Bill Ryan's personal Question-and-Answer thread. Pile it on.
Bill Ryan answering to one of his multiple butt kissers ...
I'm pretty disgusted with the dog-eat-dog mêlée that is now the so-called 'alternative media'. I see more and more parallels with the mainstream, as greed, cheap entertainment, monetization, paywalls, ego, manipulation, toxicity, drama, sleaze, competition and fakery all slowly grow and grow and grow. It's not everywhere, but there's a lot of it now.
I've posted several times that there's a kind of Stockholm Syndrome at play here, that I've not heard anyone else ever comment on. By that, I refer to the known phenomenon in which a kidnapped person, held prisoner by an authoritarian controlling group, sometimes flips to adopt the very same values as their powerful captors.
The alt media has adopted the values of the mainstream, in just the same way. Much of the alt media is a cheap copy of CNN or Fox, complete with commercials. The content is different, but the copied style is very often just the same.
It makes the days of Project Camelot, founded 14 years ago, seem like a naive simple playground in comparison. So to get to the question, I'm really not very motivated to go to the trouble to dive back into the alternative swamp.
In the last several years I feel I've grown quite a lot, in the sense that it's no longer important for me in any ego-sense to be working hard to yell at thousands of people through some virtual bullhorn. I know what I know, I understand what I understand, my values are my values, and I'm personally very comfortable and rock solid with all that.
A few people may listen to what I have to share, which I appreciate. I'm not trying to be famous, to get rich, to prove anything, or to compete. I do my own internal work, and I know that I make a difference, and have definitely done so.
I know exactly what I've done in my life, which is really quite a lot. I'm 100% definitely nowhere near the end of this incarnation! But I know I've already way more than lived the life of most other people, whatever field they're in, and that generates its own peace and satisfaction.