Drunk Ramblings: The Underdog
2026-04-28
I'm at a bar right now, and this is the first time I've gotten drunk in ages. I'm sitting outside on the patio with folks shooting pool next to me, and it's a disgustingly humid Texas evening in spring. It just got done raining, and it's hailing in other parts of where I'm generally located. In the midst of this drunken stupor, I felt that it was important to give you a snapshot of my thoughts while sweat drips down my body and the IPAs I've been pounding seep further into my bloodstream.
It's kind of a weird thing I've been doing recently, where IOKTIKN is starting to feel like a secondary thing to Cogito. The Cogito posts get done in the morning when I'm fresh, but instead of poring over a project for a few weeks and releasing it here, IOKTIKN is starting to feel like a secondary thing—when I feel like I've got another long thing in me and I've got to get it out by the end of the day, otherwise I'm toast. More prudently, it would've made sense to code the damn Zola templates to just have it all exist under a single directory, but no, my mind is constantly grasping for some kind of needless complexity via categorization to make myself feel better. I don't know, man, I'm having fun, I guess. And with this medium being what it is, the metaphor here can be described as me filling the shelves of Babel, one screed at a time. I don't know, I guess I'm having fun. Are you overwhelmed by all this output? Or just bored? It doesn't matter, I suppose. This is for me.
My blade feels blunt, but the artistry behind my words feels less inhibited. It's like I'll stab, but not as sharply. Instead of piercing, it's just this sheer brute force that still penetrates, albeit in a less profound but more painful way. I'll tell you something I've been thinking about. When it comes to the "conversion rate" of this project, if you feel so apt to call it that, the outlook is honestly quite abysmal. In what I've learned from running ads on my favorite Mongolian basket weaving forum, the likelihood of someone putting my RSS feed in their reader is about 0.01%. So, with some basic math, the 170,000 views I've received on my site equates to about, uh, 17 people who decide for whatever unknown reason to follow my work closely. And among them, probably about half of them have unsubscribed at this point due to my manic-yet-monastic daily input. "Oh fuck, this guy writes too much and I don't agree with most of it, better get this shit out of here." It really is such an uphill battle, this little project I've got going on here.
But at the same time, I'm being somewhat uncharitable. Before I deleted my guestbook, I amassed about 90 messages on it. I've received a handful of kind emails from readers, too. But at the same time, this medium doesn't ask for engagement. I don't need a message from someone to know that someone reads what I write. The degree to which that happens is an unknown thing to me, and that's how I prefer it. I have an unmitigated and absolute duty to be as honest as I can with all of you. Why? Because we all see what's going on, and we're tired of it, but don't know how to stay afloat in the deluge. This shit matters because it is the antithesis to Big Entertainment. I hope I'm entertaining, at least. Histrionic? Maybe, but we all perform because as Bill put it, life is a stage after all. I've seen other people be brazen in their honesty like me, but it sucks because it's veiled in this pornographic nihilism that makes it seem like we all should be feeling as shitty as they're feeling, and that there's no hope outside of carnal and disgusting pleasures. NO! There is so much beauty in telling people you love them, okay? I mean, even outside of that, what about a compliment to someone you don't even know? Even if it's not a good one, it's worth something to the person you complimented. It might make their whole day, so why don't you do it every chance you get?
I say that like I do the same. No, I'm not going out of my way to compliment everyone I talk to, but there's a genuine sense of joy one feels when they receive one that transcends any drug I've ever done, at least. Why is there this idea that hate is so prevalent? Well, maybe it isn't hate, but it most certainly is fear. We're so afraid of pain, embarrassment, and whatever else might happen in an unfortunate interaction with somebody. Embarrassment, as corny as it sounds, is good for the soul. Getting humbled is awesome. It's so awesome, in fact, that I spend every day humbling myself. Self-hatred is a horrible thing, and that's probably the greatest ailment of humanity. But when people use self-service as an antidote, we all know it's bullshit, and might believe it for a while, but know in the deepest recesses of our egos that we can't go on in that way of thinking. I know I literally just talked about it, but seriously, man, doing things in service of others or not letting yourself have that next beer really is an act of temperance that the soul most deeply loves and cherishes more than you could ever possibly comprehend.
