I started in Phoenix, went down to Tucson, and then all the way back up to Sedona, Monument Valley, Bryce Canyon and Moab. Finished in Denver.

I went with two of my friends, who are seasoned travellers and have travelled a similar route before. I have been to America before, but only to New York, DC and Florida, which felt like a different country from where I went.

Here are some of my niche observations.

1. Backdrops I know, but never seen before

Having always watched American films and played video games, these Southwestern cliffs and rock formations have always been in the backdrop of my mind, even though I have never seen them with my own eyes. It felt like waking up from the Matrix.

Places I have always seen but never actually been to. I had a strange sensation that I had seen all these places before.

2. Impending danger

Something I have felt here is that every part of America seems to be hazardous in some way. There is some kind of danger in the hills, and everyone seems fine with it.

• Phoenix - ultra-dry 42-degree heat

• Tucson - ultra-dry 42-degree heat (plus methheads stalking the streets)

• Sedona - wildfires (Sedona was on fire when we were there), aliens and strange people

• Williams - Republicans (Confederate T-shirts, Charlie Kirk memorials), the type of bars you peek into and just immediately walk away

• Monument Valley - Navajo hostility. I was quite intrigued to stay on a Native American reservation, maybe even speak to someone. But the vibe was extremely hostile. The cashier wouldn’t look us in the eye. Then in the McDonald’s, there were some guys just being ultra shifty. A white family walked in, and they started whispering to themselves, and then looking over at us.

• Colorado mountains - Almost perfect in every single way. Except everyone was getting a little short of breath and a headache because apparently it’s at 3,500m altitude, and people need to sleep with oxygen. They had oxygen bars like ‘come get your air!’

I kept wondering, where is like ‘good’? here. Like safe to live. Maybe I’m too soft and eurobrained. But it seems like most places in America are idyllic; HOWEVER, watch out for the guns/extreme heat/tornadoes/hostility/bears/chemicals.

3. Strange chemicals in the food

Everyone always says that it’s all slop here, and don’t get me wrong, it is slop heaven. But there are actually so many healthy choices, and Whole Foods is basically like Waitrose. Walmart has a fresh fruit section too. I had two steaks when I was here, and they were both maybe the best I’ve had.

Having said this, there is definitely something poisonous in the water and food here. I am convinced. I always just feel permanently a bit wrong. My shit becomes irregular. It changes consistency; the timing is all off. I feel sudden urges, and then other times I can’t go for like 2 days. I don’t even eat crazily; sometimes we ate only twice a day.

I read some of the labels here, and they are nuts. Literally a huge paragraph of chemicals and random additives.

I scanned my Yuka app on an A&W Root Beer, and it said that aside from the SEVENTY-TWO grams of sugar, it has E150 and E211, which are carcinogenic, weaken the immune system, and have adverse effects on reproduction and the liver.

Yuka immediately flagged this as 0/100 = BAD.

72 grams of sugar is 144% of your Daily Value. This means that after one bottle, you’re already overcooked by 44% on your sugar intake.

I gulped some of this root beer at Denver airport, and it might have been a placebo effect, but I just felt bad. My organs felt hurty. Maybe I’m infertile now.

4. Ice obsession

Americans have a strange obsession with ice. I realised that in every hotel, there is an ice machine, and there are signs all across the hotel to guide you to this ice machine. In every hotel, there is a small pot to STORE YOUR ICE. This is essential, apparently.

Someone on Reddit had the same observation.

5. Stuck in time

For the most advanced, richest nation in the world, America is strangely behind in some ways. With payments, you still need to sign the cheque and then give it to the waiter, and they will manually put all these payments through at the end of the day. Sometimes cheques would clear more than a week after I paid.

Again, I might be slightly London-brained (London is almost completely cashless now), but it seemed really strange to me. I literally didn’t know what to do, and the nice IHOP waitress had to help me out. Where I’m from, you just tap the card and leave, and the money is out of your account instantly.

Right at the end of my trip, I went to Denver airport, and it looked like it was from the 70s. Quite cool on the ‘newer’ side, but on the original side there was literally no board to see if my flight was happening. I had to just have faith while I went through security.

10/10 trip.

The issue is that when you’re new, and you first start making some money, you jump online and then start searching for “how to make money online”.

You start to get stuff like this:

To be honest, all it did at the start was fill me with excitement. I remember seeing one YouTube video about 2 years ago where a guy was talking about making £100k in a month, and I was completely blown away. I never knew it was possible to make that much, I didn’t know the system would allow people to make this.

However, the danger is that your numbers get completely warped. You can make £2,000 a month in your first six months, which is a huge achievement, but because you haven’t retired your mother on £300k a month, you might as well not bother.

A real example

A founder I met on Skool, who is a similar age to me, runs an email marketing agency that does $71,641 per month. He is gracious enough to be transparent about his numbers, which I really respect, and I think reveals a lot.

What is important here is the $53,000 in expenses and the paying of a salary. Most newbies don’t understand these things. I didn’t know them until I found out the hard way.

This founder was so graciously transparent about the money, which is rare to find. I really like that he has done this because it shows the reality.

People flex online about doing “100k months”, but it means almost nothing to me now without knowing the profit margin.

SO so many businesses do not make the profits you think they do, and some don’t even profit at all. You would be amazed how many businesses do not make money.

It is quite rare for restaurants and cafes to break even. Businesses go bust literally every day. The failure rate is so high. 90% do not make it to three years.

Knowing this, I would have approached things differently.

Millionaire at 22, broke at 29

Another amazing video I saw recently was this guy below – JT Franco. Never heard of the guy before I saw this video, but I thought it was so transparent and interesting about how lifestyle creep and business spend can just get way out of hand.

This guy was literally making $500,000 per MONTH in revenue, but spending all of it on lifestyle and acquiring even more business. It all came crashing down, and he had to fire everyone. Now he is broke.

My numbers

In July, I had a total revenue before tax of £6,340. This was broken down as follows:

• Client 1 – £1,250 p/m

• Client 2 – £1,450 p/m

• Client 3 – £1,690 p/m (variable £1,000-£3,000)

• Client 4 – £750 p/m

• Client 5 – £1,200 p/m

  

Business spend is around £1,400. Biggest spend is freelancers. Other small spends are software, such as CRM, and a LinkedIn tool to acquire more business.

My gross profit margin is around 70-75%, but I also work in the business myself, and this is pre-tax.

Is the risk necessary?

Annoyingly, what happens when you make money from a business is two things.

1. You start to lose touch with the value of money. Because it’s easy (or easier) to come by, you start to spend it, because in your mind it’s not like getting a paycheque; this money is basically ‘free’ money.

2. You see the correlation between spending more money on outreach and client/customer acquisition and revenue. Therefore, you settle on “gotta spend money to make money” and start slashing your profit margins to get to higher revenue.

It’s hard not to do. I walk around places in West London, and you realise there are levels to this game. If you walk around West London in the right areas, such as Chelsea, you will see wealth that makes you cry.

Townhouses in London are in the millions. Charlie Morgan is posted up in one of these now.

The crushing reality is that 6-7k a month is never going to buy you something like this. Not even close. You need maybe 10 times that amount to scrape something like this.

But here’s the trick: increasing revenue (not profit) is a way to justify paying yourself a higher salary, which could help you obtain a mortgage for somewhere like this, or allow you to borrow against your business or investments to obtain a property. You might not even be ‘profiting’ any more than the average Joe, but your revenue and money creation are so much higher; society rewards you for the risk taken. Food for thought.

For example, a person who decides to start running every week will first need to realise that they were not running enough. Specifically, their former self did not run enough. A person who decides to start a business is rebelling against being an employee. A person who decided to start a new hobby realised that they were not interesting or fulfilled enough.

Those who cannot progress, or transcend, are people who cannot rebel. They can only follow what has been laid out for them; only follow instructions. But when you come to do something outside of your normal behaviour, the instructions are thin, and you have to find them yourselves. And the more courageous the change, the thinner the instructions, until you drift past the last star, and you are doing something that nobody has ever done, and instructions do not exist.

Those who never rebel will always find themselves falling short. They are waiting for handouts and guides from people who will never give them the true secrets, only guides that are long expired by the time they reach them. They will never transcend who they are, and remain in a childlike state, constantly nervous and worried about the world.

Those who succeed are constantly in the unknown.

Small rebellions are necessary

A rebellion by definition is:

To transcend means:

In the modern world, much of our lives are instructed. There is a set path for most things and a ubiquitous safety blanket.

Know your assigned path, and break it

We are all assigned a path in life, stemming from the family you are from and the area you are born in. There are acceptable paths and unacceptable paths. Then there is the unknown.

Most people will choose the acceptable path, or lamely limp along it. Just enough to not have the derision from their parents, family or community. But they will not fully commit to it, which is why their lives feel like a slog.

Those who pick the unacceptable paths are sometimes interesting, but often just picking the anti-path. Their family wanted them to become a doctor, so they became a DJ. It might seem like a rebellion, but really you’re just creating anti-matter in your future. You just created a reverse version of the path you were assigned, and you’re still following it, just on the other side.

I admire all people who decide to take the unknown path. To carve out a piece of the world. To make an active decision to change the future. To rewrite the rules.

History is rebellion

Some of the greatest figures in history have been rebels who appeared to make a success of it. We love a story of rebellion, a lone wolf who defies the establishment. Think of how many films and books are based on this concept. Why is this? Why do we all relish in the rebels of history?

The foundation of many histories is built on rebellion. Christopher Hitchens once famously said that the USA is the only successful rebellion that has occurred. All other revolutions have either been reversed, cancelled, or taken a grossly different path than the one promised.

Abandoning the regular type life

Imagine your dream life. How different would it be from the current life you are living? I can imagine that if you have great aspirations, then it looks a lot different from the life you are currently living.

This means, by clear example, that to change your life you need to leave your current one. You need to tear down what is currently in your life in order to rebuild. It’s you vs you, and someone has to die.

Most struggles stem from an inability to abandon the current path. But what I find crazy is that most people don’t even like their lives! They hate their partner, hate their job, hate the situations that they are in, but still go “well that’s just life”.

People spend their lives defending a life that they don’t even like. They defend it in ways by saying things like “That’s just how it is” and “it’s different for me” and “maybe next year!”

I think about death a lot, and I think about what I’ll think about when I know I am going to die.

I believe that all entrepreneurship is a rebellion. They are rebelling against the regular rules of the world. Earning money outside of how you are meant to earn money. You are making your own rules. It is never about the money. It is about the power and the experience. This is my own personal rebellion in my life.

Retardmaxxing

A new philosophy has emerged from the ashes of the internet called retardmaxxing, which was invented by Elisha Long. Marc Andreessen famously supports it.

The idea is essentially a form of neo-Stoicism – to remove internet-fuelled overthinking, and simply live righteously from the spirit. Listening to your gut reaction and acting how you want to act.

The entire channel is a beautiful rebellion. Everything is about rebellion. Breaking free of the chains of modern life that we put on ourselves. I owe the title of this essay to him.

His entire channel is about living with thumos, with spirit. Acting from the spirit, instead of the thinking mind. The thinking mind only leads to overthinking and overall misery.

His ideas of ‘riding the tiger’, ‘chewing glass, breathing smoke’, and ‘sucking the juice out of life’ and ‘send me’ are all based on rebellion. Acting in a way that is completely natural, that calls on the spirit, free from the chains of judgement or embarrassment.

I have applied this to my own life, my own business, and it’s brought me a lot of clarity and success.

Rebellion is regaining something that was lost

I have a career trajectory that I am very happy with and make good money now, and work as little as possible.

But really, what I am most happy with is the power I have in my life, and the perspective that this journey has given me. I can say whatever I want. I can decide to take holidays because I feel like it.

It has changed me completely. I could never go back now. Even if I went flat broke, I would find a way to regain everything, and more. I now have the confidence that I could always find a way. There is no timeline in my life where it wouldn’t work out.

I also see how people are indoctrinated into becoming docile workers. How money dictates everything. How chaotic the world really is. It also makes me realise everything that I had lost in becoming indoctrinated.

People make a joke of everything nowadays. They jestermaxx. They can’t say anything with a straight face because they don’t even take themselves seriously. I used to be like this, and I know how it is. You make a joke of things, or think you’re smarter than everything, because it covers over your impotence. It’s easier to pretend that you find your lack of power funny than it is to really look at yourself in the mirror and realise you have no power.

I respect the man who blows his whole life up over the man who picked a good job and pays his bills every month, and copes his way through life.

A wonderful story begins when a change in the normal narrative happens. An inciting incident is the beginning of most books and films. What was meant to happen – the ordinary timeline – is now disrupted, thus beginning the story.

The modern world has taken something from people. It has stolen something from your spirit. One big reason people are depressed is that they don’t have enough wins. Enough achievements. They are living in a cage, with absolutely no rebellions of any kind.

Every time you rebel, you enter a new world. A new phase of your life.

This is the question I started asking myself over and over again. I’m not sure why some people get this idea stuck in their mind, but for me it happened in 2023. But the result of asking this question to myself every single day means that I think I have a pretty good pulse on the best opportunities right now – the zero-to-one opportunities.

