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Let me tell you about the marketing equivalent of putting pineapple on pizza, except worse, because at least that’s consensual…

It’s opting people into your email list without their explicit consent.

I don’t care if they bought something from you five years ago. I don’t care if they downloaded your free PDF about productivity hacks. I don’t care if you think they’d “totally love” your new newsletter about cryptocurrency investing or whatever half baked idea you’re peddling this week.

If they didn’t explicitly opt into THIS list for THIS content, then adding them is a cardinal marketing sin.

Here’s why this pisses me off…

Years ago, I used Substack under a completely different pen name, tied to a burner Twitter account, with a separate email address. It was for writing creative content that had absolutely nothing to do with my current work. People had to actively seek out that content and deliberately subscribe.

That list was sacred. Those subscribers chose to be there for a specific reason.

Now imagine if I decided to migrate that entire audience to my current business newsletter without asking. Just because I had their email addresses doesn’t mean I have permission to bombard them with completely different content they never signed up for.

You’re not being a smart marketer by doing this. Mainly because the rules of changed and ESP and email providers will kick your ass if they ever find out.

Yet I see this shit constantly.

Some entrepreneur decides to pivot from selling yoga mats to teaching Facebook ads, and suddenly everyone who ever bought a yoga mat is getting emails about conversion funnels and pixel tracking.

Or worse…

They buy email lists. They scrape LinkedIn for contact information. They add every business card they collected at a networking event to their “valuable insights” newsletter.

It’s stupid and it’s not marketing.

You’re training people to associate your brand with spam. You’re burning bridges before you even build them. You’re basically announcing to the world that you don’t understand consent, boundaries, or basic human decency.

The worst part? It doesn’t even work.

Unengaged subscribers drag down your deliverability rates. They mark you as spam. They actively hurt your ability to reach people who actually want to hear from you.

So here’s a very simple rule… Don’t do it. Ever. Not to your best customers. Not to your worst enemies. Not even if you think you’re doing them a favour.

Build your lists organically. Ask for permission explicitly. Respect people’s choices.

Cause we all know it gives off “amateur hour” vibes.

I couldn’t imagine spamming people who never asked to hear from me.

Stephen Walker.

P.S. DO NOT CLICK THIS LINK. HONESTLY, YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED. DO NOT GET MAD AT ME IF YOU CLICK IT…

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

“There are two kinds of pain in this world. The pain that hurts, the pain that alters.”

One of my favourite quotes from a movie.

That movie is The Equalizer 2.

TL;DR it’s what John Wick should’ve been.

Anyways. This isn’t going to be checklist and things you need to do but more a “hey you, yes you!” you need to reframe that pain.

Most of us are stuck in this type of limbo where we just let pain hurt us all the time.

We haven’t learnt to switch it around and use it as the type of pain that alters us.

Sometimes it does come naturally, or out of a forced situation, but most of the time the types of pain we suffer from are self inflicted due to how complacent and lazy we’ve become.

(Unless someone has driven a sledgehammer into your foot, then that’s real pain that hurts and you should probably get that checked out)

The point is this:

We can hurt and be in pain and be miserable and want to eat all of the cake and ignore the world. But that pain is just going to make us get deeper into a spiral.

We need to learn to use that pain and turn it into a pain that alters.

But do you know how to do that?

I’ll let you have a little think about it cause it’s definitely some weird spiritual and philosophical view, although it’s good to get the think-y bits in your brain box working again.

Stephen Walker.

P.S. If you haven’t seen them before. I suggest you watch them. It’s just better than John Wick.

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

I know the world feels like it’s circling the drain most days.

Open social media and it’s rage bait, grifters, and people filming themselves pretending to care about things for clicks.

Then there’s the performative empaths doing things like it’s some new TikTok trend.

But then there’s Josh…

This guy goes around handing out food, cash, whatever people need and he does it because he actually gives a shit.

