Why the Internet Isn’t Fun Anymore

[RE]

Well, perhaps Surly will at some point weigh in with his opinion on how this Medium page came to be in existence.  I've never been able to work out the secret to drawing a large readership.  Early on before Social Media came around, I used to participate on a dozen reasonably popular and well read collapse websites, and I would regularly drop on links to my latest blog or embed my most recent video.  It was very time consuming work, which garnered a regular base of maybe 2000 readers who visited the Diner once a week or so and read a couple of pages.   YouTube got about 450 subscribers.  My biggest audio interview with Nicole Foss got around 6000 listens the last time I checked.  Most got a couple of hundred or so.

I'm definitely not up to cruising around other collapse websites anymore, if any exist that are even worthwhile to spend time on.  I never liked Facebook or social media in general, which is why Surly ran that branch of the Diner franchise.  Whatever it is you are supposed to do for SEO, I'm either not doing it right or my efforts have been undermined over the years, which is entirely possible and does not cause me any Cognitive Dissonance.  Thus I am not surprised it's hard to find our little forum here now, or that Google searches don't turn it up unless you already know it's here and adjust your search terms to find it.

So the question is, besides complain about the fact it's hard to find us, what do you propose to do about it?  Start an email chain letter maybe?  Whatever it is, from my end it has to cost $0 and take no more than 15 min of point and click linking per day.

RE

[TDoS]

I'm definitely not up to cruising around other collapse websites anymore, if any exist that are even worthwhile to spend time on.
RE

The collapse of collapse websites and personalities...as the world truddles on without...

[RE]

I'm definitely not up to cruising around other collapse websites anymore, if any exist that are even worthwhile to spend time on.
RE

The collapse of collapse websites and personalities...as the world truddles on without...

That's a fabulous Irony graphic.

The Collapse of Collapse Personalities is an interesting outcome to ponder on.  It would be interesting to plot it out on a timeline.

While the realization we were bound to hit a wall with population and per capita energy consumption can be traced back at least to the Limits to Growth study in the 70s, followed in the 90s by Richard Duncan's Olduvai hypothesis, it wasn't until Peak Oil as a concept became a subject of bloggers and on forums after the turn of the millenium there was an emergence of people who gained enough attention to become "Personalities" associated with Collapse.  Our old friends (sic) like Orlov, Greer and Kunstler wrote their books and LATOC and Peak Oil forums popped up.  Then we had the collapse of Lehman and the Financial Crisis which is when economists like yours truly jumped on the bandwagon.  I would put Peak Personalities coming sometime between 2008 and 2016, after which time things began to taper off.

Why?  It's not like things have improved, we had the Covid crisis, continuing refugee and migration crises in Europe and on the FSoA southern border and Greta Thunberg emerging as the Swedish Joan of Arc leading the Climate CO₂ army into battle at the various global conferences which get only slightly more interest than my blogs did. lol.

I don't attribute it to Denial anymore, now I think it's more Acceptance & Resignation in the population at large.  When I talk to people like the traveling nurses who come here for a few months for a nice paycheck.  They seem aware that we are heading for collapse but not real interested in why, they just accept it and figure they'll go on living as they do until it hits them.  Since I can't give them an exact date for when the lights won't go on or they won't be able to get gas for the car, I'm not of much help there.  I also can't do much to help them survive collapse either, because all the choices have negative consequences beyond stocking up some preps and having some cash, which most people in Alaska do anyway.

You watch the newz or read the net, see refugees stacked at the border and say, "gee, I'm glad I'm not one of them."  Or homeless living in tents next to the mall and say, "gee, I'm glad I'm not one of them."  Or Palestinians in some bombed out district of Gaza and say, "gee, I'm glad I'm not one of them."  What can you do about any of this shit other than be glad it's not you?   Yet.  Do you want to read my explanations of why this is happening?  No, not really.  Even though it probably would be helpful because it's supposed to make you think about what you will do if/when one of these crappy outcomes shows up at a theater near you.

I'll tell one thing I would NOT do if I was homeless in NYC right now.  I wouldn't stay there waiting for a bed.  I'd take one of the free plane tickets to Miami and be homeless there instead.  At least I won't freeze to death in Miami.

So essentially the reason Collapse Personalities have Collapsed is there's not very much we pundits can tell people that they can find useful right now.  Far as the bad stuff that might happen to them in the future, you just deal with it when it comes, like any disaster.  Regular blackouts start, more people will have generators, like Puerto Rico.  Gas gets rationed, the will be more carpooling, more electric bikes and scooters.  Trump gets elected, you'll  live with an even more corrupt and useless goobermint than you currently have, which is hard to imagine I know.

I don't think anyone but billionaires is really worried about depopulation, even though the economic consequences are only a few years away.  The FSoA can fudge it for a while with immigration.  SS will be a monster problem in 10 years for sure.  So if a big crash doesn't come before that, we'll get it then.

I'd like to see some kind of movement evolve, which they always do when civilizations collapse.  It could be religious or political or philosophical, who knows?  So far nothing jumps out at me as worthwhile, with anyone charismatic enough to have a million friends on Facebook or whatever the number is worthy of attention.  Livy Dunne has a million, but that's just because she looks great doing splits in a bikini, not because she has anything worthwhile to say.  lol.  I used to think I had worthwhile things to say, but they no longer seem that worthwhile because I'm not charismatic and I don't look great in a bikini either.  If only a few people listen, you don't get a movement.  So why bother saying it at all?