Even though I am pretty good at avoiding shiny object syndrome now, I still collect these ideas secretly, just in case it all blows up one day.

A zero-to-one opportunity

A zero-to-one opportunity is a business opportunity that someone can start who has no idea about business. This could be things like:

• Dropshipping

• Amazon FBA

• Freelancing

• Trading

They are methods of making money that the layman can achieve. If you have never started a business, or done anything but be an employee, then you can start these businesses today if you wanted to.

Don’t fall for the idea that businesses are easy

Be wary of people telling you that businesses are easy. Businesses are easy to start, but making them a lasting success is the real skill.

As MJ DeMarco outlines in his CENTS framework (a framework for deciding whether a business is a good idea or not), the “E” is Entry.

Quite simply, if the barrier to entry is too low, as in, it is too easy to start, then by its nature it is a bad business, because everyone will be doing it, and there will be no competition.

Copers (usually anonymous, faceless YouTube comments) will say “that market is saturated bro”. I don’t believe in markets being saturated, and nothing is now. As long as there is money, there is money to be made.

It is the business vehicle or individual which is going in the wrong direction or just doing the same thing as everyone else.

My favourite zero-to-one opportunities

Here are two ideas that I think are really good. If I were not doing what I am doing now, I would be going in on one of these ideas:

⭐️ 1. LinkedIn ghostwriting

LinkedIn ghostwriting is booming right now. Basically, how it works is that you position yourself as a LinkedIn expert, and then you charge a fixed retainer to run people’s LinkedIn accounts. As it is a corporate platform, people will pay a lot.

I have seen people charge over £3,000 per month for some of these services, and some even charge £5-10,000 upfront for LinkedIn advisory. As you can position it to be essential to closing larger deals, people justify the cost.

⭐️ 2. Ecom emails

Ecommerce is still a booming industry. Offering emails to these businesses is also a booming industry.

Max Sturtevant type business. It’s a tricky business with a lot of moving parts, but there’s so much money in it.

⭐️ 3. Writing courses

Writing is becoming incredibly popular as people as spending most of their days stuck indoors typing on the internet. Most people then wonder “could I actually get paid for this?”

A friend of mine has basically made it from one writing course on Udemy:

https://www.udemy.com/course/writing-with-flair-how-to-become-an-exceptional-writer/?srsltid=AfmBOooIELrk2eOc8_L-nyGeISd4Z6nTDw42oDjzHkeJFgeaC2Hpobj4

Highly recommend, and recommend as a business model too.

If today is your first day in business

Business is hard and takes years. Online advice will tell you it is easy and fast. Most business ‘advice’ out there is just a funnel for a digital product. Business education is a colossal industry. Maybe even as big as business itself. The adage of selling shovels in a gold rush is certainly true and more true than ever before.

Most rapid business successes are course sellers. If you trace the income back, it’s always a high-ticket course, or some kind of mastermind, mindset selling.

Grand ideas rarely make it.

When people tell me “I have a great idea for a business”, I immediately check out. It seems to me that they have fallen at the first hurdle.

Instead it should be “I have spotted a great opportunity for a business”, or “there is a gap in this market”.

I tried trading, dropshipping, ecom, blogging with ads, and it was all fairly dead, until I just started freelancing in an industry that I knew needed the help. I followed the demand, and made a fairly decent business.

Most of the best businesses I know are boring. The idea is not shiny. It is just helping people out, or sorting a particular mundane task. The tasks are too complicated or boring to sort out themselves, so paying for it is easier than doing it yourself.

I was brand new to the game, and that’s what everyone was doing. I was desperate for money myself, so I was just doing anything and everything to ‘make it’. I still have Substack because I love it, but now I just write whatever.

Now, after 2/3 years, I have actually learned something about making money online. I still watch Iman Gadzhi videos because they’re cool as fuck, but I chuckle at the advice. I’ve actually done it now, so I know what BS is and what is legit.

My own business

I started writing financial articles, and this is still what I do. Now it’s a full agency. It works really well. We make around £5-7k every month and do some fantastic work. Interest is increasing.

Ultimately, it is just very cool and having a business like this makes me quite a cool person, which was the aim all along.

What actually works

Businesses need copy and content more than ever. Now, in this age of AI slop and general screen addiction, businesses are looking at all their competitors who are doing heaps of content and getting loads of business. They are panicking.

Therefore, content services are in demand more than ever. But now, you need to approach it as a strategy, not the physical work.

Software advances and AI mean that execution is now cheap, almost worthless. I can literally go on ChatGPT, whip up some slop, whack it on LinkedIn to schedule every single day for 100 days and pay someone in Asia to message everyone who likes it for me, all for less than £100 a month. How are you going to then sell an article for £200?

The trick is strategy. The catch with the above method is that, fundamentally, it just doesn’t work. Nothing in life comes easy, and if you think you can just hack your way to money, it won’t happen. Some people on LinkedIn say stuff like “I just fired my whole sales/marketing team with AI”. Let me tell you, they are bullshitters trying to ragebait you into buying a course or some shit software.

Therefore, you need to be a ‘content expert’ now. You need to tell your clients what they should be posting, how often, and to which audience? They can post whatever they like now with ease, and most of the time they do. But when they get no clicks and no clients, they will be left disappointed. This is where you come in.

Pick a niche

Yes, you need to pick a niche.

Generalists don’t exist anymore. I myself do finance, and only finance. You might be thinking “maybe I should do finance” but you should not do something just because you read about someone else doing it.

I made this mistake before and thought “maybe I should do email for ecom” just because I saw people making money from it and thought that would be easy. But I don’t know anything about ecom or email marketing, so it never happened.

Remember, nothing is actually easy, and in fact, you should look for the hardest and most unique thing to focus on, because otherwise, everyone else is going to do it.

How many people do you know doing financial content marketing? Not that many. This was my epiphany, and it turned out to be the right bet. You should do something that has market validation (other people are doing it), but is extremely rare and difficult to do, so that you are competitive.

For me, it made sense to do something in financial marketing because I had already done it as an employee. Therefore, it just made sense to do what I did as a job, but freelance.

You must do the same for your journey. Find your best experiences and contacts and lean on them.

Don’t get psyopped. A job is a great path

If you are young and/or a student with no work experience, just get a job first, and try lots of side hustles. Running a business is harder, with a much higher failure rate, than having a job. Only people with ADHD and something to prove (me) are good at running businesses.

Unless you are extremely talented or driven, it’s likely your business will die after 6 months if you don’t know what you’re doing. I’ve seen it happen first-hand now multiple times.

Plus, jobs are noble. Don’t fall into this theme that a 9-5 is slavery, and once you get a job, it’s over, and you will stay there forever, and you have joined the goycattle who are forever cucked by the system. You think you have a based take, but you are being brainwashed by influencers because you’re lost in life.

There are so many fantastic, fulfilling jobs out there that will pay you a lot of money and develop you as a person. And for all young men out there, trust me, women find jobs attractive. They find ambition attractive, they actually don’t care what you do. It doesn’t matter if you work some dead-end retail job; all that matters is that you do good work and support those around you.

You can also quit a job anytime you like. I have quit like 10-15 jobs in my life, you can literally just leave.

The majority of successful entrepreneurs I know have spent years as an employee. It’s actually very rare to find an entrepreneur who has never worked a real job. Being a good entrepreneur is about knowing your industry extremely well. Are you going to know it better than someone who has worked in it?

Plus, I would say that my most impressive client (in terms of money and achievements) is a CEO who has been an employee his whole life. Don’t drink the Kool-Aid.

Finding writing clients

Things in demand in 2026:

• Writing SEO articles (and doing SEO strategy)

• Ghostwriting on LinkedIn

• Ghostwriting on Twitter

• Writing email newsletters

• Writing ad copy

All these things I have seen people make full-time incomes from. Almost all marketing now is doing something like this. The first two things are what I do. I write all their blogs on their websites and do LinkedIn posts.

Fiverr and Upwork

People cry about Fiverr and Upwork and say “it’s a race to the bottom” and “I get nothing from it”. You’re just not trying hard enough. I have hired two video editors in the last month from Fiverr, and a few months ago a writer from Upwork. It does exist.

Cold email (with a catch)

Cold email works, but trust me, in 2026, volume is not going to work. You can’t just send 2,000 emails a day and hope you’ll get business. I get like 10 emails a day and I just delete them all.

Even when I was doing crazy volume and getting responses, the sales calls are so tough. The way a prospect comes to know you is incredibly influential in sales. If they think you’re some bum scrounging for work in cold email, they will treat you that way. If they think you are the authority in your sector, they will treat you that way.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is so unbelievably slept on. And yet people won’t post on their own or do anything because it’s cringe. I’ve literally made a living from LinkedIn and made so many friends and connections.

Remember, you will die soon.

Stop applying to jobs like a bot

Stop doing ‘Curriculum Vitaes’ and sending trash cover letters. Give the recruiters something to remember. Make an interesting, colourful portfolio piece. Make a video of yourself explaining what you do. Get a following online.

Be at the cutting edge. I remember putting a photo on my CV back in 2016 and everyone thinking I was an absolute madman.

“NOOO, you can’t do that, people don’t put photos on their CV!!!!”

Exactly. I did a bunch of other stuff people thought was weird or cringe. That’s why I got loads of interviews.

Also read this article, which sums this point up perfectly:

velvet noise

how to enter side doors

jobs are search problems…

Read more

4 months ago · 4811 likes · 175 comments · maja

“Do you want to go to a late-night cinema showing?”

I had to take a second to see who had sent this to me. Her name was Layla1. Her profile was nice. Scrolling through, I remember liking her. She had aired my first message more than two weeks prior.

I replied about 10 minutes later, “Okay, when?”

She replied almost instantly, “Tonight?”

She was serious.

I was ‘working’ at home, sitting at my desk, and it was past 5pm on a Wednesday. Could I simply just go to the cinema with a stranger in a matter of hours? I’d have to book a ticket, shower, eat, get ready and then leave, basically right now. I am also a boy, and I am speaking to (ideally) a girl, who will definitely not be able to get ready in that time.

The idea seemed unrealistic, and at best, slightly rushed. Dating should always be easy and relaxed.

But as I sat there, alone in my room, I considered the alternative. For context, this was in July 2023. I had just left a three-year relationship in April. I felt trapped by it, and now I was free. But free to do what? Sit in my room alone? I had a deep desire and almost an obligation to be a spontaneous and fun guy. I started to think: but why shouldn’t I go? Because I am tired? Because I have work the next day? The world is my oyster. Let me break free of the chains of life and be that guy. I’ve been missing out on these wild experiences for years, and here is an opportunity for one. It’s right here in front of me. What do I have to lose?

She was also hot, which I’d be lying if I said didn’t sway my judgement. She had deep brown eyes, and had big, full hair and nice, long legs.

I replied: “Okay sure, let’s go.”

“Yay,” she responded. “What should we see?”

This same-day date was actually happening.

The planning

“Should we see Barbie? I haven’t seen it yet,” I asked.

I suggested Barbie because I wanted to see it. July 2023 was the height of the Barbenheimer fever, and I had already seen Oppenheimer. Barbie was ideal. It was light, had good reviews, and was also a girl film, so I could demonstrate to her that I don’t just like boy films.

“I haven’t seen it either, let’s do it!! :))”

We had to pick a showing time.

“9pm?” I suggested.

She then replied, saying she would not have enough time to get ready for that.

“How about 11:30pm?” she suggested. She was really testing my spontaneity. How late would that even end?

“Where is your nearest cinema?”

“Stratford.”2

“Okay cool. I’ll get the tickets now”.

Tonight was about spontaneity. I bought the tickets and started getting ready. I was really doing this now. How crazy of me to even decide to do this. How exciting that I was becoming the type of person to do this type of thing.

We moved onto iMessage, and we chatted sporadically while we were getting ready.

“What are you going to wear?” she asked.

“Probably a shirt”, I replied.

The shirt I had in mind was a green shirt that my ex bought me, and a girl I used to see said I looked hot in, so I had the verification from multiple women that it was nice. I am convinced that straight men have no inherent fashion sense. We just A/B test our clothes based on what women tell us is nice until we get laid.

One thing I’ll never forget she said was: “I’m going to wear something pyjammyyy”. She just invented ‘pyjammy’ as a word, and somehow I knew exactly what she meant. I still think about this three years later. Genius.

Once more unto the breach

Around 10pm, I left my flat. The weather was good, so it was warm enough for a light jacket. We were texting on the way.

When I was on the tube, she was telling me that she met a sweet old couple on the train and that they were moving to Italy. I liked that she did this. It’s nice when people have the bravery to speak to strangers and ask them about their lives. I thought about speaking to someone, but nobody looked friendly on my tube.

I got to Stratford early, which I do for every single date. Helps me scope the area, check the cinema is still there, and get used to everything. A friend of mine said that on a date, he “needs to have complete control of the narrative”, which I think is exactly the feeling.

The cinema was fairly lively at this time, which made me feel better because the shopping centre was almost empty, as if it was shutting.

The call

About 10 minutes later, she started calling me.

I’m not a pussy when it comes to people calling me. I will pick up. But a little lightning bolt of anxiety sparks through you when you receive an anonymous phone call. You consider ignoring or hanging up.

