Ever found yourself trapped in an emotional rollercoaster while scrolling through Instagram Reels or TikTok? You're not alone. In this candid episode, I share my personal struggles with short-form media and its manipulative content patterns. From joy to morbid curiosity in just a few swipes, these platforms seem designed to toy with our emotions. I'm on a mission to either reduce my usage or find a healthier way to engage, and I invite you to join me as I navigate this digital dilemma.
On a more creative note, I'm thrilled to introduce you to my latest project—a mystery story born from a friendly challenge with a client. Meet Marcus Blackwood, a former military man turned private investigator, and join him on an epic quest with a historian doctor. With the help of speech-to-note technology, I've transformed my writing process, making storytelling more fluid and engaging. Don't miss this episode for an inside look at my creative journey and some exciting updates on this captivating tale!
Ever found yourself trapped in an emotional rollercoaster while scrolling through Instagram Reels or TikTok? You're not alone. In this candid episode, I share my personal struggles with short-form media and its manipulative content patterns. From joy to morbid curiosity in just a few swipes, these platforms seem designed to toy with our emotions. I'm on a mission to either reduce my usage or find a healthier way to engage, and I invite you to join me as I navigate this digital dilemma.
On a more creative note, I'm thrilled to introduce you to my latest project—a mystery story born from a friendly challenge with a client. Meet Marcus Blackwood, a former military man turned private investigator, and join him on an epic quest with a historian doctor. With the help of speech-to-note technology, I've transformed my writing process, making storytelling more fluid and engaging. Don't miss this episode for an inside look at my creative journey and some exciting updates on this captivating tale!
Hello, hello everybody. So real quick. I don't really have much on my list today that's weighing on my chest I want to talk about, but there's a few events that have come up that I would like to address. For Instagram, I have the Josh Bolton show all one word. Someone feels I have enough clout in a following to make an impersonation account of me, both flattered and annoyed at the same time. So what they have done is essentially clone my account, both flattered and annoyed at the same time. So what they have done is essentially clone my account. Added an extra W at the end of show. This is not me, and I can also tell you why it's not me because Meta believes I live in Lithuania and even though I post in California, they believe I live in Lithuania Because my account was compromised a long time ago but I was able to get it back and that ever since then has just believed I personally am a hacker. And now it's sending my password reset to a different email completely. But it shows me. The last time I've logged in because I have a business account on it was when I last logged in for the Marquee scheduling app, which I had to return. So yeah, that's another bit of a hiccup. So if you're seeing me, they're going to follow you. It's not me. Yeah, that's really annoying, annoying.
Speaker 1:
So the other thing I want to talk about is short form media. My well, reason I'm talking about is I've been struggling with it the last few days, specifically short form videos. It almost seems it doesn't matter if it's instagram reels, youtube shorts, tiktok, while it's still here in America. It seems that it intentionally follows a pattern, almost like an emotional torture pattern. So it shows you something happy and joyful and the next one's intriguing, kind of joyful, and then usually the third to the fifth video starts getting more morbid, stranger, more weirder than usually. Around your sixth video it's actual, like horror, like you're, you're like no, this is not supposed to happen. Whatever it is, it could be a dog stuck, stuck in a trap. That's what I saw earlier.
Speaker 1:
Or for me, especially me, I don't like the overcorrection of this modern feminism. I have nothing against women working in the fields and stuff like that, but I don't like it when they try to rewrite the game and play the victim card at the same time. Personally, that's just very immature kind of thing. And I'll get to that in a second because I want to talk about the publishing industry and my story and my thoughts on that. It ties back to this, but yeah, for a short form video it's going to be hard, but I'm going to try to abstain as best I can. When bored, settling on my soft, comfy bed and scrolling through YouTube shorts, I'm going to try to either slowly lean off it or monitor what I do or go cold turkey. There we go. I'm not sure which one's going to work, but I'll figure it out. I always do. Yeah, other than that, I am wanting to give you all an update.
