‘Nite Reading Part 0: I’ve Made a Huge Mistake

Sometimes you have to go searching for topics to write about. Sometimes, they find you.

I wish this one hadn’t.

It was recently brought to my attention that online retailer Humble was offering a pay what you want bundle of unofficial strategy guides for the cultural phenomenon known as Fortnite: Battle Royale. Personally, I’ve barely played Fortnite. I tried it for less than an hour about a year ago and that’s been the entirety of my experience with the game. But I’m not one to pass up an opportunity to read to deeply into a meaningless empty piece of pop culture.  Luckily for my conscience, Humble gives you the option to allocate the entirety of your purchase to charity instead of supporting this obvious attempt at grabbing money from children. So, yes, I am now the less-than-proud owner of 17 books about Fortnite. And, no, I will not include a link because please don’t buy these.

To make a long story short: I’m going to read these 17 books (each over 100 pages long), about a game I don’t play, and either get some insight into the fresh new way to extract money from impressionable children or descend slowly into madness. Probably both.

Starting in 2019, I’ll be reviewing one of these books each week until I’m done. Let it be known to Jason R. Rich, author of all 17 Unofficial Fortnite Strategy Guides, I’m coming for you… and I have no idea what any of these words mean.

Here’s a quick preview of the syllabus:

• ATK Driving Techniques, Challenges and Stunts
• Discover the Island’s Best Loot
• Building Strategies
• An Encyclopedia of Strategy for Fortniters
• The Unofficial Guide to Tips and Tricks That Other Guides Won’t Teach You
• Guide to Skins, Tools, Gear, and Accessories
• Duos and Squads Strategies
• Sharpshooter Secrets for Mastering Your Arsenal
• Surviving and Winning 50 v 50 Matches
• Fortnite Battle Royale Hacks for Mobile
• Secrets of the Island
• Mastering Game Settings for Victory
• Advanced Strategies for Winning Duos Matches
• Battle Royale for Noobs
• Killer Fortnite Strategies
• Surviving the Final Circle
• Advanced Strategies

Dang, this is gonna be some good SEO.

EPISODE 8; CAT SCRATCH FEVER

Let’s be honest, the last entry was… demoralizing. Depressing. Other words that start with ‘de’ probably. So, let’s bring some levity back into our lives. Fresh start, the sins of the past behind us. And what better way than to return to the playground that is chaos, by reviewing Conquer The Chaos: How to Grow a Successful Small Business Without Going Crazy. Well, to be quite frank, I stopped halfway through the book. For reasons we’ll get to later.

To address the elephant in the room, one of the authours’ names is “Clate”. Extremely funny my guy. That’s not a name, I’m sorry. Seriously, try google searching Clate. No-one else has this name. There’s a bunch of inconsistent Urban Dictionary definitions and a hamlet in Scotland. Suck it Shakespeare. It’s the fakest sounding name I’ve ever heard. Even worse, he commits the worst sin known to man: posting articles on LinkedIn.

The book itself is…bland at best. Truly, it’s quite boring and barely jokerfied as the title would suggest. Most of the notable features are graphic design related. The cover of the book contains a picture of a to-do list, with tasks like “Fix Printer”, “Send Brad Thank You”, and “Breathe”. The list is ended off with a big red circle saying REPEAT ALL OF THE ABOVE. I’ll give you breathing, you should continue doing that on repeat, but I think the printer and Brad could use some alone time. No need to keep going back to them. Also, I really hope the implication isn’t to complete the list in order each time before repeating, in which case I’m very concerned about only taking one breath and then having to fix a printer, a notoriously time-consuming task, before breathing again.

The other graphical design choice of note, and an utterly charming one at that, is the political cartoons. Well, they’re not actually political cartoons but they work in the same oeuvre, particularly in the practice of labelling goddamn everything because metaphor is hard to grasp. Each of the book’s chapters begins with a cartoon illustration, which tell a story across the span of the book, progressing with each chapter. It’s a saga as epic in scope as it is in meaning. Our hero’s journey starts with him walking away from an office building, losing his tie and throwing away his suitcase, with a sign in front of the building that says “corporate”. The man is leaving big business and hitting it out on his own! A simple and effective narrative, effectively communicated with only a single label. Fair enough. Next, we find ourselves… on a treadmill flanked by a dinosaur and a shark. The dinosaur is competition and the treadmill is chaos and the shark is payroll, but the fin of the sharks is bills. And your 3 hats have fallen off.

We’ll be staying at this location for the rest of the bark, Dinosaur Coast on Shark Lake. The office is the only other location and it appears for a single image. Somehow, the treadmill turns into a pile of rocks in the next chapter. This is also where a concerning trend begins. The remaining chapters all include objects with a label that’s just… the name of the chapter. Immediately underneath a chapter header. It’s right there. We know what it’s called. You can write it once. Save some ink and time. Sadly, from here the images and narrative get a lot less exciting. Each one is just the guy standing on a higher up rock with the name of the chapter and the shark and dinosaur getting progressively more upset. The dinosaur and shark labels don’t even change. Also, it’s not a consistent trek up this pile of rock. He climbs 3 rocks on one side, then suddenly he’s back at the base to climb 3 rocks on the other side. He was one rock away from the top (which we eventually learn is Freedom)! Just hop on up, my dude. In the end, he reaches top rock (after avoiding a scawy backswide into the shawks mouth) and places a flag on this pile of rocks that is like, at best 6 feet high.

Speaking of cartoons, let’s stop talking about the book. That’s all my thoughts there. While trying to push through the last half of this book, I began absentmindedly browsing Spotify for some background accompaniment. What I found next, shook me to my very core. Once I’d heard the news, it was impossible for me to even deign lay eyes upon text in a book. This was too important. What did I do? Well, I did something very bad. I searched for “Garfield”.

And I found it.

Prior to today, I was not aware there were even Garfield albums. I expected to maybe find some novelty songs that mention the lazy cat, or perhaps a soundtrack for one of the live action films. I was mostly looking for the former, to add to my Hot Garf Summer playlist. Perhaps this was hubris, for I was surprised to find a playlist by Spotify itself, This Is Garfield. The description claimed to be “The essential tracks, all in one playlist.” Now, I was surprised enough to discover actual Garfield songs purportedly by the cat himself. So, imagine my shock to consider that amongst those there were essentials. I thought I’d found it, the holy grail, it was time for me to ascend with the sweet sultry tones of Garfield.

Let’s start to correct some of these statements. First and foremost, screw you Garfield. This isn’t your music. It’s all just generic children’s album voice singing mostly classic children’s song. NOT GARFIELD. Occasionally Garfield begins or ends the song with an acerbic remark, and that’s the extent of the Garf. Blatant misinformation going on here, and, frankly, I deserve better.

Secondly, let’s respect the Garfield canon please. Everyone knows, what’s Garfield’s favourite food? Did you say spaghetti? Of course not, you’re not an animal. It’s lasagna. Then please explain to me WHY there’s a track on the album Numbers and Counting with Garfield that’s called “10 Bowls of Spaghetti”, a half-baked derivative of 99 Bottles of Beer-esque count down songs. Can anyone on god’s green earth explain why it’s not 10 Plates of Lasagna. Have some goddamn decency. As if that’s not enough, ok, we get to the 12 Days of Christmas parody (off the same album of course) which initially seems to be positioning spaghetti just as prominently, offering it the illustrious partridge in a pear tree position. I thought to myself, lasagna better be number 12 or someone is gonna be hearing from my lawyers. Well, what do you know, it is. But all is not well! Garfield has a dream of “tasty lasagna.” NOT 12 LASAGNAS. JUST THE ONE. EVERYTHING ELSE GETS THE NUMBERS, PAUL. WHY CAN’T THERE BE 12 LASAGNAS. WHAT’S THE DEAL HERE, PAUL. Just in case Numbers and Counting with Garfield didn’t sin enough, it just had to make sure that it included a song with some shall we say, dated, racial language that was also dated when it released back in 2008. It’s an “existing” children’s song so not like Garfield committed a racism out of nothing, but still, you’ve got 31 other tracks on this album, I think you’re safe to omit the problematic one.

Some of the tracks on the playlist that don’t appear to just be standard well known children’s songs are downright terrifying. In particular I’ll shout out “Never Play With Fire” off of “A Smart Start with Garfield”. It contains the lyric “You could burn yourself, and that would be so sad.” The tone of this line lacks any sincerity, and my only assumption is that the ghostly choir that accompanies Garfield and soundtracks his life very much wants us to burn ourselves. It’s rife with sarcasm and contempt.

