Edward Trimnell – Edward Trimnell Books

Kindle, Kobo, my future publishing plans…and yet another 1980s metaphor

Many of you have noticed that my books are now available at multiple retailers.

But not all of my books are available at multiple retailers.

There are reasons for this. Allow me to explain.

As recently as last year, I was Amazon-exclusive on all titles (with the exception of a few non-fiction books). All of my fiction was in Kindle Unlimited.

That’s not the way it is anymore.

Why?

The publishing landscape is changing.

Amazon is still the dominant player in the ebook retailing space (and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future).

But Kobo is rapidly emerging as a viable alternative for many readers (as the video below demonstrates). Other readers will toggle back and forth between the two.

Kobo is not the only non-Amazon e-book retailer, of course. There are also Apple Books, Google Play, and Barnes & Noble.

But Kobo, with its high-profile line of e-readers, seems to be the one that is making the most headway. Kobo is serious about increasing its market share.

Where readers go, authors will follow, and vice versa.

The wild card here is Kindle Unlimited’s exclusivity clause. If a title is enrolled in Kindle Unlimited, it can’t be sold (in ebook format) at any of the other retailers. Historically, this has meant that thousands of titles listed at Amazon aren’t available at Kobo, Google Play, etc.

Many readers, I suspect, aren’t even aware of this.

I’ve noticed a trend: More romance authors are publishing their books “wide”, with an emphasis on Kobo.

Yes, romance… the genre that dare not speak its name at this blog. Regular readers will know how I hate werebear shapeshifter romance, reverse harem romance, and all the other ridiculous romance genres.

But I don’t deny their collective footprint in the marketplace. Those weird romance genres, much as I disdain them, may be instrumental in propelling Kobo’s growth in the near future.

This will indirectly benefit the other non-Amazon retailers—not only Kobo. Because if you’re publishing your book on Kobo, then you had might as well publish it on Google Play, Apple Books, and Barnes & Noble too.

Readers will go where the books go. This is the network effect in action.

But for me, publishing wide doesn’t mean abandoning Kindle Unlimited. I will still be keeping many backlist and new titles in Amazon’s exclusive subscription program.

Yes—I know that means that those titles will only be available at Amazon. But Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited program is a major player in its own right. In my opinion, part of being “wide” means having a footprint in Kindle Unlimited.

This diversified strategy may strike some readers as needlessly complicated. But remember: I’m from the 1980s. And back in the 1980s, content publishers regularly thought in terms of market segmentation.

For example: there were movies and TV shows that were available on network television for free.

Other movies and shows were available on HBO (a subscription program).

Others required viewers to access them via a pay-per-view system.

Then there were all those VHS rentals.

And finally, there were movies that could only be seen at the cinema.

I’m doing something very similar. Some of my titles are exclusively at Amazon, other titles are “wide”.

Nor have I forgotten about free, frictionless discovery venues: I’ve also been adding readings of some of my books and stories to my YouTube channel.

The 2026 content distribution marketplace is complicated; but in some ways, it’s no more convoluted than it was in 1986. So we go back to the 1980s yet again.

-ET

Night Ranger tickets, anyone?

Night Ranger was one of my favorite bands of the golden age of MTV, long before music degenerated into grunge, then rap, and now Taylor Swift. (Barf.)

Night Ranger’s music was not innovative in the manner of Rush or Yes. But it was accessible, the sort of music that you wouldn’t mind listening to on a long drive.

The band was also remarkably consistent over multiple albums. I became a fan with Dawn Patrol (1982), then followed the group through Midnight Madness (1983), 7 Wishes (1985) and Big Life (1987).

I’m gratified to know that the band is still touring, and that three of the original members—Jack Blades, Kelly Keagy, and Brad Gillis—are still with the group.

I like Night Ranger’s music for its own sake, but I won’t deny a certain nostalgic pull. These songs bring back the 1980s for me every time I play them. Good music from a better, bygone time.

