Synopsis
Andrew rolls out a major site update, a subscription system.
Intro
There’s a saying that’s been floating around these days. That saying is, “if you’re not paying for the product then you are the product.” This is an inevitable outcome, I’d think, in any hyperconsumerist society bent on commodifying just about anything, even its own members. There are many reasons, after all, why we’ve designated our current era as the “information age.”
In our information age, data is the real currency. Knowledge is no longer half the battle, it’s now the majority of the war at this point. If you can acquire the sample sizes & the metrics, then you can acquire the trendlines. If you can understand the trends then you can inevitably shape & mold the trends however way you see fit.
There are quite a few names for this: power, control, governance, domination, and the like. All things that I’ve never been personally interested in. Wisdom as my compass for greater self-development has pretty much always been my main priority and will continue to be so. As a result, this is why I can tout this social network as possibly the most privacy-minded organization there is. After all, there is no interest in the idea of selling data.
Outro
Hence why for the past week, ads have been appearing on the website. I genuinely look forward to the day where maintaining and optimizing this website becomes my full-time passion project. By then I’m sure we will truly boom as I’ll be able to redirect all industrious energy into this effort. In order to make this dream into a reality while maintaining that principle of never stooping to selling data, this is one of the ways I will monetize.
Of course though, if you’re like me and you hate ads, then I’d recommend just getting an adblocker. If you want, I’d recommend even getting a new browser completely. It’s the browser I personally use after all. Shame I don’t rank highly on their web searches yet though. There’s another thing that you can do however, and that’s to subscribe right here for $2.50 USD a month.
At the moment we only offer ad-free benefits unfortunately, but I’m sure that benefits will expand slowly and surely over the upcoming months. For instance, I may end up dedicating a whole category of posts to just contributors. That or the fact that once we blow up into a whole digital ecosystem there’ll be a whole slew of benefits. That’s all that I have to say for now!
Regards From Your Fellow Wonderer,
Andrew Stargazer
It’s much better than paying for nitro blue.