I had no idea why she was calling me, but I guessed that she was already here, or lost, so I should probably answer.

She sounded a little frantic on the phone, like she had been running. There was a slight hum in every pause in speech, as if she was humming with energy, and when she wasn’t speaking, she needed to hum like a fridge.

“Hey, ummm, I think I’m nearly here, but can you come out and get me?” she said, the words coming out in one string like they were all back to back.

“Hey, uh, okay, where are you?”

“Ummmm, I’m out by the Overground. Can you come and, ummm, get me?”

The first alarm bell went off. I felt that drop you get in your balls when your spidey senses are tingling. Something was wrong. It wasn’t a big thing, but Stratford is not hard to navigate, and you are naturally funnelled into the shopping centre. So why does she need to be picked up? Also, anyone who knows London will know that Stratford at night is dodgy. It’s not the kind of place you go wandering about on your own, looking for a mystery woman late at night. Was I about to get jumped?

“How about I walk to the edge of the shopping centre and I’ll meet you there?” I replied.

“But can’t you, ummm, come out and get me?” she said. I could hear people in the background.

“Nah, nah, I’ll meet you in here. See you in a bit,” I said and hung up. If I were about to get robbed, then I would at least be in camera view.

I walked through the shopping centre to the Overground side and was starting to feel dread. At least if I got robbed, I could go to bed early. I considered just going home, but it was slightly too late to leave. After all, I had some element of responsibility for her now, and she was looking for me. Plus, I’m no coward. I agreed to be here, and this is the task in front of me. Time to lock in.

I reached the edge of the shopping centre and waited for a few moments, looking around for a mystery woman roaming around in the neon jungle.

Looking through the doors and across the bridge, I saw her, and a wave of relief washed over me. She was real, she looked happy (she gave me a little wave), she was not with anyone, and she was hot in real life as well.

She embraced me with a big, squeezing hug.

“Ooh, Harry Styles, hello.”

I laughed.

This is my favourite comparison, as I like Harry Styles, and he is hot and cool, so they’re calling me hot and cool.

Twice now, it has been Jenna Ortega, which I don’t know what to do with, or Bill Skarsgard, or some other random prepubescent white boy they saw in something. People often compare me to looking like other people, or say I look like someone they know. I guess I have a transferable face.

There was no explanation as to why she wanted me to come and get her, but I felt much better immediately. Time to relax into the reality – I was now on a nice date with a hot girl, she was super chatty, and we were on our way to see Barbie.

Going to the film

Walking through the shopping centre, it was immediately obvious she was slightly off the rails. I like chirpy girls, but this was a lot.

She spoke incredibly quickly, like the words were pouring from her, and the humming was almost like a strange, loveless orgasm she was constantly having. My fridge analogy was best; the phone conversation was just how she spoke all the time.

Most alarmingly, it seemed she could not hold a thread of a conversation without branching into a different one. She was glitching into different conversations.

It was like: “Oh my god, so, umm, I was in Zara yesterday and I was thinking about whether I should buy the white top or the black top, and my parents have always been really close which was really nice for when I was growing up, but then on the way here that old couple I was speaking to said they were going to Italy at the end of the year, isn’t that crazy?”

“Yeah,” I said, after a pause.

I put it down to nerves. I wondered if she might be drunk or on drugs. It was 11pm after all, she might have been out with the girls, or drinking while getting ready. Sometimes people on first dates are nervous and then wildly overshare to take control of the situation, or get drunk to get over the awkward first meeting.

Her cinema order

When we got to the cinema, she started speaking to random people. She walked up to this group of teenagers, as if she knew them, and asked them what they were seeing.

“Uhh, Insidious…” one of them said in that deep teenager voice way.

“Mm, enjoy,” she said. They were looking at me for answers. I had none. I realised this is what the old people she met on the train were subject to.

“I’m going to get a Tango Ice Blast, mmm”, she said.

“This is my dad,” she said, before I could reply about the Tango Ice Blast. She put her phone in my face with a picture of some old guy on it in a linen shirt on some holiday.

“Cool.”

She ran up to the desk when it was free.

She ordered:

• A Tango Ice Blast

• A large popcorn

• Smarties

• Ice cream

I don’t think she intended to order the other items. She wanted the Tango Ice Blast, but then just stumbled into ordering the rest like a runaway train. I was seeing wild impulse in real time. I offered to pay, but she insisted she would pay.

I got myself a regular popcorn. At this point, I was looking forward to sitting down and also getting her seated and calm, although this Tango Ice Blast was probably about to send her flying.

Settling in

First thing she did when we got to our aisle was drop her popcorn all across the floor.

“Oopsie!”

She was walking up the steps in these wedge heels, and her hands were completely full of all the stuff she ordered, but she insisted on carrying it all. She tripped a little and just lobbed the box all across the floor and all over the seats.

“Don’t worry about it”, I said. My stress levels were rising a little. We crunched over the popcorn to our seats.

Once we were seated, she took her shoes off. She was now barefoot. She then kind of snuggled into me, which I didn’t mind because I thought she was attractive, but to be honest, it was way too much, too soon. She started touching my face a little, but in sort of a touchy-feely way, like when people take shrooms

She started taking a video on Snapchat of the cinema and then put me in it, and I was just white guy smiling3 in the video.

After this initial popcorn launch, sit-down, filming session, and a few gulps on her ice blast, she leaned over to me.

“Just going to the toilet, I’ll be right back.”

“Okay sure”, I replied, and she scampered off. Barefoot still.

A moment of reflection

This gave me some important reflection time. To think about where I was and what had happened in the past 30 minutes.

• The manic phone call asking to be collected from the Overground

• The unstructured conversations

• Speaking to strangers against their will

• The impulsive order

• The spilling of the popcorn

• The uncomfortable physical contact

• The barefoot running out of the cinema, over all the popcorn she’d just dropped

It didn’t feel normal, but nothing about it was abnormal enough to put an end to the date. It was just slightly uncomfortable. I still couldn’t be sure she was sober either.

I sat there watching the trailers, which I love. Thinking “that looks good”, or “that will be shit” or “can’t believe they’re remaking that” after every one.

The trailers were finishing, and she was still not back. About 15 minutes had gone by, and I was checking my watch. I went through all the trailers on my own, and the certification for the film came up, and it went darker.

I could see her ice cream melting in the cupholder. I was getting nervous. The film was starting. This was an awkward point, because all her food and her shoes were here, so she clearly was coming back. But was she in trouble? Did she lock herself in the toilet or something, or pass out?

I sat forward in my seat and looked over to the door, but I couldn’t see her. I decided that if another 10 minutes went by, I’d go and look for her.

But just before the film started, the door opened, and I saw her skip through, with a member of staff ushering her through. She came up to the aisle and tiptoed around the popcorn on the floor.

“Hey, is everything okay?” I asked, looking up at her.

“Yeah!” she replied. “I just went to watch another film!”

This was when the penny dropped.

This was when I realised she was fully bonkers. Not just a bit kooky and excitable. Completely mentally fractured. She had just gone into another screen with no shoes on, sat down and started watching a film. She had been escorted back into her screen by a member of staff.

All the previous behaviour was confirmed to be part of the same abnormal behaviour; they were not just one-offs.

“Right, okay,” I replied, and leaned back in my seat.

Survival mode

In my mind, from this point, I was on full damage control. The new mission was to lock in on this film and leave as soon as possible, with as little trauma to myself, her, or the public. I’d only been with her for 45 minutes at this point.

Now that I was becoming aware of her mental state, I started to see more. The aura of her hotness and bubbly personality was draining away, swirling around the plug every minute. I realised she was not being cute, or drunk, she was manic.

Here are five alarming things that she started doing.

1. Moisturing

She started moisturising. This, in and of itself, is not insane, like if you’re just moisturising your hands.

But she did the full length of both arms and both legs during the film. Imagine her with a leg up on the seat, nice squirt of cream up the leg, good deep rub. It was like she was just in her bedroom.

2. Spitting

Because she threw her popcorn across the floor, and I am a gentleman, she was eating my popcorn with me. But then she had a bit she didn’t like, so she spat in it. Not a little ‘puh puh’ like if you have a little on your lips, but just basically gobbed in it.

I pretended not to notice. I guess no more popcorn for me.

3. Shouting

There is a part of the film where they do a Matrix parody, where Weird Barbie gives Barbie the choice between a high heel and a comfortable sandal, and suggests Barbie should pick the more comfortable shoe and smash the expectation to pick the traditional shoe.

She leaned forward, pointed and screamed “SANDAL!” so loudly that a guy further down the cinema jumped in his seat and then turned and looked back at us. I laughed and put my face in my hands.

4. Asking nonsensical questions

This was another pivotal moment. She asked me about 30 minutes into the film, with dead seriousness, “Have you seen this before?”

I stared back at her.

What are you talking about? We literally agreed to see Barbie together because neither of us has seen it. That’s why we’re here. To see this new film that everyone is talking about. We bonded on the fact that neither of us has seen it.

What do you think we’re here for? Where do you think you are?

“No,” I said.

“Oh okay,” she said and looked satisfied.

Then she turned to me about 10 minutes after and said.

“What’s the plot of this film?”

Again, what do you mean? You’ve just had direct confirmation that I have not seen this film. So how would I know the plot?

“I don’t know,” I said. I was giving up on trying to reason with her.

5. Dancing

She just started dancing in her seat when any music came on. She stood up and started dancing when the film ended. It seemed involuntary.

Escape plan

I was fighting wars in my mind. My emotions were going from laughter to self-pity to deep dread to just nihilism.

I could do a runner. But then this girl will be alone. Out in the world.

The problem is that she was a nice girl, and in my mind, I was responsible for her safety. Even though I couldn’t wait to get away from her, I felt quite concerned for her at this point. I wanted her to be okay. What I really wanted was for her to stop being mental. But that was not going to happen.

I wanted to cry.

Why me? Am I not a nice boy deserving of love? I’m just a boy trying to meet a girl, and now I’m going to end up on the local news. Why couldn’t she have been normal, or at least crazy in a fun way, like she might try and bang me in the cinema, not crazy like I need to think about her running around barefoot or being sectioned.

All the signs were there before now, I thought about them. But I had ignored them for the appeal of a good time.

A deep sense of regret crept up on me. Is this what dating is now? People said it was bad now. I traded the boring comfort of a relationship for the cold horrors of single life. Put me back. I was wrong. I don’t want to be a unique person anymore. I don’t want to live the life of an artist. I miss boring so much. I miss sitting at my nice desk with no problems in my life. How I miss 5pm Caleb.

Freedom

The film was actually good, and I was in such a heightened sense of adrenaline, I feel like it traumaburned into my brain.

The ending was quite poignant when Barbie met Ruth, and it seemed to calm Layla down and touched her quite deeply. She squeezed my arm a little, in a nice way.

The film ended, and she stood up and started dancing to the credits. I was normalised to this now, so I just laughed. Maybe I was stuck up, maybe I should just randomly dance in public. Why shouldn’t you?

We left, and she held her shoes in her hand. She left all her food, and hadn’t eaten the Smarties.

As it was late, the only toilet free was a disabled toilet on that floor. When we left, I went in.

One thing I cannot be certain of is that the toilet was all fucked up, and it could have been her. There was water everywhere, and toilet roll thrown all over the place, hanging off everything. It might not have been her, but I didn’t want to ask. I just did my stuff, washed my hands and left.

I found her outside talking to a member of staff.

She was saying how pretty she was, which I think was really sweet, as she actually meant it, and I could tell that this cinema worker had probably never been called that by a stranger, so she was incredibly shy but giggling.

Extraction

We were out in the cold now, walking through an empty shopping centre. It was about 2am.

I asked her what she did for a living, as I realised I had actually not asked that much about her.

“I’m an air hostess,” she said candidly. It seemed like she was calmer now. Perhaps she was tired.

“Oh cool,” I replied. “Are you off anywhere nice soon?”

“No, I’m currently on medical leave. I was released for stress.”

It was all making sense now.

She probably started munching the peanuts in the aisle in front of the passengers. Or just dancing and shouting on the plane, or just opening the door to get some fresh air. She was clearly very lovely and friendly, which is good for an air hostess, but you need some level of mental stability to do this job, otherwise the planes will crash.

We were now walking down the steps to the Overground area where she had come from. This was where the buses and taxis were.

“So do you want to come to mine?” she said, with a little smile.

You actually thought this went really well, didn’t you?

“Oh, haha, I would love to, but I have this presentation at work tomorrow, so I really can’t tonight. I’ve been preparing to do this for ages,” I lied. I was so close to the end, I needed to be as boring as possible to not derail anything now.

“How are you getting home?” I added.

“Probably an Uber,” she said, pulling out her phone. I did the same.

She tried again.

“We could go for another drink at mine,” she said, “it’s past yours.”

“Oh, really, where?”

“Shepherd’s Bush.”

For anyone who doesn’t know London, Shepherd’s Bush is quite literally nowhere near “past mine”. Some might consider it to be the opposite. This also sent me spinning, because if you remember, at the start, I asked her where the nearest cinema to her was, and she said ‘Stratford’.

