Eddy's Photo journal – Page 242 – Capturing life's beauties

If you do this, you’re not a creator you deem to be.

I’d just call you a rolling public hazard instead.

It fees like only last night I doom scrolled for exactly nine minutes and watched no fewer than seven, well known marketers, copywriters, and coaches film vertical “value bombs” while actively driving sixty plus on the highway. One hand flapping at the camera.

(This was a few years ago before the big ol’ covid hit us)

But the funny thing is.

A good friend of mine reached out to me to let me know that they’ve also just witness yet another massive influencer in our world take it upon themselves to do this type of stupid shit today. So it looks like it’s all coming back again…

You watch these videos and you see their eyes darting down to the screen every three seconds.

Mouth running about “morning routines” and “funnel hacks” while they pilot two tons of steel through traffic…

I can feel my blood pressure red line when I see these videos.

Not because I’m some pearl clutching saint. (Here comes the soap box rant)

I curse like a sailor and my own camera roll would probably get me locked up for not following certain rules from the Geneva convention, but because this specific flavour of narcissism is legitimately fucking dangerous.

You are not that important.

Your “three mindset shifts to 10x your revenue” are not urgent enough to justify gambling with a stranger’s life.

Or your own kid’s. Or mine.

Here’s what actually happens when you hit record behind the wheel…

Your reaction time collapses to drunk driver levels.

Your field of vision shrinks to whatever fits inside that glowing rectangle.

The 4 000-pound machine you’re steering becomes a heat seeking missile with a personal brand.

Someone dies so you can get 38,000 views and a dopamine hit (???)

And the sickest part?

These are the same people selling $2,997 courses on “authentic leadership,” “building trust,” and “serving your audience at the highest level.”

You cannot claim to care about people and then film yourself actively trying to kill them for engagement. So I did what any sane person would do.

I unfollowed.

I unsubscribed.

I blocked.

I reported a handful for community guidelines violations (because yes, recording while driving is against platform rules on TikTok and Instagram, go look it up)

And I felt… cleaner.

Look, I get it. The algorithm is a jealous god. Silence feels like death. You’re terrified that if you’re not constantly visible, the grift collapses and you’ll have to get a real job.

But here are your options, genius.

Pull the hell over.

Wait until you’re parked or home.

Voice note it and have an assistant transcribe (radical, I know)

Or and this one’s free.

Shut the fuck up until you’re not operating heavy machinery.

Anything else makes you a reckless asshole cosplaying as a thought leader. If you’re reading this and feeling called out. Good.

Change. Today.

Your audience will survive ten minutes without your face. If you’re reading this and nodding along, reply and tell me the class of person who you just unfollowed.

I’ll start. That funnel guy with the rented Lambo.

The mindset chick who cries on cue.

The LinkedIn bro who says “discipline” 40 times per video.

Your turn.

And if you ever catch me doing this shit, publicly drag me. I deserve it.

Drive safe.

Create responsibly.

Or get the hell off my timeline.

P.S. If this email made you angry, ask yourself why you’re defending attempted vehicular manslaughter for clout. Then go touch grass. Preferably after you’ve parked.

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I had the cruelest dream.

It’s 1999. Saturday morning. Sun’s slicing through the blinds like it’s got nowhere better to be.

I roll out of bed, boxers half mast, hair looking like I lost a fight with a lawnmower.

Stumble to the kitchen, pour a bowl of Frosties so big it’s basically a helmet.

Milk sloshes over the edge because who gives a shit, it’s Saturday.

Back to my room. Obviously the sacred cave for your average teenager.

Computer’s already humming.

Hit the power button on the monitor, crackle crackle, then the glorious screech of dial up.

That modem sound? Pure fucking dopamine. 56k of screaming plastic angels singing me into the promised land.

While it connects I’m shovelling cereal, milk dripping down my chin like a savage.

Finally it connected.

Straight to Blogspot.

My little corner of the internet that exactly twelve weirdos read. There’s three new comments on last night’s post about how Radiohead’s new album is going to ruin music forever (I was wrong, sue me)

One from some dude in Ohio who said Ok Computer actually saved his life and Kid A will be amazing when it comes out.

One from a girl in Sweden who just wrote “lol same.”

One from my friend Mike calling me an asshole.

I reply to all of them. Actual conversation. No likes, no ratios, no subtweets…

Just words, back and forth, like passing notes in class but the classroom is the whole planet.