As for the notion that this playlist is the “essentials”. Go suck an egg. One track on the playlist is a spoken Garfield album intro, and another is an intermission telling you to go to a dead URL to download an activity book that accompanies the album. Essential my buttocks! It’s here I realized all the songs on the playlist were added a mere 8 hours ago. Could this be? Could I have opened some sort of portal into the Garfverse and willed this playlist into existence. I checked a few other This Is… playlists and Spotify and uncovered a grander conspiracy. Most of them aren’t even curated. It’s a dirty lying algorithm, riding off of adjacency to the This Is… playlists that are actually curated. For shame computers. It explained why both this playlist existed and the track selection so non-sensical. I’m not ruling out the existence of a planar Garfield anomaly though, just unrelated to this playlist.

My final discovery on this Garfield journey was upon visiting his actual artist page. In light of this book’s best efforts, it happened, I succumbed to chaos. I scrolled down, and noticed in addition to his own albums he appeared on some tracks by other. One in particular caught my attention. The album art, a cartoon Garf next to a flesh and blood man. The other artist is none other than the restaurant itself, Garfield Eats. A restaurant that closed down due to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. The song released in 2021. I’d go into further detail now, but what follows will require something I haven’t done in a while.

Journalism.

But it’s time that changed. To be continued.

EPISODE 7; CEREAL OFFENSE

No gimmicks this time. Just a vile piece of literature. Who could’ve guessed that the book about non-profit charities could be the most obscene entry yet?

The book I read this week is called “The Non-Nonprofit: For-Profit Thinking for Nonprofit Success” and hoooooooo boy. I have some thoughts here.

For the very briefest of moments I was hopeful about the contents of this book. Of the books I’ve purchased, it’s the only one that explicitly is about non-profit work, but I was still skeptical. Lots of ways that could go south. Non-Nonprofit had a good start, the foreword talks about how poverty and racism are systemic issues. It even goes so far as to say that the political discourse in America has left those in poverty behind in favour of the middle class. Ok, seems promising. Much more woke than I expected, maybe I’m in for a pleasant treat.

Nope!

The hopes are dashed mere paragraphs later when the authour describes the founding principle of the charity that he operates, which is to “enable the poorest of the poor to qualify for jobs that pay more than 10$ per hour.” Hey bud, crazy idea here, what if maybe those jobs just… paid more than 10 dollars an hour? Say, hypothetically, some sort of wage that one could consider… liveable? Just a thought.

Ok, disclaimer here. I only just now realized the Foreword was written not by the authour. I’m leaving it there to stand in my shame. And yet, my point still stands but it won’t reflect on the authour himself. And frankly now I feel worse about the authour because those two ideas that gestured at progressive ideas were all I was giving him credit for throughout the book. And that wasn’t even him. Whoops!

Speaking of the authour, I feel it’s important to mention that prior to working in the non-profit sector, our authour was an executive at General Mills. This isn’t relevant to any of the ideas contained within the book or this post. Personally, I just find the fact he is a reformed Cereal man very funny. It’s a silly food. From the sound of it he worked primarily in the Yoplait yogurt domain of the General Mills corporation, so not an actual cereal man but y’know. It’s funnier that way. There’s no truth in comedy. He’s a cereal man. I don’t make the rules.

Sorry, one last tangent here, at one-point Cerealman says that he tried to learn French for the sake of his Yoplait work. Which leaves me with one question, why? Why French? Is there something I’m missing about the yogurt business that would preference one towards learning French in specific? There is no mention here about any sort of business deal they were trying to set up with French yogurt magnates. My best guess is that my guy took French Vanilla yogurt a bit too literally.

So, yes, there is a book that exists. There is a phrase included in the Foreword but repeated throughout the book so Cerealman cannot escape the blame. The dubious phrase here is “hard-to-employ individual” and frankly, yikes. Me no like. It’s the first of what will be many instances of victim-blamery. The phrase completely shifts blame from any corporation or economic system as a whole and onto the individual. It says “oh I’m sorry we’d really like to give you a living wage, but you just make it so so hard for us. We’re really really trying but you’re just so hard to employ.” The businesses are Atlas and the workers are the herculean weight of the globe whose burden they must bear. It’s never explicitly stated what exact traits makes someone “hard-to-employ” but context clues make it pretty clear what it’s referring to: being poor and/or a minority. My fears about the negative connotation of how this phrase is used were backed up by a later comment. When talking about “empowering” people, as an example it mentions that someone who isn’t empowered might attribute their boss giving them an odd look as “oh the company is racist”. This example feels so evocative of conservative arguments against things like diversity goals in schools and businesses, that the dreaded minority is always running around calling things racist for no good reason. It’s never something overtly stated, but there are countless examples throughout Non-Nonprofit that add up to a heavy inkling that for a guy who runs a charity to help impoverished African-American populations find employment, Cerealman sure thinks a lot of things about those populations

There’s a lot of smaller stuff in this book, the light stylistic choices I normally joke about in these reviews. Confusing paragraphs and pointless algebra equations. But, to be quite honest, I can’t bear to mention that stuff. The more I think about the ideology present in this book, the more sickened I get and to dwell on stuff like that feels downright disingenuous. The introduction to this book says it’s not a scholarly work, but it sure does feel like a textbook example of using charity to make oneself feel superior to others.

For all the talk this book does about the systemic nature of poverty, describing it’s conception of poverty as systemic is misleading. Typically, when you hear someone describe poverty as systemic, it’s in reference to the ways in which poverty is enforced over generation through systems, specifically government policies and the nature of a capitalist society. The systems are the thing that is flawed, the systems are the issue. I don’t believe that’s what Cerealman is saying. I believe that Cerealman is saying that these issues are systemic in that they are passed on from individual to individual, generationally, but that the issue is in fact with the individual. They are the one at fault for their own poverty. Cerealman’s charity, which as mentioned is intended to make impoverished African-American populations more employable, is tailored towards that idea. It is the self that needs to change. And those changes that need to be made include the aforementioned “don’t think things are racist”, as well as “I gotta be a nice little employee when my boss make rude snipes at me because he might be stressed about a big job we have to do, and I’ve gotta do my darndest to make his life easier”. It’s not about fixing the system; it’s bending the individual to fit into the broken system.

There’s a whole chapter here about how too many charities give stuff away for free which makes people feel entitled, so they won’t appreciate what the charity provided. Which is why charities should charge people money? I’m sorry? It’s more tripe about how poor people are stupid and unless they’ve had to personally invest a resource into something, they don’t really deserve it do they? Kindly, shut the hell up. It details how the employment charity will remove people from the program if they’re consistently late. Seems odd, considering one of the major problems for poor people finding employment is that they may rely on public transit, or they may be single parents, which makes getting to work on time a genuine struggle which results in them losing their employment. Seems to me like a charity might want to have an understanding of the basic dilemmas that impoverished people face before being a charity for impoverished people.

There’s one last thing here, the worst thing. The thing that most made me realize I can’t waste time talking about the minor haha issues here. Full context here, the authour is a Jewish man whose parents were Holocaust survivors, and the following section is him referencing the writings of a Holocaust survivor. Both people who have more connection to the issue than I could ever have, fair enough. Yet this train of thought is just absolute vile. As a way to drive home the idea that charities should have a clear purpose to their work, Cerealman reference’s the work of Victor Frankl. The idea is contemplating why some people died in concentration camps and some didn’t. The conclusion is that those who survived could “envision a future for themselves despite their suffering”. Yes, the people who died in the Holocaust just didn’t believe hard enough, they didn’t have a vision board. Why does it seem like we’re blaming people who died, and not THE PEOPLE WHO WERE COMMITING GENOCIDE??? I have to imagine they are the number on party at fault here. If that weren’t enough, Cerealman has the AUDACITY to add that the survivors “were literally living proof of Friedrich Nietzsche’s maxim, ‘He who has a why to live for can bear any how’”. You know, Friedrich Nietzsche, the guy whose ideas were famously very popular amongst Nazis. Pick literally any other philosopher, my guy! The idea that one would try and posit survivors as shining icons of Nietschean ideology is just quite frankly disgusting. Just, c’mon.

That’s it. That’s the end. Not plugging the Patreon this week. Go enjoy life, please.

EPISODE 6; SUB HEAD

At the forefront of this piece, I must apologize for what you are about to read. In an effort to emulate the structural style of today’s reading, Clients First: The Two-Word Miracle, the following post will contain an onslaught of subheadings which contain within them only the briefest of diatribes. You have been warned.

Let’s Do Some Math Why Don’t We

Let’s address the elefont style in the room, Clients First contains an obnoxious number of subheadings. The book is divided into 3 sections, within each of these sections there are at least many chapters, and within these chapters are many subheadings. They don’t individually subhead every paragraph, but it comes damn close. By my count, across the 243 pages of the PDF for Clients First, there is roughly 180 subheads (I did count this exactly but then I started typing and forgot the actual number, I think it was 179?) Let’s do some math why don’t we. Already, we’re at roughly a new subheading every 1.3 pages. Not too egregious, it’s a number that may make sense in a more textbook style work. I should clarify that these pages are small though, think paperback novella size.