Not because there’s a camera crew staging the perfect “wholesome moment.”

Not because he’s building a personal brand called Kindness™ or whatever.

He just does it.

And his community? (Yes we know a lot of communities are batshit unhinged)

They are the ones who help fund it.

Real people throwing in real money so Josh can keep being a decent human in a world that’s forgotten what that looks like.

No marketing spin. No “join our movement” horseshit. Just a guy who saw people struggling and thought, “Yeah, I should probably help.”

I don’t know about you, but that hits different, especially this time of the year.

And I know how easy it is to get cynical. Easy to assume every good deed is just another play to appeal to the social media engine.

Easy to think everyone’s in it for themselves.

Josh is out there proving that wrong though.

And maybe that’s the thing we need to remember when the news cycle feels like a slow motion car crash and half the internet is trying to sell you something you don’t need. (I DON’T WANT YOUR SCENTED CANDLES TIFFANY)

There are still good people doing good things.

Not for applause. Not for shares.

Just because it’s the right fucking thing to do.

So yeah. The world’s still dark in a lot of places.

But there’s light too.

And sometimes it looks like Josh, walking around his neighbourhood, making someone’s day a little less heavy.

That’s it. That’s the email.

Stephen Walker.

P.S. If you know someone like Josh in your world, someone doing the work without the performance, tell them they matter. We need more of that energy going into 2026. Oh and someone’s chopping onions on this side of the world right now…

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

Thought I’d hit you with a little bit of direct response shenanigans today, mainly cause my brain is mush.

Ever notice how sending an email these days feels like shouting at a wall, hell…

Even social media posts tend to just sit there and feel meh.

The thing is.

You fire off a message. Then you hear cricket sounds. Follow up some more. Then even more crickets.

And you start wondering if you’ve somehow become a ghost, if this is your “Sixth Sense” moment and nobody told you.

But we all do this and you get it. Cause you also treat your inbox/feeds like a biohazard zone.

Opening it feels like cracking a door where you trapped something feral and unpredictable.

We’re drowning in the wreckage of the attention economy. (THANK YOU GARY VEE)

Everything feels like a public square set on fire, where strangers attempt to relocate their problems into your Tuesday afternoon.

So what do you do when you actually need someone to respond?

Time to steal from the people we love to hate…

Salespeople.

Yeah, I know. Those “HUGE SAVINGS TODAY ONLY” emails make you want to throw your laptop out the window. But they work. And whether we like it or not, they understand human psychology better than most therapists.

So let’s ethically jack what they do and use it for good.

Whether you’re trying to close a work deal or convince your mate to finally pick a restaurant or place to grab a few beers.

Firstly, you need to appeal to their self interest.

Stop thinking about what YOU need and start with what THEY get. The reader doesn’t care about your goals. They care about their Tuesday not getting worse.

Don’t bury the benefit. Lead with it. First line. “Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya, you killed my father, prepare to die.”

Not “Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya, when I was a young boy…”

Get to the point ffs.

Second: Your subject line better earn its keep. The rent is due and those words need to pay up.

The best ones offer a benefit, promise news, or spark curiosity. Ideally all three.

“Newsletter #37” is not a subject line. You might as well pretty it up and send it straight to the cemetery. Nobody’s opening that.

Something like “How we quietly crushed Q2 while everyone else flailed around.”

Same information. Now it’s gossip. Now it’s alive.

Probably most important: Write like a human, I honestly don’t think I have any other way to say this.

But here goes: H U M A N

“Our groundbreaking app provides cutting edge tools to enhance workplace synergy.”

Who talks like this? Nobody you’d want to have a beer with, that’s who.

Write like you’re sitting across from someone, telling them something that matters between bites of a sandwich.

Short paragraphs (under five lines). Short sentences. No jargon that sounds like you’re regurgitating an HR manual.

“Circle back” makes me want to run in squares out of spite.

