Here’ s a guy with platform and here’s what he chose to do about it.
I think he realized that he had way too much platform and too little time left in his life and just wanted to play music with his friends in front of a reasonable amount of people. Most mocked him, but I think it’s heroic.
The guitarist he played with for years pretty much became a terrified hermit, because of his platform.
Platform. Everybody knows what it means, and if you search the Miriam-Webster’s dictionary for it online you won’t even find it listed.
I have none and I’ve tried and I’ve only learned that I need help. I’m willing to do 99% of the work, but it will only happen if I can get 1 person to team up with and help me, and I’m willing to sign a worse deal than Elvis had with Tom Parker to get it to some extent. If someone can help me write and be read according to how well I write. I will give them all the money my writing earns except for enough for me to be able to survive modestly and continue to write and sort of be read.
My only addendum is that I will try to make my writing better and more marketable as long as I’m still willing to put my name on it.
I’ve tried trading my help for others help, and I think annoyed them more than I’ve helped them even though I did help them.
Any platform seeking I will do for others. Because it’s very hard and takes a lot of time. The more time you spend the harder you realize that it is to get properly, much less honestly.
I think I’ve cajoled like eight nice people to subscribe to me, but after this post they will be deleted and only will be future subscribers if they want to be.
Everything that follows will be bitterness. Everything else on my site I hope has as little bitterness as was possible. So if you don’t want it go somewhere else. Either on my site or on any site.
Here was my goal in 2000. I wanted to write; get better at writing, be read according to how well I wrote, and perhaps get paid just enough to write and be read.
In 2000, that was not only achievable. It was sort of easy. One guy with platform let me write for free about whatever I wanted and didn’t edit a thing or try to even though I needed it. I posted some stuff on one silly specific newsgroup and had some fans there. I had some fans from the the free writing.
Then I got paid well to do little and got some great editing, which was a fluke because everyone knew that the internet was going to be monetized and was willing to gamble on other’s ability to monetize it.
Then I was told I had no platform around 2005 and learned what it meant
Now after about 13 years of trying to get platform. I have way less platform and way less of an idea about how to get it honorably alone.
If you Google me you will find I’ve been quoted in published books without permission, had entire aricles published without permission by people who made money off of them. You will find links that are dead and articles that they once linked to still on some sites without my name and often presented much more shabbily than they originally occurred. I asked someone with platform what to do about it and he told me I could only make them take it down, and then he did the exact same thing to me.
The whole thing has made me hate more people than I did before, which was few, and perhaps led me to like ten new people I really love that can improve my writing but not my platform.
Now I can’t even write for places with platform for free despite trying and mostly kissing up to do it. There are way too many people in the same boat as me. Some much better writers and some much worse.
Here’s how I learned the secret definition of platform.
I worked really hard on a book. I sent it to my one real editor. She was nice enough to read it for free even though only the first half was edited at all and that poorly, and she said that it was really good and sent me to an agent.
The agent told me flat out that it didn’t matter how good or bad my book was. It wouldn’t be published because no one knew who I was. There is no chance he read even the title. He said if I were Andy Rooney, he would publish anything I wrote. At lesat he was honest, and at least Andy Rooney had accomplished something on his own.
It left me wondering what Andy Rooney would write about the Clash, but at least he was honest.
I have like 182 twitter followers. Kim Kardashian has close to 59 million. Kim Kardashian has worked really hard to get them, but she only has them from luck of birth, two murders, and a sex tape that may or may not have been made and released on purpose.
I honestly just wanted to be a writer and sink or swim on my merits. I never wanted to be a marketer. I hate marketing. I will pay someone a lot to market me honestly and well, but that’s all.
In 18 years, I’ve learned some really ugly lessons about life.
The more I learn about marketing the more I understand how unable to do it that I am.
I hated some parents for getting their six year old millions of internet followers and now I understand.
99% of writing is kill or be killed.
I don’t even blame most of the people who live by that credo, because a lot have to do so to survive.
I’ve watched great writers become terrible ones to survive.
I’ve watched great writers write things that aren’t really writing, but are merely disguised advertising just to survive.
I want them to help me, but how can they possibly do so?
I’ve seen guys that I respected and loved, who I begged for help not help me. Some after agreeing to help me.
In one case I did everything I could to add to his platform just for a little help, and that guy has his dream job and almost every day thanks the one person who helped him a long time ago. He may help others, but he won’t help me. He won’t even tell me that he has no interest in helping me or even acknowledge me even though the first time I met him I gave him an irreplaceable gift purely because I thought he would enjoy it, which meant that I could no longer enjoy it.
I messaged him on Facebook and this is exactly what I said.
“I hope I haven’t ever upset you or annoyed you. The first time I came upon you randomly I heard you discuss Flickerstick hilariously for five minutes, and I heard a kindred spirit the exact same age as me. I was in Chicago but now am not, but thankfully there are still ways to listen. You do have my dream job and tho perhaps envious I am in no way bitter that you have it and I don’t. The thing I am most envious of you is that I never found a group of friends who were kindred spirits and you seem to have so many. I once was sent a DVD rip of The Steven Banks Entertainment Center and gave it to you because I really wanted you to see it and I knew that doing so would mean I would lose possession of it, but I still feel good if it meant you saw it. I’ve dreamed of being your friend and having your friends, but I have no ill will that I do not. I love you and what you do, so I do hope that I have not annoyed you and if I have tell me how and I will stop. I still consider you a friend in spirit. Peace.”