-ET

‘Star Wars’ and the endless sequels of a corporate cash cow

Brett Arnold of Yahoo! is distinctly unimpressed with the latest, endless installment in the Star Wars franchise:

“‘The Mandalorian and Grogu’ is easily the worst Star Wars movie, but even calling it a movie feels like giving it more credit than it deserves. It’s a feature-length episode of streaming-era television, and boy, does it look and feel like it. It’s uncinematic in pretty much every way, from the drab visuals to its repetitive structure that lacks the storytelling heft needed to make the jump from TV to film. Say what you will about ‘The Rise of Skywalker’ or the prequel trilogy; at least they’re movies!”

Reading the above, I feel a little like the lead singer in the J. Geils Band, who discovered that his high school sweetheart had been turned into onanistic fodder for a girlie magazine:

Star Wars was amazing when it first came out. I can say this with certainty because I was there at the beginning.

It was the summer of 1977 and I sat with my dad in a cinema in northern Kentucky as the very first Star Wars film began.

I was nine years old.

I will soon be 58.

I’m sure you caught the irony. That was almost half a century ago.

The last Star Wars movie that was really necessary was Return of the Jedi in 1983. I remember watching The Phantom Menace in 1999, sixteen years later. It didn’t feel like Star Wars.

Since then, the movies have only gotten worse. It’s obvious that Disney is just milking the Star Wars universe as one of its few reliable cash cows.

Star Wars was great! But it’s time for new science fiction stories and fresh space operas.

-ET

Family Secrets and rural supernatural horror

I have a new release: Family Secrets. Here’s what it’s about (Amazon description):

“When a Cincinnati businessman connects with a distant cousin on Facebook, he agrees to stop by the man’s remote rural property on his way home from a business trip.

The visit should have lasted thirty minutes.

Instead, he finds himself trapped in a doublewide trailer deep in the woods, drawn into the disappearance of a local girl, and forced to search a dark pond for a body that may—or may not—be there.

But something else is moving through the woods that night.

Something ancient and hungry.

Family Secrets is a supernatural mystery/thriller inspired by regional folklore, nightmares, and the eerie landscapes of the Midwest.”

This is the second book in a new series I’ve created: Uncanny Ohio:

“Uncanny Ohio is a series of atmospheric supernatural tales set in southern Ohio, in and around the Cincinnati area. Traditional ghost stories and urban legends with a strong regional flavor.”

This was a natural move for me. Many of my supernatural stories are set in southern Ohio, and take inspiration from the ghost stories and urban legends that I absorbed as a kid in the 1970s and 1980s.

Family Secrets is currently enrolled in Kindle Unlimited.

-ET

Find your inner Cyrano

In the spring of 1986 I was a senior in high school. My honors English teacher, Mrs. Bollmer, assigned our class Edmond Rostand’s 1897 play, Cyrano de Bergerac. As part of the study of the play, we also watched the 1950 film adaptation starring José Ferrer.

Since I was a 17-going-on-18-year-old boy, I naturally focused on the play’s romantic plot, the homely Cyrano’s pursuit of the lovely but vapid Roxane, who is in love with the handsome but vapid Christian de Neuvillette. (Note for male readers: Cyrano’s method of wooing Roxane is not likely to yield any more satisfying a result in the real world than it did in the play.)

The awkward love plot is a necessary contrivance for a stage drama. What Cyrano de Bergerac is really about, though, is finding your individuality—and personal integrity—in an anonymizing world that seeks to crush both.

And in this regard, the play is relevant to everyone: men, women, the old, the young, and everyone in between.

This theme was certainly relevant in 1986, but that was long before the internet, social media, or the culture wars as we know them today. American culture, politics, and intellectualism were not without their flaws in those days, but they were generally better than they are today.

Take politics. When I was a young man, I thought that I was a liberal. As I entered full adulthood, I thought that I was a conservative. In the political landscape of 2026, I am simply an outsider. My opinions won’t please the personality cult of the MAGA base; nor would I fit in among the lemmings on Bluesky, who compliantly use unnecessary neologisms in the name of political correctness.

