The Essay

Where did all the blue checkmarks go? Like many a writer, they got laid off. As many of you know from my endless rants and the title of this very newsletter/Substack, that I care little for social media. I’ve thought that perhaps it’s a necessary evil and more and more I’ve come to believe that is simply and utterly and unilaterally (Pat Ryan, I’d like to buy an adverb?) useless.

I’ve never been algorithmically “verified” nor will I ever, ever, ever pay for it.1 I put out a tweet promoting the podcast and the little analytic button routinely says something like 27. For an account with nearly 1,700 followers, that is a 1.6% reach.

Forget what the fraction is if you have the gall to link out of Twitter say, to a Substack post, an article, a blog post, etc. There is an algorithmic choke hold on most of the accounts. In order to see my tweets, you’d have to actively seek them out. Not ideal.

Twitter is out for one thing: Twitter. It doesn’t care about connection or making it a digital town square or whatever bullshit nonsense that billionaire, sophomoric goon spouts. More than likely, as the great writer Howard Bryant (who left Twitter and has NO regrets) said, the acquisition of Twitter was likely a long con to “influence” the 2024 election, this per Jeff Pearlman’s wonderful Substack riffing on journalism.

Many people have amassed large followings. Even people with very modest followings like mine are reluctant to let that go. We earned it, dammit! Even if it’s a small fraction of what makes us attractive to gate keepers, it’s still a number gate keepers can point to and say, “Oh, yes, you have an audience.”

I’ve long thought that deleting Twitter, and maybe other social media platforms, would be for the best. But what about your platform, BO!? I’m lucky: this newsletter and my podcast audience, cultivated from more than 10 years of work and showing up, is larger than my social media audiences combined. By quite a bit. We’re not winning Webby’s over here, but why does this audience matter vs. that audience? Podcast and newsletter audience is 100% permission and you get it beamed right to your inboxes or podcast feeds without so much as a whiff of an algorithm pulling the strings and deciding what you see and what you don’t.

At times I find Twitter useful to find people but so far as connecting or promoting my work? It’s a 99.9% waste of time and especially energy. As I’ve long said, we were duped into thinking social media mattered and it’s becoming more and more apparent who social media is for. Spoiler alert: It isn’t us.

Verify yourself, and the rest will follow.

The Books

1. Easy Strength Omnibook by Dan John. A long-time strength coach, Dan writes simply and eloquently (if at times with verbosity) about training like, “If it isn’t sustainable, repeatable, and doable, I don’t do it.” Same can be said for writing. Sustainable. Repeatable. Doable. Sure, NaNoWriMo is seductive with its 50,000 words in a month or whatever, but a mere 200 words a day for 365 days is 73,000. I mean … that’s a book … and it sure as hell sounds sustainable, repeatable, and doable. If we’re patient …

2. How to Stay Married: The Most Insane Love Story Ever Told by Harrison Scott Key A painful-to-listen-to Ep. 4 of #CNF). Harrison’s wife told him she was in love with another man, a friend, and, well, Harrison slammed on the brakes of a novel he was writing and wrote this gut punch on love and faith and resilience and painful self-reflection. Also, here’s a far better audio experience with Harrison. Plus, he’ll be back on the pod soon.

3. It’s Better to be Feared: The New England Patriots Dynasty and the Pursuit of Greatness by Seth Wickersham. Few reporters are as good as Wickersham. He’s a master. I never tire of reading his profile on Y.A. Tittle. Pod TK.

4. The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession by Michael Finkel. Pod TK.

The Other Stuff

5. Mason Curry riffs about Samuel Johnson’s procrastination game.

6. A very fringe source called me back and asked, “What are you willing to offer us?” As a journalist, the answer is fuck … nothing … for myriad reasons. Jeff Pearlman says it better than I.

7. Steven Hyden, a guest on the pod way back when he released an amazing podcast on Woodstock 99 called “Break Stuff,” wrote of his 15 favorite albums of the year so far. I’ve heard of one of the artists. I need to expand my musical palette. Maybe you do too.

8. So much Legend of Zelda content with the release of Tears of the Kingdom2, essays, reviews, et cetera, so I was particularly pleased with this one by Amber Sparks, care of Roxane Gay’s The Audacity, “It’s Dangerous to Go Alone.”

9. Tom Rachman, whose book The Imperfectionists (2008) was a fave of mine, wrote “On the Pitfalls of Book Promotion in the Internet Age” on LitHub. Rachman’s new novel is The Imposters.

10. Quit social media every other day. Think of it like intermittent fasting.

11. Robert Gottlieb and Cormac McCarthy died in the same week. The Road is a favorite book of mine, but Blood Meridian went over my head (it doesn’t take much to clear that hurdle).

McKenzie Marathon Postponed

For those who might have wanted to join me for the McKenzie Marathon, an unsanctioned race, end to end, on the McKenzie River Trail east of Eugene, I must postpone it.

Maybe it’s because I’m 43 (today, July 1, is my birthday, Happy Canada Day!), but my body/fitness just … isn’t … responding to my training program on the time scale I had set. Maybe if I was 23, even 33. I know age is “just a number,” but sometimes it’s more than “just a number.” Sometimes that number is fucking piano on your back. My current biology (and affinity for high quality beers and ciders) — plus the heat — have me incapable and un-confident in my ability to run 26.2 on a trail (when it might also be smoky).

I’ll keep you posted.

Support the podcast

If you have a few bucks to spare, Patreon is where it’s at. I’m trying to sweeten the pot for patrons, but everyone seems pretty content just by chipping in a few bucks. No complaints there! No matter, I’ll keep trying to offer any goodies I can think of that’ll show my appreciation for that support. I recently did a spat of one-to-one 30-minute coaching calls. Patreon.com/cnfpod

Free ways to support the show? Kind reviews on Apple Podcasts help validate the show for the wayward CNFer.3 And, as always, linking up to the show and sharing it with your writer pals is the best way to keep it alive.

Thanks for reading, CNFers.

Stay wild,

b.r.o.