RE

[K-Dog]

So the question is, besides complain about the fact it's hard to find us, what do you propose to do about it?  Start an email chain letter maybe?  Whatever it is, from my end it has to cost $0 and take no more than 15 min of point and click linking per day.

Complain is not the right word.  With the comprehension of the reality comes disgust, but I let it go.  Nothing I can do about it.  A couple of decades ago I would be ranting about how this prevents me from changing the world or some such.  Now I know better.  Currently the world does not want to change.

The way change happens is when a critical mass of people sees change as an individual benefit to themselves.  Then like a spark into dry grass a wildfire can start.  A chain reaction of individual gut decisions leading to mass action. 

But a wildfire can't start in wet grass no matter how hot a spark.  This is our current situation.  We live in wet grass.  Two proxy wars that the US is not directly bleeding in, and the aftermath of the COVID drama makes people dis-interested in the outside world.  Everybody is hunkered down now trying to do the best they can with their own personal circumstances.  Nobody sees any personal benefit from rocking the boat.  Yet.

If the Zeitgeist of America changes, we may become very popular without doing anything different than we do now.  If people feel a benefit from coming here, they will come.  That benefit will happen when  the general public becomes interested in collapse.  As things are, there is no benefit people feel from a visit here.  Currently a visit here is for personal edification only.  The feeling of no benefit does not depend on the quality of what we do entirely.  A visitor's reaction to being here depends on the particular social atmosphere a visitor marinates in.  If we give a takeaway that other people find interesting and can share with others in their lives, a visit here will feel worthwhile.  Then many visits we will have. 

We should keep doing what we are doing and not worry about how many visits we have.  When the grass dries our spark will be hot enough.  When more shit hits the fan the public will get interested.  Our current situation is temporary.  We are hard to find, but not completely invisible.  That could change.

[K-Dog]

It wasn't until Peak Oil as a concept became a subject of bloggers and on forums after the turn of the millenium there was an emergence of people who gained enough attention to become "Personalities" associated with Collapse.  Our old friends (sic) like Orlov, Greer and Kunstler wrote their books and LATOC and Peak Oil forums popped up.  Then we had the collapse of Lehman and the Financial Crisis which is when economists like yours truly jumped on the bandwagon.  I would put Peak Personalities coming sometime between 2008 and 2016, after which time things began to taper off.

And that is a good thing.  Our old friends (sic) were not so pure at heart.  Their interest was mercenary and as long as collapse was a bean feed for them they were around.  When that stopped they were gone.

Evidence for my claim.  All three are still alive and pursuing other lucrative adventures.  Greer is Mr. Magic.  Kunstler works for the deep state deliberately attracting nutjobs to his site for listing.  Orlov still pumps his true believers for cash I imagine, but I don't know since I won't read him.

I stopped reading him when he wrote to me "that we would never meet and he does not have to be nice to me.

Let them circle jerk each other.

[RE]

Orlov is probably still on Putin's Payroll and Kunstler is one of those ex-NY Liberals morphed into  Conservatives in old age.  Mr. Wizard is just what he always was, a pseudo-intellectual blowhard incapable of defending his idiotic proclamations so he just deletes anyone who disagrees with him and doesn't kiss his ass.  I haven't visited any of their websites in years.

Gail still runs her site, but her actuary's eye viewpoint is very repetitive, so there is nothing new there for old timers, and she also is not charismatic and not bikini material. lol.  Richard Heinberg is still blogging, now at

https://richardheinberg.com/museletter-369-something-wicked-this-way-comes

Haven't read any of his recent stuff though.

Anyhow, I'm not expecting we'll ever go viral,  I just like keeping in touch with old friends who think about the topics and enjoy chatting about them.  There's always some new twist popping up, collapse is the gift that keeps on giving. 

RE

[RE]

We stand about as much chance of "rewilding" the internet as Doomers who are prepping for TEOTWAWKI stand of surving collapse by going out today and trying to live by "rewilding" in some national park or in the Amazon.  There's not enough "wild" space left anymore to live, even if you're Eustace Conway or Cody Lunden and all you need is a knife and you can survive in the Kalahari desert.

The days of the Wild West in Cyberspace are gone forever.  But from about 1985 until the party was over in 1999, it was great.

https://www.noemamag.com/we-need-to-rewild-the-internet/

We Need To Rewild The Internet

RE

[K-Dog]

Kunstler is one of those ex-NY Liberals morphed into  Conservatives in old age. 
Haven't read any of his recent stuff though.

RE

That is being kind.  I actually still read Kunstler, but I always do it through a VPN.  I use the VPN as a pair of psychological hip-waders.

Kunstler is not a conservative.  He is a flaming asshole racist who think Palestinians wipe their ass with their fingers.  A century and a half ago he would be an injun-hater.  From Kunstler's point of view if you are not white, you are not right.

I go there to watch his decline.  It is a cheap thrill to know his writing is not what it used to be.  Considering what I was put through, and that he knows something about it makes my interest understandable, and not a character flaw.  He writes a lot of his own comments, desperate to keep his honey trap funded. 

He never was much for substance.  His writing is, and was all style.  He studied other writers to get good at being the sophist he is.  As time goes by seeing what he is doing gives me insight about what he put me through, and the government abomination he calls a website.

I am banned from leaving a comment and that is a good thing.  Being banned means the motherfucker only gets five minutes of my time a week.  I am prevented from obsessing.  When I got the boot my life got a little better.

If Kunstler went to the Holy Land.  Bibi would put him up.