Even though there are several Vues in West and Central London? So why did she say Stratford? She didn’t know where I lived at this point either.

It didn’t seem like she was being coy and tempting me. I think she actually thought Shepherd’s Bush was on the way to Canada Water.

I forgot she was not part of this mental plane, so I just said, ah okay, sorry not tonight. This fake presentation I have is very important. Some would say pressing.

I waited for my Uber for extraction, which had about four minutes to go.

She seemed a little disappointed that I didn’t want to go back with her. A strange part of me wanted to, because she was pretty and I didn’t want her to be disappointed, and also a curiosity to see how she lived. But then I remembered how uncomfortable I was being with her, and I was counting myself lucky that nothing had gone too wrong.

The Uber pulled up, and hers was one minute away, so I gave her a hug and said goodbye. She hugged and smiled back, but was clearly a bit let down that the date was over.

In the Uber

Once that Uber door sealed shut and he pulled away, the relief I felt was enormous. I laughed to myself.

I had a chatty Uber driver, which was perfect. I began to tell him this exact story.

My Uber driver was this old Muslim guy in a white kufi hat with a long beard who seemed fascinated but also deeply concerned with my experience. He told me that a young man like me should be careful of women like this. He said this was why arranged marriages are effective, as they have the security and preverification of the community, and I was inclined to agree with him. In times of chaos, boring structure is incredibly appealing.

He told me a story about a girl who got in his Uber who had just been cheated on by her first boyfriend, and was screaming in the car. He was trying to console her, and actually stopped the Uber because she was being too distracting to drive. Eventually, friends from another Uber had to come and get her.

Aftermath

I got home safe and sound and went straight to sleep. I woke up at about 9am, wondering if it really happened.

Later that afternoon, she started showing me videos of her in a changing room. Nothing freaky, just videos of her in different outfits. She was dancing in some of them. I have no idea where she was.

“I think I look like Mary Poppins in this one mmmm”

“Nice”, I replied. I was really happy she didn’t know where I lived.

She texted me, asking if I wanted to go out. I didn’t reply, so she started calling me. She called me three times after. I just ignored her and hoped she would go away.

Eventually, she did, and I never spoke to her again.

Epilogue

This is my best dating story.

I think about her from time to time whenever I think about the rules of society and the rules of engagement. There are invisible rules which we all live by, and sometimes they can be tastefully broken. You often need to warm people up to breaking these rules before you break them, and not break too many of them at the same time. If you do, people will start to feel panicked that you don’t know the rules at all, or that you might start breaking them without control. Layla had no care for the rules, and she just did what she wanted, when she wanted.

Other girls love hearing this story. I tell this when I am on other dates, and it always goes down incredibly well. They find it hilarious, and seem to like me a lot more and love Layla. So really, I have a lot to thank Layla for.

I actually do hope she is well. I tried to stalk her when I was writing this, but couldn’t find anything. I guess she just exists in my memory now.

3

The infection started as a tiny spot on the outside of my calf. Then it became a little more red and a little more sore. Then over the course of about four days, my calf started to swell until I woke up in the middle of the night, and it was humming with pain. The skin was tight. I was officially cooked.

I had just got back from a holiday in Southeast Asia (Thailand and Vietnam), so I immediately knew where I’d likely been caught by this flesh-eating monstrosity. Nothing in England is this ferocious.

My three-week trip involved sparring strangers from across the world in a Muay Thai camp (mainly Russians and Israelis), crawling Ho Chi Minh clubs and riding motorbikes in the Vietnamese mountains. I thought I’d gotten through it all without a scratch.

But the damn jungle got me in the end.

Where did the staph come from?

While I was slowly being eaten alive, I had time to think about where it had come from. As mentioned, the coincidence of this holiday could not be ignored.

Lying there looking at the ceiling, replaying the last few weeks, I realised who gave it to me. It was this guy from China from my Muay Thai camp that I met in clinch sparring.

Anyone who has done any kind of martial art knows this: some people just don’t understand sparring. They go way too hard.

This is because they are either:

1. Trying to appear hard

2. Psychopaths who enjoy inflicting and receiving pain

3. Autistic

This guy was definitely autistic. He didn’t understand that the objective of sparring is to try out moves and stay technical, not just try to destroy each other.

What made it frustrating was that he was strong but incredibly bad. So it just ended in a really tight, intimate cuddle every time.

We would reset, and I would try to show some techniques and explain the concept of sparring, but he was new, and he didn’t speak much English, so he didn’t get it. Back into a struggle cuddle.

“Good war”, he said after.

It was not a war, bro, but it was nice to meet you.

Two days later, I was in Vietnam in a hotel room, and my neck and the back of my head were all spotty. Super itchy. Dude gave me the clap where he had rubbed his head against mine with such force.

It was irritating, but not too bad. I thought it was sunburn initially. For the next two weeks of the holiday, I was healthy, and I got back to the UK in one piece.

But when I got back to the UK, my leg got dry from the whiplash temperature and humidity change. I was scratching my legs from dry skin. And also my head from the rash.

Then I got a little spot on my leg. You do the maths here.

The progression

Three days after first noticing it, I woke up, and it was hurting badly. To the point where it distracts you from everything else.

My housemate kindly applied a bandage with turmeric on it, which she claimed would heal it, but it didn’t, and my bedsheets got yellow stains.

I may have been wounded, but money never sleeps

Before my holiday, I had met a businessman in London who had invited me to a private event. I met him at a free networking event, and he invited me to his private group. What an excellent chance to meet some unique people and get my business off the ground.

I wanted to make a good impression on this guy. A potential prospect was there too, upon his recommendation. I had never been invited to anything like this. The event was at a fancy hotel out West in London. Full of business connections. The very idea thrilled me.

I did not plan on being a Crimean War hospital victim on this day, but I could not call in sick. I just couldn’t. He would think I was bitching out.

Back then, I was hungry for all opportunities, and I had to eat everything up. Nothing would be left off the table. This event was in my calendar, and I was going, even if it killed me.

I remember thinking: “I need to get to this event quickly before I die. Once the event is done, then I’ll die.”

I also thought I could manifest that I wasn’t sick. The disease in me would fear my tenacity and realise it is not safe.

There was free wine at the event too. Getting wasted solves most problems in the short term.

Limping to the event

The event was at The Cumberland Hotel in Oxford Circus.

The event was classy, and at this point, my nerves were outcompeting the pain. Back then, I didn’t know how business events went, so I had no idea what I was walking into. I popped two Lemsip Max Cold and Flu tablets in the bathroom.

I went with an all-black suit with a turtleneck and looked sharp. Too bad, I was physically hollow. Something I didn’t account for was that the tightness of my suit trousers was enough to grip my calves and rub against the swelling.

I looked so good but felt so bad. I was secretly rotting. But anything was worth it for success. I could not face the idea of missing out. I could not face the idea of failure.

The event progresses

Once I was at the event, I said hello to some people, and everyone was friendly. They were curious about what I was doing, and were happy to tell me what they did.

Someone handed me a glass of red wine. My nerves subsided, but then the leg throbbing began again as the Lemsip pills had not kicked in yet.

I had to go to the cubicle every now and then to check my staph wasn’t leaking fluid or that it was still intact. But other than that, things were going well enough.

By about 9pm, I was feeling good again. Three glasses down, Lemsip pills kicking in. My leg felt tight but not sore. Maybe it was fine.

Unfortunately, at one point, a woman was talking to me, and I was struggling to maintain interest due to my fatigue, so I took that as my cue to leave. I’d shaken all the right hands and spoken to some nice people, and also met the potential prospect, who I was going to email. Mission accomplished. I should leave before anything bad happens.

Back out in the street, I was walking Oxford Circus at night, which is always busy, no matter how late. That was an ethereal city lights fever dream.

Day 4 – doctor

The next day, I was feverish. I was sweating all over like crazy. The infection had grown.

Day 4 was the final straw. I called 111.

I went to the doctor, and he looked at it intensely for about 10 seconds, and then said, “I think it’s an infection”.

Yeah, no fucking shit. What else could it be? 7 years of medical school was worth it then? I want you to tell me what is going on. Or give me some stuff and let me end this.

“Yeah,” I said.

“I can see that it’s all yellow on the edges”.

“That is turmeric”.

He put me on Flucloxacillin, which absolutely slaughtered my guts. I literally could not drink or eat without shitting 20 minutes later, and I had to take them for a week.

I did a two-day fast in the end, because I actually needed to leave the house to meet my friend for the first time in person, and it was the only method to not shit myself in public.

The final fast actually brought me through to the other side. Finally, the fever went, and the swelling stopped for good. I lived.

Aftermath

I made a full recovery. Staph is nasty. It can spread to your bones and your organs. Thankfully, due to my overall health, luck and good healthcare access, I was fine. Now I have this hole scar in my leg which is like a bullet wound. It’s a great story.

This is now my favourite scar. It is a tattoo that reminds me of my resilience.

It reminds me of how I went to this event despite the pain. It reminds me how I made a success of this business despite everything. It reminds me that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

I got better, and I was back to the grind, but now with a cool story.

The prospect I met at the event referred me to a client. I went to many more of these events and closed a few more clients.

All worked out in the end.

Social media has been pulled over our eyes for over two decades now, and the true damage from it is now coming to light.

The algorithms have become the norm – people have forgotten what life was like before it, and could not possibly go back.

Fully grown adults have been alive entirely under the spell of social media.

The Social Dilemma raised most of these concerns in 2020, but six years later, we seem to have ignored the warnings entirely, and I would argue that we have reached the final stages – a collective madness.

The key points

Social media is making us mad.

It is making us mad because:

• It creates thousands of conflicting images, ideas and opinions which slowly erode your sanity.

• It hijacks dopamine, replacing real-life pleasures.

• It creates isolation.

The end result is very bad, and is happening already.

In fact, it has already happened.

Why do I describe this as ‘madness’?

Here is the dictionary definition of madness.

Madness typically refers to a state of extreme irrationality, lack of control, or wildly unpredictable behaviour. It is often used to describe actions or thinking that appear illogical or disconnected from reality.

It can also be described as “extremely foolish, irrational, or reckless behaviour.”

For me, semantically, what separates madness from depression or anxiety is the ‘extreme irrationality’ that is specifically ‘disconnected from reality’.

At this point, there is no question about whether social media is linked to anxiety and depression – this is old news now. Almost all studies out there collectively show that social media usage is “significantly associated with increased depression”.

Yet despite this, the social media algorithms march forward and become more advanced and invasive than ever. I believe that the next stages of this are madness.

Why does social media make people mad?

Instead of death by a thousand cuts, we are now facing madness by a thousand voices.

No one particular moment or specific account on social media is particularly damaging by itself. But the collective noise, over the years, is what causes the damage.

I believe there are three key reasons that contribute to the madness.

1. Dopamine hijacking

Dopamine hijacking is basically the main reason that social media makes you depressed. It essentially squeezes out every last drop of your dopamine.

Every notification, like, comment, call, or email will sap your dopamine away. The frequency of all these notifications means that your dopamine has literally no chance to recover – from sunup to sundown, you are exposed.

Years without real joy make people mad.

2. Isolation

Extreme isolation is incredibly damaging for the human brain and spirit.

Social media creates isolation. People spend more time alone than they ever have before, and the effects are showing.

This is a digital version of Prairie Madness. Extreme levels of isolation on the prairie for new European settlers caused them to mentally collapse.

3. Collective hysteria

If your neighbours and all your family go mad, it is likely that you will too.

Politics and social discussion have become wild. People act in bizarre ways now. We all know what Twitter/X is like.

I also believe people just act collectively weird now, for no particular reason.

In Europe between the 14th and 17th centuries, there were several cases of dancing mania.

People would begin dancing in groups, hysterically, for sometimes weeks on end, until the point of death. Nobody knows why.

According to Wikipedia, the “spontaneous spread of this phenomenon through social networks played a significant role”:

“It’s hard to deny that the dancing mania was marked by social contagion exacerbated by stress. Outbreaks occurred along trade routes or reoccurred in the same areas – where people had knowledge of the format, in other words. Beliefs and behaviour can travel just like pathogens.”

Is this just TikTok now?

Maybe that is a stretch. But some of the shit on there seems purely insane to me.

Sometimes I look out of my window and see people dancing in the street, or squatting in front of a camera in some way, and wonder if Dancing Plague is back.

I was in Vietnam once, and this American girl showed me a video of like 100 frat bros dancing in perfect sync outside a frat house, which she found “really hot”.

I found it bizarre to the point of being scary, and then started to spiral about whether this was truly it for humanity, or whether I had in fact gone insane myself and could no longer relate to normal people.

The results of the madness

You can see the madness everywhere.

In your own friends and family. In your partner. In your parents. People say things that aren’t true. People think the Covid vaccine put microchips inside you.

Social paranoia is through the roof.

Even I’m getting a little schizo these days.

People can no longer form normal opinions.

What is considered ‘normal’ now is usually quite extreme, in terms of volume and depth. You can apply this to almost anything.

Emotions are at an all-time high.

Depression and anxiety are through the roof. People are crashing out online all the time in the most strange ways.

People are becoming strange (even me).

