Hey everyone... there isn't much time. Reading into this intro won't reveal much. I'm sorry.
I'm robek.
About me:
Fun fact: I lost my original steemit account a million years ago. That's okay. I didn't write anything back then. I've been on Medium for a while, but I kind of really hate it. It's impossible to find anything to read and everyone is a jerk. Well, I'm intentionally - but the rest are succeeding without really trying. I run a publication with a few buddies. I don't know what it's about. I'd really like to transition here from Medium, so I'm giving it a test run.
I haven't used an HTML or Markdown editor in a long time. It's fine. I'm dealing with it. I hope it will become second nature. I'm excited about writing new pieces and publishing them here (should have a long one by the end of the weekend). I think publishing fresh will be easier to format. I think about these kinds of things.
One time I wrote a thing poking fun at another thing. No one read it, so I'll regurgitate it here, verbatim.
Staying true to her trash roots, Robek “RW” World reeks of sardonic narcissism and delusions of grandeur. Lengthy, well-researched “20 minute” reads are jammed between short, incoherent blurbs. Since no one has time to read past the first 150 words, RW brings a casual sense of confusion to the media platform. Many see her writing as toxic, but —
RW lives in Austin, moving there after losing his or her mind. A veteran of the dark corners of the internet, RW has learned that nothing is ever happening and to just be cool. Robek never intended to fall into marketing, but after many years working in an advertising agency — it sort of happened. There was never any intent to write either.
Writing? No one’s truly mad enough to think that’s a good idea. A complete waste and only pursued by those with delusions of grandeur or a trust fund. I had neither, and only managed to opt for a Journalism minor.
I dropped my double major and went for the BFA in design. Companies would always need commercial art and videos, but the world would eventually need exactly 0 journalists. It could have been the 6 years of school that finally drove me to just graduate, but I have no regrets and why should I? I went from Theater to Art to English back to Graphic Design. The stint in English was a pipe dream, I thought I could teach and write fiction, but dropped out 3 weeks in and never looked back. I just happened to take enough classes for the Mass Comm minor, and I’m sure my respectable public university is grateful for the additional tuition payments my half-hearted attempts at diversification brought.
Robek first discovered Medium several years ago, using the platform in a past life to share marketing tips and tricks. That’s not so interesting, so they cast away their real identity and began to focus on the absurdity in modern media — with the goal of entertaining and educating. Each strange change to the platform leaves RW questioning the direction, but she’ll stick it through...? There’s good content (probably) and most of it isn’t locked down by the membership.
People have compared the Robek World magazine to Kaufman or Hunter S. Thompson, but that gives it too much credit. It’s an exploration of tech, internet culture, and futurology. Most of it feels like nonsense and is probably not as clever as it thinks it is.
Who benefits the most from being noteworthy? Establishing yourself on Medium is an exercise in patience. Growing an audience is difficult. Highlighting top performers keeps them top performers. They are the authors and writers that draw traffic to the site, so in a business sense — it works. But as Medium continues to shift away from its cultural commons platform, into a paid subscription model, will it be able to retain the other creative content generators?
RW’s curious to see. Ev has some good ideas and God knows that content consumption requires mass experimentation to find something that is both profitable and enjoyable. Medium makes it easy to read, but each month adds more trending and questionably curated content to the feed. (Addendum: But, this is why I'm eager to move to steemit.)
Robek makes dumb art for his publication’s articles.
What will happen when discoverability becomes limited to pay-gates and pay-to-play? Will new blood continue to come to Medium to write? If identity politics and editor picks become stagnant, will Medium become another bubble of thought? Will people be able to continue having conversations or will they become one sided. This is the challenge, especially when backed by investments. Who knows. We’re here to stayish — so we guess you’ll just have to deal with us. Our internet culture magazine is a hot mess of irony and facts and we have no stated goals. Come to your own conclusions and stay open-minded. Ask questions and admit you know nothing. That’s what keeps you golden. "
So yeah, that was that thing. Could you tell I wrote it on Medium? There's not really a video. If you'd like to watch a video, you can watch this one. I'm sorry.
Otherwise, I'm excited to be here. I have a twitter, but I don't use it much. I'm on shitposter.club. I keep getting told to verify but I don't know how. That's all there is.
Oh actually, could someone help me out. My home page keeps saying I'm not following anything. What should I follow?
K bye.
PS There's probably some time, though.
