Doomscrolling the Day Away

I have spent most of the past week trying to shake off a particularly tenacious cold. I'm usually quick to shake them off, but this feels like some mutant covid hangover. Very achy. The days start well but by the evening it has rallied again. It's left me feeling drained, and it is in this feeble state that I've been watching the internet reach a hysterical crescendo on the subject of AI. It is no longer coming for your job, it is here and ready to take it. I am reminded of the "THEY'RE HERE!" trailer for Poltergeist, only this time it isn't ghosts that are going to fuck your life up, it's tech billionaires. Is this a form of a mass psychosis? It certainly feels like something big is coming. As a software engineer, this year more than ever it seems like the coming wave is something that I have to figure out how to surf or get wiped out. It's existentially terrifying. 

If you are also feeling unglued from your previously imagined future, allow me to recommend some places to escape from the coming white-collar apocalypse. 

A CAVE

This is the classic retreat from modernity, as demonstrated by hermits through the ages. With no electricity there's no danger of accidentally doomscrolling the day away on X. I would recommend one somewhere in the warmer parts of Europe as the cave winters can be brutal. Since you'll be avoiding all human contact the language barrier won't be an issue. You can even put a sheet across the cave's entrance to give yourself an extra level of abstraction from the real world.

A BUNKER

AKA a new build cave. This comes with all the exorbitant costs of new build accommodation. On the other hand, bunkers are hot now, albeit very billionaire-coded. They are most likely outside your budget unless you can acquire an old missile silo in the middle of nowhere. A great hack for acquiring a bunker is to get employed as private security for a billionaire. When they inevitably screw the global pooch and retreat to the perceived safety of their own bunker, it will only be a short time before their head of security kills the now powerless idiot who hired them. Stay on his good side and you're golden.

A DESERT ISLAND

Another classic isolation destination. People usually end up there by mistake, which suggests they are easy to chance upon. There is a real danger that the island will sink as increasingly massive server farms accelerate global warming and melt glacial ice. The weather's bound to be good though. Pack a hat.

ANTARCTICA

The aforementioned global warming should make the place a bit more hospitable. The penguins can be quite noisy and the smell of their guano takes some getting used to, so take both ear and nose plugs. On the positive side, I am 100% confident that no penguin will ever be mad enough to add AI to MS Notepad.

THE MOON / MARS / SPACE IN GENERAL

The ultimate isolation but difficult to achieve. Also there is a non-zero chance that you find yourself stuck with Elon Musk.

#booktok

I've spent a lot of time on #BookTok lately. For the uninitiated, #BookTok is the subslice of TikTok that caters to everything to do with writing. It was, at first, illuminating. It is now frequently unhinged. It is everything I hate about the process of publishing a book. Now, I have only ever self-published a book, so I'm aware I'm very much firing shots from afar on this subject.

I'm not going to single out any particular content creators here. There isn't any single person I think is repeatedly giving terrible advice, it's just such a hotly contested subject that the massive spectrum of opinions is bound to contain some clunkers. So without further fanfare or handwringing, here are my favourite worst forms of bad advice on #BookTok and social media in general.

• Cover letters. These are presented with the expectation that their audience is in a cargo cult. I've yet to get representation myself, but if and when I do, I'm fairly sure it will be on the strength of my submission and not driven by the cover letter. Sure, the letter is important. A dreadfully written one could mean an agent doesn't even look at your sample. On the other hand, if the manuscript is good, no agent is going to dismiss you for not having a perfect cover letter, whatever that is. In my very unpublished opinion, agents are people and people have differing tastes. Some of them like some personal details, while others just want the facts of your submission. It's a bit of a lottery as to which is which, although #BookTok is helpful there because some agents are on it. My instinct is to make sure the salient details are first and foremost - genre, synopsis, comps. Anything else is sugar.
• Authorial self-promotion. This is wild. It is the worst. You wanted to be a writer? Surprise! Apparently you also have to be a content creator. I have so far avoided doing this, beyond this veiled alter-ego blog, because it is my nightmare. I like writing. As a creative process it is almost free. You can do it in your head. All that is required to share it is pen and paper. Obviously as a society and industry we have moved beyond that, but the process is fundamentally the same. The difficult part is getting other people to read it. In the past (and this may be the sort of false nostalgia that leads to even worse opinions than I'm expressing here) you would write a book, get an agent, sell the book, and if your publisher wanted you to do some signings or similar they'd sort it out. Otherwise there wasn't an expectation on you, the author, to also be your own PR agency. It is dispiriting. I've seen authors I admire posting relentlessly, and not always about their own work. I sometimes wonder whether this isn't another form of cargo cult. Have they got hard proof that their social media traffic is responsible for their book sales? I hope they do, but in a technological landscape where platforms have the means and motive to present misleading data, I am naturally distrustful. At the other end of this are the unpublished / self-published / maybe-just-experimenting people who I don't mean to cast shade on.
• Live streaming. I find this especially unhinged. Again, I hope those doing it are seeing some sales of the back of it, but I would rather never sell a book again than put myself through it. I've seen people live writing. I've even seen someone live editing. Who is this helping? Are there people out there who find the writing process mysterious and beguiling? Honestly, it is, to quote Douglas Adams, mostly staring at a blank page until your forehead starts to bleed. It can of course be many things, but none of them make for an engrossing spectator sport.
• The bots. That tantalising feeling when one of your posts has received a reply or someone has DM'd you. The latter should immediately get your spidey sense going because bots love DMs. They waste your time with stilted small talk before clumsily trying to sell you an editing/publishing/prostitution service. To be fair I see less of them now. Perhaps they have all been put out of work by Musk's Grok, leaving space for actual people to attempt to sell you editing/publishing/prostitution services in the comments.
• Finally, the endless calls to promote your work. I know or at least hope these come from a place of good intent, but they are endless and appear to do nothing but attract the previously mentioned bots. I suppose they are mostly harmless, but in a social media circle made almost entirely of writers, it feels like we're just a pack of dogs howling in the dark.

I don't intend any of the above to sound mean-spirited. Promoting books is difficult, and everyone has to do what they're driven to do. I've even heard some lunatic is planning on releasing their book on cassette for the ZX Spectrum! This could open new avenues for literary promotion. I should consider re-releasing my novel Dead Penguins on a dead penguin. I'm sure ZSL London would cheerfully help out for a suitable donation. That said, the shipping could be expensive as well as legally problematic. So maybe posting writing tips to #booktok isn't such a bad idea after all.