Not Letting Them Get Off That Easy Though

That count is too generous though, because not all 243 of those pages are actually book. There’s 12 pages of front matter before the introduction, and 10 pages of back matter. Let’s discount those to bring us down to 223. Down to one per 1.2 pages. We won’t stop there though. Most chapters have an excessive amount of blank space between them, between 1 and 2 full pages of nothing. Since this also exists between the introduction and the first chapter, we can average it out for number of chapters. There’s inexplicably five chapters at the start of the third section that have no blank space, so let’s say that evens out with the chapters that have a full two for an average of 1 page per chapter. At 36 chapters, that’s 36 less pages of writing and we’re down to 187 pages, just barely under a subhead per page. Not letting them get off that easy though, arguably the first part of a chapter between the chapter title and the first subhead is it’s own little word compartment, and those should count to, because the issue is less subheads in specific and more constant interruptions in the writing. So, including the 36 chapters and the introduction, 37 more subheads which leaves us with 187 pages divided by 217 subheads for an average of .86 pages per subhead.

Being Too Generous

I’ll be honest, that number doesn’t look that bad, but it feels so much worse. The count here, while overly complicated, is probably me being too generous. I’m not bothering to account for the oversized chapter heads that probably eat up a third of a page each, and that beyond the blank space between chapters, they more often than not end on a single paragraph page making some of them closer to 3 blank pages.

The Most Criminal Aspect

The most criminal aspect of the subhead problem is mostly that they just… don’t serve much of a purpose. They often don’t even divide distinct concepts; they’ll just add one in the middle of continuing a single anecdote. Nor are the subheads very descriptive, they’re just singular phrases chosen from the following paragraph. Often, this practice just spoils the punchline of a paragraph. It feels like nothing more than an excuse to not have to structure your book properly, which at least makes reviewing this a lot easier.

Lemonade Mouth

It’s difficult to overstate how much of this book is about them (the authours are a married couple of realtors) writing the book. Clients First begins with a set of nested flashbacks. It starts with the recounting of an anecdote that we think is the origin of the book’s concept, but, quelle surprise! Actually, this all started a little bit further back. So, we flashback even further to another anecdote. Keen minded folk out there may have already pieced together that this is the same narrative structure as the Disney Channel original made-for-tv-movie Lemonade Mouth. I have the same critique of both, you can just start at the second flashback. Don’t act like you’re playing “gotcha”, and we were so foolish to believe that this is where it all started. You’re the one controlling where we’re going, just don’t choose to start with it. Start with the start.

Just Want to Sound Like an Aaron Sorkin Character

As an aside here, I hate when anecdotes are presented as if they are being written as a novel. I don’t need a detailed recounting of the exact dialogue of the witty conversation you had 6 years ago because, like, c’mon, we both know that’s not how the conversation actually went. You just want to sound like an Aaron Sorkin character. It’s ok, you can admit it. This is a safe space.

The Words Client First Appear Next to Each Other Italicized

Clients First is also very much about the book Clients First, in that it’s constantly referring to Clients First. You see, Clients First, the title of the book, is also the titular concept preached within Clients First. Thus, Clients First, the title of the book, is constantly mentioned. And every time Clients First is mentioned, it’s italicized, as if they are citing their own book Clients First. Now I could somewhat understand why Clients First does this if they italicized specifically when discussing Clients First the book as an entity. But it’s not that. Whenever the words Clients First appear next to each other, it must be italicized. Just for fun, I just thought as I write this why not do the ol’ CTRL+F on the PDF to see how many times they say Clients First. It’s 540 apparently, neat.

Literally Cause Actual Miracle

If we have to actually discuss the contents within the book, the reverence with which Clients First (the concept, not the book) is treated is downright unsettling. Clients First (the book, not the concept), feels like the closest to the type of book I expected when I decided to read a bunch of business self-help nonsense. It’s a very cultlike attitude, and it is repeatedly and excessively mentioned that not only is Clients First (the concept) a proven business technique, but also that it will literally cause actual miracles to happen. Not “this is so effective it can accomplish things that would normally require a miracle to work”, but “this is a really good business technique, and also at the same time will cause unrelated things to miraculously work out”. Clients First will change you. Clients First will change your life. Clients First is a two-word miracle that can be your miracle to trigger irreversible change. You will be haunted by these three keys and the all-encompassing powers they possess.

Join Scientology

So yeah anyways the Clients First concept is that you put your clients… first. There are three keys to it, honesty, competence, and caring. So basically, just be a nice person and work hard. That’s it, that’s the secret. Just go join scientology or something, it’s probably more interesting.

Give Me Money

Oh yeah, give me money I guess. Almost forgot to write this part. Just go to patreon.com/safetyjames alright. Last week I consulted with my top advisor to glean business advice from the discography of Taylor Swift, and I’ve taken it out from behind the paywall for one week only if you want to get a taste of those premium goods. Haven’t decided what the Patreon content will be for next week, probably join a cult or review a sandwich, who knows.

EPISODE 5; THE CHILI IS NOT EUPHORIA

PREVIOUSLY ON BECOMING VERY MONEY: ṱ̸̼̘̍̑̔̿h̶̜͔̉̑͐̏e̶̞̹͉͂ ̵̖̱̺̲͛́̑̅c̵͖̓͋͛ḁ̸̱̹̺̌̆̒n̸̲̲̉̏́v̵͓̟͔̠̿̆à̸̪͖̪̝̉ṣ̶̻̚̚͘͠.̷̺͇̞͐͒͛ ̵̟͉̬͆̀̈́̂t̴̥̓̑h̸̺̞̽͗͑̽ẻ̴͇̆͝ ̸͔͔̋͜f̸̢̖̗̂̇u̵̺̟̪̪͆n̴̯̪̟̋̐̐n̷̖͉̍͜ê̶̳̫̦ͅļ̵͈͖͆̆.̴̫̪͍͍̈́̆ ̴̼̙̌ţ̷̠̯̓͆̓h̴̼͖̔e̸̛͇̍̍ ̸̼͔͒͗p̶̡̝̒̂̕͜ͅi̵͕̽͆͂̏p̵͍̞̘̆͠é̴̲͒͛̅l̷̛̬̳̤̂̐͑i̶͓̾͛n̴̨͚̾̓͊e̵̺̓.̵̨̬̭̒̎̊̄ ̸͕̻̗̓̈́̊̎t̴̬̙̦͗̄̉̍h̶̰̾e̴̤͗̃͑ ̶̡̦̗̤́̂̾c̷̱̆̾͝a̴̺̘͈̿ņ̵̳͓͂̈́͐̒v̸͖̎̑̄a̷̬̫̰̎̀̕s̶̻̔̍͒͗.̸̣͇̂̃͠ ̸̢̙̗̊͗͜͝t̴̺̽͌ḩ̷͓̀̒e̷̩̦͌̏̍ ̸̞͔͐̀͆̐f̶̡̰͔͍̈́̆͊̒u̵͓͖̙̜͋̓̋̂n̵̬̟̬̔̇̒n̵̹̣͕͍͗ẻ̵̪̚l̴̡͍͉̯̿͠.̶̩̠͍̆́͜ ̷͍̤͖̀͊͛t̷̙̠̽̿̑̚h̷̩͆ͅe̸͖̪̖̙̔̕ ̴͚͍̃͐̓̑p̶̺͙͙͙̈́̎̀ī̸̤̔̍p̴̗͕͂̂é̶̱̈̚l̸̘͚͛͠i̸͎̙̝̰̔̆͠n̶̤̜͇̑e̵̟̙͖̎̅̉̆.̴̪͇̅̽̈ ̸͙̪̟̯͒̃͗ṭ̶̯̣͐h̷̫͚͇̀̇̔̀ẻ̶̯̖̫̕ ̴̲̖̫̌̐̎ċ̶̞̜͇̬͑a̷̹̼̼͋̅̽̑n̵̝̣͗v̴̡̟̄a̷̬͇͌̀s̶͎̘̾.̴͓͙͔̬͌̀͝ ̴̪̘̽̐̐t̷̲̥̾̐͘h̷̼̫͎̩́ē̸̖͓̺̋ ̵͎̥͔̙͐̊̌́f̵͖̠̬̮̎̚ų̶͕̗̃̔̆̕ñ̶̢̮̫͝n̵̡̈́e̵̥͌l̵͕̑̒ͅ.̶̡̢̬̈ ̵͍͈̪̫̋͝t̸͕͂͝ḥ̵͓̐̊̒̑ͅē̵̘ ̴̹͉̒ͅṕ̴͕͚̀́̎i̸̲̾̇̀̄p̸̢͔͌̈́̄e̸̯̚͝l̵͖͕̙̈́i̵̲̊̇͌n̴̞͎̈́ē̸̘̙̆͘͠.̸̫̖̭̲͋̽̈

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Don’t look now, but there is somebody in your kitchen. Someone is stirring the chili. The stirring is the motion, the mechanism. But what about the chili? We believe the chili being stirred is not euphoria. That someone is Average Joe, Tech Genius.

