Information or Entertainment
2026-01-15
I've been a casual user of the Melonland forum for a while now. I first made an account back when I launched this site in February of last year. Melon has done a great job running his forum. His art and software projects are always a pleasure to engage with. Also, he got interviewed by Rhizome and that made me kind of jelly. Recently, I followed the RSS feed for the forum, which has made it easier to keep up. I never really posted on forums when I was younger, but it's been a fun experience getting to know this one.
I responded to a post earlier today and it really got me reflecting on my journey writing online over the last two years or so. It's been quite the experience, that's for sure. I remember when I first started, I called myself a "freelance writer." I thought that it was a grand dream to get paid to write. It was enticing. Unfortunately, I learned quickly that the space is much more competitive and saturated than I thought. It turned out that a ton of people had the same idea as me. Go figure. With the advent of LLMs, it made the space even more competitive since there were now fewer jobs.
I found a guy who was a professional copywriter back in early 2024. His website was impressive and he seemed to have a lot of experience. I sent him an email soliciting advice on how to get into the industry. His reply was harrowing. He said that he lost most of his clients because they had a better experience with ChatGPT because they could get results quicker and cheaper. He was forced to transition to resume writing and told me that I wasn't going to find any work in copywriting.
Around that time, I posted some ads on different websites to promote my services. Conventional advice was to pick a niche, usually something you were interested in and knew a lot about. People can write about beauty, tech, dogs, cats, or whatever else. I considered picking music as my niche, but decided instead to go against conventional advice and become a generalist. I offered writing and editing. I got one consistent client and a few one-offs over the course of a few months, but quickly became dissatisfied with the work.
The pay was shit, it was competitive, and it was boring.
I realized quickly that I wanted to write things that actually interested me and I wanted more control over my platform. That's when I discovered Substack and decided to have a go at becoming a newsletter merchant. I found that it was tough to figure out what I wanted to write about. I couldn't get past myself, and ended up publishing things that were subpar. Moreover, I wasn't publishing frequently enough to get favored by the algorithm. Soon enough, I felt like I was at a dead end. I couldn't pull in any readers. The only people subscribed to me were ones I knew personally. My work wasn't getting on anyone's feeds. Promotion felt impossible. It was bullshit.
On top of that, I felt like I wasn't going anywhere. To write as a career, I now know, is a pipe dream. Talent and hard work aren't enough. You also have to sacrifice your values, denigrate yourself, and if you're lucky, you might be able to make a living as a second-rate hack. I used to aspire to be a guy like Hemingway, Dickens, or even Faulkner. I wished that my words were good enough to get printed and into people's hands. I understand now that it's more realistic to be like Bukowski, working a regular job and having the books just be a side thing. Of course, Bukowski's main passion was writing, but the hard lesson is that passion rarely pays the bills.
I'm conflicted about whether I even want to make a living with my writing. Seeing the popular Substack publications was a sobering experience. The writing was devoid of soul. I've learned that when it comes to reading, there are two reasons why people read anything.
Information and entertainment.
Those are the only two reasons why anyone reads anything. I'm at a position now where I have to ask myself, do I wish to perform? Am I informative? Do I have any business being persuasive? Is Cogito meant to entertain? I guess it's time for me to have my Maximus moment.
Are you not entertained?