Тег: Channels

Reflections on the project’s second anniversary

Two years ago, the first post was published as part of this project. Back then, the channel was called LPR-tyan and looked like a rather cringe-worthy roleplay as a girl who claims she is a political party.

Gradually, the channel distanced itself from this strange persona; the process accelerated after the project founder left. Now the channel is much more respectable, but it has lost some of its drive. The main feature of the project was answering questions, but over two years, essentially, answers to all the main questions have long since been given, and some more than once. Repeating oneself is somehow strange; however, a new channel, Libertarian Aggregator, seems to have decided to go through the history of my channel and repost the most successful posts, for which I am, of course, grateful.

Therefore, today the focus of my activities has shifted toward things that were previously more incidental: translating books, writing scripts for a series of videos, and collaborating with a network of other anti-state projects. I feel my growing demand as a libertarian activist, but at the same time, the demand for the Telegram channel is rather falling; this is evident from the view counts. A year ago, the channel had 848 subscribers, but the average number of views was 70% of the audience. Now there are 1,860 subscribers, but the number of views has dropped to 40%.

My most in-demand competence remains not so much the ability to compose something of my own, but the ability to rework someone else’s and present it in a more attractive form. So I will continue this peculiar cooperation with those who have many fresh thoughts but experience difficulty in presenting them. This also includes answers to questions like “what do you think about such-and-such a tome?” I would like to post reviews of various voluminous works from time to time, but familiarizing myself with them takes an awful lot of time, so only for money.

The original monetization model of the channel was narrow: an answer to a question accompanied by a donation was guaranteed and given out of turn. Gradually, the focus shifted simply to donations for the development of the channel and targeted contributions for book translations. Initially, it was proposed to simply transfer bitcoins; now there are many more options available, from banal rubles to advanced bitcoin payments via the Lightning protocol. I highly recommend mastering this latter method, because eventually you’ll have to anyway. I have posted all the instructions on this matter; they are not complicated.

Since the end of April, I have started a strange experiment — I started a personal blog. The subscription is paid, and although I regularly write something about myself there, it is primarily an opportunity to support the main channel — I am far from thinking that my personal musings themselves are worth monthly fees. So far, I am writing for as many as three readers who subscribed for 200 rubles a month, and no one has subscribed to the 1,000 rubles a month level yet. However, I currently enjoy the process of keeping a personal blog, so I will continue this activity even if the number of readers does not increase significantly; it’s a sort of hobby within a hobby.

I still want to engage in something more practical in addition to creating text content, but so far nothing concrete has come to mind. After all, social entrepreneurship is a separate talent.

The post turned out to be quite minor, in accordance with the general atmosphere around us, and it would be good if this underlying irritation in people does not accumulate in vain.

Started a personal blog

Several times, I have been suggested to start a Patreon or some other system for providing premium content in exchange for regular donations. The idea of receiving regular donations certainly appeals to me (although it’s unclear what stops a reader from simply donating regularly without using intermediary services) — but for a long time, I couldn’t figure out what kind of premium content I would be willing to offer. Share smarter thoughts with paid subscribers and less smart ones with free ones? Well, that’s not quite it…

Then an idea occurred to me. In my main channel, on the website, and in all the linked social networks, I talk about libertarianism, while I usually remain behind the scenes. So, as premium content, I could provide my own personal perspective on the world around me — basically, various things that don’t fit into the format of a channel about libertarianism.

So, I started a live channel on the Boosty service (chosen for banal economic reasons — it takes less for mediation than its competitors: 7%, plus the payment system commission). I will post personal things there, while still trying to avoid my deanonymization. There is only one subscription level, 200 rubles per month, and so far I don’t see any reason to create more. If you have suggestions on what else could be written there, subscribe and let me know in the comments. As you know, I always highly value the opinion of those who are willing to back it with money, and I try to fulfill such requests.