The constant self-talk is annoying, isn't it? I know it can be, but we all have that inward reflection and for me, I decided to turn it into some kind of art, so sorry about that. Maybe you'll see a part of yourself in me, or see some way toward compassion that I can't fully comprehend because you won't send me a message after reading this, but indulge in my words as a part of (Your) personal inward reflection. There's a certain aim I have to be accessible, but just detached enough from the system to spark the interest of those who really want something to get. In my personal life, I can be gregarious and personable, but at the same time I get tired of the performance and need time to be alone. It's not that I loathe any aspect of the performance, obviously, but this whole concept that the words I write here and put on the internet can impact someone in a positive way is, I don't know, almost intoxicating in its own way.
But I don't know, I read a lot of blogs on Kagi Small Web or Bear or Neocities or independently hosted ones and find them just so dull. The second I see that the blogger works in software or whatever else, I ditch. Even the ones who aren't in software are just so boring. Look, I don't want to sound like some presumptuous hater, but the intellectual veil I see in many of these independent blogs is just—it's just—harrowing, okay? So many of them just want to sound smart or well-read and they do it in this way that's so sanitized and benignly corporate that it makes me thankful I never decided to hit up any of those shitty career fairs when I was in college and fuck off to selling dope instead. Am I unemployed? Is my brain fried? You fucking bet your sweet ass, buddy. Somehow in the calculus of trying to figure out this day-to-day bullshit, I stumbled upon an opportunity so undervalued that none of you will even see its merits until way after the fact. Yeah, in the face of AI, taste is the way forward. It's not about getting it done, but how it gets done and by who and what their idiosyncrasies have to offer. You better bet my idiosyncratic ass is gonna be here way after the RSS renaissance is in full swing, telling you sheep that I FUCKING TOLD YOU SO.
Don't worry, I still love you. I never stopped loving you, but we're seeing a growing distrust in Platforms and it's something that's not just felt among a small subset of "we are open-minded" individuals. Even those who play the games those platforms make us engage in are seeking more, and the resentment toward those platforms will only grow in the face of trillions of dollars getting burned. It's not even about self-sufficiency anymore, but about finding ways to work within this shitty social contract we all decided to sign. The "way out," if you even want to call it that, will be found outside of the American hegemony. As an American, I for one support the emerging New World Order I will see in my lifetime. Why wouldn't I? I won't be fully plugged in, but like many, maybe halfway plugged in—one ear in the noise, the other on the outside, feeling and seeing everything unfolding in the absolute perfection that God ordained since the Fall of Man. Is it a spiritually losing battle? Absolutely, but everyone loves an underdog, right?
I'm reminded of that neo-Nazi guy Andrew Anglin, the fella who writes the Daily Stormer. I don't know if it's still around (I checked—he's going over to Nostr and his forum is still up on Tor), but there's something I appreciate in his prolific writing even if I don't fully agree with his ideology. It's kind of a weird thing, all the layers of irony he's cultivating into a singular message. Those right-wing guys are ostensibly Christian, but in a way that's too wrapped up in political ideology to make me fully subscribe to their sentiments. I mean, those guys try to talk about the White Race despite the fact that it's a literal fabrication to sow discord among everyone. Ugh, don't worry, I'm not gonna get political on (You), okay? It's not my place, really. But listen, if you have an inclination to lump me in with those types, just don't, okay? There are so many layers of signaling going on, and in the face of all of it, the only thing I can tell you with absolute certainty is to love God and your neighbor. You may disagree with them, they might wrong you, but in the face of all of it should only be uncompromising love and affection.
But still, I am more than appreciative of someone who lets it all out on the daily. There's not enough of us who do this kind of thing in this way, and even though I'm not faced with oppressive censorship, I feel emboldened at the end of all this ranting just to tell you that love triumphs always. Even in the throes of hatred, disgust, and polarization, we have a chance to sit in that and find those small pockets of grace where we can, and I urge you to keep going and find them. I know I'm a Christian, but please don't be so against my words if you don't agree with my theology. If you're Buddhist, Muslim, Atheist—it doesn't matter. I don't care. I still love you, whoever you are. I love you more than you'll ever know, truly. It's just that we are so concerned with all of these meager things that I want to cut through all of it and find you, whoever you are.
My man h0p3 has this mission to Find the Others, as he calls it. We all have that mission, and while we stumble about in our flesh-sacks trying to find them—in meatspace or cyberspace—there's this constant urge to stay in our own heads where even when the demons try to confront us, we remain comfortable. The discomfort is something we all contend with, but find assurance in it; there's so much more outside of what's behind your eyeballs. Whether of any kind of eminence or disenfranchised, we all have those times where we feel like the underdog.
Stay that way.
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