Fourth: Tell them exactly what to do. (I have no clue how people fuck this up)

Don’t hover around the point like a nervous teenager asking someone to the dance.

Give them ONE action. One deadline. Make it stupidly obvious.

Not “Let me know what you think.” Try “Can you send feedback by Wednesday so we can move forward?”

A clear call to action wins. You’re doing the hard thinking so they can just reply “yes” and get on with their life.

Here’s the dirty secret which does suck to a degree:

Nobody’s reading your email/posts. They’re skimming.

But you know what everyone reads?

The P.S.

It’s where you drop the performance and just say the thing. “P.S. Please send the draft by 5PM or the boss will lose his mind at both of us.”

These techniques are just good manners in this whole marketing shindig thing we’re doing. If you’re borrowing someone’s attention for a few minutes. Consider it a favour from them to you.

Tell people why they should care. Be friendly. Ask for one thing and make it easy.

The best types of emails/posts aren’t seen as transactions. Think of them as slow built connections.

Stephen Walker.

P.S. See? You read this bit. Now go write an email/post that doesn’t make people want to fake their own death.

P.P.S. A lot of these things can be forgotten if you’ve built somewhat of a “brand” but that’s a topic for a whole different time.

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

I know this world is a cold place a lot of the times.

But it can also be a beautiful place if you let it be.

Sadly today. A friend I work with got the call that nobody wants to get. His best friend has sadly taken his own life.

In this situation you can’t always think of the right words to help comfort, cause the brain switches off and emotions take over.

But if we can show that we’re there for them with actions, it makes things a little more bearable.

While human connection is hard to get nowadays, cause everyone’s living permanently online while projecting a perfect world.

We need to realise that behind every screen is an actual living person. That same person has good days, bad days and days that are so heavy that they often wonder it’s worth pushing on.

You might feel this too.

There’s no right or wrong way to approach being human, but what you need to know, that no matter how difficult things get, you matter.

You matter more than you know, even on your darkest days.

If you feel that someone might need a little help, reach out.

If you need a little help, reach out.

My inbox is always open if you need it.

This time of the year is tough but we’ll make it through it.

Look after yourself and don’t forget.

You matter.

Stephen Walker.

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

I’m busy thumbing this email while on the last train back home.

If it sends, it sends. The signal is meh.

I had a catch up with a friend who I’ve not seen in forever.

We shot the shit, had a few espresso martini’s, did some people watching and mused on the state of the world.

We both came to the conclusion that the hyper acceleration of artificial everything is going to lobotomise society.

We’ve predicted that 2026 is going to be filled with the biggest gap of fake versus real we’ve ever seen.

It doesn’t matter what space you operate in, it’s going to be monumental and so far his and mines predictions since 2019 have all come true.

But here’s the short and sweet fix to it all…

Connection. Genuine, fun, friendly and intimate connection.

That is how we don’t get sucked into the world of fakery and bullshit.

While everyone is trying to automate their lives with AI. If you drill down into being an actual human…

You’ll be leaps and bounds ahead. Funny thing I witnessed over this last year too is, that everyone who has peddled some AI “thing” in their offers, have truly not given a rats ass about the person who buys it. They’re only in it for their own profits.

Profits of people? Not my gig.

So keep this in mind as we roll into 2026.

Connection will be the new commodity and if you can handle that. Everything will be golden.

Figure out how to make that human element stronger in what you do and you’ll wipe the floor with these AI nerds wanting to squeeze every buck out of everyone.

Stephen Walker.

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

“There seems to be some perverse human characteristic that likes to make easy things difficult.” – Warren Buffett

As I write this, my brain feels like applesauce.

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The reason:

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I entered into a solo retreat last Saturday, where I’m…

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Eliminating salt, oil, sugar and caffeine (and most other foods for that matter)

Meditating intensively

Restricting all inputs (social media, reading, tv, etc)

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For two weeks.

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My plan was to keep working as usual:

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Banging out YT content, emails, and the new offer I’m working on.