Speaker 1:
I'm working on a story, kind of like a indirect bet with one of my clients that I clean pools for. She said, hey, write me a story, a mystery. Well, he didn't say whatever. He's really into mysteries, so I decided to write mystery. So I'm writing one about Marcus Blackwood. He's like a former military guy they're in PI. I know the cliche and the trope. There's a play into this, though, and essentially he gets all these different like crinkets essentially that line up and he gets this beautiful historian doctor and they go on this epic quest and stuff like that.
Speaker 1:
I'm really enjoying the process, and speech to note especially has been very helpful. I still write everything out within the format. I try to write as much detail as I can and then have how I engineered. My prompt is essentially it takes, it, enhances the writing, as if you like gave it to a ghost writer or editor, but it also fixes a couple of spots for pacing, or I might be talking about a scene on the bridge, but then it's like, okay, they kind of go down to the river, so it like blends it better for me. So, yeah, that's, that's been really fun. It's another one of those like it's a good addiction.
Speaker 1:
I'm getting addicted to writing stories. I've been creating some interesting content, short stories about about 2500 words. Yeah, I'm trying to work on it. I'm, when I'm bored and I'm not working YouTube shorts, I'll sit on my phone and Create this adventure where I haven't really figured out a name for them, I just call them like stereotypical names, like Jack, jill, jill, johnny kind of thing. I know three Js, but they all go on this adventure and stuff like that, and the cliche is one's really hungry and always getting into trouble. One's just a natural perv, always trying to find the pretty ladies and stuff like that. And then one's like the overly arrogant, it's ladies and stuff like that, and then one's the overly arrogant. It's fun, I like it. Maybe I'll actually make something out of that, not sure yet.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, once I get to the point for Marcus, though, I'm going to have to figure out what I'm going to do with the book. Do I go to Draft2Digital, which is essentially just like a platform that it is a publishing company but it's not a traditional publishing company, and publish my stuff there, or do I try to go down the traditional route? Lately I've been reading a lot of people do this hybrid, where most of the volume they do is self-publish and the rest is like by contract Okay, by this series, series. I have to make one book kind of thing, but you're usually generously compensated, so I haven't figured that part out yet. It'll be interesting now for the publishing industry, as I've been doing a lot of research into it, especially the last two weeks, as I'm I'm nearing the point where I need to consider hiring an editor or perfecting my editing prompt and have it do that. I'm not sure I'm getting to that point where I'm looking into the industry and it's interesting.
Speaker 1:
Essentially, I've noticed that when I go to Barnes Noble there's a lot more female names being displayed than male. I mean, it's not bad. I mean I get it. Yeah, the traditionally the authors of pre-20 20 2008 will even agree that, like jk rowling was in like the 90s, she did well, but jk aren't, you know, instead of saying her full name. Generally speaking, in the last decades or so, there's been a push for the female voice, but there's been an extra aggressive push towards the LGBTQAI+ and this weird BIPPOO. I don't know on that one. It's, I guess, the neurodivergencies and stuff. As I've looked into it though, having ADHD could count as that, but squint your eyes. But I've noticed a lot of.
Speaker 1:
I've been using ChatGPT 4.0 on the actual OpenAI app because there's a web scraping option and have it pulling up editors and then I'll like it's really creepy what you can have it do. So I have it pull up their name, their company email, their contact phone number. Then also I have it scraping to tell me what they want, in particular for writing, and that's been really fun and helpful, saved me a lot of headaches, found a couple editors. I think I might reach out to one of them to get them on the show. Essentially, they say unless you're the lgbtqai plus or a female, and one of them made it the distinct like asterisk of or you're the b-i-p-p-o-o thing, whatever it is. She's like I won't, I probably will not consider your material for the goals of inclusion. I sat there and I was like God damn it. And then the one that she would kind of consider my work she's agent submissions only. And I sat there and I'm like, okay, so I looked into agents and I take. So the publishing houses take anywhere from 50 to 60% of what you make, and then the agent can take anywhere from 10 to 20% of whatever you make on top of whatever the publishing company takes. And then the government and I sat there and I'm like, oh my God, you're literally making pennies on the dollar kind of thing. Yeah, so that editor I'm probably not going to submit to, but she might be the one I invite on the show. You never know. It is interesting, though.