In the words of Shakespeare’s Mercutio, “A plague o’ both your houses!”

Listen to Cyrano’s monologue above (from the 1950 film adaptation). Now, more than ever, you need to find your inner Cyrano. Acquiescence to the whims and default opinions of the crowd probably wasn’t a good idea even in 1986. But today such acquiescence is toxic, and destructive to both the individual and society.

-ET

MS NOW, the “Gen Z stare”, and workplace realities

The so-called “Gen Z stare” has attracted a lot of attention in the media recently, especially in regard to workplace situations.

The Gen Z stare is a vapid, amused, or annoyed look that young people sometimes give their elders. And in the workplace, most of the management team is going to be over forty and therefore an “elder”.

I’m not sure that there is really anything new here. Watch a teen movie from the 1980s. You will see teenagers from the Reagan era giving older adults similar looks (often accompanied by eye rolls). Keep in mind: those teenagers of the 1980s are now late middle-aged adults in their 50s and early 60s.

The point being: young people have always believed that older people are fuddy-duddies, not current, old-fashioned. If those adults would only get with it, already!

Older people have always believed that young people are too arrogant, and need to spend more time learning the way things are done, versus expressing their opinions.

Both viewpoints are right and both viewpoints are wrong. It depends on the context. The tug between tradition and change is as old as civilization itself.

But in the workplace, the situation is less ambiguous. The workplace is not going to change for the new hire right out of college. Change is going to happen in the opposite direction.

That’s why I’m not a fan of videos like the one recently published by MS NOW, entitled “Did You Just Get the Gen Z Stare at Work? This is Why.” The video asserts that today’s young adults were brought up in a “participatory” culture, and—therefore— don’t cope well with “hierarchy”.

Here’s a newsflash: you could have said more or less the same thing about young adults entering the workplace in 1990. Here’s another newsflash: those young adults of 35 years ago had to change and adapt to the workplace. Today’s young adults will have to change and adapt, too.

The workplace, whether we like it or not, is all about hierarchy. Just ask anyone who’s ever held a job for any length of time.

-ET

The Great Tennessee Hugging Scandal: what was he thinking?

The internet has officially declared that Two Minutes Hate will be exercised daily for Keith Ervin, the Tennessee school board official who hugged a 17-year-old female student and told her she was “hot”. Ervin has also been charged with assault.

The incident itself (you can watch it on video) was certainly eyebrow-raising and inappropriate. Did it rise to the level of assault? The hugged girl subsequently gave a speech about how offended she was, and this is not the first time Ervin has been in hot water over similar actions. Make of it what you will.

I’m not here to defend Keith Ervin, or to brand him a combination of Osama bin Laden, Jeffrey Dahmer, and Attila the Hun (as so much of the internet seems intent on doing). I’ll address this from a more practical perspective.

Modern life requires one to read the zeitgeist. In 1985, the year I turned seventeen, 17-year-olds were considered “almost adults”. We did not want to be classified as “children”.

Also in 1985, an older man could have gotten away with referring to a 17-year-old girl as “hot” without a national emergency being declared. (But even then, it would have raised some eyebrows.)

This is not 1985. This is 2026. Older teens are now widely regarded as “little children”. The country is in the throes of pedophile hysteria, with the definition of “pedophile” being expanded weekly. A 50-year-old man who expresses amorous appreciation for a 25-year-old might well be branded a pedophile in the current climate; so what the heck did Keith Ervin think he was doing, making such a remark to a 17-year-old?

I graduated from college in 1991, the year of the Tailhook scandal, and the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill hearings. I have heard that corporate workplaces were freewheeling, Wild West environments in the 1980s; but I was a teenager then. Sexual harassment avoidance indoctrination was part of my workplace training from my very first day on the job.

The message I received in such training was simple: when in doubt, don’t do it. Don’t say hello to that pretty coworker who ignored you the last time. And—for Heaven’s sake—don’t tell her she’s pretty. That’s an immediate firing offense. Keep your eyes forward at all times. Adopt the air of a polite eunuch.

