically things might have changed since. Why can't we seen to remember how to make things look their best? The above video on the decay of film might help with that.

While watching The French Connection for Cannon Cruisers (Yes, there's a spoiler of an upcoming episode for you), one of the questions that came up was why exactly films just plain don't look this good anymore. William Friedkin and his crew didn't have even a fraction of the technology available to us today and yet the movie looks, sounds, and feels, far more different than if a similar movie was made today. In fact, its quality is light years beyond what we can do with current digital technology. But why exactly is that?

Of course the easy answer is "we're losing the talent and means to make good art" but then the elephant in the room, the one that is never answered, becomes how it is being lost this fast? In our technology obsessed culture, why are we glorifying inferior technology that doesn't make art better? From cell animation to arcade design to the short story, we are losing valuable parts and origins of the arts we were raised on, and we do not seen to care even as we complain about how the modern material is not only not holding up but is also beginning to turn younger generations away from art altogether. This is a serious issue that is just plain being ignored.

I don't really have the answers for dealing with the decline except to first acknowledge it is happening in the first place and then to encourage those in said industries to preserve said techniques before they are pointlessly lost forever. Art is meant to build on the past, not to reject it for the ideologically hollow and terminally sneering mess of an industry we have today.

At the very least, unlike, say, a decade ago, everyone is very keenly aware of these problems now. I've met plenty of zoomers who love these old methods of creation and even attempt to revive it themselves. It's admirable, but they can't do it alone. The change rests in all of us working together to strive for a better field, and the younger generation can't do that alone. Gen Ys, in particular, finally need to put our selfish pride away and go in for more than nostalgia bait IPs that should have been left to rest ages ago, and expend more effort building something new.

Again, it's not about abandoning the past, but building on it. Those old IPs were built and things that came before. We need to do the same now in order to finally move forward. We cannot continue to peddle dead IPs whose time has already come and gone. We need new blood and we can't get any if we keep deliberately elbowing the new generation out so they have no space at the table. Otherwise we are headed for a dead end, just like the mainstream industry.

You can't put new wine in old wineskins, and yet that is what we insist on doing with nostalgia culture. We need fresh takes and new angles on classical archetypes and frameworks. We can't can't do that if we refuse to move on from dead IPs.

The 20th century is over, remember, so too, must we put behind the childish ways from then that led us in the gutter today.

What kind of industry is this supposed to build, exactly?

We also refuse to move on from considering the audience, our fellow man, as anything less than walking wallets to be pried into at our convenience. As if they are little more than plebeians to be lectured to, that they must Shut Up And Listen, to anything we have to say.

No, I won't go into another tirade on Fanatics, I've done that enough, but to emphasize this isn't a problem with one industry. It's all of them. The aging theater kid mentality that was chased out normal people, reviles male audiences, and obsesses over "updating" old IP for modern sensibilities at the expense of creating anything new, has reached its end. Everyone sees this now. It's unavoidable, and it is being recognized, but there is still no plan in action to correct it.

I realize I've made a lot of enemies over the years for being blunt about the way things are. The thing some of these people get is that I never went in with the intention of wanting to blow anything up. I went in with a mentality of wanting to understand the growing disdain for normal people, the anti-social celebration of destruction that is modern art, and the obsession with Kool Kid Revenge of the Nerds mentality. Essentially what I learned is what we all already know. Nothing can be created through destruction, blind hatred, and arrogance, never mind all together in a wrecking ball mislabeled as "art" that has unable to make anything sustainable.

The first step to doing all of this is to stop with childish clique-ism and shrinking the field to feed our egos. It's to find ways to build new ideas based on classical ideas in a culture trained to hate it all. We should be working together, not managing decline.

Until we do that, we're destined to keep bashing our heads against the same brick wall for at least another decade as our industries swirls further down the drain. If we don't finally act, we risk losing much important. At that point, we might not have any solid foundation left to build on, and then what can we build?

Lets hope we don't have to find that out.

The next issue of Cirsova features a new Galactic Enforcer story! Join Detective Brandon Stone as he meet what lays waiting in the abyss of space in Void Railway! I hope you action, because you're about to get plenty of it. Preorder here!