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But my brain had other plans, and decided to teach me a surprisingly valuable lesson in how to:

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Match the work you’re doing to the state you’re in.

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It started when I tried outlining a new YouTube video, and flew through the first 80% of the ideation phase before smacking into a brick wall when I tried to apply the final 20% polish necessary to actually record and post it.

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In other words…

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When I zoomed out and focused on the big picture — the central idea, the core points, the stories — I could see it perfectly.

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But when I zoomed in on the details — the hook, the examples, the supporting evidence — everything went fuzzy and my mind turned to mud.

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This is normal during solo retreats like this:

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Cutting out salt and stimulation and cranking my meditation volume way up pushes my analytical, detail-focused left brain into hibernation.

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But it also lights up my intuitive, vision-focused right brain and activates a higher intelligence that is often drowned out by the noise and stimulation of regular life.

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That’s the point of doing these retreats, after all.

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So I should have known better.

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But it still took my stubborn ass four days to stop fighting against my state and start working with it.

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In practical terms, that means waiting until after the retreat to:

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Polish and record YouTube videos

Write my email welcome sequence

Build out my new offer

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And instead, spending the next week:

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​Coaching one on one clients (the intuition boost has made coaching even more effective)

Clarifying my big-picture vision

Planning big ideas for content & offers

Identifying & removing any psychological blocks that are slowing down my business & personal life

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In my younger years, I would have been way too bull-headed, too brainwashed by mamba-mentality to shift gears when I ran into excessive friction.

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But this retreat has schooled me in the value of:

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Matching my work to my internal state.

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And I hope it gives you permission to dump the grindset propaganda and introduce more flow into your own work, as well.

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Of course, sometimes the task just needs doing.

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And before you shift tasks, it’s always a good idea to:

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Make sure you’re in the right state for the task ahead of time (lifestyle, diet, training, sleep)

If you’re not in the right state for the task, put yourself in it (movement, breathing, caffeine)

Try grinding for ~20 minutes until your state naturally shifts and you sink into the task.

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But sometimes that’s either not possible, not efficient, or not optimal.

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Sometimes, the wrong state for the task you planned is the right state for a task you didn’t plan.

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And sometimes you just need a nap.

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Hope that’s helpful.

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Let me know if anything landed for you.

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– T

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P.S. This means, most likely:

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No new YT talks or emails for a couple weeks.

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But I’m not sure yet.

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I’m going to run the rest of the retreat as an experiment in following my energy and seeing where it leads me.

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Should be interesting…

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“Relaxation is essential for the full expression of power.” – George Leonard, Mastery

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There’s a new type of energy floating around social media, and it’s not the good kind.

I’m calling it “Dig Bick Energy”

The not-so-nice flaccid cousin of Big Dick Energy.

Instead of confident competence, it’s just digging into topics you don’t understand and bickering about them online to sound profound.

Some masculine woo woo influencer just posted a rambling takedown of “48 Laws of Power” that perfectly demonstrates this phenomenon.

His hot take?

The book is “tragically incomplete” because it promotes a “zero sum scarcity model” and treating people like “game pieces in your own private chess match”

This is peak Dig Bick Energy.

He’s taking a complex work of historical analysis and reducing it to a simplistic strawman so he can argue against something that was never the actual point.

Robert Greene didn’t write “48 Laws of Power” as a self help manual for aspiring sociopaths, but you can tell a lot of people are running with the Patrick Bateman from American Psycho vibe instead… (They should ACTUALLY read 48 laws of power tbh)

The thing is.

He compiled centuries of historical examples showing how power actually operates in the real world.

And I’m fairly certain (If I can dig it out) that there was in interview where he states it’s more descriptive than anything.

I mean if I were a doctor, I wouldn’t prescribe taking the 48 laws of power to heart.

I guess we could also call it an instruction manual for being an absolute asshole, although if you look a lot deeper into what he was sharing and writing.