Corona-chan

The coronavirus finally caught up with me. An attentive reader might have suspected this from the content of recent posts in the channel, but the test results only arrived today.

Main symptoms: an urge to hug statisticians, difficulty with self-isolation. I don’t feel a need for artificial ventilation of consciousness yet.

Although the channel continues to operate as usual, it is now assumed by default that posts are created by me in co-authorship with the coronavirus — unless stated otherwise.

2019, results

The most surprising achievement of the past year for me is that the channel continues to exist at all and is even doing quite well. I still have things to say, and the number of people wishing to read them continues to grow. In 2019, the channel’s audience tripled, and that is only among those who prefer texts. In addition, I started writing scripts for videos, and since July, eight of them have already been released on the Libertarian band channel, and a ninth should appear any minute now.

The format of answering scattered questions from the audience helped a lot with post topics at the start of the project; now, in addition to that, I have begun to devote a lot of time to a consistent presentation of my own vision of libertarian ideology, translations of interesting texts published by foreign authors, cooperation with other libertarians of related directions, and even with left-wing anarchists, which I could not have imagined a year ago.

I am sure that in another year I will again be writing with surprise about the unexpected ways the channel continued to develop, so for now I will refrain from making detailed plans. Well, except that I promise to finish the translation of The Mechanics of Liberty and continue working on the video course on libertarianism. I would like to gradually look for ways to move from theory to practice, but we will see how that goes.

I will be glad for your New Year’s gifts in my bitcoin wallet, greetings in the chat and comments, and simply a good mood expressed in likes under the post.

Changes in the operation of the channel

While the channel was on pause, I reflected on its future, and now I want to formulate more clearly how it will be managed.

Every week, roughly on weekends, I intend to publish not exactly a longread, but a sufficiently detailed article on topics that interest me, which are not necessarily related to your questions. Alternatively, this could be an interview or something else equally labor-intensive.

On weekdays, no more than one post per day will consist of answers to questions accompanied by donations. I have already accumulated a huge pool of answers on a wide variety of topics, and continuing to fill the info-space at the same pace would mean inevitable self-copying, paraphrasing, and so on. I answered free questions because I needed it—it is easier for me to reason within a specific given topic than to fantasize about what else interesting to convey to the public. Now I am happy to continue answering, but only if you need it, and the best way to demonstrate your interest is to back it up with money. Free questions will now move for me into the category of sociological data on what people are generally interested in, and theoretically, they may form the basis for articles.

Bitarch’s column will be maintained as texts from him appear, not tied to specific days, but somewhat depending on the depth of my processing of the original text.

Mutual promotion with other projects is possible, but on my part, it will always be a review of the corresponding channel, indicating whether I subscribed to it myself, and I would like the same approach from the opposite side, although, of course, I have no control over the info-policy of other channels.

I am ready to post reviews of other channels as a bonus to an answer to paid questions asked by them, as was tested with the “Pravy Argument” channel. Reviews will be posted on a permanent basis and not deleted after a fixed period, as usually happens with advertising on various Telegram channels.

I do not intend to personally place my own paid advertising on other channels, but I am ready to accept payment for such things as a donation, as was the case with advertising on the “Whales are swimming to the LSD crash pad” channel. In this case, if necessary, I can provide promotional text adapted to the audience of the corresponding channel.

When you just can’t focus on Hayek…

Ancap for Grandmas

My team and I at Libertarian Band have released a new video, this time — about ancap. Back in winter, I wanted to write an overview text about how I see the relationship between the main currents of libertarianism (which differs from the traditional division into minarchism and ancap), but I never got around to it. Instead, this was achieved in a series of five videos, which finally concludes today.

The “Libertarianism for Grandmas” series will continue; in the second part of the cycle, we will focus on explaining individual key concepts for libertarianism. For now, as they say, subscribe, leave likes, and send bitcoins if you like what we’re doing. It’ll only get cooler from here!