Fun fact: only the first and last sentence of that paragraph was written by me, the rest is straight from the Average Joe’s mouth. That sweet, sweet, overflowing with chili mouth. I spoke last week about unnecessary uses of metaphors and analogies, which often only served to make things more confusing. I feel like I spoke to soon. It gets so so so much work. The introductory section of the chapter “Patterns, Details, and Secrets” employs a chili metaphor. I have yet to fully parse what its purpose is supposed to be, aside from evoking a sense of eldritch bean-based horror. How I long for the simpler times of skateboard-bike-car. As I’m sure you all recall, last time we discussed how the SCF was used to invoke RSFC, or it might have been the other way around. Regardless, what is clear is that learning the SCF is to learn the stirring of chili. And of course, the stirring is the motion, the mechanism. Which leaves us to question, well then what is this metaphorical chili, Mr. Average Joe? Why the chili is the factors and the variables! My understanding of this analogy stops here, as it’s somewhat unclear what the interaction between the stirring and the chili is. One thing is for certain, the chili being stirred is not euphoria. I just give up on that part.

Look, I gotta be honest here. The entirety of this chapter? In and out of my brain. Woosh. Nothing remains but residual chili sticking to the ear canal. The final chapter of this book is essentially a summary of all the previous chapters (and it’s actually as brief as it claims to be!). Reading this summation I was astounded not only by the thought of how much time I’d wasted reading a book that could seemingly have been summed up in 10 pages, but also how much of what I’d read for last weeks review has just disappeared from my mind completely. All that remains is ṱ̸̼̘̍̑̔̿h̶̜͔̉̑͐̏e̶̞̹͉͂ ̵̖̱̺̲͛́̑̅c̵͖̓͋͛ḁ̸̱̹̺̌̆̒n̸̲̲̉̏́v̵͓̟͔̠̿̆à̸̪͖̪̝̉ṣ̶̻̚̚͘͠.̷̺͇̞͐͒͛ ̵̟͉̬͆̀̈́̂t̴̥̓̑h̸̺̞̽͗͑̽ẻ̴͇̆͝ ̸͔͔̋͜f̸̢̖̗̂̇u̵̺̟̪̪͆n̴̯̪̟̋̐̐n̷̖͉̍͜ê̶̳̫̦ͅļ̵͈͖͆̆.̴̫̪͍͍̈́̆ ̴̼̙̌ţ̷̠̯̓͆̓h̴̼͖̔e̸̛͇̍̍ ̸̼͔͒͗p̶̡̝̒̂̕͜ͅi̵͕̽͆͂̏p̵͍̞̘̆͠é̴̲͒͛̅l̷̛̬̳̤̂̐͑i̶͓̾͛n̴̨͚̾̓͊e̵̺̓ and the Mindless Work LADDER. To be fair, I don’t put myself into ideal situations for retention of information with the way I read these in a fevered state, but it strikes me as impressive how little I can recall. And being on the opposite side of this book now, I feel a clarity I didn’t feel last time. As I look at this summary, I look again at the “six component of the tech genius myth” that Average Joe sets out to debunk. Initially I’d thought, oh that’s a nice narrative framing and will be useful for myself in terms of analyzing the text. Now I look at it and some of these “components” are just meaningless. What does “secrets are elusive” mean? Who is talking about Steve Jobs and is just like “well what can you do, secrets are elusive!” THAT ISN’T A PERSON. Why are we debunking this. “Their thinking is mysteriously inverted”. NO. Who thinks this? The chapter debunking that one is just called “Becoming Contrarian”. That isn’t mysterious! Nobody is claiming it is! They just have new ideas. That’s not mysterious inversion! And, like, Average Joe agrees that it’s not that! Hence the debunking of the claim, but nobody is claiming it! There’s no debunking to be done!

OK, I just had to step away to put the kettle on so I can have some tea. I was not expecting to experience genuine rage while writing this up but here I am.

There is a bright side. This is the most personally connected to an authour I’ve felt since the halcyon days of Jason R. Rich and Nite Reading. Average Joe is littered with expression and personality, sometimes to an unhelpful extent. At one point, a Taylor Swift song is quoted. I had not heard of the song in question (I Forgot That You Existed), so I thought maybe it’s a deeper cut. So, I consulted my expert and resident Swiftie, my sister, as to the general popularity of the track. And lo, she bestowed upon me her wisdom, which I can only assume is akin to the oracular curses of Delphi: it is both not very well known amongst the masses, and typically not a favourite even amongst the Swifties. The news delighted me, confirming my suspicions that our authour is a deep fan of TayTay. And I cannot hate for that. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. He has my utmost respect for having the courage to use a Taylor Swift quote to explain bitcoin.

Average Joe, as the name would suggest, is a very relatable man, as the name would suggest. Just like all of us, he must find new and innovative routes to meet page counts and citation quotas. In a seemingly new trend in the second half of the book, I do not recall it’s presence at all in the first half but also I have forgotten most of that half so take this with a grain of salt, the presence of pictures has skyrocketed. When teaching us all about how none other than the authour of the 95 Theses, Martin Luther, was a contrarian epic business boss, he includes a full page picture of the original 95 Theses and a half page picture of literally just the modern day doors of the church where it was first posted. Later, when discussing the Greek man who inspirationaly put rocks into his mouths for years, half a page is devoted to a picture of a marble must of Mr. Rocks in my Mouth. Frankly, the latter one felt like rubbing salt in a wound given it was surrounded by a lengthy 5-page retelling of this historical fable of a man putting rocks in his mouth. It was one of the better rocks in your mouth stories I’ve read, but also way too much length that essentially just said “this person put effort into being better at public speaking”. We get it, it takes work to improve things; but this book is over 400 pages, we can chill on the historical lessons.

It’s time that I regrettably must address that the rocks-in-his-mouth chapter also uses Elon Musk as a subject for study throughout. I can’t say that it’s grating because it’s vapid Silicon Valley gushing about Elon, because it isn’t. But it also isn’t necessarily critical. It refuses to make qualitative judgements on most of the things described. An anecdote about Elon Musk showing up at one of his factories and deciding to fire 700 people isn’t commented upon. It’s stated, and then moved on without unpacking it whatsoever. What lesson am I supposed to take from this? Is it cool and badass or is it mean? The story is cited but that sort of just feels hollow, you didn’t do anything here. You just uncritically relayed an anecdote without a single drop of commentary. Investigating the citations on the Elon Musk section also revealed to me a new wrinkle to the notion that Average Joe writes like 90% of university students trying to finish an academic essay. Scrolling through the citations, I noticed a pattern. Many would appear repeatedly in a single batch, one after the other, and then not be used anywhere else in the book. Now, as an alumnus myself, I can recognize this tactic. You want to cite a certain number of sources and use them enough to justify their presence, but you also really don’t feel like forming any synthesized new ideas. So you devote a paragraph, maybe 2 or 3 of them, and you essentially give a SparksNotes summary of the source. Repeat that a couple more times and you have yourself an essay. But what you end up with is just a disjointed list of other people’s ideas. No new conclusions are gained from critically clashing the concepts of these sources against each other. It’s just a list, a list that does nothing but make you think, why wouldn’t I just read your sources.

So, I propose an alternative to the presented meaning of stirring the chili. The chili is the sources, and Average Joe is the stirring. He’s really just aimlessly churning the sources in a circular motion, they remain the same. And the wooden spoon isn’t the tasty part.

I really thought I was going to be able to end it there. Seemed like a nice poetic ending. But damnit, I just remembered I have to talk about the triangles. At this point, screw it, let’s just list some of the triangle. Starting from last week, ṱ̸̼̘̍̑̔̿h̶̜͔̉̑͐̏e̶̞̹͉͂ ̵̖̱̺̲͛́̑̅c̵͖̓͋͛ḁ̸̱̹̺̌̆̒n̸̲̲̉̏́v̵͓̟͔̠̿̆à̸̪͖̪̝̉ṣ̶̻̚̚͘͠.̷̺͇̞͐͒͛ ̵̟͉̬͆̀̈́̂t̴̥̓̑h̸̺̞̽͗͑̽ẻ̴͇̆͝ ̸͔͔̋͜f̸̢̖̗̂̇u̵̺̟̪̪͆n̴̯̪̟̋̐̐n̷̖͉̍͜ê̶̳̫̦ͅļ̵͈͖͆̆.̴̫̪͍͍̈́̆ ̴̼̙̌ţ̷̠̯̓͆̓h̴̼͖̔e̸̛͇̍̍ ̸̼͔͒͗p̶̡̝̒̂̕͜ͅi̵͕̽͆͂̏p̵͍̞̘̆͠é̴̲͒͛̅l̷̛̬̳̤̂̐͑i̶͓̾͛n̴̨͚̾̓͊e̵̺̓ is three things so might as well be a triangle. We have “the three parts of intelligence” which is technically a three part venn diagram but that’s basically a triangle and also it does not make use of the overlapping areas at all. It consists of IQ, EQ, and Personality. Apparently EQ is the only malleable one, which seems kinda weird to me considering I learned to read and I’m sure that would make a big difference in how I scored on an IQ test. Weird intellectual essentialism, my dude, why don’t we not. More fun triangle now, we have THE DARK TRIAD whose three sides are Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy. Ancient myths and psychologist warn that when someone’s personality assembles all three sides of the Dark Triad, they can get big and purple. And last but not least, the Sustainable Mystique Triad.