How do we fix it?

The problem is that the internet is incredible and immensely useful. It can change your life in the most amazing ways (which it has mine), and will continue to do so.

Unfortunately, the side effect is going completely insane. Seems like a fair trade offer for those who can handle it. But unfortunately, this means that really there is nothing to ‘fix’ if overall the benefits outweigh the negatives.

Plus, the bizarreness of the internet is something that causes it to be so appealing. Who knows what you are going to see when you clock in to your morning scroll? Especially if you respond to such wacky content, you’ll usually see it.

Soft remedies do exist (dumbphones, no-phone areas, even Substack to an extent).

But they are just band-aids to the larger wounds deep down.

Jaron Lanier is one of the smartest people in this space, having written Who Owns the Future? (2013) and Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now (2018), both excellent books explaining very clearly all the problems we are creating.

He describes in the iconic Channel 4 interview how society has been “gradually darkened” by social media.

My solution

I believe that we all are collectively responsible for our society, and that this social media madness is revealing something dark within us.

If I am honest, why do I log on every single day?

It’s because:

• I want money from the internet.

• I want to be seen by interesting people.

• I want the most attractive people to like me.

• I want to discover areas of the internet that no others have discovered.

This is what goes through my own head, and I believe everyone else’s.

The algorithm is just a machine that feeds on this.

Therefore, quelling our own greed is how we fix it. Everything on the internet is created by people and shaped by how we as individuals behave towards it.

However, will I stop wanting these things? Probably not. And I know the internet can give them to me.

So if I just endure the madness spells longer than the next guy, then I’ll win this giant societal slot machine game.

This deep need for competition and recognition is what really creates the problem. I’m not sure how to fix that.

2026 we are launching as an agency, a proper one.

A proper agency to me is one that has a presence in the city.

I think the way I thought about it before was that somehow I would be ‘ready’ for that next step. But as I have told myself so many times before, you will never feel ready.

The next steps I am taking are:

• Hiring a sales rep/appointment setter

• Meeting more team members in London

• Improving sales and positioning Finnus as a marketing solution (because we are)

I made a new About page recently, and took a step up in how I position myself.

I have started to understand that every successful business has momentum, or velocity. You need to display a sense of movement, and that people joining you are part of something.

Reflecting on 2025, we did well, but the missing piece was a proper sales cycle. I took ABC (always be closing) too literally, so I was just taking random shots all the time, attempting to land clients, with no actual process. This meant that I got burnt out super quickly and ended up reaching out to nobody. I landed some good clients and made money but felt like it wasn’t worth it.

I am hiring an appointment setter (a fractional sales guy) to start ramping this up a little more. I have found someone who is ideal and is keen to start. The process has been laid out, and he starts on Monday.

Looking through my leads book too, I have a huge number of leads. I went a little ham on the lead scraping, and I’d say I have a few thousand solid potentials, with another 700,000 cold leads I found from an email guy I used to work with.

For the business itself, I know the idea is good. And we’ve had inbounds too.

I had a free meeting recently with a life coach who told me that in sales, they have something called LAPS.

This stands for Leads, Appointments, Presentations, Sales.

The amount of hot leads coming in, the appointments (i.e., who actually shows up to a call), the presentations made, and those who sign on the dotted line.

If I track this, I can make sure that the sales process stays constant and we actually keep on top of everything.

I will also start selling harder on the lead generation side. Marketing with no ROI feels like pissing money up the wall.

I define moments like this as ‘leaps’. Most of the time, annoyingly, you need to progress slowly, brick by brick, step by step, but occasionally, you need to cut the queue and just fake it till you make it. This is what I call a leap.

This is a leap now.

I want this to be an agency in London, but I have been waiting for permission to make it so.

I kept waiting. But for what?

I already know everything about what it takes to start an agency. I used to work at an agency which got its first office in 2020. I technically already have an agency myself. I already live in London.

What more could I need to know before I start?

One cope I had was that it “could be expensive”. But I also know that one of my clients rents an office in Bishopsgate for £150 per month, for two users. It’s nice too.

Also, most importantly, I love it. I love what I do, and I might be biased but I think we do excellent work. I think our results are great and our content is fantastic. So what else am I going to do with my time? I have nothing else but to go for it completely.

Now I have to spin thousands of plates at once, lose sleep over missed deadlines, and fret about either having too much work or not enough work. At least people think I’m cool now.

Still, there are some good things. Money-wise, we’re in the green. I am at £6,000 a month roughly, pay around £2,000 back into the business for services and software, and the rest I spend on rent, bills and other random things that appear in my life. Last month I did £8,000+, and I still have most of it too.

I still see teenagers ripping £20-30k months online and scream into my pillow when I am 18 months in at 28 and still have no idea how to get there.

But the business itself seems to be a good idea. A content marketing agency for financial services. I thought it would be.

Although growth seems painfully slow, I looked at my Xero account recently, and the numbers have all been going up. Not sure why I’ve become so obsessed with money. I remember my net worth being a -£2,000 overdraft in uni, not including the student loan, and I sat back and thought “I’m actually so fine.”

The most concerning aspect of this is that I am now basically unemployable. I could never work a job again. Partially from pride, but also from the fact that I could not resist finding my own solution to everything. That is partially what made me a bad employee in the first place. Now it feels there is no going back.

It becomes hard to relate to anyone, too. Probably because I’m spinning more plates, people annoy me more.

The real question is: is it all worth it? I’m not sure there is an answer.

I would counter this by saying that it’s not like I had a choice.

I couldn’t work at my corporate job any more. I literally couldn’t. I would lie on the bed and stare at the ceiling in despair when I had to do something or attend a meeting. I remember thinking once that a perk of death would be that I would never have to attend that team meeting double bill on a Monday. It literally bored me to tears.

But what else could I do? I had done English Literature at the University of Southampton, basically got hammered and hung out with friends the whole time, so fast forward 3-4 years, and I had a £45k p/a job as a writer in a fast-growing fintech company. I had really landed on my feet, considering that I had never really ‘tried’ until my third year of university.

I shifted from an insecure working-class bum to essentially a middle-class yuppie who drank oat flat whites in four years. Could I have actually done better than that?

But bizarrely, even though this job had solved all my problems and was an amazing opportunity, I found myself wishing that I would get hit by a bus on the way to work so I wouldn’t have to go anymore. Looking back now, I think the reason it was so terrible was that it was exactly my dream job. I finally got it and realised that’s all it was. I couldn’t fall on the excuse that my dream job was somewhere on the horizon.

My life’s work had been to get to exactly where I am now.

You don’t react in ways you think you will. You think you know yourself, and then you start acting out. You really think you’ll get to a certain point and be like “I’m good now”, but that never happens. Older people always told me this, but I thought it would be different for me.

Within 6 months of my new dream job, I was already goofing off and doing the literal bare minimum and spending the rest of the time playing video games or chatting women up on Hinge.

To not give a fuck was an understatement. But why was I being so selfish? In a cost-of-living crisis, I had landed a dream job in London. If you had said the words to me at uni, “45k+ salary in London”, I would have not believed it.

Everyone else is happy with their job too, some on even less money. So why am I a special snowflake who is too good to work an easy job? Do I feel the need to be better than other people? Yes, everyone does, but it goes deeper than that.

The only thing that had really thrilled me in my time there was the Etsy dropshipping store I ran while at the previous job. It felt like a hustle, somehow that I was finessing the system. The money glitch.

I also started to become really sick of people who just gave up on life. Especially in their 20s with no blockers. But then I took a long hard look in the mirror on New Year’s Eve 2024 and thought maybe I had given up too.

I always had dreams of being the guy. I read about great heroes in history as a kid, about knights and castles and 19th-century generals. But as soon as I realised that I was not going to get it, I began to trim my dreams away, until I was just living month to month.

But I looked at myself in the mirror and decided that it was now or never. I really had to just send life, or I’d stay in this corporate mediocrity forever. It turned out I am not smart or talented enough for anyone to notice me organically, so the only choice is to brute force success.

I’m not sure what caused this shift. I have a few theories:

• The crushed hope that I wasn’t where I thought I’d be at 26-27. I felt lied to. Like society had lied to me about jobs.

• My expectations of life have been irreconcilably warped by the internet, and I simply cannot cope with an average life.

• An unconscious complex after a traumatic breakup in 2023, where if I make a successful business and become rich, that PROVES she and everyone else were wrong.

• The slightly more woo-woo one is that 27 is a sacred age where you spiritually and cosmically enter a new stage of life.

• Some kind of sickness with modern life that has reached a crescendo. I literally cannot accept that my life is standing still.

Likely a blend of all of them. Perhaps it will never matter. I’m certainly not complaining about any of this. I almost don’t want to know. Whatever it is, it’s working.

I have a business now, and we finished our first year of trading and did around £55k in revenue in the first year. Next year should be closer to £70-80k. But I don’t really feel any type of way about this, to be honest. I wish it excited me. But I think it’s because I have realised, depressingly, that this is still a pittance in the context of the big bad world. Is it enough to buy a house? Or buy land? Is it enough to achieve financial freedom for life? No.

I have changed so much, but my actual life and day-to-day have not changed really. I have the luxury of no alarms and no annual leave days, and the ability to drop clients, but I still wake up most working days and spend them at my laptop, take a lunch break, and then come back to it.

2025 has been a tough year for many reasons, but I have to accept that sometimes life is just bad and there’s no way around it. I think when you make an attempt to be excellent in everything you do, the moment everything isn’t excellent, it feels especially more painful.

It will all be worth it one day. Just turns out changing the wealth trajectory of your entire bloodline is kind of hard. But the cat’s out of the bag now, and there’s no going back.

I urge all readers to pause and consider this question for a moment.

Consider this aside from the obvious essentials of food, water, clothes, and rent. Once you have what you need (which, if you are blessed enough to be born in a first-world country, is not too hard to come by), then the whole idea of making money can become a little more abstract.

Think: What purpose is money serving in your life right now? Why do you need to make more money than you have?

This is something I have been pondering for a few years, and the more I think about it, the deeper the discovery goes.

I have always wanted to make as much money as possible, but I don’t think I ever understood why.

Daydreaming at work is where the magic happens

Back when I was daydreaming in the office, I started to have thoughts about my salary and money and where I was going in life.

Here are a few thoughts that I dwelled on:

• How were people rich before money existed?

• If everyone had the same money, who would still be ‘rich’?

• Why would they be rich?

• If money “doesn’t make you happy”, why do we even work at all?

• How come some people work really, really hard (nurses, doctors, teachers, cleaners) and get paid significantly less than others? (including me, sitting in this office, doing nothing).

Sometimes, the simplest questions are the deepest.

Of all the financial information I have consumed in the last two years in starting my agency, nothing has really explained it.

It was only when I quit my job to start a business that everything started to fall into place.

How we become conditioned

Here’s how most come across money for the first time – you see your parents work hard at jobs. Then you grow up, and you do the same work yourself.

This is excellent for the most part. But they install limiting beliefs about your life and what you can do. Limiting beliefs are curious, as they seem to adapt at each level, and certain beliefs seem to creep out at you from the dark that you didn’t know you had.

Quite simply, you are not aware you have them until the task is in front of you.

I had many when I first quit my job to start a business:

• Fear about calling myself a freelancer/founder/entrepreneur

• Fear about doing sales calls or any kind of ‘selling’

• Fear about charging money (am I overcharging?)

• Fear of having no job and having no ‘safety net’

• Fear about tax/accounting/money/costs/stuff I don’t even know

• Fear about people seeing me fail

I didn’t have the confidence to be a better person than I was, and it made me crawl back to my old self.

• “I guess I’m not really an entrepreneur”

• “I probably am charging too much, I am not a real ‘professional’”

• “Entrepreneurship is too risky; a job is much safer”

Growing up poor/average, you learn to get what you’re given because that’s how you are programmed to be.

You get used to phrases said by your peers, which keep you all subdued:

• “Oh well, I guess this is how it is”

• “Most people fail anyway”

• “Just another day at the office”

• “That’s life”

• “You need rich parents”

• “Money doesn’t grow on trees”

I started to realise this and study it intensely. I began to see this and think, if I could get past this, if I genuinely believed I could be rich, it could actually happen.

I was forced to deprogram my mind. It was in this deprogramming that I began to realise what money is. The whole work/reward dopamine cycle is slowly dismantled, as you start to realise that for so many wealthy people in the world, work does not equal money.

You need to carve out a piece of the world

Remember my previous daydream – how did people become rich before money?

They became rich by becoming more powerful or more useful than other people. Money was added after.

It’s not even about the money; money is the byproduct. Money is the smoke that comes from the engine. Money is the proof, the receipt.

Money is actually not real.

Here is what I realised: what we are all looking for is a small piece of the world that we own.

I have been chasing money for about 6 or 7 years, and I could never put my finger on what exactly I was after.

Now I understand entirely.

Our ultimate goal is to carve out a piece of the world.

A real piece of the world, not some illusion of it.

It’s what so many have done before us. Look around at pieces of the world that are all ‘owned’. All the businesses that run things that are owned. The buildings, the land, the houses, the cars and the businesses.

