everything is changing, how are you?

requesting proof of life

freewrite for substack

Alex Dobrenko
Aug 7, 2026
Homeroom 213

ONE- not wanting things to be so polished anymore

i feel like everything has become too polished online? like when i think about publishing something on substack, i am immediately and without even realizing it already thinking about how it’ll perform - the shape of it as an experience for the audience. there is little gestation or creative shaping of a thing before it is seen from the POV of the audience that shall receive it.

1. but not anyone specific in the audience, rather ‘the audience’ as a whole - a unit, a mass, a hoard, an algorithmic representation of humans representing ‘audience’ which is itself a stand-in for ‘money’ or the possibility thereof

2. this is, based on my scientific research of my own brain, fucking bad news.

1. i am of course not saying one should not write for an audience - i don’t think one can help it, but i do think that the stakes get so high - or FEEL so high - that the scales tip in the favor of audience capture and business and away from the good time goofs that you ever did any of this for in the first place

this, then, is perhaps one attempt to veer myself back the other direction. change course. turn the wheel (of Fortuna, Dunceheads where you at??), and say fuck it, let’s be dumb again.

TWO- it’s the people, stupid

you know that whole ‘it’s the economy, stupid’ thing? its from the olden days when government was real. i think james carville said it but maybe it was someone else. if only there was a way to check.

but anyways, i think the truth is that really, when you boil down to it, it’s the people, stupid. always has been meme.

people, people, people. i love em. no not ‘em’ - YOU. the readers. the batheads. i have missed you and i fear that i don’t really even know who many of you are anymore.

there are a lot of you here, but who are you?

i want to know.
i want you to know me too.
so let’s do that.

THREE- this is a request for proof of life.

please comment with any, all, or none of the below:

1. a question you have for me

2. a question you have for everyone

3. a request for me to ask you a question

4. a request for anyone to ask you a question