Goddamn it I need to try and describe this mess of a triangle. Ok, so, there’s three sides to the triangle. The bottom is Interesting Problems, the other two sides are Articulate Speech and Narrow Focus. Now these sides have arrows going along them, pointing towards where they meet at the top. At the top there is a big circle called Fascination. But we’re not done. The triangle also has an interior. At the base, on top of Interesting Problems, is the Slow Create Framework. And rising from the Slow Create Framework are bubbles and these bubbles are inflections and they rise all the way up to Fascination. Don’t think I need to clarify any further, you all get it.

The thought that there’s still so much absolute malarkey I haven’t even gotten near yet is draining my very soul. I just, I have to start listing stuff off. Rapid fire, let’s go.

Left brainers and right brainers, left brainers are logical and literally incapable of telling a story without collecting data first. God forbid their kids ask for a bedtime story.

Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey shows up for some reason, and I can’t believe I’m not writing more about it since it’s the one thing in any of these books I actually have extensive knowledge on. But also, my dude, Average Joe, see another movie. Star Wars isn’t everything.

Memorable morsels of chewy sugary delight, nibbles of synthesis’ loser cousin.

Story juice.

Pruning is essential and brevity is key, says the 482 page self-help book.

Story juice.

Sapiosexuals.

Building custom bedrooms in a private jet (?)

Sinking Houdini into a milk jar.

Organic Whole Foods hot bar vegan mashed potatoes.

Counting the beans (not the ones in the chili, coffee beans)

“Some entrepreneurs will have great teeth, a British accent…” Sorry, my dude, great teeth and British is an oxymoron.

Collecting snails and narrowing down the glide protein.

The belief in the great person mythos sliding into our DMs (direct messages)

Dicken’s knocking (hehehe)

This last bit is too sad to relegate to a rapid fire passing mention. Possibly the single saddest moment in literary history. At the end of the chapter containing the lovely Sustainable Mystique Triad, Average Joe has a humble request. If we, the reader, come across any inflections (the bubbles in the triangle), that we share them using the #AverageJoeTechGenius hashtag. A place where, and I quote, “many others just like you are likely to cheer you on or discuss your inflection publically.” There are four tweets with that hashtag. Three are from the authour. The other is from the publisher. I believe Hemingway claimed that “Baby Shoes. For Sale. Never worn.” was the saddest story told in six words. #AverageJoeTechGenius is the saddest story in five.

Anyways the end of the book is a Dicken’s quote that “we forge the chains we wear in life” and psshhh can’t relate. Imagine forging your own chains? Who would do that?

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This has gotten far too long for me to be cute about this so, hey, give me money please? Subscribe to my Patreon for exclusive bonus posts every other week, the ability to vote on which book I cover next, behind the scenes access to my creative hellscape, and one respect. It’s literally just 2 dollars. Anyways, next week I will be collaborating with resident Swiftie, my sister, to see what other business advice we can glean from her lyrics. Kachow.

EPISODE 4; DESTROY GOD

I’m worried the symbiote plotline from the past weeks may have made these posts a bit inaccessible to the average person, so I reckon it’s time for us to read Average Joe: Become the Silicon Valley Tech Genius. Get right back to our humble roots.

As I started reading the introduction to Average Joe, I was tentatively optimistic. I was surprised to see that it seemed to be going in a admirable direction. It was only a few pages until it quickly took a south turn into some truly nausea inducing verbiage. There is a clear image of the authour viewing themself as a Promethean figure, daring to subvert the authority of the Gods. I’m just going to quote this passage wholesale to illustrate the perceived grandeur:

“I methodically and ironically chip away at the grand arch of this tech genius myth in the chapters that follow. With every swing of the ax, there are sparks of truth…”

I should state, I’m going to be splitting this into two parts since the book is almost 500 pages and I do not have time to read all of that in one night (which is how I do this for some reason). So, I won’t have the full context of the final conclusions drawn by the book but I do feel like I have a general idea where it’s headed. The general thesis of the book appears to be this: the concept of the “tech genius” (or Great-man theory as a whole) is a myth… but only insofar as much as it’s not an innate trait. It is a destination one can reach by following tried and true steps. It starts off promising, the Great-man mythos is a problematic theory that demeans the power of the masses and places all historical change upon the back of singular major figures. But out authours qualms with this theory appear to lie solely within the notion that these figures are channeling a god-given power, that they are just born with it. That definitely is a issue with the Great-man theory of history, especially due to how it can play into the worldviews of bigots and phrenologists. Yet the authour does not appear to have an issue with the idea of attributing all of Microsoft’s success to Bill Gates and not it’s masses of employees, the problem is thinking Bill Gates didn’t work his little butt off to earn his godlike status. And with the simple tricks in this book we can become god too! Thanks Mr. Prometheus.

Most chapters and subheadings within them begin with a quote from a famous figure. One such quote is “creativity is intelligence having fun” attributed to Albert Einstein. First of all, I find this extremely funny. It just seems like such a fun and flirty way for acclaimed scientist Albert Einstein to describe something. More importantly, I had doubts about the veracity of this attribution but fortunately there was a citation! A citation to another book about creativity, which feels like when you’re writing a paper for school and you’re too lazy to source down the paper another paper cites so you just cite it as if it came from the other. Cursory searching reveals that there is no indication Einstein actually said that, and I’m not surprised. Nobody actually says quotes, that’s not how talking works. I have a strong feeling 99% of quotes have been created wholesale by inspirational wall posters and social media account. Later on two more Einstein quotes are pulled out, one of which is cited from a listicle “19 Things You Didn’t Know about Albert Einstein”, the other is cited to “The #1 Place to Boost Creativity (Hint: You’ll Be Naked!)” I have my reservations about using clickbait articles as sources for you big cool book that will attack and dethrone god. Even putting truth aside, something about a constant use of quotes from historic figures and entrepreneurs feels like it undermines the proposed anti-Great Man stance of the book.

To speak it’s praises for a moment, something that sets Average Joe apart from previous entries in this series is that it’s actually written like a book? Like there’s prose! The writing is structured! Chapters are bookended so that the ending relates back to how it started! It’s actually a welcome change of pace just to read something that makes a stylistic choice. And yet…

How do all business self-help books have an adverse relationship with functional analogies? I’ve already mentioned it previously but hoo boy does Average Joe have some stinkers. First up we’ve got everyones favourite concept, skateboard-bike-car. Everybody knows skateboard-bike-car. Everybody loves skateboard-bike-car. We all understand exactly what it means. It makes perfect sense. You have skateboard, and you think but what if it was better. So now you make it a bicycle and it’s like, ok, that’s pretty good but what if it was a car. And then you have car and you’re like “hell yeah, car”. That’s skateboard-bike-car. It’s literally just describing incremental improvement, you make something, incorporate feedback, improve it, repeat. The problem with this analogy is that it actively makes the concept more confusing than it actually is? Iterative improvement is a simple concept to grasp, but comparing it to a technological progression from skateboard to bike to car makes it fuzzier because that’s just… not a logical progression? I’ve never really considered “bike” as “the sequel to skateboard”. Something like horses to horse-drawn carriage to car is a much more clear (and existent) linear pipeline. Not to mention the fact that skateboard are way more tubular than bikes or cars.

But the real holy grail of bad analogies is THE ARTIFACTS. You see, it’s very simply to understand. SCF is composed of a few key artifacts, the canvas, the funnel, and the pipeline. You’re probably asking what SCF is. Well, following the SCF framework you can invoke RSFC and activate the DMN in the brain. This is not to be confused with a New York Times op-ed writer trying peyote for the first time. But you shouldn’t be confused because it’s all very clear. Now, as mentioned, there are 3 artifacts. What do we mean by artifact? Well it’s not really explained but I guess an artifact is a fun brainstorming worksheet. It’s important to understand that none of the artifacts are actually different. They are just 3 different coats of paint on the exact same structure. The SCF canvas has 11 boxes that you work through as a sort of brainstorming process to harness daydream energy. The SCF funnel is the exact same thing but the 11 boxes are just represented as a linear diagram. The SCF pipeline is the exact same thing but it’s laid out in a spreadsheet format so you can have multiple instances of the process running alongside each other. And once you’ve assembled all 3 SCF artifacts you can socket them into the SCF gauntlet and instantly brainstorm away 50% of all life in the known universe. The only thing that can stop you is tech’s mightiest entrepreneurs assembling.