Weekend Lounge ~ Why Everything Sucks Now

Welcome to the weekend!

Hope you've had a good week. I've been knee-deep in multiple projects, one of which I can't even hint at yet. That aside, lets talk about the current entertainment landscape, and how it's been changing recently. We are finally seeing the last embers of the 20th century extinguished and what we are being left with has yet to be seen.

Let us explain why that is.

We've gone over a bit about the slipping quality of corpo entertainment and its various reasons for it current terrible state before. In fact, it's been a constant theme. The Cultural Ground Zero effect is real. Of course, we have the usual reasons/excuses for noticing this trend: the "nostalgia" argument, the "changing tastes" argument, and the "catering to the market" argument" are all the most common. And yes, some of those might apply, but are not enough to paint the bigger picture. None of the give the full view of what's going on.

For instance, no Zoomers or younger gens care about mainstream entertainment anymore, just as much as no one except aging "Geek Culture" Cultists desperately holding onto their youth even look twice at it anymore. Some passively consume the slop, but none pay it any real mind anymore. It's like how a Baby Boomer goes to the television to think. It's just expected and passively consumed. No one actually cares about this stuff anymore, and they haven't for a long time now.

You won't find any shortages for the reasons behind this, but I think the video from David V. Stewart above highlights all the potential arguments and explanations as to why things have changed. This is before he gets into the main crux of the issue. I'd suggest watching it for good reason. He has a very good way of getting things across.

That aside, I do see a hard turn coming in the future due to both how fragmented our culture is and how those in charge both dumb down and belittle real creativity at the expense of ambition. It's going to lead to a generation that is just plain going to ignore "fiction" entirely. They will see it as a waste of time, much like we basically already do now.

What will happen is because of how vapid, predictable, and repetitive, mainstream entertainment is, as well as the cratering emphasis on "imagination" (We're a long way from the silly "Reading Is Magic!" punchline of the 1990s), on top of the lack of interest in 20th century IP among younger gens, will all lead to a fracturing in the overall.

You're going to see the mainstream focus more on "reality" entertainment (A growing trend since the end of the '90s) with things like streamers, reality programming, and video essays, taking the air out of the room. At the same time, anything "fiction" related will struggle unless it a flavor of the month supported by one or more of the above things.

The reason for this is the mainstreaming of "tropes" since the Geek Culture '00s have made Following The Formula Right the only thing a corpo needs for you to hand over their wallet. What the formula is depends on how you were trained to consume your entertainment. What you then have are Gen X to Millennials begging for scraps, whether they be rehashed tired formulas, endless subversions of the same handful of ideas, or More Of The Same.

None of these groups desire stories, they desire their youth resold to them forever, like Baby Boomers buying endless Beatles merch and products well into retirement age. The old IP is all they want, quality has nothing to do with it. This is because the "quality" to them is merely in repeated names, aesthetics, and actors/voices saying what they want to hear. The core story, the morals and the deeper meaning, don't matter as much as the surface level. If it did they would engage in other things outside the IP. But like Baby Boomers, it doesn't matter how good something is, because it isn't John, Paul, George, and Ringo. At the end of the day that's all they care about seeing.

Evergreen meme for a reason

How did this come about? For many reasons. We all know it's real, but it's hard to put a finger on what exactly is to blame for it. This is because the explanation is multifold.

Those among these older generations, present company included, are to blame for the current state of things. We cheered for vacuous slop, meaningless pop cult references, and selling our youth back to us forever. We made fun of the Big Bang Theory for being "geek blackface", but Scott Pilgrim was no different in pointlessly catering to "Geek Culture" vapidity. Just because one is better made doesn't make them both slop. Slop is about intent. There is no meaning to either except ego stroking and pandering to a generation that deserves neither.

What we have here is not only the End of Pop Culture, but the end of the 20th century influence on culture as a whole. Those days are gone and they're not coming back.

The elephant in the room is also that Western Culture has been built off negativity, subversion, and bitterness for over half a century now. It has lead to a low trust society, fracturing political and religious outlooks, and mainstreamed misery into common discourse. Politics didn't cause this: it lead to the current sociopolitical situation everyone hates.