And this is in a workplace environment with only adults. I haven’t been in a K-12 classroom since 1986. But the behavioral standards in an educational environment, with minors present, must be all the more stringent.

In other words, there is really no excuse for making a mistake like this in 2026—not unless one has been living under a rock for the past 35 years. Keith Ervin is around sixty years old. He had plenty of time to get the memo. What was he thinking?

-ET

Amazon review rules changing

See Kevin Tumlinson’s video about the changing tides of Amazon reviews, and how the rule changes have been influenced by—you guessed it—AI.

I recently opined about the topic of review begging. Although Kevin Tumlinson approaches the issue from a different angle, he also seems to believe that obsessive review farming is no longer a productive practice for authors and publishers…if it ever was.

I can’t say this enough. There is absolutely nothing wrong with a book review culture existing online, as something that readers do among themselves.

By all means let readers talk about the books they’ve read. And leave them alone while they’re doing it.

The problem arises when authors and publishers begin to see random internet reviews—written by random people—as a key pillar of their marketing strategy.

-ET

Rescuing restaurant chains from the MBAs

Back in the 1980s, Pizza Hut was one of my favorite places to eat. I ate at several local Pizza Huts here in Cincinnati with my parents, my friends, and some dates.

Even back then, Pizza Hut was a national franchise. (In fact. I think it was already an international franchise). But Pizza Hut was distinctive, atmospheric, and wonderfully quirky. Those glass light fixtures, and the red-and-white checkered tablecloths. The arcade games in one corner.

And then the MBAs ruined Pizza Hut, as the MBAs ruined so much of American business.

Some time around the turn of this century, corporate management teams in multiple restaurant chains decided that restaurants should lose their distinctiveness, and aim for a stripped-down, ultra-modern corporate look. The idea seemed to be that restaurants should mimic the Apple Store.

Suddenly, Pizza Hut wasn’t a fun place to eat anymore. Ditto for others. Very few fast food restaurants provide anything approaching an immersive experience nowadays.

There have been some notable consumer backlashes. Last year, customers expressed their vehement disapproval on the internet when the corporate pointy heads decided that it was time to give Cracker Barrel a makeover. Cracker Barrel’s management team promptly backpedaled.

As the attached video from CBS shows, a Pizza Hut in rural Pennsylvania has discovered a new formula for success. That formula turns out to be—lo and behold— going back to the distinctive Pizza Hut decor, menu, and layout of the 1980s.

The video also mentions that the store has brought Pac Man back. This is a nice touch, but I don’t think it’s necessary for every restaurant chain to literally go back to the 1970s and 1980s. For example, those famous (or infamous, depending on your viewpoint) aluminum ashtrays are not coming back to McDonald’s in an era of smoking bans. And I’m okay with that. We can leave the aluminum ashtrays (and all the second-hand smoke) in the Reagan era.

But there are a lot of good things that should be brought back to national restaurant chains—wonderful elements of well-known brands, that were eliminated in the name of nonsensical “modernity”.

Every restaurant should not look the same. And restaurants certainly shouldn’t look like the Apple Store.

-ET

Banshee: a flawed but compulsively watchable crime drama

I’ve been watching Banshee, a crime drama that originally aired from 2013 to 2016. I’ve always enjoyed Jonathan Tropper’s books, and I was originally interested in the show because of his involvement.

First, the negatives. This show has far too many plot holes, some rising to jump-the-shark levels of absurdity. Characters don’t always behave consistently, and often behave in ways that are not even plausible. For this reason, the viewer is never quite able to suspend his or her disbelief.

But I don’t believe that realism is Banshee’s goal. This is compulsive, potato chip entertainment that keeps you watching—from one scene to the next, and from one episode to the next. The tension and power oscillations that are achieved in some of Banshee’s scenes are worth studying—especially if you’re interested in writing fiction or film scripts. (They’re also worth your time if you’re simply looking for some not-too-challenging, pulp entertainment.)

Another positive: There is quite a bit of sex in Banshee. But the sex, while occasionally excessive, is used strategically.