I’d be remised not to mentioned the contents of some of those 11 boxes. Of course, we have the Mindless Work LADDER, an analogy and an acronym at the same time. We use the Mindless Work LADDER to climb down into Mindless Work, naturally. The acronym stands for “LOOSEN, ANTENNA, DAYDREAM, DRIFT, EMERGE, RECHARACTERIZE”. All very clear. In case you’re not quite grasping it, there is a diagram of a ladder where each rung is labeled with one of these steps. Once again, this analogy doesn’t make sense, it’s supposed to be something you’re climbing down into except you reach the bottom at drift. Emerge and recharacterize are steps about coming back up. It’s not a unidirectional process so “climbing down” a ladder isn’t actually applicable here at all. Which makes you question why they forced the acronym so hard as to use the word “antenna” as a verb. “Hey man, sorry I can’t go out tonight, I gotta go antenna.”

Now, you may ask, what is the purpose of this LADDER? Well, once we begin to drift, that is when we may acquire goodies for our next box: nibbles of synthesis. I’m just… I was going to go into more details here but c’mon. You can’t just say “nibbles of synthesis”. C’mon bud, really? Nibbles of synthesis? I genuinely don’t know what more I can say. It just has to speak for itself.

In conclusion, this book used the phrase “virality embedded within it’s bowels” and I felt genuinely sickened. Can’t wait to read the other half for part two.

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Instead of being sickened, why do something sick and subscribe to my Patreon for some totally tubular behind the scenes content. There’s officially someone who isn’t blood-related to me on board so it’s really popping off. For just 2 measly little nibbles of dollar a month, you can read my entire backlog of Patreon exclusive posts that go up every other Tuesday. Last week I wrote an essay about the movie Venom (2018) and it certainly went some places. In fact, today’s reading choice was voted upon by a singular patron for whom I can assign sole blame for the psychic damage I received.

Next weeks Patreon post will either be about some sick skateboarding content or Seinfeld (there was a very disappointing subchapter referencing stand-up comedy that I didn’t cover here today because it was exceedingly boring for a business book talking about stand up). I haven’t decided yet. If you want to see anything in particular, you can harass be about it through the Patreon. Cyberbullying is a premium feature.

EPISODE 3; EMBRACE CHAOS

We ended our last Patreon post by making a statement, a statement that we would shake off this string of failures by having the symbiote from the 2018 movie Venom. Unlike the time we turned into Tim Allen at the end of a Nite Reading entry, this time we have continuity.

Today we read a book entitled Be A Start-up Superstar: Ignite Your Career Working at a Tech Start-Up. It may come as a surprise, but we did not like it. Contrary to the first two readings in this series, this book is more about working for a start-up and climbing the ladder from there, not starting a company yourself. Now, while we like to think of the symbiote as more of a co-equal than a boss, this might be a useful change of direction. Obviously being head honcho from the start hasn’t worked out so far, it’s time to try giving someone else the reins so we can flourish underneath them. And sometimes that someone is a ball of goo from outer space.

First, we should address the elephant in the room. Why do we keep saying “we”? Well we’ve taken book authour and my good friend Steven Mark Kahan’s advice and become a We Person. One of the 35 simple steps to follow to be a start-up superstar is to walk in the shoes of others. Some people, vile villainous people, are I People, they make I Statements. These I People are a solipsistic sort and shalt never succeed in business, so we must cast them aside. There is no more I, only we. As we all know, the only way to be successful in business is collective action and profit sharing and we are glad this book is making that radical argument. Semper fi, Steven.

Now that we have gotten that business out of the way, let us commence. This book has an adverse relationship to effective hypothetical situations. The book’s introduction asks us to imagine we were having a dinner meeting with the authour, and we tell him about how we are so disenchanted with the working world after such high expectations leaving post-secondary, how we are hoping for a big break or to find a mentor. With an elegant flourish, it is revealed that Steven, the authour, is our mentor and he is taking an interest in us. Rejoice! Now where did the fact that we were having a dinner meeting play into this? Nowhere! You could have just said imagine you’re sad, and even that seems unnecessary. We’re reading a book about how to be a start-up superstar, just assume we’re already sad and cut right to being our business dad. In another hypothetical, Steven wants to illustrate the problem with a scenario he encountered at one of his previous jobs. Quest Software, his employer, organized their products on their site not by category but by how recently they acquired it. Now, for a simple mind like us this is a hard concept to grasp, how could this be bad? Well, he asks us to imagine, what if Amazon organized their products on their site not by category but by how recently they acquired it? My feeble brain finally understands the issues, it would be bad. Yet, this analogy also seems completely pointless, it’s not really making anything easier to understand. It’s just the exact same situation but with a different retailer. It’s pretty self-explanatory to anybody who has made a purchase before that categorizing products is better than just listing them by recency of acquisition. We all live in a society, we get it.

The other big adverse relationship this book has is with effectively using statistics. Early on, it laments how so many college students want to work in big Fortune 500 companies and not start-ups. It then cites a statistic that, as he suspected, Big Company or Bust students are not experiencing smooth success and that 43% of them are underemployed. Except the statistic is just for all college students, not just those who planned to go work for Fortune 500 students. Even more, it’s including majors that wouldn’t even necessarily be picking between Fortune 500s and Start-ups. It certainly is a statistic, but it does nothing to suggest a verifiable difference in the employment rates of Big Company or Bust Students vs. Start-up Stans. A similar situation occurs later in the book when discussing the effectiveness of vision boards, citing a stat that 82% of small business owners practicing visualization have accomplished 50% of what they had on their board. Once again, there’s nothing to compare this against, no meter of what those without vision boards accomplish in contrast. Not to mention that accomplishing 50% of your vision board isn’t a clear metric of effectiveness, the completed part of the board might have been relatively simple goals that were easily marked off. Also, this is pure speculation on my part, it isn’t unreasonable to suspect that people who use vision boards are likely to self-report that it works for them. If they didn’t believe it was doing something, they wouldn’t be doing it. So who’s to say how much of that 82% is overestimating how much of their vision board has come true.

And finally, despite the change in perspective from founder to worker, our old friend business jargon is still here. We’ve got fun-raisers, which may or may not include hiring banner-planes and which may or may not be the second instance of hiring a banner-plane in the whole book. We’ve got company names like Mynd, YayPay, Goobler, SlapFive, InstaVisor, and Thycotic.  Only one of those I just made up. We’ve got describing tech start-ups as a frontier for outlaws. This is one of my favourites because it makes me wish that Tumblr was a tech start-up whose vision was to disrupt tumbleweeds. Also, not really business jargon but we didn’t have time to mention it elsewhere: says we have NO excuse for not shaking someone’s hand which in this global climate? Methinks it’s problematic. And he even admits earlier in the book he thinks we have a serious epidemic on our hands (of people not working for start-ups but still).

In conclusion, the foreword of this book says that they knew the corporate world wasn’t for them when the first thing they were shown on the first day of the job was how to clock-in and clock-out. Almost as if that’s an important thing to get done first so you get paid for your training if that’s how your company handles hourly wages. Anyways, we’re clocking out.

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Speaking of getting paid for your hours, give me money and subscribe to the Patreon? If you aren’t sure of what kind of content you’ll be getting, you can find last weeks Patreon post unlocked to read for free which may help if you’re confused by why we’ve bonded with the Venom symbiote. On that note, we skipped talking about a section about Embracing Chaos as we figured it would be a good fit to explore next week on the Patreon where we well embrace chaos and review/learn doing business from the 2018 movie Venom.

EPISODE 2; WARM BLOGGER OUTREACH

Yes, this is a day late. And yet, my dad is the only one putting money into this so only he’s allowed to be disappointed.

For today’s entry I read a book called Art of Start-Up Fundraising by Alejandro Cremades. I hated it. Last week’s book at least had something interesting going on. It was weird and frequently skeeved me out, but it had content. Despite the title, this book lacks any sense of artistry. It’s just… it’s so boring. It has a very textbook-esque voice. So, you’ll have to pardon the scattershot nature of this review, there’s not much of an overarching stench to comment so I’ll be focusing on more individual moments. Largely because I scrolled past large chunks of this book to avoid falling asleep too early the day before I have a night shift.

