White Pill Wednesday #18
You Can Just Do Stuff
White Pill(s)
You Can Just Do Stuff
Never in human history has there ever been a better time to just “do stuff”. Nor has there ever been a time when “doing stuff” was so important. You Can Just Do Stuff comes off as a ubiquitous nonsense phrase whose only equal can be found in Live Laugh Love - but that could not be further from the truth.
Contextually, the phrase is often used in conjunction with individuals posting progress pics of their projects. Thereby telegraphing to the viewers a reminder, as they’re observing you “doing stuff”, that they can “do stuff” too.
Now why would I start off this week’s newsletter with a breakdown of a meme thereby removing its humour for something more serious?
Because it fucking matters.
When I say that at no point in human history has there ever been a better time to realize your capacity for agency - I mean it sincerely. If you right now have access to the internet, a barebones computer, and a roof over your head then you have all the prerequisite tools to be a force for change.
ChatGPT, Perplexity, Code Academy, Khan Academy, YouTube, The Pirate Bay, Libre Office, Blender, Library Genesis - the list goes on and on. Each and every one of us has access to directories of information, tutorials, and tools that any one individual can use to 1000x their potential and beyond.
Not only that but it has never been more important for individuals to embrace this attitude of “just doing stuff” by asserting their agency upon the world. Let me give you an example to clear any ambiguity.
The Old Ways Are Dead, or Dying
On October 25th 2024, 11 days out from voting day, Joe Rogan published his interview with Donald Trump. Now just think about what had to transpire to make it all possible. If the 2024 US election was as consequential as Donald Trump and his team said it was - then it would be correct to assume that just about every PR move they made had to be scrutinized and calculated to the Nth degree.
Of all the shows and interviews Donald Trump could have done he and his team chose Joe Rogan for a reason. The same Joe Rogan that hosted Fear Factor, commentates on UFC, is a comedian by trade, and who has the most popular show in all of the world with no equal. Just take a second to think about how absolutely fucking ridiculous that sounds. Mind you the episode is the 2nd most viewed JRE episode according to YouTube only second to Bob Lazar and Jeremy Corbell who were invited to talk about aliens.
How badly do you think the established corporate press has to fuck their reputation in order for something like that to happen? Think back to where you were in 2004 and how difficult it would be to convince past-you that not only would Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton in 2016 but that on the tail-end of his 3rd presidential campaign Donald Trump would be interviewed by Joe Rogan in potentially the most consequential public conversation in modern US history.
Sure, hindsight is 20-20 and tracing our steps isn’t all that hard. But the fact that this interview is just yet another thing that happened in 2024 that we’ve moved past at a moment’s notice is kind of fucking insane.
This is all to illustrate the fact that the systems of old are either dead or dying on full display for everyone to see. Trust in corporate media has plummeted to the point where people are outsourcing their news to social media. There’s an entire industry of independent journalists making livings off blogs and livestreams that see better numbers in a week than some outlets do in a month. The same outlets that have been around for decades are getting lapped by people recording in their basements.
The global political system is seeing the exact same dynamic. Is it really any surprise Donald Trump got elected twice after everything that Americans have been through? What about Javier Milei? Nayib Bukele? Speaking figuratively - the people have had enough of the ruling elite. Now there’s a million things one can say about the reasons why those elections went the way they did, why the candidates ran, their decisions, etc. But the main takeaway, for me anyway, has been that the people have had enough and are tired of being ignored by those who are adjacent to or operate within the political/cultural elite class.
What about the education system? What about the job market? Can we say with confidence that the expectations around the quality of life of generations past remains the same today? Doesn’t seem like it to me - not here in Canada anyway. Just as a personal example, I live in one of the most prosperous cities in my country. I have a family member who is among the top 1% of earners in the nation. And yet, they are unable to purchase a home within the city just like millions of others that live here.
The status quo, the way things have been, all these systems that penetrate our lives - they no longer function in the way they ought to. And that’s to say that they are not and have not been working for we the people in the ways we expected them to. In the ways for which we paid them to.
We expected the news to be truthful in their coverage of events but we couldn’t predict just how badly they desired profits over truth.
We expected our elections to be free and fair without inappropriate involvement of party powers.
We expected our politicians to spend our hard-earned tax dollars properly and respectfully only to be proven wrong.
Is it any surprise then that when the established systems fail people so often and so badly that they begin to turn to alternatives?
Politically this means selecting candidates that are outside of “the system”.