In all too many shows, and in 99% of all the romance and erotica novels being published nowadays, sex is used as a cover for weak storytelling. Not so in Banshee. In Banshee, the sex heightens the tension and complicates the plot. A sex scene in this show is almost never only about sex.

-ET

Book review-begging 101

There are many things I don’t like about how indie publishing has evolved under the influence of the “gurus”. One of these is the practice of review-begging.

(Note: Dean Wesley Smith gets credit for inventing the term review-begging. But it is too apt not to coin.)

Online review culture is a fact of publishing. As one of my former corporate bosses told me, “you can’t stop people from talking.”

And allow me to be clear here: there is nothing inherently wrong with readers getting together in spaces like Goodreads (or on Amazon, for that matter) to discuss their reactions to various books. This is no different from people discussing their preferences for anything else in the online world.

Online reader reviews, like everything else one finds online, is a mixed bag. Your mileage may vary.

I’ve seen some reader reviews that are extremely thoughtful.

On the other hand, I once saw a reader review that gave a book a one-star rating because the book did not have any dragons, and that reader only read books with dragons. Okie dokie.

I came across another reader review that gave a book a one-star rating because a dog happened to die in the book. The one-star reviewer then pointed out that he “didn’t read books in which animals die.” (One assumes that this particular fellow never read Old Yeller.)

I reiterate: there is nothing wrong with any of this. Everyone has a right to broadcast their opinion on the internet. (That’s sort of what I’m doing now, isn’t it?)

What is deleterious is that a handful of indie author “gurus” have convinced writers that they must behave like Instagram models. They must constantly primp and wheedle for reader reviews and ratings, like a teenager desperate for approval. There have been cases of writers giving away cash prizes, Kindles, and even laptops in exchange for reader reviews. The whole thing has become absurd.

And as is always the case, there is no easier mark than an indie author who is eager for success. The practice of review-begging has given birth to a cottage industry, eagerly filled by companies that make money by putting indie-published books in front of advanced reader copies (ARC) readers. The only qualification of said ARC readers is that they are willing to give their opinions about books online. What could possibly go wrong?

On the contrary, I have learned to actively distrust review averages on Amazon. Some of the best books I’ve read in recent years have had middling 3.5-star review averages. On the other hand, some of the astro-turfed 5-star average books have been mediocre at best.

(Note: whenever you see the reviews for a trad-pubbed book, you can assume that the review averages have been gamed in one way or another.)

I reiterate again: I have no desire to censor, quell, or discourage anyone from expressing their opinion about a particular book, movie, television show, or piece of music. That’s the consumer side of the equation. I’m opining from the creator side now.

When you start writing for the folks who are the most vocal online, you’re not just writing by committee (which is bad enough). You’re also writing for people who may not even be your primary readership. Most avid readers seldom review, or even rate, books. They’re too busy reading.

This is why I’m no fan of review-begging, or the self-appointed gurus who advocate for the practice.

-ET

The world before CNN: less information and fuller lives

Ted Turner passed on May 6 after a long, busy life. While his enterprises were numerous, he is best remembered for the Cable News Network, aka CNN, which launched on June 1, 1980.

Most of us did not get CNN right away. Even middle-class households were slow to adopt cable. Americans really did believe that we could exist with access to only four or five television stations in those days.

My parents purchased a cable subscription with CNN included in 1982. For many years, CNN included a partner channel called CNN Headline News. The idea was simple: all the major headlines in thirty minutes.

CNN has become controversial in recent years, depending on one’s political sentiments. President Trump has repeatedly referred to the network as “fake news.” Early on, CNN was mostly apolitical and mostly dedicated to reporting the news in an objective manner. There were no significant controversies like that back then.

On the contrary, pretty much everyone believed that there was something amazing about CNN. Prior to that, if you wanted to watch the news, you had to tune in right around dinnertime. The local news ran from 6:00 to 6:30 p.m., and the national news ran on each major network afterward.