It’s 100% anthropology.

But this influencer missed that entirely because actually understanding the book would require acknowledging uncomfortable truths about how the world works.

Instead, he’d rather live in his fantasy bubble where “infinite resources are as freely available as oxygen” and everyone can just collaborate their way to success. (Which is possible but lol, just wait until someone uses one of the biologically hardwired laws against them and the herd…)

I’m down for wilful ignorance though, cause there’s no way you can try and sound smart and enlightened by watering complex ideas like that down.

The book documents how people like Cesare Borgia, Napoleon, and countless others actually gained and maintained power throughout history.

You can find those lessons morally repugnant, but pretending they don’t exist won’t make power dynamics disappear.

This is what happens when people consume content in bite sized chunks and think they understand complex topics.

They dig for surface level criticisms and bicker about half baked interpretations instead of grappling with the actual ideas.

Social media rewards this behaviour because nuanced understanding doesn’t get engagement.

Hot takes and moral posturing do. (Join Twitter and you’ll see exactly what I mean)

Next time you see someone confidently dismantling something they clearly don’t understand, you’re witnessing Dig Bick Energy in action.

Don’t be that guy.

This is also why I wanted to rip my eyes from my skull when someone tried to tell me that Blinkist would increase my book reading speeds and comprehension and LmaoGPT would fully change our views…

Anyways. That’s my Friday Soap Box session done.

Go have a kickass weekend.

Stephen Walker.

P.S. Give the 48 laws of power a read and then go deep down the rabbit hole on the people it was based off. That’s when you’ll really see where this all comes from…

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

Give me your tired, your sleepless, your weary minds yearning to think clearly…

And I’ll remove brain fog and all of the icky gross shit that is tied to it.

Although firstly: This isn’t medical advice and if you do attempt to follow this, please do not blame me if you get the runs.

I’m just a guy with a keyboard, not a doctor with a prescription pad.

With all of that said…

Your brain is running on empty, and it’s not just because you stayed up until 4 AM doom scrolling TikTok.

Sleep deprivation literally depletes creatine levels in your brain, which is why you feel like you’re thinking through mental quicksand after a bad night.

Here’s where it gets interesting though…

Researchers took a bunch of sleep deprived meat puppets aka people, and gave half of them creatine, half a placebo…

Then they tortured them with 24 hours of no sleep plus exercise (because apparently scientists are sadists, lol go figure)

The results?

The creatine group performed significantly better on tasks that hammer your prefrontal cortex, you know, that part of your brain responsible for decision making, working memory, and not acting like a complete moron.

While the placebo group’s brains turned to mush, the creatine group maintained better mood, faster reaction times, better balance, and superior cognitive performance.

Even after being awake for 24 straight hours.

These people were functionally zombies, but creatine kept their brains firing on most cylinders while everyone else was operating at potato level intelligence. (Which honestly was me for the last few weeks or so while this illness, virus or megaultracovaids hit me)

The magic dose? Five grams, four times a day for a week in the study.

But most research shows 3/5 grams daily is enough for cognitive benefits once you’re loaded up.

It first saturates the muscles cause muscles are greedy bastards and then your brain snaps up the rest.

Your brain burns through energy like a Ferrari burns through fuel though, especially if you’re doing all that fancy think-y shit like writing or studying.

When you give it premium fuel (creatine), it runs better.

When you don’t, you get the mental equivalent of engine knock.

It’s more that foggy, sluggish, “why can’t I think straight” feeling and we’ve all been there.

I always thought brain fog was normal. But after my lack of sleep and mental activity, It was just my brain begging for better fuel.

Feed it what it needs and then like magic…

You’re a functional human again.

So if you’re feeling like you’ve been run over mentally, even if you’re eating right, sleeping right and doing all the things you’re supposed to.