Economically this means finding ulterior routes of investment like crypto.
For the news it means getting updates from independent creators.
For education it means browsing the countless free sources online and self-teaching.
But more importantly - not only are more and more consumers making this transition but those that take advantage of this newfound agency are overtaking those that remain within their respective systems.
Mind you, there are countless more failures of the status quo that I could have mentioned as examples above but I do not have the time nor patience to remember them all. That’s kind of the point - the political and cultural elite have fucked their carefully calculated reputations so effectively and so thoroughly that the general public have turned away from them in favour of the outsiders. More and more people each day are choosing to act with agency outside of these systems and build their own foundations for something better. And this process only continues to accelerate at an exponential rate.
Endless Resources
Here’s a link to a free self-teaching site for Math, Science, Economics, Music, Biology, Standardized Test Prep, Arts & Humanities, Computing, and Life Skills.
Here’s a link to a free repository of knowledge curated by an associate neurobiology professor at Stanford who breaks down what it means to be healthy and makes it accessible to as many people as possible.
Here’s a link to a forum explaining how to access and download just about any piece of media ever created for free.
Here’s a link to a collection of free tools anyone can use to investigate just about anything which is also used by legitimate journalists and investigators to uncover bombshell stories.
There are countless other examples I could mention but we’d be here until next Wednesday reading them all so instead I invite you to do your own searching using Perplexity.ai which is ALSO free.
Point is - never in human history has it been easier to use existing tools and infrastructure to leverage your capabilities 1000x and then some.
Need a tutorial on how to fix a problem with your car? YouTube has you covered.
Looking to expand your client base and set up an online shop with step-by-step guidance? Shopify has you covered.
Need to scrape contact information from websites to collect information? Octoparse has you covered.
Can’t afford to buy Microsoft Office for school? LibreOffice has you covered.
Anyone that has access to the internet and even the cheapest of laptops has before them a seemingly infinite amount of ways to increase the scope of their capability for agency in their lives. And once again I will repeat - there has never been a time in human history when this was the case in such a significant way.
The systems of old are dead or dying before us and those that are able to adapt effectively are the ones who will succeed. It is a tale as old as time but still rings true.
I’m sure that operating within those systems at present with various commitments like job prospects or mortgages to pay could entice the best of us to demonize the inevitable change. If I was a grey-haired nightly news anchor and I saw teenagers on Twitch having better ratings in an hour than I do in a day I’d have plenty reason to be pissed. But that hair-trigger reliance on anger only serves to label the offender as ignorant and unworthy of respect. Face it, you lost.
That’s why it has never been more important than it is now to understand just how capable you are of acting independently and with agency to enact change. The systems of old are clinging to the few shreds of legitimacy that remain after thoroughly disgracing themselves. Nobody is coming to save us. The government is just made of people like you and I. And the problems we have on the horizon as individuals, communities, nations, and as a species are far too significant to be left to the machinations of outdated systems.
AI-based automation is only a few years out before entire sectors of the economies that support our nations and therefore our quality of life is affected. War is senselessly ramping up globally towards potential nuclear conflict which could wipe out all of humanity with a single bomb. Cultural drifts and demographic dynamics are causing an increasingly concerning drop in birth rates globally the likes of which we have never seen before. All this isn’t meant to inspire fear - but rather to put into perspective that the newfound challenges we face as a species that have never been faced by any previous generation to this extent cannot be overcome by reliance on the systems of old.
What now?
Ok so we have a lot of global problems being overseen by an outdated system run by geriatrics and perverse economic interests - how do we solve that?
By just doing stuff.
By taking it upon ourselves to use each and every advantage afforded to us in our personal circumstances and act with agency to induce change.
Extremely open-ended and ambiguous, sure. But that’s the point - what “doing stuff” looks like in reality is different for each and every one of us. It doesn’t have to be a Sisyphean task for it to matter or affect change. Not every one of us can build rockets, electric cars, and be ranked Top 20 globally in Diablo 4 in one lifetime.
I don’t know of any sure-fire method of finding what the “stuff” in “You can just do stuff” is for everyone - but if I’ve learned anything it’s that you can’t do it alone. Finding others, be it online or in person, that share even a semblance of the “doing stuff” spirit is absolutely critical.
For me it happened on April 10th 2024 when I attended New Demos 2 - an exhibition of demonstrations by coders, creatives, and nerds in a small movie theatre on the west side of Toronto. I had never attended any event like it before and had no idea what to expect besides what had been advertised.