Either that or (gasp!) read the newspaper. Most Americans had longer attention spans in those days, and actually didn’t mind reading the newspaper, but that’s another topic for another day.

I watched CNN sporadically during the 1980s, but I was a high school kid for most of that period. My CNN obsession began in 1989, with the Tiananmen Square Massacre in Beijing. About a year after that came the first Gulf War. For both events, I was tuned in to CNN multiple times throughout the day.

Bad things happened before CNN became common in American homes. There were wars, government scandals, and troubling international events like the Tehran hostage crisis of 1979 to 1981.

Although I was a kid then, I don’t believe that most American adults ignored national and global problems. There was, however, a commonly held belief that attention was best directed closer to home. Plenty of Americans were dismayed at Nixon’s corruption, or Carter’s bumbling, but there was generally less outrage about the news.

Maybe this was because there were fewer news broadcasts to consume. (And this was long, long before the internet or social media). This made faraway events, including events taking place in another American city, genuinely remote.

It’s also worth noting that in 1980, almost all American adults of childbearing age were married. Most had children. Their personal lives were full and demanding.

This is another way in which 2026 is far removed from 1980. Nowadays, only about a third of young American adults are married, and even fewer have children.

Perhaps that makes it easier to sell them on the notion that the news is more important than their daily lives, that events in Washington DC are more urgent and pressing than events taking place in their living rooms.

Sadly, for all too many Americans in 2026, that is genuinely the case.

In 1980, it usually wasn’t.

-ET

Jennifer Big Eyes: generational name patterns

I was born in 1968. I did not go to school with a single boy named Ryan.

Thirty-odd years later, I was in the workforce. I met a lot of younger men (born in the mid- to late-1970s) named Ryan.

This was odd. Where had all these Ryans come from? And where had they been before, during my childhood, teens, and twenties?

The mid-1970s surge of boys named Ryan is an example of how generational naming patterns can turn on a dime. From the 1950s through the end of the 1960s, the following male given names were much more popular for newborns in the United States:

Mike/Michael
David
John
Mark
Scott
Steve/Steven
Kevin
Jeff/Jeffrey

The sudden (and relatively short-lived) increase in American babies named Ryan can be partly attributed to two factors: the popularity of the actor Ryan O’Neal (1941-2023), and the debut of the soap opera Ryan’s Hope in 1975. So if you’re an Xennial man named Ryan, it’s likely that you owe your name to a soap opera. The popularity of the name Ryan tapered off in the mid-1980s, right around the time that the soap opera’s ratings started to decline.

My name, Edward, was uncommon among boys my age. I was named after my father. Over the years, I have heard various explanations for the reason my father was given this name. None of them are entirely satisfactory. Edward is certainly not a family name for our clan, in any meaningful sense.

When I was a kid, I would sometimes meet adults who delighted in telling me about Mister Ed, the 1960s sitcom that featured a talking horse of the same name. They would then imply that I might have been named after the sitcom’s eponymous equine.

Despite my youth, I was quick to disabuse them of such notions. (Oh, the traumas that children had to endure at the hands of adults, before the advent of the “self-esteem” craze.)

My mother was born in 1946. She was named Linda—like more than a million other women born in that era. Linda was a much overused name during the Baby Boomer birth years. Linda was, in fact, the second most popular name for newborn girls during the 1940s, according to the Social Security Administration’s online database.

Throughout my life, I have met many Boomer women named Linda. I have never, so far as I can remember, met a woman my age or younger named Linda; but I don’t doubt that they exist.

When I try to think of any Linda who doesn’t have Baby Boomer associations, the only one who comes to mind is Linda Barrett, the fictional sexpot of Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982).

But once again, there are Baby Boomer connections. Even though Fast Times at Ridgemont High is regarded as an early Gen X movie, the movie’s director, Amy Heckerling, born in 1954, is solidly in boomer territory. (Heckerling is closer in age to my parents than to me.) I think it’s safe to say that the name “Linda” belongs entirely to the Baby Boom generation.