Maybe try supplement creatine and get the squishy stuff between your ears a little lovin’

Don’t forget to hydrate like a mofo too. Cause for some reason your body absorbs more liquids when you’re supplementing creatine.

Stephen Walker.

P.S. For the nerds who wanna read the study, here’s some cited info and all that good stuff.

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

I must’ve been living under a rock the size of Montana because I just watched the first episode of Yellowstone and holy shit, where has this been all my life?

Kevin Costner as a modern day cattle baron who owns the largest ranch in America?

Sign me the fuck up. But it’s not the premise that got me.

It’s how they introduce the story that made me realise I’ve been wasting my time with everything else.

The first episode grabs you by the eyeballs from minute one and doesn’t let go.

No bullshit exposition dumps. No gentle world building. Just pure, immediate tension that makes you lean forward in your chair and forget you were supposed to be doing literally anything else with your evening.

Within the first twenty minutes, you know exactly who these people are, what they want, and why they’re willing to kill for it.

The stakes are clear, the conflicts are established, and you can practically taste the violence simmering just beneath the surface.

This is how stories need to be introduced. Not with forty five minutes of character backstory and careful setup.

Not with gentle nudges toward the plot. Just drop people into the deep end and let them swim or drown.

Yellowstone doesn’t fuck around with pleasantries.

It shows you a world where power is measured in land, family loyalty is everything, and modern progress is the enemy.

Then it throws fuel on that powder keg and lights a match.

You can feel the action coming from episode one. It’s like watching storm clouds gather on the horizon.

You can feel the tension in the air and the pressure drop as you know lightning is about to strike, you just don’t know where or when.

Now I have to binge the entire series like some kind of Montana ranch obsessed maniac, and I’m not even sorry about it.

Sometimes living under a rock means you get to discover gold when you finally crawl out.

Consider me officially obsessed.

I’ve also now considered upgrading my cabin in the woods lifestyle to a cabin in the woods that must also double as a ranch and house horses and all of that good cowboy shit too.

Stephen Walker.

P.S. Here’s the trailer for your tired eyeballs.

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

It’s 6 AM on Cyber Monday and Karen from accounting is already having a nervous breakdown in the break room because the flash sale on artisanal dog sweaters ended at 6:01 AM and she “literally cannot function” without securing a £200 cashmere turtleneck for Mr. Whiskers.

“This is worse than Black Friday,” she sobs into her pumpkin spice latte.

“At least then I could physically fight someone for the last discounted item. Now I’m just refreshing browser tab and crying at my laptop.”

Dave from IT walks in, looking like he hasn’t slept since last Tuesday.

“I’ve been monitoring seventeen different retail websites since midnight,” he announces to no one in particular. “My cart abandonment rate is higher than my credit score.”

“Did you get the limited edition gaming chair?” asks Brad from marketing, who’s been stress eating donuts since the office opened.

“Sold out in fourteen seconds,” Dave replies, dead behind the eyes.

“Fourteen. Fucking. Seconds. I had three browsers open, autofill enabled, payment info saved, and still got beat by some bot army in Bangladesh.”

Karen looks up from her tissues. “I tried to buy those wireless headphones that were 80% off, but the website crashed right as I was entering my credit card info. When it came back up, they’d increased the price by 200% and called it a Cyber Monday Special Deal.’”

“That’s nothing,” says Linda from HR, who’s been unusually quiet.

“I accidentally bought a £1400 espresso machine because I was rage clicking through checkout errors. I don’t even drink coffee.”

“Can you return it?” Brad asks.

“All Cyber Monday sales are final,” Linda whispers. “I now own a professional grade espresso machine and I’m lactose intolerant.”

By noon, the entire office has descended into online shopping madness. People are bidding against each other for the same items, forming temporary alliances to share discount codes, and engaging in psychological warfare over the last remaining units of whatever garbage they’ve convinced themselves they desperately need.

“I got a 50 inch TV for £200!” screams Janet from reception.

“What’s the catch?” everyone asks in unison.