These are pieces of certain people’s worlds. They have carved them out of the world and claimed them as their own. Sometimes generations and generations before you.

Those who were rich before money? They own properties, they own businesses and portfolios, and networks with infinite potential. If they lost all their money, they could get it all back tomorrow.

Is the window closing?

I believe this is why so many people in my generation are depressed now, despite there being more opportunities than ever.

It is because while there are more ‘opportunities’, the world is shrinking so rapidly that carving out any real piece of the world is so much harder.

Everything is rented or a subscription service. We don’t even own our time or attention anymore; social media and screentime strip that away from us.

Our true purpose is to carve out a piece of the world that we own. A house and a small piece of land. A relationship and a community.

Businesses that we own. Networks that need you.

The power to live your own life and have nobody tell you otherwise.

Take ownership of your own mind

It always sounded like BS to me when people would say things like “free your mind” and “become the master of your own mind”.

But I realise now that it is entirely real. And this is the first step. If you have no ownership over your own mind, then you have no ownership over anything.

This means quitting everything that distracts you, addressing vices and toxic behaviours and situations. If you are stressed or anxious, or exist in some kind of chaotic situation, you need to escape not just for the time freedom, but also because you will never have agency over your own thoughts.

Beat your vices, quit your bad habits. Move away. These are objects which make you part of someone else’s world.

Enlightenment on the world in this way has changed everything.

This philosophy I started to see everywhere.

So in any small way you can, carve out a piece of your own world.

I might not be ‘rich’ rich yet. And I am stressed a lot of the time. But I have carved something out. I have a business that I run, and all the work I own as me. I have a network, new skills and experiences.

It might not be as grand as a property or a piece of land just yet. But these small ownerships have given me so much that I now understand it. And the business is just the first vehicle to these ultimate assets.

Start with your own mind and your own time, and see where it gets you.

I first started working in London when I was 19, and at the time, it felt magical.

It was 2018, and after graduating in July, I spent four long months trying to get a job, which, as an English Literature graduate with nothing much but retail and supermarket experience, was pretty tough.

In October, I was lucky enough to find a social media intern job, right in the heart of the city, in Oxford Circus.

I started my job at the end of October, so Christmas in London and the cold were setting in. Something about the cold makes the world seem serious and time seem more finite. When walking through Soho, I remember that I would look up at these buildings, at the top floors, and think – what is inside them? Who is in there? Is anyone in there?

Would this be a place I’d ever see?

From the end of October, with the cold setting in, I began the daily commute on the train from my home town of Canterbury. I would see these sights every evening when I left the office and I remember I would grab the Evening Standard from the man at the tube entrance.

Back then, before Covid, 9-5 Monday to Friday in the office was the standard, and there was no working from home. Therefore, I was commuting from Canterbury to London (2 hours there) and then from London back to Canterbury (2 hours back) every single day.

My day was essentially 5:45am to 8:30pm, five days a week. I would cycle to the train station every morning, board the 6:20am train to St Pancras, jump on the tube to Oxford Circus and be in the office by 8am. That was until my bike got stolen when I was at work (twice), so then I had to get up at 5:20am to give myself enough time to walk.

I was also being paid £950 a month and would pay £700 for the monthly train ticket. I was so embarrassed when I told people this. Especially as some people sailed into £30-40k grad jobs.

But anything was worth getting my foot in the door in the big city, and this was my path, and I held onto it.

A whirlwind of jobs

I crashed out of this job (a story for another day) and went back to working at a supermarket in Canterbury and picking up some freelance writing gigs online.

I had decided to put the big city vision on pause, and resigned to the fact that maybe this path wasn’t meant for me, or maybe I was doing it wrong. But after a few 10-hour shifts stacking crisps and cereal, I decided that I was being a wuss and started to get back into the excitement of London again. But this time I had to crack it.

Even though the job I had was stupidly hard and unrewarding, I couldn’t forget all the times around it. Those pints outside with all the lights, the tall buildings, the ocean of people and endless opportunity, jumping on and off the tube, the nights out.

After a flurry of applications, I landed a new job as a sub-editor in 2019 at a company called Stylus, based in Edgware Road.

Looking back, the timing of landing a job just before the Covid-19 pandemic was some unbelievable luck, and I held this job during lockdowns and all the way until 2021.

When London came back to life, a whirlwind of jobs came through my life as I kept chasing the next big opportunity.

• I went from Stylus to a company called Paysafe as a copywriter in 2021 (finally got to work in a skyscraper in Canary Wharf)

• In 2022, I went to Barclays as a copywriter

• In 2023, I went to Tide as an SEO copywriter

One day, I asked myself: What was I chasing?

More money, obviously.

But in other ways, I think I was chasing something else. I was chasing that feeling of having ‘made it’. That feeling of being rooted in the city at the top of the castle. That feeling of being in one of those buildings. Finding access to secret rooms that nobody else knows. Going places where nobody else had been and my peers could only imagine. Networks of people that would expand my thinking to thoughts I had never even considered.

Like a voyage across a sea.

Soon, a job wasn’t enough, and I realised the vehicle to this kind of wealth would need to be upgraded. This was when I started to look at starting a business online.

Getting into online business

I have come to realise that I am an obsessive person by nature.

This was my true motivation to start a business.

I had everything already with my job, except I had hit a dead end. Plus, I had started to realise what the true vehicle to great wealth was.

To become wealthy, you have to create a competitive moat around yourself.

This means that you have to have something other people don’t have, know something people don’t know, and have access to places people can’t get to. Then you work on putting a price tag on it in smarter and smarter ways. In my mind, this is

Unfortunately, I realised that as a marketing employee in his 20s, with no connections or money, I was going nowhere fast.

I was making a solid salary, with a bonus, but started to realise that the work I was doing was essentially pointless, and that I was building no wealth of any kind. Sure, I could save into an investment account and be rich in 40 years, but it wouldn’t make me rich in the way that I defined it.

From here, I started the pursuit of an online business, and became immediately hooked:

• I started a gaming website called Gaming Kingpin

• I started an Etsy dropshipping store

• I started this newsletter

• I started a website called Desktop Diversions

• I started looking into copywriting, agencies, and other business models

• I started trying to be a popular trader on Etoro

When I was at Barclays, I started the dropshipping store, which was a flash in the pan, until I started to work on something more sustainable, which was freelance copywriting.

This was the side hustle that started to pick up, which has now become Finnus today.

The first invitation

Everything changes when you set up as a business.

Suddenly, letters in the post start coming through about business credit cards, and HMRC starts getting on your case about random forms and payments they need.

Your mindset also starts to shift in an unbelievable way.

You have essentially ripped the guardrails off your life. No longer are you protected by a salary and stability, but neither are you limited by a boss or a company.

Probably for the first time in my life, I was actually free to do what I wanted.

This does a lot for the mind, and you start thinking about all the things you could do. This was when I started becoming more of a content creator, uploading my first YouTube video in May 2024, which is something I never thought I would have the confidence to do.

Opportunities to random events and calls began to come through.

One day on LinkedIn, I received this message:

I am very much the type of person to shoot first and ask questions later.

I could not be certain if this was some kind of mistake, or whether they had actually looked at my profile and considered that I might be the type of person to join a members’ club.

Long story short, I bought an outfit specifically for it, showed up on the day, tried not to look too out of place, and clearly made a good impression, as they let me in.

Becoming part of Home Grown

The first day I went in early January, I sat in a corner and spoke to nobody.

I just went to assess the layout, see what would happen if I went in, and find all the exits. I also had no idea what I was meant to be doing.

Imposter syndrome was bouncing off the walls inside me. That first day at school feeling never goes away (and in many ways, due to the age gap, people probably did think it was my first day at school).

But I always stick to the mantra of walking in like you own the place. I imagine I am the benevolent owner, and these are my guests.

Remember, everyone else is nervous.

After a few months, I had been to a few events, met some people whom I made friends with, and realised that lots of other people were new and had no idea what they were doing. I have come to realise this is the reality for most businesses/events/careers.

Now I feel very comfortable there, all the staff are very nice and relaxed, and lots of other members have been very welcoming.

The highlight was the other week when I managed to get one of their signature blue notebooks to add to my collection.

Attending Meet the Members

Home Grown hosts frequent events called ‘Meet the Members’.

Meet the Members is a self-explanatory networking event. You enter a room by the bar upstairs, where there are a bunch of people who attend the club, and you start networking.

I’ve been to a few of these events now. There was a time last year when I went to several random business networking events in London, so my social anxiety for these events is almost non-existent now.

The event I went to last week on Wednesday had free alcohol for the first hour, after that they tried to pump the brakes a little by making it paid.

I met a variety of people that evening.

I saw James and Tony, two guys I’ve met before who both have a wealth of experience in marketing, and have also given me great advice.

I met a collection of new people too, a guy running a telecoms company, a guy who had just exited a car parts business, a girl starting a payments company, and a guy running the European arm of a communications business.

When the night was drawing to a close, the girl asked me and a bunch of others: “Do you want to go to Home House?”

She was a member there and was taking guests over for a drink and to view the place.

Home House is the original members’ club. It was constructed inside a house built in 1777, and handed down throughout the years to various people, before becoming a members’ club in 1998.

Home Grown exists as a business club spin-off, although it is quickly becoming a competitor in itself, and I learned about Home House’s existence only after I joined.

Walking over to Home House

Home House is just a short walk from Home Grown, potentially just a five-minute walk down one street.

I was aware of Home House’s existence from the website. Home House is known for its extravagant staircase with a nice aerial view, which I finally got to see with my own eyes.

In a place like this, you simply find a sofa and waiters begin to hover around you, making sure you have everything you need.

We had the good fortune of finding a wonderful waiter, who gave us free drinks.

As the others were talking, there was an offer to get a tour of the place, which the others weren’t too interested in, but I took up the offer.

The waiter gave me a private tour of the place, even in the parts that were closed that evening, and told me about his ambitions to leave in January and take a trip to Thailand before starting his business. We bonded more with each other, and the house was merely the backdrop.

When I came back, a jazz band was there to play for everyone.

I was told there is a man who goes there every night, and sometimes spends £1,000 in a single night on booze.

When he brought me back to the main room, I saw a lone old man passed out on the sofa, and I wondered if he was the guy.

I found a good seat and sat back to watch the jazz band play.

Finally inside

I was finally here. Inside one of those buildings that I never knew I could see. It seems like I worked for six years to sit in a chair in a specific part of the city.

I thought back to where I was six years ago, with a supermarket manager having a go at me in the back because I was stacking crisps too slowly. And walking up and down the bike shed after a day in London, feeling that sinking feeling after realising my second bike had been stolen.

My dream is to one day have a place like this for myself. Maybe not the whole place, but just one room like it. At least somewhere far away from any pain of long commutes, horrible bosses, colleagues, and stolen bikes.

I reminded myself of the delusions I had six years ago.

The delusions that I could have my own business and that I could be in a members’ club and be on the top floor of a Georgian townhouse building in Soho.

It made me realise that all the delusions I have now could also happen.

But these delusions get harder to keep a hold of. The world fights so hard to make them seem impossible. I remembered that fire that I had six years ago that made me get on a bike at 6 am in the dark, excited to just see London.

I have been feeling lost this year, and wondered if we all get a limited amount of fire from the day we are born, and I simply burned through mine.

Yet sitting in that chair gave me a flicker. Writing this has reminded me that the vision never left. For me, this is just the beginning. Brick by brick, I am getting there.

I only say this because I didn’t know where it was until after I booked the flights.

Madeira is called the ‘Island of Eternal Spring’ for a reason. The climate there is so strange. Being a small, but mountainous island in the middle of the sea, it catches clouds and rain frequently in the centre, which then trickles down into the rest of the island.

The weather is incredibly random; you could be in a pocket of rain, looking at a beam of sunshine in the distance.

And the reason I went there is linked very closely to this Substack.

Back when I was trying to make something as an entrepreneur, I had no real plan in place, except trying to get followers and find work on various platforms.

In 2023, I posted my first Substack posts about copywriting. Back then, I had no idea what I was doing, but I had one target in mind, which was to try and grow a following online. I had about 20 readers.

I joined a group from who at the time, was the only person I could find who was really specialised in growing on Substack. From here, I remember joining and connecting with a few people on a spreadsheet she had created, one of them being .

Kenny was a very nice guy (and I have since met him in person in London) and he connected me with another financial copywriter called .

Mike and I immediately got on very well and found we had a lot in common. We were running businesses of similar sizes, both writing, both attempting to gain some kind of following online.

We met in London once (when my leg was fully infected and I hadn’t eaten in over 30 hours – that’s another story), and Mike had told me that his mum lived in Madeira, about 10 minutes from Funchal, and that they often visited in March. He told me that I should come and visit whenever I was free.

I jumped on the opportunity, and earlier this year, after a few texts, I had booked a flight and arranged to stay for four days with his mum, step-dad and girlfriend.

I prepared almost nothing. This is one of the perks of being an entrepreneur. You have no need to ask permission for anything. You are also gifted the psychological freedom to think of it in the first place.

Essentially, before my trip, all I knew was that he was going to pick me up at the airport. I had a vague address but nothing else to go on. Amanda (his girlfriend) laughed in the car about the insane trust combined with the lack of planning we had.