Speaker 1:
And the extra push for feminism getting back to that, I don't agree with it. I mean, like I said earlier, if a girl wants to do a man's job, go for it, but it's like it's a man's game. But I think so, understand, you're playing a man's game, you can't change that. And be respectful, like don't be a victim. Like the oh my God, I'm a woman, you're being mean to me. It's like and it's a man's game, kind of thing.
Speaker 1:
I just read a few of the books recently written by these female authors and of diverse background and all that. They're not that good. To be honest, I can't finish them. It's almost. It's repulsive, it scratches my brain. It's like they're insulting me while telling a story, and I'm huge on not being insulted or disrespected. So lately I'm just not reading a lot of new books in general, especially if I know if they're gay or a woman, mostly because it's like it's insulting. It's like oh, you're a heterosexual man, yeah, wow. And it's like shut the fuck up, okay, I get it. Yeah, I'm a straight white man, kind of thing. It is interesting, though I'm sure some publishing company will eventually see me and like want me to write for them. It's gonna be interesting in the beginning, though, to figure that out.
Speaker 1:
Once I finish the marcus one, I'm thinking of actually writing my original one. When I was a kid I would see it all the time. I mean, the story evolved, but I've gotten it back to the original one, so I'm going to probably knock that one out. Next. That's probably going to be a single, a mono, like a just following the main character. The eight rings, though, might is. Well, no, it's not. It's going to be a multi-point of view, because there's like six different characters, super complex, involving politics, religion, magic, betrayal, trust, corporations and greed. That's kind of my like, my satire stuff at them, the lgbtq and feminism the modern feminism, by the way. I wonder if someone's gonna cut this out of context, especially with that instagram guy. But yeah, I'm, I'm trying to figure out from there what I'm gonna do.
Speaker 1:
I love creating stories, so I'm sure I could try different things and I might just adopt pen names. So if I get known as the mystery fantasy guy and I was like, well, I want to try my hand at horror kind of thing, like mental, fuck you up horror kind of thing, yeah, that might be a pen name, no biggie on that one. The other thing. So, on all that, once I'm heading out on this one thing I have been playing with because my ADHD at times gets way out of hand or my motivation or the novelty of the event is not intriguing to me what I've been working on is essentially a gamification, essentially so, as I play D&D Dungeons Dragons 5th edition. I'm actually reading up on the Cur curse of Strahd to work on a campaign for my family.
Speaker 1:
I realized I'm like wait, I have a bunch of 20-sided dice. So what I've been doing is telling ChatGPT to make me a list Like here's the things I need to do, and then make me a list of 1 through 20 of, like, main quest is clean your room, clean your floor, clean the counter, kind of thing. And then I tell it, okay, now include also important, which is a little bit less points, fun quest and side quests. And then, like, I give it the point value. It's actually really, really cool. So what I've been doing with that is I'll, like I'm starting on my floor, it's more of a hot mess than I anticipated.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, it's been fun. That's why I just roll my dice or I have a dice roller on my um phone and work and, uh, just feel, okay, number 13. Look at the list, oh, clean the counters, okay. And then, um, I'm working at a point system with me. So if I do certain writing or certain um cleaning tasks, I actually get so many points. So like, if I get 20 points, I can go get myself a nice like chicken strip meal at the diner I'm going to go to and then um, stuff like that. Or then I want to buy a DJI pocket 3 with the microphone and all that to eventually get to the point where I'm filming. There's a whole hot mess of clean with the editing, though I don't know about that one, it's been fun.
Speaker 1:
The the one thing I'm trying to find an app where I can input everything and it can give me a calculation, so like if I had had a 200 points in cleaning but I have like 150 points in writing, or it could combine them and tell me I have 350. I can't really find one and I'm not sure if I'm supposed to code one. I've been talking to the developer of Speech-to-Note and he says the principle is pretty easy. He said the GUI or the graphic user interface might be a little tricky. So I'm not sure if I'm supposed to do coding. That wouldn't be a good idea with all my ADHD distractions. But yeah, so life's good over here. Just keep going is the main thing. Just keep going and don't worry about it. Have fun, have a good one. Talk to you next time.