Spoke to a friend of mine who is a professional comedian.
Tried to get him on Nostr and failed miserably.
As well as touring, he makes 'jokes on the street' videos which get millions of views on TikTok, Facebook etc. He probably makes a little money from the videos, but it's not his main income.
I mentioned that we need more non-bitcoin content and that his videos would be well received. Lots of people would tip him directly with Bitcoin.
"I don't have any bitcoin," he said.
"You don't need any. Download Primal, and it comes with a wallet. Start posting and getting zaps right away."
Silence.
He is not dumb. He knows social media is exploitative and algorithms are an awful game to play. He knows the pound is fucked.
But this shows how hard it is to fight the systems that have their hooks so deep into us.
What's a better way to purple-pill him?
We need more great comedy on Nostr!
‘Is this it?’ You think.
‘I’m supposed to do this for the next 40-45 years? Maybe if I redouble my efforts, forgo avocado toast forever, and marry a countess, we might be able to afford a two-bedroom flat above a betting shop in a commuter town called something like Wallythorpe or Pynchbottom-on-Thames.’
I left for South America.
Travel makes you live in the moment. The only looking back you do is to organise your experiences into a coherent blog for your family and friends — you know, so they remember to be jealous.
My site was called Tall Travels.
I wrote weekly. Raw, sarcastic, and poorly edited posts.
I had all the tools I needed to create something great — a sharp observer’s eye, creativity, unlimited time and energy, inspiring people, and formative experiences.
I particularly fell in love with Argentine culture in Buenos Aires — midnight dinners, literary discussions, film festivals, rock music, street art — I drank it all in… especially ‘yerba mate’, which I drank before the Hollywood celebrities. I learned Spanish, played 5-a-side football with locals, and wrote songs on a faulty steel-stringed guitar.
Tall Travels was self-expression. I still believe that your primary audience should be yourself. However, that does confuse potential readers of your travel blog. They expect ‘10 Cozy Cafes in Buenos Aires’s Upmarket Palermo Neighborhood’, not ‘A Conversation Between Overweight Farmers on a 14-Hour Bus Journey’.
My travel blog never looked attractive. In fact, I’ve always been against taking pictures. It feels like an alternate version of reality, and pressing your face to an SLR eyepiece and clicking the shutter means you are not really looking at life. You’re not really experiencing your trip. I took a few shots on a clunky digital camera — Machu Picchu, the expansive Bolivian Salt Flats, the grassy Pampas of the Andean foothills — but they never felt like mine. One time, I watched hundreds of tourists scramble to take the same photo at Iguazu Falls, then I wrote about it in the hostel.
The posts were rants. I needed to process why everyone seemed to act so differently. This formed part of my ‘write a million words of garbage’ training.
Writing comes easy when you are feeding your soul with so many new experiences. When everything is the same, you have to trick yourself to draw the words out.
Like many forms of writing, travel blogs aren’t very honest. But, I captured the landscapes in the camera of my mind. The characters of Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Uruguay, Argentina told the kinds of stories I’d never heard before. I wrote those stories later, after I processed what they meant.
Mexico would be the next place to feed my writing journey. And luckily, I like spicy food.
#unphiltered