The book begins with a foreword from Barbara Corcoran of Shark Tank fame. She regales us with an anecdote about how her mother had 10 children, and every time she told Barbara’s dad he would “run right out and buy another bed”. Forgive me if I’m wrong here, but this seems goddamn insane. Just like, from a logistical perspective, a new bed is going to be your first purchase? You’re not even initially going to be putting the new baby in a bed, they’ll be in a crib! And the anecdote presupposes they’ve already had a fair number of children, so you’re most likely already in possession of a crib from the previous kids. The necessity for a bed arises as an existing crib user rises to a ripe age of being bed sized. Immediately vacating the house to go mattress shopping as soon as you learn of the baby seems a bit like putting the bed before all the other things. In general, though, after a few kids you should be reasonably set for most of the supplies you need for bringing up baby. This is just the first paragraph of the foreword and has little bearing on anything else in the book but I’m taking what I can get.

I suppose the broadest comment I can make is that this book seems very… self-involved on the authour’s part. The About the Authour section reveals that two important things about our writer, he is a cofounder of Onevest and was a consultant on the development Obama’s JOBS Act. Don’t worry if you weren’t already aware of this, you can tell. Onevest gets mentioned constantly throughout the book, and not in the sense of “this is my personal experience from when Onevest was just a start-up” and more just mentioning it as a product to be used by entrepreneurs. And the JOBS Act? Hoo boy, the JOBS act. There’s an entire chapter of this book dedicated to breaking down the details of the act. Which like fair enough, it does pertain to start-up fundraising, it’s somewhat relevant. It feels a bit self-centered, but I can let that slide. What I CANNOT abide is mentioning in the very first paragraph of said chapter that the Act you worked on “may well go down in history as one of the greatest moments” of Obama’s presidency.

One blessing that Art of Start-up Fundraising was kind enough to bestow upon me was a brief trip back in the memory palace to my Nite Reading days. It’s been so long since I’ve seen tips described as hacks that seeing “Six Hacks for Effective Journalist Outreach” was like an oasis in the middle of a content desert. The first of these hacks is possibly the most incomprehensible phrase I’ve ever read in a book: “Focus on inbound-outbound warm blogger outreach.” WHAT IS THAT? He provides zero explanation about this. How is a blogger warm? The wordsound of it evokes a euphemism for urination more than it does business advice. Another term I’m not quite familiar with was the “Micro Seed Round” of fundraising. Mostly because I didn’t feel like reading the explanation. But it seemed like an important step in the process, so I went ahead and tweeted at Dirty Job’s host Mike Rowe asking if he wanted to sign up for my Patreon. No dice yet, but you never know. My writing involves wading through shit so it’s familiar territory for the man.

@mikeroweworks hi mike did you want so subscribe to my patreon. it's pretty neat and i do a pretty dirty job. https://t.co/95aEWa47nn

— safety james of money fame (@scampdastard) March 17, 2021

Starting this series, I expected to see a lot of typical “wealthy person explaining how to be successful to poor people” tropes. Last week I avoided a lot of them because the bigger concern was whether the authours were actually pigeons. Art of Start-up Fundraising serves us up a nice cup of that classic “stop spending 10 dollars on these fancy friggin’ lattes already”. It pairs nicely with the traditional techniques of bootstrapping. To be fair, it sounds like pulling oneself up by the bootstraps is infinitely easier in the United States since it’s a country where you’re allowed to call anyone or even send them emails. Here in Canada it’s illegal to send e-mails without a legally binding agreement from both parties.

In conclusion, he mentions something called the Rainmaker Code which sounds cool as hell but is boring and not even a code. A code is a set of rules, “Timing, Synergy, Efficiency” isn’t a set of rules. It’s just three words. Do better.

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Speaking of doing better, give me money and subscribe to the Patreon? I learned in today’s book that the first port of call is often family, and my dad is my only Patreon subscriber. Now I’m supposed to move on to angel investors and well golly gee if you’re reading this you must be swell. I’m sure an angel like you would give everything to be in an exclusive club with my dad. And I’m not even going to ask for everything, just two dollars. We have coins for that amount here in Canada, so it’s basically no more expensive than, say, 5 or 10 cents a month if you want to think about it in terms of coin quantity.

Next Tuesday on the Patreon, I’ll be following up on some advice I received from today’s book and consulting with some advisors about continued start-up strategy. And if you’re just joining there’s one whole post in the backlog where I had to type “epic-win-sauce” on top of that. And as always you can follow me on Twitter @scampdastard so you can know when I upload late again.

EPISODE 1; CONSUME LIFE DINNER

I can think of no more apt way that this could’ve started than it being accompanied by a strangely busy time at work and an unexplained literal pain in my side. Really sets the mood.

Something I hadn’t considered when moving from Fortnite strategy guides onto entrepreneurial advice books is how much more actual reading it would entail. A significant chunk of Nite Reading was scrolling past screenshots, and an even larger chunk was scrolling past blocks of text that had been copy pasted from previous entries. Neither of these luxuries would be afforded to me on this new journey.

The book in question today is known by the name of Start-up Life: Surviving and Thriving in a Relationship with an Entrepreneur. I’d picked it simply because it had the word start-up in the title, thought it would be cute as the first entry in a series. There were a couple start-up mentioning books to pick from, but I’d just chosen this one in particular at random to be quite honest. When I’d announced the title of this book back in Episode 0, one of my readers kindly pointed out to me that it seems like this might be a relationship advice book, as in romantic relationships. I found this idea funny, assuming it would obviously be about business relationships, but tucked the idea away in my brain with the notion that it might be fun to write about it as if it was actually about romantic relationships.

Well turns out it actually is about that, so there go all my ideas.

Turns out, I’m not the only one disoriented using the word relationship in this context. So are the authours, our good friends Brad and Amy (I had to look up have way through reading this to confirm that this was not the name of the couple from Gone Girl, that was Nick and Amy). Early on in a section apologizing in advance for any use of heteronormative terminology throughout the book (which, given this was written in 2013, is actually kind of impressive so I’ve gotta give some amount of respect there), they lay out the language they plan on using to avoid confusion between romantic and business relationships. They announce that they will use partnership and relationship to refer to romantic relations, meanwhile entrepreneurial relationship will… also refer to that. They do not say how they’ll refer to those of the business variety, a strange omission since throwing the word entrepreneurial in front of it seems like a natural way to do that.

These definitions come just a few short sentences after the phrase “your life partner can also be your business partner”. Finally, someone brave enough to say co-workers should be allowed to marry. More importantly, it’s one of the first instances of the deluge of dreaded “business” language to be expected throughout the book. The example that made me want to give up on this entire project about a chapter into it was “a surplus of togetherness”, used as part of a metaphor for how to plan couple time around busy business boy schedules. I’ve been firmly swayed to the position that we should be making metaphors strictly illegal, nothing good has ever come of a metaphor. “Surplus of togetherness” has come of a metaphor.

The other major culprit is the concept of LIFE DINNER. The most space alien description of a key part of your romantic relationship I’ve ever heard. I love to USE ONE OF MY REGULARLY SCHEDULED LIFE DINNERS INSTEAD. I crave that. Essentially, the LIFE DINNER is a monthly night where you go out to a fancy restaurant and hash out all of your relationship issues from the past month in a public space. Remember, don’t waste time addressing lingering unresolved issues at home, save them for that good ol’ LIFE DINNER instead and make some wait staff uncomfortable. I lied slightly earlier, when I said these books would have no copy pasting, because sections like LIFE DINNER do recur throughout different chapters. It’s at least different text each time. One of these times we are implored to declare tonight LIFE DINNER right now! This very moment! Go, right now, today, make a reservation at a fancy restaurant.

I’m not sure if this book is aware but that is a very bad idea right now, and frankly I expect more. Set a good example in these trying times please and thanks.

This book’s biggest problem, however, is it’s not telling me how to make money and get rich overnight! So many of these tips assume the wealth and success is already there. The authour couple resolve the division of household chores by hiring people to do the chores for them. LIFE DINNERS are accompanied by expensive gifts like Range Rover, jewelry, and remote controlled fart machines. I need to become a millionaire while I’m asleep and none of this helps one bit! The most useful business advice I’ve gleaned from this book is that Brad is on the board of directors of Cheezburger, the “lolcats” meme site. Brad seems to have massive stacks of cash floating around, and according to the news people have made a lot of money from investing in memes recently, so this seems like a surefire investment opportunity for me.

In conclusion, this book posits the question “How do you turn down opportunities that would help your company grow and be successful in order to be at your daughter’s chess tournament?” I’ll just come right out and give it to you straight, it’s by not raising a kid who joins chess tournaments, it’s not a good spectator sport.

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That’s all for this week. In other news, the Patreon has officially launched and you can check it out right now if you feel like dropping a mere 2 dollars to support my lack of foresight. Within the next 2 weeks you can expect to receive for your investment: the ability to vote on which start-up mentioning screed I cover next, an exclusive post where I go for a life dinner with the concept of ICanHazCheezburger and 2013 internet culture, and at least 10 respects. Anyone who signs up also gets access to a Discord server where I’ll be sharing behind-the-scenes updates of the reading process if you want to see some of the straggling bits of content I couldn’t fit into these posts. Support is not expected but always appreciated, and if you want to make another poor life choice be sure to follow me on Twitter @scampdastard.