But it turned out well, and I had one of the best short trips of my life.

Meeting the neighbour

On the third night, their neighbours came over for dinner.

Emmanuel and his wife and new baby.

There was a running joke about Emmanuel that he was the most perfect man in Madeira.

A Venezuelan-Madeiran, Emmanuel was fluent in Portuguese, Spanish and English, and was also a real estate lawyer. The last time they spoke to him, they told me that he had injured his hand while building his new farm, which meant he “couldn’t relax by playing the piano”.

The first thing I noticed about him was his eloquence. He spoke in sharp, concise sentences with crystal clear pronunciation.

Most people pepper their sentences with ‘ums’ and ‘sort ofs’, but everything he said was a clear, well-constructed phrase. There was no hesitation.

He was offered a drink.

“No, thank you. I don’t drink.”

I asked him why he didn’t drink.

“I stopped drinking roughly two years ago. I simply felt no need to drink any longer, and therefore I just stopped.”

As it became dark, we spoke about politics, world events, countries and the usual dinnertime chat. He told us that in the bathroom of the new house, they had installed a fake ventilation system, which involved just sticking a fan on the wall to trick him. But he had subsequently installed a new ventilation system himself.

When others were away from the table, I congratulated him on his new house and baby. He thanked me and asked about me and what I did.

I told him that I was in marketing, and some copywriting similar to Mike. He seemed very interested, and then he asked how old I was.

I told him that I was 27.

“What an age man, what an age! What a beautiful age is 27.”

He took a moment to think about it himself, likely reminiscing about being 27.

He asked me if I wanted to hear his theory about the age of 27.

His theory was that when you hit the specific age of 27, he believed your brain goes through an existential change, and this is why the 27 Club exists. His theory was that the brain reaches a stage of enlightenment, but often an existential crossroads. Artists reach this pivotal point, and being more extreme souls, it often tips them over the edge. 27 is a make-or-break age.

He said that this is the age when many people become a lot more serious in life.

He himself was 36 and said that when he was 27, he met his current partner, which combined with a shift in his life. But only when he hit 27 did he notice this change.

I was captivated by what he was saying.

It was one of those moments when things feel so well-timed, where you are told something that you didn’t know you needed to hear.

Thoughts in the mountains

When we were out walking in the mountains, I thought a lot about what he said.

I knew before the trip I needed a holiday badly from all the burnout, and I had also been feeling on a knife-edge.

Having been on a journey where you so blindly push forward into the mist, it is sometimes hard to remember why you started.

I had been wondering why I was this way for a while. But now, thinking about the age of 27 in this way, it provided a good explanation. And the fact that a stranger had felt the same way many years ago gave me the reassurance I needed to remember why I started.

I was trying to not place too much divine significance of this event, but I couldn’t help it. After that conversation, I knew that I was in exactly the right place.

It felt like I wasn’t crazy after all.

And I was meant to be here in Madeira, which meant I was meant to be on Substack two years ago. And everything between then and now had been justified.

It only felt right to write about it here too.

Substack is also where everything started.

I started trying to make it on this platform, start some kind of online business or income, and had no idea where I was going in life. Substack was where I met Mike, and we worked together on a client, one that helped me massively when I was starting.

Then, fast-forward 7-8 months, with my own online business, I was here in this place because of him, because of Substack, meeting their neighbour who told me, without knowing me, that he knew I was going through a significant change.

It seemed like everything was by design.

It also reminded me of the seriousness of life. Make hay while the sun shines and enjoy it because some people never get a chance to change before it is decided for them.

The journey from 25 to 27 ended right at that dinner table, and the rest of my life began the next day.

Madeira is incredibly lush. The soil is a rich brown, and much of the island is untouched, simply existing as it always has been.

Maybe all the fresh air gave me a moment of clarity I needed.

These two books are Death in the Afternoon and Meditations.

Perhaps I might not be able to explain exactly why they have, as sometimes it can seem hard to be truly self-reflective, but I hope that with this short piece, I can give some kind of explanation.

Often, people in the business space find it easy to pick a book like Dotcom Secrets by Russell Brunson or Atomic Habits by James Clear as an example of a book that changed how they think. These books make good clickbait titles, good selling points, and ‘actionable’ tips – essentially, steps you can take straight after reading them. These books are often marketing materials in themselves.

However, neither of these books changed anything for me; they seemingly only added more information. Nothing within them changed the structure of my thinking at the root, and none of them changed any beliefs I held.

But the two books I am about to speak about did exactly these things.

Book One: Death in the Afternoon

Death in the Afternoon is a non-fiction book about bullfighting. Ernest Hemingway was famously passionate about bullfighting in Spain, and several of his books are centred around Spain and the bullfights. This was his treatise on the sport.

This book was his account of everything to do with the bullfights, from the way the stadiums are set up, the best seats to get, how the bulls are prepared, how the fighters are trained, how the fight goes, the ‘correct’ way to finish the fight, the etiquette within the fights – quite literally everything.

I did not expect to like this book so much, which is a direct mirror to how Hemingway begins the book, not expecting to enjoy bullfighting.

What surprised me even on the first page is that the controversy and distaste for the cruelty of bullfighting is nothing new. In the 1920s, despite the wide popularity of bullfighting in Spain, there was still a huge distaste for many of the same reasons as today, particularly from neighbouring countries such as England and France.

Hemingway himself did not expect to like it, but he quickly speaks about the effect it has on him.

His unexpected love for the bullfights was an immediate hook for me, and what follows is a structured and detailed description of every detail of bullfighting.

He describes the literal chronology of a fight, from the breeding and preparation of the bulls, the training of the matadors and picadors, the selling of the fights, the stadiums – all the way to the fight itself, the specific moves, and the styles which are considered the bravest, and those considered cowardly or cynical.

“It is not enough of a book”

Chapter 20, the final chapter, left a real impression on me.

After everything, all the long descriptions, Hemingway ends the novel by expressing anguish that he did not, or could not, say enough:

Despite speaking about bullfighting in every detail that you could imagine, it still wasn’t enough, and perhaps it could never be enough.

He adds details of memories he has of attending the fights, and all the life behind them:

He hammers this home with the final lines of the book:

The pain of a passion

Despite every line being about bullfighting, to me, this book is not about bullfighting; it is about Hemingway and his obsession.

This book was an attempt to explain the depth of a passion.

This ending demonstrates perfectly the pain of having a passion, specifically the pain that you will never know the passion in its entirety – you will never ‘complete’ said passion.

Perhaps another point is that a passion is rooted in pain in itself. It is no secret that Hemingway was deeply troubled. I wonder if only people who are troubled find passions in such a depth, as it is the medicinal nature of the passion which makes them so deep.

Nietschze described in Man Alone with Himself that you are either one of two people.

How this book changed how I think

I thought nothing could change my mind, but this book reminded me that my mind can always be changed.

I was able to realise that a passion seems painful because of its limitless nature.

I discovered the concept of ‘aficion’ and could understand how a taste develops for something to the point where it seems bizarre or distasteful to a regular person.

My only aim now is to achieve a similar level of obsession.

Book Two: Meditations

Meditations is a book written by Marcus Aurelius, a Roman emperor.

It is a series of small quotes or ‘aphorisms’ that are his reflections on philosophy, nature and spiritual reflections.

What is so fascinating about this book is that it was simply the diary of Aurelius, and had no intention of being published.

Something intended as a personal diary is now one of the foundations of the Stoicism philosophy.

I have also read On the Shortness of Life and Enchiridion, but still, to me, Meditations is the best by far, both from an enjoyment and academic perspective. Stoicism is a deeply personal journey and about inner reflection, the format of it being a personal diary seems fitting.

The power of the mind

What Meditations highlights first of all is the power of the mind.

This power of the mind comes from the development of self-control by abstaining from vices and anything that is not in accordance with nature.

Once this is understood, the mind can achieve strength in its most natural state.

A different translation of Meditations goes into more depth on this line:

He goes deeper and provides advice to himself in hard times.

The book also demonstrates that nature is the fuel to the power of the mind, as it is the ultimate demonstration that our time on this earth is short.

The ‘filth of life on the ground’ I think about often too. Whenever there is some petty problem or something that bothers me, this quote helps me remember that in the grand scheme of things, nothing really matters.

How this book changed how I think

I could and might write an entire essay about how this book has changed how I think, but I will try to keep it as brief as possible.

A fundamental tenet of Meditations and Stoicism is that "all is as thinking makes it so" and that the more you fall to "the puppet strings of impulse", the more you lose control over yourself.

What this book taught me is that the mind can be impenetrable, why discipline is everything, and the true shortness of life. Aurelius often talks about even the greatest historical figures being buried in the sands of time, soon to be forgotten.

The book emphasises that life is fleeting, humanity is insignificant, and only in understanding the shortness of life will you live without fear.

All the changes in my own life

These two books are now a foundation for my thinking.

In the last two years, the time I have read these books, there have been huge and complex changes in my life, most of them very positive.

But with such changes, the mind often has trouble catching up, and the doubts creep in, about whether you are doing what you are meant to be doing, and it can be difficult to define yourself, or know what kind of person you are.

These two books have given me solace.

Death in the Afternoon helped me understand why I was obsessed with certain things, and that it was okay to be obsessive. It made me realise the beauty of a passion, and of the work I need to do for a passion. It gave me inspiration to think about the depth of many of my own passions.

Meditations helped me realise that being disciplined and thinking about nature and higher powers is an immediate path to a calm mind. I would read it on the Overground at 6:30am on the way to training, slightly worried about the pain, slightly worried about the exhaustion, but then I would remember “you are a soul carrying a corpse” or “why can’t I endure this? You’ll be embarrassed to answer”. Immediately I would feel calm.

New ideas are always necessary, both as a writer and an entrepreneur. Finding endless pockets of inspiration is tough, and you need to give time to yourself to make sure you fill your cup when necessary.

I started reading the book because I was curious about why people had such a love for the cruel sport of bullfighting and also wanted to read some of Hemingway’s non-fiction.

Hemingway was famously a lover of deep-sea fishing and big game hunting, but above all, nothing captured him like bullfighting.

The book is written describing his time in Spain spent at bullfights. He describes the fights in meticulous detail and the culture behind them.

The long descriptions of the specifics of bullfighting were tedious at times, but I began to realise that within this was the true magic of the book.

On the surface, the book is about bullfighting, but underneath it’s an example of a passion — a passion so great that a man wrote an entire novel about it, just to try and explain what he saw in it.

What aficion means

A lover of bullfighting was known as an aficionado. We use the word now for any expert or connoisseur, but back then it was more linked to bullfighting.

‘Afición’ is Spanish for hobby, but the true translation is much deeper.

Some further definitions below give a flavour. It’s derived from the word ‘aficionar’ meaning to have an affection.

It’s a word which blends all of these definitions.

Death in the Afternoon was published in 1932, but I think Hemingway defines what aficion means best six years earlier in his 1926 novel The Sun Also Rises:

Haters will say that aficionados could perhaps be pretentious or esoteric, but I like to think that it is something more than that.

Furthermore, this unspoken bond based on aficion that Hemingway describes I have personally found to be true.

If you meet someone who is into the same things as you at the same level, there is an immediate understanding, that goes beyond what you say to each other.

Comparison to wine

In Death in the Afternoon, Hemingway makes the comparison between a bullfighting aficionado and a wine connoisseur.

I think this passage explains the development of a passion, and how passions find you.

In short, for many, wine starts (and ends) as a bitter drink that has no meaning. You might enjoy being drunk from it.

But some people will find a little more in it. As they drink more of it, they will begin to develop a passion for it, start to enjoy everything about it, and notice the nuances of the whole experience, even the bad parts. They will start to search for the ‘truest’ version.

Anyone with a passion will also have a catalogue of experiences involving that passion which they can compare to each new experience, and find new areas of appreciation.

Aficionados of anything will understand that it’s difficult to explain why they like something, but as Hemingway says, you’ll know you like something straight away from the effect it has on you.

There are aficionados wherever you look, in so many things.

Football, food, dancing, art, boxing, travelling, gardening, gaming, cycling, knitting — the list goes on. There are new passions made every day.

To those who don’t love these things, and who can only see the surface, they seem strange, but to aficionados, they make complete sense.

My aficion for writing

In many ways, reading and writing are boring.

You sit and stare at a page or a screen. You write with a pen or tap on a keyboard. Often you have to force yourself to stay interested. You sometimes get a back ache or a sore wrist.

At times, I’ve absolutely hated it.

When I used to write 30 articles of 500 words per week in my bedroom for a dentistry company (for £7 each), I still remember the bright screen light blaring into my eyes as I desperately tried to write them all before midnight. Then, I definitely hated it.

Or when I used to drive to the library with my friend for weeks during the summer to write a short, shit novel, and discovered that writing one is a process of endless suffering as you encounter plot hole after plot hole, and gradually lose your grip on the inspiration you had to start it.

These writing experiences blend together so that when I now start to write something or read something enjoyable, I’m layering over these experiences. On the surface it doesn’t seem like much.

