Tag: Big Ideas

It’s Comical How Easy I Could Start A Successful Blog If Someone With Some Business Sense Would Help Me


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I can already feel my interest in this particular idea fading. I’m obsessed with developing and writing four novels and this is just another summer daydream. But maybe I should just get this out of my system by writing a bit about it before turning to the scenes I need to develop before I go on a personal writer’s retreat this weekend.

Ok, here’s why someone with some business sense should be my partner in a new politics – and culture blog.

  1. You wouldn’t have to pay me at first
    Because of a very specific set of circumstances, just to get things off the ground in the first few days of any new professional blog, if you were a business type, you could “pay” me in access to the site’s Webstats. Just being able to see the site grow from zero would be enough pay at first. Once the site began to make money I would obviously want some pay, though, duh.
  2. I’m obsessed with this subject
    If you look at this Website, you can tell I have VERY STRONG opinions about the specific issue of civil war or autocracy coming to America by 2025. I’m a turnkey solution.
  3. I’m good at thinking up weird post ideas.
    If you look over this blog, you can see proof that I’m pretty good at coming up with strange, interesting post ideas that if they had some proper marketing probably would have a chance of going viral.

    Anyway. Lulz. No one listens to me. Unless someone approaches me about this, this summer daydream is going to burn out very, very soon.

A Modest Proposal For A New Blog


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Now that we have had 24 hours to look at the soft-reboot of Gawker, and it’s obvious that my personal media tastes have moved on from the Gawker of yore. Besides my gripe about the new Gawker’s layout (it’s not really a blog), I feel kind of sad that none of the posts are as spicy-hot as the old Gawker’s. The whole thing is well done and interesting, but…not really viral-worthy.

This could change, of course, but it got me thinking.

Most of the traffic for this blog is coming from searches of people obviously worried about an impending civil war in the United States. My gut tells me that if I could find someone with some business savvy (read, money) and I wrote actual journalistic articles that were laser focused on pondering what appears to be our never-ending march towards the choice of autocracy or civil war (probably around January 2025) that you would have a recipe for some sort of success.

I could do it, but I have no money and no friends.

You get people hooked by long, interesting posts about how this or that recent event seems to indicate we’re closer to autocracy or civil war, and keep them hooked with weird articles like, “Is Tik-Tok Reading Your Mind?” and “Is Taylor Swift A Virgin?”

In the past, this would be the point when I would get frustrated, buy a URL and struggle for a few days to make this dream a reality. But, lulz, I four novels to work on.

So, I don’t know, maybe someone contact me about this? Or, hell, someone else can start this type of blog so I can have something to read?

The Thing I’ve Notice About New Yorkers


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I only rarely go to New York City. But every time I go, it is a real opportunity to recharge my creative batteries. Each time I go, however, I notice something about New Yorkers — they have very strong mental narratives about the city.

I say this because I’m something of a small town kook, or as the late Annie Shapiro would put it, I am a “delusional jerk with a good heart.” So, when I go to New York City and get drunk and talk to random people around me, once they get a sense of who I am, they dissociate.

The moment the get the sense that I have even the barest amount of kook in my personality, they not-so-subtly roll their eyes and start to do their taxes in the back of their mind. “Oh, so he’s one of THOSE guys,” they think.

I have to admit that I’ve learned a lot from this. Just going to NYC the few times I have has really toughed me up. I still long to live there one day. But, who knows. Wishes are like elbows and assholes.

The New Gawker Is Great, It’s Just Missing One Thing: ME


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The original Gawker got me through a very dark time in my life so I’ve always had a sentimental attachment to the site. The site has come back and it seems fine. I could see myself reading it on a regular basis. I struggle to see how they’re going to differentiate themselves from, say, New York Magazine though.

One way they could do that is to hire me!

I have a very old-Gawker sensibility. I like to look into weird concepts in weird ways for weird reasons. I did a great job with ROKon Magazine in Seoul for the the few months it existed in late 2006 to early 2007.

And I know the beat I could cover for them — the civil war or autocracy beat. Most of my writing on the subject to date has been rather vague for no other reason than I’ve just been letting off steam. But just the barest amount of money to write on the subject would cause me to throw myself into producing actual journalistic articles on the subject.

Julia Allison, the icon of the Old Gawker.

I would also love to get paid to do an actual investigation into my lingering fears that Tik-Tok is reading our minds. That would be a lot of fun to poke around in a silly, semi-serious manner.

One big concern I have is, are Websites moot? I know for me, at least, I get almost all news passively off of Twitter. That’s it — if there’s news, I get it form Twitter. For the New Gawker to work, it would really need to be bonkers and interesting — two things I definitely bring to the table. (Wink.)

Anyway, I wish them luck, no matter what. I have a novel or four to work on, so I’m not holding my breath that they’ll listen to — or care about — the voice mail I left them tonight about this very thing.

What I bring to the table.

What The Fuck Is Tik-Tok Up To?


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Tonight, I was repeatedly pushed eerie videos on Tik-Tok. Given that I had a long and interesting conversation about Tik-Tok’s ability to push “eerie” content to me with someone today, it’s almost like the service is taunting me at this point.

Here’s what happened.

I had a wide-ranging conversation with someone today over beer and pizza and at one point he mentioned how an online friend he met in person was “tiny” compared to what he expected. Well, lo and behold, what happens today, but I get pushed a video about that exact fucking thing — how tiny another woman was!

Then, I’ve been pushed what seems like six or so videos about elevators, of all things. And what did I think about intensely in the last 24 hours since I’m living in a hotel this weekend?

Elevators!