And for those who wish to deepen their knowledge of ancap without waiting for new videos — you are most welcome to read our translation of The Machinery of Freedom by David Friedman, which is also still ongoing, but a significant part of the book has already been translated.

Video about specific risks when playing chess

Resuscitation of vkontaktika

For some time, I had an unofficial mirror on VKontakte. However, it is well known that this jurisdiction has a rather unpleasant administration policy regarding the handing over of its citizens to the Russian Federation administration. Therefore, some security measures were taken regarding the public page (I have no idea exactly what they were, as I personally avoid that place), a side effect of which was the loss of all subscribers and history.

So, if for some reason it is more convenient for you to be on this particular social network, you can subscribe to the public page again. Just in case, I do not recommend liking posts — it is stupid to be imprisoned for a like; be imprisoned for reposts at least.

Planting the ancap flag on shaky ground

Agorism for grandmothers

Libertarian band has released a new video from the “for grandmothers” series, this time about agorism. Be sure to watch it; I think it turned out quite lively. And for those who want to dive a bit deeper, I’ll remind you that I have already talked about agorism on my channel. In January, I answered a question from the Classical Liberal, where I pointed out that agorism is not the only way, and one should not completely neglect political methods, and in June, on the contrary, I responded to criticism of agorism regarding the claim that counter-economics does not weaken the state in any way.

Dr. Zoidberg’s seminar on the benefits of underground medicine

Panarchy for Grandmothers

Hooray, we did it! The most anticipated video of this summer has been released on the Libertarian Band channel, where I tried to explain panarchy in the simplest terms possible.

Panarchy for Grandmothers

In my opinion, this is the most successful of my scripts so far, and all the other project participants did a great job.

A bit of behind-the-scenes

In the spring, the team from this channel, with whom I had previously had sporadic experience collaborating, approached me with a request to write a script for a video so they could hold auditions for a new host. I decided that since all sorts of people would be auditioning, the text should be as simple as possible and aimed at the widest audience—an introduction to libertarianism. That’s how the script for “Libertarianism for Grandmothers” came about. During the auditions, they went through about five people, and as a result, the channel got a wonderful new face—Anton. Of course, it’s a bit a pity that the girl didn’t pass the casting; it would have been easier for me to prepare scripts for her, but I really like how it turned out.

Libertarianism for Grandmothers

The video spread quite well across various public pages and has received over 1,700 views to date, which already exceeds the audience of my own Telegram channel.

Then Bitarch approached me and suggested creating something equally accessible, but about panarchy. I had to disappoint him and reply that I wanted to create a cycle linked by the internal logic of the narrative, and the next one would be a description of minarchism. The video was released relatively recently, but for a reason I don’t understand, it wasn’t received as favorably by the audience. This is a bit strange because, on one hand, the entire agenda of the Libertarian Party in our country today is based on a minarchist platform, and on the other hand, the LP has never once explained its platform in video format, so the video on minarchism is almost the first of its kind. Please share it if you find it useful.

Minarchism for Grandmothers

Now the long-awaited panarchy is out. Following panarchy, there should be a “for grandmothers” description of such an interesting strategy as agorism. The text is already ready; all that’s left is to film and edit. There are many other interesting things planned, so please subscribe to Libertarian Band and recommend the channel to your friends.

Donations and plans

I have updated the donations section on my website, adding several instructions on using cryptocurrencies, so as not to refer to scattered blog posts.

Also, something unexpected happened to me. When Siberia was covered in smog, I complained in the chat about headaches, throat problems, and sleep disturbances. The smog has eased now, but one of my readers suddenly decided to gift me a trip to the sea, so I will soon head to Armenia and Georgia for a couple of weeks. Such generous gestures are, of course, very overwhelming. But I will try to view the trip more as a business trip than a vacation, and from time to time, I’ll write something interesting in the channel.

Thank you for filling my life with such pleasant surprises!