I hammer out a quick post…

Something stupid about how I’m convinced the Millennium Bug is real and we’re all going to die listening to Vengaboys or some stupid shit.

Hit publish. Log off.

And in that moment I remember that he internet doesn’t own me.

It’s a place I visit, not a fucking live in.

Then I’m out the door. Meeting the friends at the record shop.

We’re gonna blow our paper round money on imported singles and lie to each other about how many cigarettes we’ve smoked.

Life is small, slow, beautiful. Tactile. Real.

And then I wake up.

It’s 2025.

Phone’s already in my hand before my eyes are open. Notifications stacked like Jenga blocks made of pure spite, anxiety and rage.

Elon’s ratioing someone.

Another crypto thing died.

Someone I went to school with is now a tradwife influencer selling $79 candles that smell like “masculine discipline.”

The UK’s on fire, again.

America’s on fire… still lol.

My neck hurts from scrolling in bed. My attention span is a chewed up piece of gum.

I haven’t spoken to another human in real life without a screen between us in… fuck, I can’t even remember.

We had it. We actually fucking had it.

A version of the internet that was playgrounds and treehouses and secret notes, not this endless scrolling trench warfare.

We built the walls ourselves, brick by brick, like by like, outrage by outrage. We handed over our souls for dopamine hits while being lie that it’s also connection.

And now we live in the sludge.

Everything’s too loud, too fast, too fake.

Everyone’s performing. Everyone’s exhausted. Everyone’s lonely as hell in a crowd of ten thousand followers.

I miss the screech of that modem. I miss waiting. I miss logging off.

I miss when the internet was a place you went, not a place that went inside you and set up fucking camp.

What the hell did we do?

Why did we let them turn paradise into this screaming landfill?

I just want to go back to sleep and never wake up in this timeline again.

Cause before we know it. We’ll be stuck inside while everything is automated for us. I mean they’re already automating people’s thoughts…

Stephen Walker.

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Stephen Walker, Unit 146317, PO Box 7169, Poole, BH15 9EL, United Kingdom

November 16, 2025

Get your guard up

This is the tech-y email you need to pay attention to.

Fraud and identity theft is at an all time high right now.

“But Stephen, I’m good. My security is on point!”

It might be. Until it isn’t.

People have weak ass passwords. They have old mobile numbers and email addresses attached to accounts they use daily, and allow absolute fucking weirdos who they have never interacted with before, to follow them on their social media platforms as “friends”

That is only scratching the surface of how weak everything is in general.

(I won’t go into AI duplication, and social engineering because that is a whole universe of horror in it’s own right)

But don’t forget. Size matters when it come to password security.

As of this year. Comparitech’s report highlights that 65.8% of compromised passwords were under 12 characters in length, which is the minimum that “most experts recommend.” On the flip side, only 3.2% were 16 characters or longer. Understandable, considering that it’s difficult to remember multiple long passwords without a password manager.

But password managers of weirdos.

Anyways.

The reason I’m telling you to make sure you’re updating your email address security is, the amount of people who have had whole account jacked because of piss poor security is off the charts.

You see people’s accounts on social media get taken over and in most cases, especially the online space, their livelihoods are stripped because of it.

It’s not a fun thing to do.

If you’re making a brand new email address. Make sure you log into all of your accounts that you use and manually update those accounts to your new email address. Followed by re-verifying two factor authentication and all of that bullshit. Also make sure you never re-use a password (I know we’ve all been guilty of it) and even if you need to re-use a password and add a little variation spice to it. Add some extra characters/symbols or whatever. But with a new email address PLEASE make something incredibly complex and tattoo it into your frontal lobe.

Same thing applies if you’re gonna change your mobile number in the new year. (New year new me lol)

The same day you decide to do it. Log in to all of your important accounts and remove two factor authentication and delete that mobile number. Then once you have your new mobile number, go back in and re-activate it all.

Yes I know it’s a pain in the balls but hey, it has to be done.

It’s getting increasingly harder to stay secure.

And the only way to stay full secure is to set everything else on fire and go live in a cabin in the woods. (Still subscribed to my emails though)

Stephen Walker.

P.S. Always a fun little read to scare yourself into security submission

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And why feeling like shit can save your life.

Now I know the self help sunshine brigade is going to hate this, but here’s a truth that’ll make them clutch their crystals and reach for their gratitude journals…

Disgust is one of the most powerful motivators on the planet.