What the fuck is going on? How could the Tik-Tok “algorithm” figure out that I, specifically, was thinking about elevators a lot in the last few days. Or, more specifically, if you follow the logic that what I’m seeing in aggregated assumption about people like me, then why would there be a few thousand people like me who the “algorithms” thought would be interested in elevators of all things. I have no written about the situation with elevators. I have not spoken to anyone about it. The only metric by which elevators have come into my life at all has been in my thoughts.

I’m still not prepared to go full crank and actually believe Tik-Tok can read our minds, but…I dunno, man, something spooky is definitely going on.

A Scifi Explanation For ‘Havana Syndrome’


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Here’s a free scifi concept for you, Hollywood. The reason why diplomats around the world are having their minds fried by some unknown device is there’s some industrial strength “digital telepathy” going on.

The point of being targeted is a digital mindreading device is draining their minds so intensively that they suffer intense side-effects.

Money please!

Potential Fast & Furious Movies


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It seems as though each Furious movie grows more…furious. They’ve gone to space, what could happen next?

It’s my impression that a Fast & The Future cross over with Transformers is at least being thought about. But, why stop there? Why not have them time travel to save The Rock’s life? Maybe bring Dr. Who into things. They could set the entire movie inside the TARDIS.

They could fight dinosaurs.

How about a Fast & the Furious with clones? They all have to fight cloned versions of themselves.

A Little Contemplated Aspect Of A Potential First Contact: The Religious Right


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Given the extremely weird development that the U.S. Military is like, “Oh, by the way, UFOs are real,” I’ve found myself given a bit more serious thought about what First Contact would be like in practical terms.

Now, obviously in the back of my mind I’m kind of couching this in a “JEWS IN SPACE” plot device for a hazy movie in my mind, but we shouldn’t sleep on the Religious Right in the United States getting really fucking worked up about converting any space aliens we might eventually encounter.

It would not happen right away. And how likely it was to happen would depend on the actual nature of the ETs. (I think it’s likely that any ETs we actually encounter would be machine intelligence, but, lulz, even that wouldn’t stop MAGA Religious Right people.)

It’s easy to imagine a situation where one the shock wore off that we Were Not Alone that the (white) MAGA Religious Right in the United States would see the aliens as Souls To Save. The only reason why I even suggest this is the fucked up religious logic that has made the absolute support of Israel a foundational aspect of the modern Christian Right.

If they can pull that out of their ass, they can definitely think up a reason to demand they get the opportunity save aliens souls, too. (I’m not picking on Israel, but, as I understand it, the American Religious Right’s love for it is for a kind of dark reason.)

It would be surreal that once we reached Alien Nation levels of indifference to aliens being in our presence that the aliens would start to complain about how pushy the American Religious Right was. (How the American Religious Right would get to the point where they finally came to believe that ETs had “souls” would also be pretty surreal.)

Anyway. lulz.

How America Would React To Our Best Geopolitical Bud Great Britain Collapsing


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Americans think of Great Britain as our far older, posh relative that swings by every once in a while to hand out Fleabag DVDs. The United States is so big that we only have a hazy understanding of the outside world. Canada, cold. Mexico, hot. Great Britain — King George III was an asshole, Churchill was cool.

I’m not in any way suggesting I have any bead on the slow-motion collapse of Great Britain, but anyone paying attention to the goings on there will have to admit that the United Kingdom of 2021 has a very 1918 Austro-Hungarian vibe to it.

Or, to put a more fine point on it, a closer historical approximation might be Czechoslovakia. The two nations that made up that multi-ethnic state just gave up and split because they no longer had the energy to stay together.

The same thing with Great Britain, in that it definitely seems as though the very concept of being “British” is beginning to evaporate. Just look at how worked up the English got when they faced Italy on the football pitch recently. The English team didn’t go into that sports battle as British, they went into it as English.

This leads to the question, “How would America react if Great Britain finally buckled and ceased to exist?”

Well, ironically the United States is, uh, going through somethings right now itself. The United States is suffering a similar disunity momentum as Great Britain is. But, for the sake of argument, let’s say at some point between now and when the US is likely to go tits up (2024-2025) the UK beats us to it.

First, there would be earth shattering shock that the Union Jack was no longer applicable. The idea that once the Scots bounce out of the UK that the Union Jack would be moot would be something the poor old American brain could not comprehend. It’s a simple thing to grasp and a lot of people who don’t care about geopolitics would gasp.

Then, as the whole country pealed away with the departure of Wales and the unification of Ireland, Americans would start to make comparisons to the other big collapse of the last century — the Soviet Union.

But the dissolution of the UK would be one of those rare occasions when the United States would sit up and take notice that there was an Outside World beyond our boarders. Comparisons would also, likely be make to the shock of the 1940 Fall of France.

There would even be a bit of a question as to how difficult it would be to make the rump state of England a US state. (This would happen in some of the more bonkers portions of MAGA because, well, white people.)

We just would not be able to process any of it at first.

Until, of course, we had our own civil war and then everyone would say, “Fuck, both major Anglophone nations collapsed within years of each other.”

The Curious Case Of Tik-Tok Pinning Down My ‘Type’


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Oh, Jesus, this shit with Tik-Tok gets weirder and weirder. Now, Tik-Tok knows me so well to the point that it’s not only pushing me content from a woman who looks identical to a dead woman I think about a lot, it now is pushing me videos of women I definitely would date.

Now, I’m totally willing to accept that they have me figured out because of their mysterious, all powerful “algorithms.”

And, yet, they know my exact type of woman so well, to a subtle granular level, that it’s very, very spooky.

It definitely would innovative if Tik-Tok branched out into being a dating service since it was, like, fucking reading our fucking minds.

Wink.