promoting your stuff is very cool actually

three things i'm proud - proud! - to share with you today

Tyler the Creator has this quote about promoting your own stuff:

“I know a lot of people who make things who don’t stand proudly by their stuff…I don’t know if they’re too cool or they don’t want to look thirsty, but they’ll put a song out once on their stories — and that’s it.

"You went through something. You figured something out in a structured format. You recorded it. Not just one take. Parts and parts. You edited it. You mixed it. The label paid some kid to make an album cover and they made the cover. It’s a whole thing.

“And then you mean to tell me that you’re going to be passive and just put it on your story once? Are you crazy, bro?

“I’m still promoting an album that came out a year ago. I put too much time and energy into this finished project just to put it on Instagram and forget about it. No. Promote. Let people know. Be proud of what you made.”

I want so badly to have the gall to do this.To stand tall and say, “look y’all I spent a ton of time on this and I would love for you to check it out.”

I want to feel excited. Proud. But I feel bashful. Try-hard.

I fear that if the work isn’t so good that it cannot be ignored, on its own, with nary a peep from me, the pure artist who’d never sink so low as to promote his own stuff, then it is garbage. And so what, I gotta stand in front of the world and push this..garbage?

Embarrassing. Uncool, as Tyler says. Thirsty. Parched. To push means to beg for a sip of that yum yum water that I clearly do not deserve. For if I did, I’d be swimming in it.

To promote your work means, my very smart brain says, to admit failure.

Except not when Tyler does it. Because he is cool.

What if I was cool.

Maybe I am.

I am.

I am!

I’m cooler than the dark side of the pillow.

I’m almost as cool as the phrase ‘dark side of the pillow.”

I like myself and I like the shit I’m working on and I’m gonna promote it right here right now, without apology.

I’ve got three cool things for you today - here they are:

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ONE: I interviewed my heroes about creativity and AI for Whoa, Vol. 2

Many of you will remember how last year, me and the great peeps at Sublime launched Whoa, Vol. 1: Conversations To Make You Feel Human.

Well, we’re back with Vol 2: a series of conversations that I had with ten of the coolest people in the world:

• Oliver Burkeman, Bestselling Author on what he’s betting his career on

• Robin Sloan, Novelist, on the new economics of content creation

• David Perell, Host at How I Write Podcast on the unspoken reality of how the writers he interviews are actually using AI

• seth godin, Bestselling author on the talking dog theory of AI

• Anu Atluru, Investor & Writer on what happens when every human skill becomes an art or a sport

• Mills Baker, Head of Design at Substack on why he’s bearish on LLMs

• Venkatesh Rao, Contraptions on why we should ditch the idea of authorship and embrace a transhuman future

• Joan Westenberg, Writer
  on why the "pro-AI vs. anti-AI" debate misses the point

• Jasmine Sun, Writer on why creative anxiety is actually economic anxiety

• Billy Oppenheimer, Research Assistant to Rick Rubin & Ryan Holiday
  on how AI is fast, but not necessarily good

If you're trying to make sense of the future of work and what it means to be human, I feel confident in saying this is the best collection of thoughts on the topic.

Sublime be releasing the conversations one at a time over the next ten weeks over at their Substack here.

If you’d like early access to all ten interviews + exclusive access to the limited-edition print zine, you can get your copy here AND I’ve convinced them to give BAT readers a 20% discount code on either the physical or digital zine for the next 24 hours. So go buy one now if you want and tell me what you think.

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TWO: I’ve got an essay in The Pathless Collective’s First Zine: Unwritten

The great and kind buddha of the self-employed,

Paul Millerd

, is largely responsible for my writing Both Are True.

In 2022, he kept pushing me to write and I kept saying I know I know but i’m scared blah blah. Eventually we made a deal - I sent him $100 and said that if I didn’t publish 4 essays by the end of the month, he had to donate the money to Trump.

Fast forward three years and here we are. Paul and

Frank Chen

just launched the Pathless Collective, which Paul describes as:

I’m launching the Pathless Collective. It’s purpose is to launch cool shit into the world as a group. My book has inspired many people to harness their inner creative spirits but doing high-quality work is hard without formal structures around you. I wanted to start this group to help people raise their own ambitions through publishing high-quality creative work. Our first release is a 46 page, sexy color magazine, aka “Zine,” produced by eight people from around the world on the theme of thresholds.

See that last part? About the sexy color magazine? I’ve got an essay in that!!! It’s called “briefly, forever” and look at how cool they made it:

The zine also has essays from Paul, Frank, my pals

Becky Isjwara

and

Brian Wiesner

as well as people who I don’t know but I am sure are awesome like Francesca Galli, Josh Knox, Becky Isjwara, Bess Hambleton.

You can buy the zine here or here:

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THREE: my essay about the phrase ‘suck it’

Those last two were sort of easy to promo, right? Cuz someone else is manning the lines (the ship?) and I’m just able to scream “hey look at me and this cool thing” but this next one, this is my bag, my thing, my up, down, all around…

It’s an essay I just published and I’m really proud of it and god damn it if I’m gonna publish it once and forget about it.

I like it, and I think you might too. So have at it!!

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comments

1. what’s your relationship to promoting your own stuff??

2. got something sweet to promo that you want the world to know about? share it in the comments babe let’s party