BECOMING VERY MONEY; EPISODE 0

Oh, I’m back here again huh.

Two years ago, on this very site, I underwent a spiritual journey. A spiritual journey involving a number of Fortnite books I don’t exactly recall, but it was almost 20. It was the pinnacle of my creative career, by which I mean the only good thing I’ve ever done. And what do I have to show for it? A series of blogs that left me at a net loss of 20 dollars and ghosted by prolific authour Jason R Rich.

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I’ve been trying to think up a follow up to Nite Reading for quite some time now. Shortly after that series ended, I moved directly on to working on my undergrad thesis (partially inspired by Nite Reading) which sated my literary appetites for quite some time. A few ideas have come and gone from my brain, the one that probably got furthest along was reviewing joke books but the problem there was that I’m already very funny so adding any additional humour might have gotten too much to handle. Thinking back upon Nite Reading, I see three key factors to qualify as a suitable follow up. It needs to be a substantive enough set to accommodate a multi-month writing series, the concept of its very existence needs to be exploiting vulnerable people, and most importantly: I need to question my life choices while doing the reading. Which brings me to the announcement.

I have purchased a bundle of “entrepreneur” books, 18 in total, which I will be reading and reviewing here for my new mini-series “Becoming Very Money”. I say mini-series because this will fall under the same umbrella that I’m retroactively assigning Nite Reading to, “How to Get Really Very Good at Doing Things.” The decision to take on this selection of books was accelerated by the fact that when I googled Becoming Very Money to make sure it wasn’t already being used by another product for some reason, the related searches were all something akin to “how to get rich overnight” which is goddamn harrowing. It might not be as pressing an issue as tech-illiterate grandmothers buying lazy Fortnite books for their grandchildren because they were flossing at thanksgiving dinner, but promising riches to people strapped for cash in exchange for some of that cash they lack is also pretty heinous. So, I’m looking forward to taking a fair and balanced approach to dunking on their work.

There’s one last announcement to be made in regard to the format of this series. Entries will be going up every other Tuesday (starting two weeks from today, March 2^nd). The move to a biweekly schedule is firstly because I have a full-time job unlike during Nite Reading. Secondly, it’s been almost 2 years since I posted on here so literally nobody can complain about 2 weeks. Thirdly, because I’m asking for money. In the spirit of the books I’m reading, I’m thirsty for cash now. Maybe I can even reimburse the now 40 dollars I’ve spent on books for this blog. On the Tuesdays where there isn’t a blog entry, I will be making exclusive Patreon content for a very low monthly fee because I’m aware of my value as a creator and that value probably maxes out at two dollars. I spent the entirety of Nite Reading having never played Fortnite so I could only rely on second-hand nephew opinions to justify my more objective critiques of the advice itself as opposed to the medium. So, this Patreon exclusive content will be correcting that, not as in it’s me playing Fortnite but like I’ll be testing the advice. Each Patreon post will be following up on and implementing some piece of advice from the previous weeks book. I’ll be able to follow, in real time, the ups and downs of the being mad online business to see if the advice I gleamed from The Food Truck Handbook is worth a single damn. I’m still ironing out the details here, but there will be more info once the Patreon goes live with the release of the first review in Becoming Very Money.

Last time, I was never able to get Rich, but maybe this time I’ll get rich. The series will begin Tuesday, March 2^nd with, fittingly, my review of Startup Life: Surviving and Thriving in a Relationship with an Entrepreneur. I’m regretting it already, and if you want to regret your own life choices, go follow me on twitter @scampdastard to know whenever a new entry goes up.

‘Nite Reading Part 17: Ending.

This late April, we as a culture have witnessed a great many of media spectacles that serve as culminations of years of back story. Avengers: Endgame, the Comedy Bang Bang 10^th Anniversary Special, whatever’s going on in Game of Thrones right now, that’s pretty much it but three is enough to call it a pattern. And now, I shall make it four as I too join that great pantheon of culmination. The beast is nearly vanquished, this is the last entry of Nite Reading.

I have a curious relationship with endings. Mostly in that, I’m not good at reaching them. I’m half way through the first season of probably 20 something television series. I very rarely come even the slightest bit close to finishing a game, tending to just end up playing through the first hour, getting distracted, then coming back to play that first hour again, repeat ad nauseum. When it comes to my creative works, it’s rare enough for one of my ideas to makes it’s way into a first installment, let alone a final one. So, it’s a strange experience to be sitting here on the precipice of an ending, an unfamiliar sensation. But by god I spent 20 dollars on these books and I’m gonna get my moneys worth out of this.

It’s not quite accurate to say I’ve saved the best for last, when I chose Fortnite Battle Royale Hacks: Mobile to be the last entry I had no idea what it would contain. I don’t pre-screen these books at all, I just pick which one I’m covering willy-nilly. I figured, this one is for phone! It’s gotta be somewhat drastically different than the others considering it’s about one of the few forms of the game that has notable differences from other versions. There’s gotta be something there. Not really. Once again, pretty much the exact same information as all the others. There’s a little bit about changing the UI settings for mobile which is appreciated but has also been covered in a few non-mobile focused books. There is, however, one egregious point in this book. One that feels emblematic of this entire series.

It’s been discussed here before how difficult it’s been for me to ascertain the chronology of when and in what ordered these books were written/released. This one isn’t as difficult to ascertain. Early on the book states that it was written after the iOS release of Fortnite, this is obvious of course. Why would a book ever give advice for a version of a game that doesn’t exist yet? They’d just be guessing at what the future version of the game would be like! That would be silly. We also know that this book is prior to the Android release of Fortnite, because it specifies that at the time an Android version had been announced for Summer 2018 launch but did not exist yet. Given these parameters we can ascertain that the book was likely written between April and July 2018. On a totally unrelated note, you might want to be aware that is was somewhat newsworthy that when Fortnite for Android did come out, the developer Epic Games decided to not release it through the Google Play Store as most Android apps are. Instead they bypassed Google as a third-party distributor and instead opted to have it mainly available through downloading from their own website.

This book gives a paragraph about how to download Fortnite for Android. You know, the app that the book has specifically mentioned does not exist yet. They’re gonna tell you how to download it. Not a problem though, right? It’s can’t be hard to guess at how to download an app! It’s all the same way, every major app. It’s common knowledge. You go to the Google Play Store, search the name, and download it just like any other! We can push this book to market just fine, get it out there while the market is hot. And when the Android version does come out we’ll still be good to go! Telling people to download from the Google Play Store! It’s not like the Google Play Store would ever have to explicitly add a warning that Fortnite is not available on their platform to prevent people accidentally downloading malicious clones. Send it to print, boys!

There’s a discussion to be had about Epic’s tendency to opt for first party distribution of Fortnite, whether on PC or Android, and what it means for the industry as a whole. This isn’t the place for that. This is where I am so grateful for this decision because its hilarious that a decision made to avoid paying Google a percentage of microtransaction sales ended up revealing the blatant laziness in the creation of these books. They just made up a fact! About a version of the game that didn’t exist at the time! Honestly, I’m more surprised they didn’t just leave it out so they could later sell another book called Fortnite Battle Royale Hacks: Android Strategies for Surviving the Final ATK Driving and Killer Sharpshooting for Noobs.

It just… it genuinally baffles me. They specifically mention that the Android version isn’t out yet. IN THE BOOK. On page 2! The made-up fact is only on page 8! You can just not say things. You could opt to not mention that the Android version isn’t out yet. You could opt to just not make-up facts about how to install for Android. You could opt to not shoot yourself in the foot. Just, here at the end, I just don’t get it. I’ve read 17 of these books, they made 17 of these! There’s more coming! And every step of the way it just seems to clear that nobody making this cares. I can make jokes about the authour’s secret plans to make people worse at Fortnite so he can win, but they just come from a place of me wanting to attribute any source of good will to the creation of these books. Because otherwise, I can come to no other conclusion than these being egregious cash grabs. As if to taunt me, this is one of the two books of 17 that included promotion encouraging you to purchase the other books at the end. These books have print versions! Trees were killed for this! Ink was used for this! They’re full color, it probably wasn’t the cheapest printing process. I often find myself so drained by life, work, school, etc. that I find it hard to start a series. Harder to finish it. Stuff I feel creatively passionate about. But somehow, everybody involved of the creation of this book managed to keep churning it out. Keep selling this. And they haven’t stopped. I just want to know why. I need there to be more to this than pure exploitation of unaware consumers.

So, I want to end this series with a request, perhaps more of a plea. I’ve avoided using the authour’s name too much in this series, I didn’t want to cast aspersions, didn’t want to judge this person I know nothing about. But please, Jason R. Rich, if somehow you are out there reading this on a cruise lecture circuit somewhere, reach out to me. I’d love to have a discussion with you. Let me know why.