Presenters from all backgrounds (game development, product design, business management, entrepreneurs, artists, etc.) had 5 minutes each to demonstrate an original work in tech or a creative field with a Q&A to follow.
@ansonyuu demonstrated what she learned from hosting @socraticainfo meetups and conferences at the top engineering university in Canada. Events where students would showcase their projects in front of audiences they would normally not have access to and be able to collaborate with their peers in ways a classroom could not accomodate.
@pketh showcased Kinopio his free-to-use whiteboarding software which is an invaluable tool to anyone looking to organize their ideas visually.
@caseploeg did a live speed-run of Factorio in Command-line by importing the rules of the game into code and automating a program to find the quickest method to complete the game. A game that on average takes 50 hours to beat by noobs completed in seconds by a program written by a nerd - just because they could.
Sidenote, I use nerd to refer to intensely passionate borderline-autistic people that have deep interest and seemingly unquenchable thirst for knowledge. Let’s face it, we’re all nerds about something.
@internetvin showcased a habit-tracking app with a social media blend called Futureland 2 which is still in beta but I believe he’s still sending invites if you ask nicely.
The other presenters included @_GABRIELOC, @ericlchen, @dcarmitage, @analog_emoji, @devontoast, @trillhause_ and I encourage you to check them out if you’re looking to find more people just doing stuff.
Point is, I was way out of my depth being in that room as a spectator. I’ve never written a line of code in my life nor have I ever designed a product that was mine to own. Just about all the stuff I’ve done in my life was in service of a pre-existing system with clearly dictated inputs and outputs. Never had I been surrounded by so many high-agency individuals eager to share their craft with an eager audience - it was electric.
The night turned into a collective celebration of the creative spirit of every individual. Hyperbole? I would vehemently disagree. Seeing individuals voluntarily go up in front of total strangers to showcase their works-in-progress (which is nervewracking to say the least for anyone that has ever had the displeasure of sharing a draft of anything would know) and the inspiration behind it is inspiring.
The problems they were solving were not insurmountable existential crises. Each of the demonstrators invested their personal time into projects they deemed important - that was the only criteria. And some of these projects impacted hundreds if not thousands of lives. I left that night thinking to myself “If they can do it, so can I.” and that taught me a valuable lesson I cannot believe it took me so long to understand.
You can just do stuff.
It certainly helps to surround yourself with as many likeminded people as possible so that you can bounce off each other and do stuff together. Geographic limitations aside, we have the internet to bridge the gaps where it can. One resource I’d recommend trying is lu.ma which may or may not have postings for your location but it’s worth checking. Otherwise, do the research yourself and find ways to just do stuff.
Whatever problems you may have in your life - do not forget your capabilities for agency in overcoming them. There are more opportunities out there than we are led to believe. And with every passing day the tools for taking advantage of it all are becoming more effective and accessible for all.
The problems we face as individuals, community members, nations, species are far too great to be ignored or left to the machinations of the status quo. We are inching closer towards increased surveillance, censorship, global conflict and a plethora of other crises at the behest of people that care little for our wellbeing - they’ve demonstrated as such. And thus we must take it upon ourselves to build alternative systems and solutions to the problems that we all face.
If that to you means building AI-backed B2B SAAS like @knowclarified then so be it.
If that to you means building creative one-of-a-kind automated engagement-farming tools for 𝕏 users to make memes for their moots like @jaivinwylde then so be it.
If that to you means building collective gathering points for likeminded individuals to discuss how to accelerate the rate of change which your own gov’t refuses to consider then so be it.
If that to you means building an anti-slop alternative to YouTube with gamified incentives to maximize for kino videos then so be it.
If that to you means building a meme search engine then so be it.
The important thing is to never forget that you can just DO stuff, that it has never been easier to just DO stuff, and that it has never been more important to just DO stuff.
Despite the impulse to embrace cynicism and displeasure with everything that is wrong with the world - I invite you to consider an alternative. A vision for a path through these crises that in the end sees us triumph as a species. A path that we must make up as we go along it as no previous generation has done before. Which we can achieve by……you guessed it - just doing stuff.
Thanks for reading and if you’d like to see more of my content I’ve set up all the links here. I am livestreaming on 𝕏 multiple times a week which are also posted on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Rumble, and here on Substack.
Will be streaming later today on 𝕏 around 6pm EST and later in the week as well.