Producing writing has an effect on me. I like seeing things written down that I’ve thought about or having my name as the author on something published. I like sitting at a desk, and sometimes staring at the wall. I enjoy tapping on a keyboard. I like rewriting sentences. I’m not sure why.

Aficion means having an appreciation for something with all its negativity regardless of what it looks like and developing a taste for something where it’s difficult to describe why you enjoy it. Only someone else who enjoys it will understand.

It’s deepening by the day.

There are copywriter purists, who are staunchly against AI, saying that organic writing will always be king, and that human writing will always form a better business strategy.

But then there are the AI evangelists who state that AI is the future, the ROI for businesses is undeniable, and to ignore it is to be left behind.

SEO king Jake Ward is right at the centre of this divide.

It all kicked off on LinkedIn this week with his post about the success of his tool Byword.

Byword is a tool which produces hundreds of AI articles, of very high quality which seem to pass Google’s AI detection.

Nobody can argue that the ROI on these is amazing.

For just a small price, you can fill your site with hundreds of articles, and garner huge waves of traffic.

With a good landing page, you could potentially make thousands.

But many critics state that these sites completely tank after a few months (there are many screenshots in the comments section), and that they’re cheap wins that don’t provide lasting brand awareness on Google.

I’ve screenshotted a flavour of some of the comments.

Some of the copywriter purists against:

But the AI evangelists were also out in force:

And neutral Matt Barker trying to cool everyone down:

Pick a side

The point here is that if you’re starting out as a copywriter, you might need to decide what your stance on AI is.

Will AI fit in your offering? Or be avoided completely?

This is mainly to reassure clients, who are on the sidelines of this battle, wondering if they should be implementing AI into their business.

Plus it’s also important to be transparent about how you produce their content.

I personally like AI, but not for content writing, only for guidance and structure.

Call me a moderate AI evangelist.

Which side are you on?

Do you think AI is the future of writing and thinking, or is it just a fad full of cheap wins?

If you don’t know what dollar dominance is, you can read about it in my article here:

https://www.currencytransfer.com/blog/expert-analysis/what-is-dollar-dominance

When I was researching for the article, I simply wanted to know how many currencies are pegged to the US dollar.

I typed into Google ‘how many currencies are pegged to the US dollar’.

If you try it now, this is what Google says in a snippet:

Sweet.

I put this fact into the article.

(FYI if you don’t know anything about currencies, 66 is quite a lot — it’s worth mentioning as a stat. That means whatever the US dollar exchange rate is, their own currency follows it. It’s protective, but also potentially exploitative).

Once it was in the article, I decided to find which 66 currencies these were so I could list them in the article.

Terrible mistake.

I ended up pulling a thread and unravelling the entirety of Google and my own sanity.

It sent me down a rabbit hole of financial articles, questioning what was true.

Questioning whether anything was true.

How many currencies are pegged to the US dollar?

As we have seen, Google says it’s 66.

But which currencies?

I checked Wikipedia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_circulating_fixed_exchange_rate_currencies

According to Wikipedia, only 23 are actually directly pegged.

So are people counting currency baskets as part of it? (This means they’re pegged to others as well).

I asked ChatGPT:

“Several”.

At the end, it’s basically shrugged and said “ask Wikipedia”.

The link was broken too. Cheers AI.

Back to digging

Flashback to when I was searching, I needed to find a source for this information.

I wanted the article to stand out and list all the currencies.

These articles had asserted so strongly that it was 66.

My logic was that currency baskets are being included in this. So any country that uses a currency basket to fix its exchange rate is counting as being pegged to the US dollar.

But where did 66 come from?

Who originally came up with this number?

Who originally counted 66?

Someone, somewhere wrote this, and published it.

Top sources

Here are what the top-ranking sources say:

Ava Trade

Ava Trade says “over 66 currencies”:

https://www.avatrade.co.uk/education/market-terms/what-is-currency-peg

So does that mean there are more?

The Balance

The Balance says “at least 66 currencies”:

https://www.thebalancemoney.com/what-is-a-peg-to-the-dollar-3305925

The hyperlink references Ava Trade as well, so you know where they found the number. But they said “at least” to be safe.

Investopedia

Investopedia says “more than 65”:

https://www.investopedia.com/articles/forex/040915/countries-use-us-dollar.asp#:~:text=More%20than%2065%20countries%20peg,their%20official%20currency%20of%20exchange.

Some might call this 66.

LinkedIn

A LinkedIn article by Andrew J. Bilden assertively says “65”:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/11-us-dollar-worlds-reserve-currency-andrew-j-bilden/#:~:text=Today%2C%2065%20countries%20are%20pegged%20(fixed%20exchange%20rate)%20to%20the%20US%20Dollar%20and%2011%20countries%20use%20it%20as%20their%20official%20currency.

65 or 66?

To this day I’ve never managed to find out.

To avoid spiraling into madness, I’ve settled on the answer being up to/more than/at least 65/66.

But if you’re the person who originally said 66, please, reveal yourself to the world.

I need answers.

The big problem

In this quest to find a source, I realised a huge problem with Google, and how it discerns things to be true.

Naturally, I want to do the best job possible for my clients.

This involves financial accuracy, and delivering high-traffic articles.

Here’s the problem: if I count the number to be actually, for example, 62 currencies, and I put this in the article, Google may mark this as incorrect.

As every single other article says 66, or 65, then if I put something different, then it will stand out, and most likely be considered wrong, unless I can prove it extensively, which I can’t.

The snippet says 66 as we speak. Google has determined this to be correct.

If I want to maintain a good article, I have to contribute to the mystery stat, unless I can prove it’s not actually correct.

But if I don’t include a stat, then I have no chance of being included in the snippet for ‘how many currencies are pegged to the US dollar?’

At the time, the highest ranking article was a LinkedIn article, stating that it was actually 65 currencies.

When I was writing the article, this was what Google considered to be correct above all others:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/11-us-dollar-worlds-reserve-currency-andrew-j-bilden/

I went with 65, and reinforced the mystery number.

I became another link in the chain:

This got some good rankings for a while (as 65 was more ‘accurate’), until more people started saying 66 again, specifically ‘over 66’.

But still, nobody knows for sure, and they cover themselves by using ambiguous language like ‘over’ and ‘at least’.

What is true on Google

Over 66 is probably is true, or close enough to it. I’m on team 65.

But the point is that it doesn’t really matter.

Multiple sources on the internet now confirm a number without verification, because of a stacking of sources on top of each other all verifying each other to obtain SEO traffic.

As the saying goes, “a lie told often enough becomes the truth.”

It seems like now technology is giving wind to this.

AI will hopefully improve this, but it also suffers from the same problem, often more wild in its hallucinations.

The moral of this story is don’t believe everything you read on the internet (not like you needed to be told that anyway).

It might just be there because some SEO writer read it somewhere else and passed it on.

For a hot minute, it had an advantage over ChatGPT for the simple reason that it was completely up-to-date.

Now that ChatGPT has added its Browser Tool, it can do everything that Bard can do, but better.

You can also make your own GPTs in ChatGPT, as I have done with Article Muse.

Bard is now back in second place.

But it’s not out of the race, and one day, Bard might be what we’re all using every day.

How Google works at the moment

Most people are missing the true threat of AI to copywriting and content creation which is the fundamental change in how we search for information.

Google’s version of Bard is most likely one day going to replace Google searches or at least break the traditional format.

At the moment, Google works in this way:

1. You type in a search query

2. Google lists pages produced by companies and people relevant to your query

3. You browse and go in and out of the websites that you want/need

4. It’s up to you to determine if the information is correct

SEO makes sure that your content has the best possible chance of being found, and Google also does all the heavy lifting in terms of listing and ranking sites.

How Google will work in the future

Google is a business, and they’re constantly looking for ways to make their product better, faster, more attractive, but most importantly, make more money.

As it stands, Google does pretty well.

They made roughly $297bn in 2023, and it’s only rising.

But they need to stay ahead, and a lot of people are starting to use ChatGPT for quick answers.

Google still has to play the middleman and find a website which will tell you the right answer. AI will just tell you straight away.

For this reason alone, Google was straight on with its competitor, which was why Bard was a bit rushed and wonky when it came out.

But Google almost definitely has bigger plans.

You can see with some search results that they’ll produce a ‘snippet’ (the holy grail for SEO writers).

This is the box that will come up displaying the result as a straight answer, and demonstrates that Google is looking into AI responses.

Search bar changes

The Google search bar will be the first thing to change.

You will have AI within the search box, which will answer your question straight away. Like a snippet, but the whole thing is a snippet.

However, Google does still have the incentive to make sure people are using it for as long as possible, as more eyes are on the screen for longer, therefore more time looking at ads and maybe clicking on them.

AI might make Google too efficient.

So Google Plus might start to be a thing?

Similar to how ChatGPT has a premium version, which (allegedly) produces better results and puts you at the top of the queue when servers are getting squeezed.

This way they’ll be able to remove ads and market this as a positive thing. You'll pay a small overhead to use this Plus version.

I reckon all platforms which rely on ads will do this at some point.

SEO potentially wrecked

SEO is all about rankings and clicks, but if AI is giving us all the answers then there won’t be a need for articles to appear top anymore, as people won’t be scrolling.

They’ll be spoon-fed the information straight away, so SEO will become very weak, as the order won’t matter anymore. AI can read it all at once.

What Google will care about is accuracy, as if they’re wrong, people will start to favour the other guys like Bing and Yahoo.

Bing and ChatGPT are in alliance now, so the game is on.

Bard will become a truthsayer

Bard will grow as Google’s AI tool, and will become an authority on what Google says.

At the moment, what is ‘true’ can only be verified by other sites. Google cannot discern anything to be ‘correct’, only match it up to what other people are saying and try to give you the best result.

This is also why AI is sometimes wrong, because all it can do is take the most common answer (the most likely answer) and slap it up into a cheesy response. It can’t actually think.

Google can make Bard super accurate though, if it harvests our information because then everyone is constantly adding to the human facts blockchain.

It’s basically already doing it.

How can Google make sure that everyone is adding to Bard?

By tracking your activity even more than it already does.

If it treats people like AI inputters, then it will be able to make sure everything it says is correct.

But for now, it’s a delicate situation, and Google needs to move carefully.

ChatGPT is flying at the moment, and people are remembering that Bing exists.

Google needs to slowly make sure it surpasses ChatGPT, but doesn’t scare people away.

Will human writers die off?

Never, but SEO writers and copywriters might.

But they’ll just be different things. Ghostwriting, fiction, reporting and journalism will always be there. Entertainment will always be around.

There might even be jobs that don’t exist yet, like an AI Feeder or something. Writing true things into the AI to make sure that it’s accurate.

If you’re interested in AI tools for writing, check out the GPT tool I made:

Or do you keep it subdued and cool?

This is the dilemma of an ad agency.

But we seem to be sliding into the latter at the moment, whereby so many brands are going for more redacted brands. Writing too.

Apple’s logo has become progressively more cool:

Windows too:

Starbucks are also on their way:

One could argue that it’s because they have become more trusted brands.

But I do think that it’s also because of our cultural shift, where we’re starting to get a taste for simplicity and minimalism.

The epitome of coolness

Blank Street Coffee has hit the ceiling of this.

I see these shops all over the place in London — they’re the hot new coffee brand.

There are absolutely no frills on this brand.

Even the menu is white with black text.

The people who branded this clearly saw that subdued branding would appeal to the progressively cool population of London always after that next coffee brand.

It’s minimalist to the core. There’s almost nothing else to say about them.

Copy coolness

Writing is going the same way.

As our hunger for coolness increases, and our attention span decreases, minimalist copy is becoming more desired.

Even how I’m writing now with the sentences spaced out is a modern thing.

Block text is very unattractive these days.

Adverts used to be descriptive and full of text, because that was the fashion, the same way that novels were overly descriptive and flowery in their language.

This was the coolness of the time. They probably would have found our ads basic and confusing, and our novels thin.

So when you’re writing copy, take this into account.

Is your copy fashionable? Will it stand the test of time?

Does it fit the minimalist style?

He goes on small tangents about other random things, such as Spanish culture and general writing.

In one quote, he comments on what makes a bad writer:

It makes sense for the Hemingway, who was obsessively fixed on what is good and true, to make such a criticism.

But he’s not wrong. And this observation applies to copywriting.

When I first started writing, like most people I tried to sound as impressive as possible.

I would even go to a thesaurus and pick words that were even more impressive than the ones I knew.

I’m pretty sure in school we’re encouraged to do this.

“Injection of a false epic quality”

In short — do not try to sound impressive.

Do not try to create value where there is no value. People will see the value if it’s there.

If you’re writing an article, or copy for a business, don’t try to use impressive words that customers won’t understand.

Imagine you’re writing to your nan, who doesn’t understand what the product is.

Is she going to feel confused when she reads it?

Is she going to feel ripped off after she buys the product/service because you oversold it?

Explain things without illusion

Instead, use your writing to explain why they need it.

Appeal to their human side.

How will this make their life easier? And don’t lie. They will know.

For example, don’t say this brand is ‘cutting-edge’ if it’s not.

Martin Amis once said that writing is a campaign against cliché:

Write clearly and explain well.

Do not “mystify where there is no mystery”.