Not the gentle, Instagram friendly “I’m ready for change” bullshit. I’m talking about the raw, visceral disgust that makes your skin crawl when you look at what you’ve become.

The kind that makes you want to burn your entire life down and rebuild it from ash.

You know that feeling when you catch yourself in the mirror after three days of Netflix binge eating and realise you look like a sentient pile of laundry?

Or when you check your bank account and see where all your money went and feel physically sick?

That’s shame and your survival instinct screaming at you to get your shit together.

The positivity cult wants you to love yourself into change.

“Manifest your best life! Speak kindly to yourself! You’re perfect just as you are!”

Meanwhile, you’re rotting from the inside out, and they want you to smile about it.

Fuck that noise.

Sometimes you need to get so disgusted with your current situation that staying the same becomes more painful than changing.

When the thought of another day living like this makes you physically ill, that’s when real transformation begins.

Disgust is rocket fuel.

It’s the emotional equivalent of touching a hot stove. You don’t need motivation to pull your hand away, you just do it because the alternative is unbearable.

Use it.

Get disgusted with your excuses, your patterns, your willingness to accept mediocrity.

Let that revulsion become obsession with becoming someone you can actually respect.

The self help crowd can keep their vision boards. I’ll take raw disgust over positive thinking any day of the week.

Stephen Walker.

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Time for one of my regular soap box rants…

Yes I’m still sick, but I’m miles better. I’ve somehow magically recovered my ability to think and put words down again.

Although during this period of man-flu-whatever, I did a bit of “cleaning house”

“What do you mean when you say cleaning house, Stephen?”

I’m glad you asked…

Now you might know that I like emails.

You also might now that I like emails that come from people that actually sit behind the keyboard, write it and hit send.

They’re fun. They’re imperfect and they share little glimpses into the senders life.

Now even though I’ve not emailed for a few days

(I could’ve easily pre-written a bunch to go out daily when I do feel a little bit of the sickness coming on but there’s a reason I didn’t do it)

Which would at least stop me from skipping a day or two and end up getting messages asking if I’m okay and haven’t died.

(To the ones who emailed. I really appreciate it.)

The point is, when my brain was being punched in every direction.

The only thing I could do besides sleeping and drinking water, was to open up my email, eyes in a half squinted haze and delete emails and unsubscribe from lists I don’t want to be apart of anymore.

See the thing is.

I signed up to fellow artists, creatives of all sorts, marketers and even brands that hooked me on their stories and quirks and good stuff, only to later on be fooled that this was all pre-written bullshit past a set period of time (Autoresponder) and then for the next 45723 emails and/or by the time I die…

Explode my inbox with obnoxious BUY MY SHIT OR ELSE emails or the infamous RE: bullshit in all variations…

And so I know for a fact they were only in it for the profits and not really for the people.

Yes. Don’t get me wrong. We got bills to pay and food to eat. But there’s a right way to do it and a wrong way to do it and because they’ve destroyed that sacred set of rules and yes there are email rules. I’ve just opted out with hopes of never being bothered by them again. It’s sad cause I genuinely liked those people but anyways. Life goes on.

It’s just crazy to me that everyone just wants to automate relationships. If you build relationships with a handful of great clients/customers. They’ll keep coming back to you for years and you won’t have to do the hamster dance to paid.

Everyone gives Kevin Kelly a bit of shit but his 1000 true fans still stands today.

It’s just people don’t want to go down that route because it takes work and you need to build relationships first before the profits start to come.

Anyways. My rant is over.

TL;DR be a genuine human and stop trying to automate relationships because it makes you look like a jackass.

I’m off to go drink some lemon tea and get back to sleep.

This virus or whatever hasn’t won just yet.

Stephen Walker.

P.S. Make 1000 true fans your mantra and get to work cause I know I don’t want 42364564574 customers. I want 1000 true fans and I’m sure you do too.

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Stephen Walker, Unit 146317, PO Box 7169, Poole, BH15 9EL, United Kingdom

November 11, 2025

It’s a complete map for beating the financial game, so you never need to work to make money again.

I know that might sound out of reach…

But it’s a lot more straightforward than you might think.

And in today’s talk, I lay out a plan to do it in 5 years or less.

Watch close.

T

P.S. Many, many thanks to everyone who supported the channel by liking and commenting last week.

It helps a lot, and doesn’t go unnoticed.

It’s been a ton of fun creating these talks again (first time in 3 years!) and your support has been amazing.

Keep it coming, and let me know what you’d like to see next.

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November 8, 2025