Why goblin blog

21.04.23

We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down.

The act of writing

Publishing for me is painful. I don't like most writing and often find myself becoming bored before I stumble on a satisfactory revision. What I do know is good writing is a relative rarity these days and the best way to become good at something is to practice. A bit like jumping off a cliff without your wings. So, cut me a little slack in the beginning, eh?

I want to write. Simply the act of writing out ones thoughts is a useful mechanism in thinking them through. It allows me to play critic to myself. Writing for others allows you to get the outside view.

Yet a blog format seemed incompatible with my sensibility — my scratching about different things. A blog needs to find its audience! The only audience I could possibly serve, I thought, would be a cult of personality. So, I've kept quiet.

Experience then taught me the value of my knowledge, perspective and ideas. As I've kept quiet, the loudest voices were the ones heard. I find this very annoying, because the loud voices are often wrong or worse. A phenomenon akin to the Dunning-Kruger effect.

So how does one reconcile all of the above?

Turn into a monster

You see, this blog isn't written by a human. It's written by me, Goblin Oats, and I have winny.eth to thank for seeding the initial idea. She was able to share with me the psychological power of pseudonymity used by online personalities today (particularly in web3 or crypto space). What initially may have been refuge from scams and regulators also provides refuge for a shy writer from their readers. Somehow, I had to be prompted to connect the age old pseudonym to the pseudonymous online identity.

Of course, a pseudonym allows for something even more powerful.

Deal in the transgressive

I'm a curious goblin with idiosyncratic domains of interest and expertise. They may be imminently evident, given my involvement in tonk or from what I've been tweeting about. You certainly may anticipate correctly the bulk of what will be published here.

What you may not anticipate is that I'm also a bit of a mischevious goblin. As anyone who enjoys a bit of a mischief, I like to deal in the transgressive. We all feel society is in dire straits and that means we need transgressive statements more than ever. The thing about transgressive statements is they tend to bring a lot of heat and also are generally malformed or at least too nascent to have a completely balanced structure.

Not something any rational human would want attached to their name. Then again, I'm no human.