I honestly started out 99% loving him and 1% hoping that he could give me much less help than he was given.
I only wrote that to him on Facebook because I noticed that when I rarely commented on his incessant posts honestly and just added to his posts positively that he was purposely ignoring me, while at the same time liking posts that just said, “Yeah, that’s great,” or “Yeah, you kick ass.”
So I figured I must have done something wrong at some point even though I don’t know what it is. So I sent that, which I thought was an apology and me telling me I would leave him alone.
He responded, but not to my message.
He could have told me. You annoy me. You suck. I know that you want my help, and I don’t want to give it. Leave me alone forever.
Honestly, anything would have been fine, but he in all ways basically told me to go F myself with no explanation.
About a minute after my message, he posted the exact comment and video I posted supporting his post that he ignored, as his own new post with my words!
Then I hated the guy I had loved and started to point out things that he posted that were completely ignorant.
I was actually right. He posted a song and said things about it that were exactly the opposite of what the song was written to say by the writer we both loved. I would bet my life if we walked up to that writer and I would be shot dead if the writer didn’t agree with me that I would be right, and that writer often says completely contradictory things about his work.
That comment was ignored, not just by him, but by everyone.
I have no idea why he didn’t block me other than maybe it would make his platform seem a little smaller (infinitely less smaller).
I’ve done this to others and told them they could delete my comments. They don’t. They don’t respond. They don’t block me. They don’t unfriend me.
That made me hate myself, and I’m done with it forever.
I will only say positive things. I will expect nothing in return. I’m not even going to try to get people to read this on social media to let them know it.
I’ve seen almost every other writer write obvious things to be read and just to seem like the best at writing something obvious. That’s insane because all the credit will still go to whoever said it with the most platform that day.
I never even wanted credit. I just wanted to write and sort of be read on my merits and get better at doing it.
I now know that I can’t write about things in the news or even things many people love as much as me, more than me, or less than me. I can’t write about things I know more about or less about.
I’ve seen guys with Ph.D.’s write horribly ignorant things about music that got published only because they had Ph.D.’s in English.
I can pretty much only write about things that happened to me and hope that someone thinks that they are worth reading and that someone else will want to read them. Then I will let them market me admirably and let them have as much money as they want to do so.
Meanwhile, I pledge to help everyone else I think needs platform that I think has something to say and does it well with no expectation or requests for anything in return.
So here is my last rant about the world as we know it ever, unless I get lucky enough to find someone who can help me get platform honestly.
A kid was nicknamed plaid shirt guy and one guy I only knew from the internet, who only helped me at all points, was amused by his story. Read about plaid shirt guys’s story elsewhere. It was an amusing story, and here was my apologetic response.
You know it did make me smile for a second and then I thought about it and the rest is kind of a sick joke. I like that kid and he was well spoken, but
All he was trying to do was hear the president talk.
1. Others who have said negative things on social media can’t
2. He was thrown out and will never be allowed at another Trump speech again
3. Nice kid fairly informed for his age but now the whole country if not the world wants to make money off of him and hear what his opinions on politics are
4. He had a twitter account. He’s tweeted 7 times and has 26k followers now and he will have probably at least 4 times that many in four days just from going to a speech, getting put in a noticeable place and being normal
5. Good for him he got lucky and has platform. I hope that he uses it well
6. If he has any opinions he will be dogged by those that disagree forever
7. There are people now who idolize him because he went to a speech and was wishy-washy about Trump, and there are those that hate him now for the same thing
8. 100% someone will look into everything about him and try to destroy his life. I hope he makes some money to be happy and make it somewhat worth it because everyone else only cares about making money off of him
This shouldn’t be America. Americans were way better off when they were they were all making shady backroom deals absurd as it sounds. Part of me even thinks that people are better off in other countries that are made to listen and made to stand like robots, because then they go home and in both cases they have very little control over what the government does to them.
Every writer is going to write what they think of it all. I would have but no longer.
Here’s an even more absurd comparison. Like or hate Fidel Castro and everyone has an opinion, and probably only people who liked him were allowed at his speeches. But he would talk for four hours and the people would actually listen to him, and I don’t think he spent all of his time trying to entertain them, tell them how great he was, and what a great job he was doing. He didn’t have to. They were stuck with him either way.
He probably spent a lot of time being boring about their health care system which was actually much better than ours. Our president wants to be a dictator, and he would be a worse, more heinous one than Fidel Castro and a lot of people want him to be dictator!
That guy is not making America Great Again but America has a lot of things not great about it that have nothing to do with him too.
That’s it. Everything I’ve ever done positively or negatively to get platform is my fault. All the bad my fault. All the good someone else can take credit. This is the last time I will write the word platform on my site even if I mean some place for a guy giving a speech on a soda box.
I once had ads on my site and apologized for them. I made exactly $100 from them and they are gone.
My fault. I’m done. I hope I get lucky. If I don’t, my fault. The only place to see my confession is right here and I won’t hide it, but I won’t point it out either.
Me and Ringo say “Peace and Love. Peace and Love”