The most popular girls’ name in the 1940s was Mary. Mary was my maternal grandmother’s name. She was born in 1922. I have never met a woman my age or younger named Mary, either. I have met some Mary Jo’s who were born in the 1960s and 1970s, but never a plain old Mary. Once again, I am sure that they exist; but they are comparatively rare.

Kayla is a girl’s name that came out of nowhere in the 1990s. One never encountered the name when I was a kid. I began meeting Kaylas around 2010, just as the first girls given that name were reaching early adulthood. I have nothing against the name Kayla, but what’s wrong with its more traditional analog, Katie?

Among Gen X girls, Jennifer is the most popular name, hands down. Jennifer was already becoming popular when I was born, in the late 1960s. But Jennifer really surged in popularity in the early 1970s. It is the most common name for American girls born in that decade.

This is why there are so many 50-something women nowadays named Jennifer. Jennifer Aniston (born in 1969) is just one drop in that vast ocean of Jennifers.

I went to school with more Jennifers than I can count. Later in life, I met many more who were just a few years younger than me (born in the first half of the 1970s).

I seem to have been surrounded by Jennifers from the very beginning. My mother informed me that when I was a newborn, the couple living in the apartment unit next to my parents had a two-year-old girl named—lo and behold—Jennifer.

The girl had especially wide, blue eyes. She was also fond of staring at adults, according to my mother’s telling. My mother therefore nicknamed her Jennifer Big Eyes. Over the years, Jennifer Big Eyes has come up in conversation from time to time.

Jennifer Big Eyes would now be, I would guess, in her early 60s. I don’t believe my mother ever knew her full name. I have no idea where she would be nowadays, or if she is even still alive. After that many years, anything is possible. But I do hope that Jennifer Big Eyes is still out there somewhere, and that she is doing well. One more Gen X Jennifer among so many.

-ET

OnlyFans and inevitable aggregations

As this video from Coin Bureau Finance explains, the OnlyFans gold rush is already over, and more changes are coming. The platform is inherently risky for investors and credit card processors; but that isn’t the only problem. The OnlyFans ecosystem is also subject to the aggregating forces that are present in any creator-based economy.

Henceforth, OnlyFans will likely be moving in two directions, neither of which is promising for the much-ballyhooed individual creator on the platform.

The first is the superstar creator. Often this will be a celebrity. Recently, there has been an influx of aging female celebrities joining OnlyFans. These are actresses who have aged out of leading-lady roles (don’t look for Sydney Sweeney or Zendaya to join anytime soon) but who are still young and attractive enough to draw in millions of simps with credit cards. Shannon Elizabeth is the most famous recent example, but she is far from alone.

The second direction is that of the AI-powered OnlyFans agency. In these cases, there may be a real live human female somewhere, providing some of the content. Increasingly, however, content that does not feature a celebrity will rely on artificial intelligence.

And according to the above video, artificial intelligence is already powering many OnlyFans accounts. The thirsty males who plunk down their credit cards each month think that they are gaining access to the woman on the other side of the screen. In reality, they are most likely chatting with a woman (or possibly even a man) in a call center-like facility in the Philippines or Vietnam.

Which brings us to another familiar realization: OnlyFans subscribers really are a gullible, pathetic bunch of men.

-ET

Homeschooling: the wrong solution to a real problem

A large number of school levy issues were on the ballot throughout Ohio this past Tuesday. Most of them were rejected by voters. Reading the comments on Facebook, I noted that those who voted against the levies were largely unapologetic.

There is a general dissatisfaction throughout America with public schools: their management, their methods of (taxpayer) funding, and the instruction that is taking place within them.

This dissatisfaction with public education has fueled a concomitant rise in homeschooling. When I was a kid, during the 1970s and 1980s, one never met anyone who was homeschooled. (Fewer than 1% of Gen Xers receive their education this way.) But nowadays it seems that every other young adult one meets is the product of homeschooling. Every young couple with children is at least talking about educating their kids at home. The percentages rise as the neighborhoods become whiter and more affluent.