I don't tend to address politics here directly, because it's really a dead end discussion point. The second someone sees a buzzword, their brain clicks on to a certain track and you become Friend or Enemy. At that point, you might as well be speaking backwards. But this isn't about Friend or Enemy, it's about understanding where we're headed.

And this is all due to where we've already come from.

I'll be blunt. The Right sees the arts as useless and a dead end. They refuse to support anyone even remotely on their side, ceding the ground to people who hate them. They would much rather support grifters who put out low quality versions of "based" calendars, political talk shows, or vapid entertainment stuck 20 years ago. No one is investing in any real countercultural efforts (and if they are, they are very much the exception to the rule). There is nothing even remotely approaching art here.

The Left is no better. They see the arts as an opportunity to promote whatever new thing they were told to support by their favorite TV/online personalities, and morphing their own works to comply with these updated slogans. They are convinced that something like naming a villain Tonald Drump is high art to be applauded and high brow commentary on par with the best Russian Literature. They also happily subvert their own IP for updated messaging at every opportunity. There is nothing approaching art here.

Surely, that's everything? After all, we've addressed both "sides" of the discussion, right? No, we're not done. 

Centrists pretend to be above it all, saying they want no morals, lessons, or politics, and just want Entertainment. This is impossible. There is no piece or art without meaning, without something to say, and in fact any art worth engaging will have these elements in them deep inside on some level. The actual problem should be that there is little focus on what is being said, how to say it, and how to connect with the audience. Instead, the focus is on returning to the *Insert Decade Here* standard where everyone was Sane and Not Weird, even though they were and we just didn't notice because we were kids back then. There is nothing approaching art here.

This leaves you with the three modern views of how art is seen: to be taken for granted, to weaponize against your neighbor, and to consume mindlessly between sugar binges. That's it. There isn't anything else. What you are left with is an upcoming younger generation whos see all of this and has no reason to engage. Art is clearly meaningless because that's how we see and treat it. Therefore, the younger generations will turn away from it.

It will also lead to the more common usage of AI generators for entertainment, because it gives the bare minimum. This will be good enough for them, and we've given no valid argument against them doing this. What else is consuming art for anyway? We don't have a good answer for this that isn't a cliché from the 20th century since proven incorrect by how things have decayed.

The ignorance of the Right lead to the belittling of art, the arrogance of the Left lead to the pamphletization of art, and the mindless consumption of Centrists lead to seeing art as novelty, trope checklists to follow or subvert. Don't get me wrong, none of these positions are exclusive to any of these groups, but those are the main three views of entertainment that has lead to the irrelevance of art on modern day living. The younger generations have internalized this and are ready to apply it to their own position.

And, again, what reason have we given them to think of anything else when all we focus on are things we should have let go of long ago?

20th Century IP has no meaning to those born outside of it. No, not even if you "update" the morals, and not even if you Go Back To the old morals. It has no relevance for the 21st century man living in uncertain times caused by the previous century, and the more we cling to it the more younger generations will turn away and move on without us. The 20th century is not the center of the universe, and we're quickly learning how irrelevant it's most likely going to be in the long run. We should be preserving what worked now before it all gets disposed of.

We've treated existence and reality as a novelty for so long it has turned our outlook cynical and barren, matching our entertainment. The only way to move forward is to take what we learned and apply it to the present. This requires letting things go, but also looking forward to the generations before us who need a guiding light. We have to be there for them, not ourselves. We're not kids anymore. We need to start acting like it.

Thanks for reading. That's it for this week! 

See you next time, and please be sure to support smaller and independent artists trying to make a difference. It's the only way we'll see any change.

Check out King Leper by David V. Stewart, an epic tale of a king protecting his throne!

Weekend Lounge ~ The Third Place

Welcome back!

The weekend's here, so lets have a bit of fun.

There's been much discussion recently of reclaiming smaller things we've forgotten over the years, perhaps even subtle things we hadn't even considered before. One of the recent discussions has centered around "slop" and what we've allowed our entertainment and art to fall into. We've essentially given up trying or aiming for anything higher, our priorities on other things.

