GOODNIGHT, METAL FRIEND #29

Tried to hit 30 total mixes by the end of the year, but just missed it. I love doing these, and will continue doing them into the new year. This weird thing I started doing as a little hobby during the start of the pandemic is the one thing that’s truly stayed with me from that time!

When I started using the Headspace app to fall asleep, I loved the Warm Engines clip. And, well, I love metal, but falling asleep to metal is very hard. Even some of the more doom – drone stuff includes DRUMS and shrieks and stuff, so that doesn’t work well for sleeping.

I didn’t really know it was a genre, but “dark ambient” was what I was looking for, and even then there are many variants of this sub-genre. Some is still pretty grating, with loud parts and and shrieks and other sudden bursts of sound.

So rather than build a playlist on on a streaming music service, I start sourcing (and purchasing) music from Bandcamp, and figured out how to “mix” songs together like a DJ, and I absolutely love it.

My online pal DJ Shotski start DJing polka music around the start of the pandemic, and now she DJs at festivals and events. Maybe I can DJ some planetarium or spooky art galleries some time! DREAM BIG.

To listen to more, you can find all my mixes on Mixcloud, or read all the Goodnight, Metal Friend posts here on my blog.

NOBODY CAN COMMENT

Sure, paying someone to “handle you socials” is nice and all, but you can do the same thing with the format of your choosing.

Millie doesn’t have social media on her phone. Someone else handles her Instagram and Facebook pages, the only social platforms she hasn’t deleted, and she went to therapy to handle the constant bullying she has faced online. It’s hard to escape the fact that people are obsessed with everything Millie says and does. The actor has been inappropriately sexualized for years, something she’s tried her best to ignore, but the effect of trolling and harassment has been severe. Before she deleted Twitter and TikTok, Millie had been constantly bombarded with hateful messages, angry threats, and even NSFW missives from adult men.

Now Millie only speaks directly to fans via blog posts that read like diary entries on the Florence by Mills website. It works because, as she says, “Nobody can comment.”

NOBODY CAN COMMENT. I love this.

We don’t owe ANYONE a direct line of communication.

Want to make a comment? Eh, go start your own site, or post it on social media for no one to read.

We owe no one a conversation.

SOCIAL IS TRASH

So TikTok spied on Forbes journalists.

Twitter showing everyone how many times there posts have been seen. What a fucking TRAIN WRECK that’s gonna be for media outlets and labels. I’m sure this will be reversed by the weekend.

The UK based Center for Countering Digital Hate says “the TikTok algorithm takes just 2.6 minutes to show vulnerable girls videos touting restrictive eating plans and self-harm content.”

When anyone asks which social media network I’m looking to join next, I tell them NONE. I have this website. A few newsletters. An email address.

Bye.

BLOGGING

Fun interview with Rayne Fisher-Quann over at Substack:

Love the part at about the 15:30 mark, where Hamish McKenzie brings up blogs, and what a time that was.

And wow… it fucking was. I mean, I started a music blog in 2001, which was read by some people at AOL Music, which helped me get my foot in the door in 2006 when I got a three month contract gig.

That small bit there is WILD to think, and something I discount so much.

A few years later, in 2008, in the middle of the boom of Buzznet buying up music blogs where I was approached for “acquisition” (and said no), I was asked if I wanted to start a metal blog for AOL Music. That relationship and opportunity existed because of BLOGGING.

I had airfare and a hotel room for three nights in Oslo Norway because of blogging.
I shared one of those luxury boxes at a NBA game with people from Elle magazine because of my music blog.

These days I mostly update Google Sheets and build email campaigns, so a little less glamorous, but I think that’s why I love writing my HEAVY METAL EMAIL newsletter so much, because the ability to reach people via websites and email newsletters is still able to change lives.

USEFUL WORK

Seth Godin with the heat on the whole GPT3 thing:

If your work isn’t more useful or insightful or urgent than GPT can create in 12 seconds, don’t interrupt people with it.

Technology begins by making old work easier, but then it requires that new work be better.

If we can stop writing boring text and “good enough” copy to appease search engines, then we can get to writing better material.

We can write scripts for video, and emails to influential people to affect change. We can write insightful instructions to get everyone on the same page, and move things in new and efficient ways.

ALL IN THE DOSE

Finally re-found this quote from Joe Holder:

“sometimes, all the time, never”

don’t think of exercise as an “all the time” activity—key is just to not let “sometimes” become “never”

don’t think of “junk food” as a “never” occasion— key is to just to not let “sometimes” become “all the time”

it’s all in the dose

Joe Holder via Twitter

PULLING FOCUS

This quote rattles my bones:

‘I was working in film production and was responsible for what’s called “pulling focus” – as the character moves across the scene, the focus puller keeps them in focus. That’s what I did for 10 years, mostly for commercials. But commercials are the most transient things you can possibly make. It’s so much energy, but they last for 30 seconds and are gone from the world. I wanted to make something more permanent.

Adam McDermott of Linus Bikes

GET BUSY BEING BORING

It’s a good thing we have “generative AI” now, so we can stop paying such high prices to those greedy designers, artists, photographers, and other creative folks who want things like a “living wage,” or “health insurance.”

Stock art is one thing, but now we’re gonna have computers help make it, too, so even more stock art can be out there in the world, thanks to Adobe, which tries to sell it as “Amplifying human creativity.”

Absolute trash. A race to the bottom and no one wins.

We had a vibrant, thriving blogosphere. Then came the greedy corporate bastards who bought everything up, drove down costs by paying writers shit, and quality suffered.

Now, years later, the common wisdom is “blogs are dead,” all without realizing that it was the tech-industry shit lords who turned blogs into “micro blogs” to funnel traffic to their bloated, ad soaked, tracker stuffed shit sites.

So for the past 10+ years we’ve been pouring our “content” like photos and writing and jokes and witty banter into these social media platforms, and once we stepped off the noisy train we realized the blog world is a wasteland. It’ll take years to get back to anything we used to have.

I’m done putting these rants on the very platforms I wish to destroy. Why should a single bit of my 20+ years of experience and wisdom make their distraction shines a penny more?

Oh, but more people will see it on socials!

Bull shit.

The open web is far grander and wider than a crap social media platform. Everyone needs an email address to sign up for a social media account, and every single smart phone comes with an email app already installed.

I’m done, so done with this social media nonsense.

And now we’re gonna fill with with “generative” art? And stories? And posts? And music?

We deserve the bland, monochrome future we’re getting.