I understand the dissatisfaction with twenty-first-century public schools. It seems that no news day is complete without a fresh report of some weirdness being taught in public schools, or some flagrant example of teacher misconduct.

And yet…I had a very different experience in the 1970s and 1980s. I attended both public and working-class Catholic schools, both at the grade school and high school levels. I received an excellent education. And while I liked some of my teachers better than others, almost all of them were intelligent adults who were deeply committed to their calling.

What happened, then? Sometime during the mid-1980s, one began hearing the catchphrase, “if you can’t do, then teach”. The careerism of the 1980s taught young people that teaching was a second-rate profession. If you were smart, if you were a capable student, then you didn’t want to be a teacher. No, that simply wouldn’t do. You had to be an attorney, a CPA, or a CEO.

Another important trend occurred during the Gen X growing-up years: a decline in the number of capable young women entering the teaching field.

As recently as the 1970s, teaching was considered a top career choice for the most capable young women. While some of my teachers were male, they were disproportionately female. Many of my female teachers were absolutely brilliant. My junior high science teacher, a woman named Mrs. Tierney, was as knowledgable as many college professors.

That all began to change in the 1980s, with the rise of “girl power”, and the idea that the brightest young women must compete in all traditionally male careers. The result was more intelligent young women working in law and finance, but fewer intelligent young women becoming math and science teachers.

Did society benefit most from more intelligent young women entering law firms…or from more intelligent young women entering the field of education? I’m going to let you draw your own conclusions on that one. (I don’t want to deal with the hate mail.)

What I will say is that there are trade-offs to all societal changes. Forty years ago, we began subtly denigrating the teaching profession (“if you can’t do, then teach”) and we began telling young women that they were passively accepting the patriarchy if they didn’t go toe-to-toe with their male classmates in the corporate boardroom.

Forty years have come and gone since all of those trends began. The excellent teachers who provided my education during the 1970s and 1980s are all retired. After casting the teaching profession as a second-rate career choice for four decades, many people are shocked to discover that—lo and behold—the field is now populated by mostly second-rate people. (In one of their Freakonomics books, Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner documented the decline in teacher IQ within my lifetime.) Many parents are also shocked to discover that a disproportionate number of those teachers are left-wing ideologues who shouldn’t be trusted with anyone’s children. But that tends to go along with the second-rate thing.

And now many of those affluent white suburbanites have decided that public schools must be abandoned wholesale. Parents who once believed that a teaching career was beneath them have decided that they should take a break from their law firms and corporate offices to…educate their children at home. Can no one see the irony here?

I reiterate: I experienced public, industrialized education during the 1970s and 1980s. It really isn’t that bad when the right adults are in charge. The problem is that the right adults are no longer in charge, because the right adults are off doing other things. Among those other things (note irony once again) is now homeschooling their kids, because they no longer trust the people working in education.

I am grateful that I wasn’t homeschooled. I loved my mother dearly, but she would not have been capable of teaching me Spanish and algebra at home. In my experience, very few parents are well-equipped to provide competent instruction beyond the fifth- or sixth- grade level. Teaching at the junior high level and above really is a task that is best left to trained professionals.

The proof is in the pudding. I’ve met many of these young adults who were homeschooled in recent years. Most of them are nice enough, but there are noticeable gaps in their knowledge and social development. I would not have wanted to trade places with them.

Another important factor is the socialization and people skills that the organized educational experience provides. I was neither the captain of the football team nor the most popular kid in my school. But my high school experience was anything but four years of living hell. In fact, I rather enjoyed it.

More germane to our discussion here, my school years taught me about friends, enemies, rivals, and conflict management. These are skills that many screen-bound Gen Z young adults sorely lack.

The solution to the crisis in public education is not for a million concerned parents to isolate their children and retreat behind suburban walls. The solution is for a million concerned parents to become involved and take back their public schools.

This is not like trying to take back the national government. Education is still largely managed at the local level. It is possible for organized groups of adults to bring about substantial changes.

This would be a lot more beneficial (for their children, most of all), and practical, than for every parent to try to become a do-it-yourself calculus teacher.

-ET