Another related and yet less talked about topic, is the loss of the Third Place. One might argue the loss is at the crux of everything we've been going through since Cultural Ground Zero put a wrecking ball to everything so long ago.

If you've been interested in the decay we've been going through for any amount of time by now then you've almost certainly heard of Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone, a book that came out a quarter of a century ago which saw all the patterns that had already formed and the cracks that led to pale artificial replacements like "Geek Culture" to consume an entire cohort of youth into a New Religion and way of life. The problem became centered on the "Normie" and the solution was to relate to those who consumed the same product you did instead. There was nothing else to it. You were a Victim and everyone was out to get you.

And, obviously, that mentality didn't work out too well.

One of the expressions no one had really brought up over this quarter century was the idea of the "Third Place" in life, something Bowling Alone described as its main thesis, and something which has faded away into irrelevance in the war on everything that is modern life. All this despite the fact that we clearly desire connection while fighting hard against finding it at the same time. It's a giant mess, but we're used to it by now. We don't want to accept it's not normal or healthy, for whatever reason. And we're paying for it.

The video above gives a good description of the topic. The Third Place is, as described, the third important place in life. The first being Home and the second being Work. Home is where we can relax and recharge on our own and with those closest to us. Work is where we show another side of ourselves, using effort to achieve something separate from Home and our relationships there. You know how you always felt awkward as a kid when your parents talked to your teachers? There's a reason for that. Instinctively, you knew those two places should be separate. Mashing those together hasn't been all too great a change either, but that's not the topic today.

The Third Place is a neutral public space between the other two where we can connect with other people away from the others. In fact, part of the three places that makes them important is that it disconnects us from the other two and gives us a break and a way to discover new sides of ourselves. All three are important.

The third can be as simple as a restaurant, a bar, or a club, a place where you are detached somewhat from the other two places, throwing in some unpredictability and odd comfort into your day to day routine. And it no longer exists in the modern world.

The issue is that all three places have been heavily damaged in recent years. Home has turned into a bunker from the world, a place where Work is not only brought into but made the place where it is frequently done the most. Work has no stability and therefore contains no trust or growth of basic work relationships beyond tentative trust for as long as your inevitably short employment exists for. The Third Place, however, is completely gone and destroyed from modern life, taken out back and shot. And we're feeling its effects today.

There is no public neutral place to go, and they are rapidly dying out. In the process, we are losing community connections and turning into a block of strangers who sometimes see each other when we dare go out to... well, to do what? Going out is now seen as an annoyance, taking you away from your bunker. It's a nuisance, not a break. Eventually, the way things are going. we won't even need to go out to get groceries anymore. Then what happens?

All of this is killing community worse than Putnam ever imagined it would. Remember, his book was written before social media, lockdown world, and door dash. We've fought hard to kill off connection since Bowling Alone first released, and we're not quite turning it around yet. Local life is dying everywhere as we anticipate plugging into the cloud instead.

I know where I am the streets are fairly deserted and even the weekend makes no difference anymore. It is a ghost town of door dash drivers and empty buildings and sidewalks. There are no clubs, no hobby groups, not even church gatherings, anymore. It's just a large concentrated block of people who do everything they can to avoid each other. That's all it is and all it has become.

What is being built up by this attitude? What is the purpose of burrowing away into ourselves at the expense of both our own health and everyone else around us? We all know the answer to that, and we're well aware of where we're going is not anywhere good.

On the plus side, this topic is being brought up again more and more in discourse, because now there is no one who doesn't know, and doesn't pretend, that any of this is leading to a healthier society. We know it's not. We just have yet to figure out a solution beyond fancy words and promises. We need more than that. The answer involves bringing back the Third Place, and until we do, we'll be trapped circling the drain.

That's all for this week! Have yourself a good rest and get ready for March! We're almost there and out of the endless winter.

I can't wait until we finally are.

Check out Cirsova #20! My story of a man on a motorcycle with a mission against witches is inside! I hope you like bullets, because you'll get them!