“It’s from 2003 and weighs 400 pounds,” she admits. “But it was 95% off!”

The day ends with half the staff having buyer’s remorse, the other half having seller’s regret for not buying more useless shit, and everyone agreeing that next year they’ll definitely just stay offline for the entire week.

They won’t.

And that, friends, is why they call it Cry Baby Monday.

No products were sold in the making of this email. Only dignity.

Tomorrow is gonna suck balls.

I’m still coughing my tits off.

Amazon has a deal on some fancy books I’ve been looking for but I can guess it’s gonna be double the price and pawned off as a Cyber Monday deal.

Stephen Walker.

P.S. Don’t forget to educate your earholes with one of the greatest pieces of post-rock ever.

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

If you want a portal back to when the internet wasn’t exceptionally shit, this browser extension will be a must have.

With the mountains of AI generated trash being blasted into cyberspace since every “creator” made ChatGPT their entire personality, you can see where this shitshow is heading.

And it’s nowhere good.

Websites are spoofing their metadata, which might seem harmless on the surface but is actually digital equivalent of cancer.

Google used to have all these nifty search operators you could throw into the search box to tailor your results with the accuracy of scalpel cut.

The “before:YYYY-MM-DD” operator was top fucking tier for research.

Want to see what people actually thought about something before the AI opinion bots took over?

Boom. Real human thoughts from real human times. (back in my day lol)

But in the past month, I’ve noticed articles and sites spoofing their metadata. Remember that show Catfish? Well that but for website authenticity.

They’ll claim to be from 2010 but the search picks up text blurbs that are obviously from present day AI word vomit.

It’s like time travel, except instead of going back to see dinosaurs, you’re just getting more algorithmic bullshit.

While tech bros push for their fully AI generated internet utopia, we’re racing toward a reality where truth won’t exist.

We’ll all be fed our own personalised version of “truth,” which is already happening faster than a drunk person falling down stairs.

These platforms know us better than we know ourselves, which is both impressive and terrifying as fuck.

Here’s how cooked we are…

Let’s say you’re heavily left leaning. Cool. Your views are your views. But when you visit a right leaning website, their AI immediately reads your digital fingerprint and serves up left leaning rhetoric to keep you engaged and buying shit.

So you never actually get your views challenged. You’re just constantly fed ideas that massage your confirmation bias at the cellular level.

It’s intellectual masturbation at best.

This isn’t new though.

Marketers have been split-testing different pages forever.

But now AI can serve up content tailored specifically to your psychological profile in milliseconds.

Real time manipulation at the speed of light.

It’s coming, and when it fully arrives, as the kids say: “We’re cooked.”

So where do we go when there’s no escape from the matrix?

Pen and paper? Sitting around campfires telling stories? Transcendental sex parties?

Fuck if I know.

But at least Slop Evader gives us a fighting chance to see some actual human generated content before the robots finish turning our brains into porridge.

Download it before they make that illegal too.

Stephen Walker.

P.S. Here’s an article on it and I wouldn’t be surprised if this gets shit canned by the end of 2025.

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

I never liked running black friday promos.
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Not because they aren’t profitable (they are).
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And not even because they nuke your pricing power and brand integrity.
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Honestly, I just hated running them because everyone runs them, and the thought of running with the herd just to make a buck always made me cringe.
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It took me five years to run our first black friday promo, in my first business.
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And even then, I had to close my eyes and clench every time we pressed send.
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So anyway, no Black Friday promo here.
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But I do want to give you a gift, just because.
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It’s one of our most popular retreat sessions of all time:
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​Advanced Communication & Charisma
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A three-hour masterclass in high-level communication that will have you speaking like a weapon.
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I don’t want to post it on our public site, because it’s usually reserved for members of The Path.
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So if you want it, just hit reply and my assistant Simon will send it over.
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No countdown timer necessary 🙂
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• T
  ​
  P.S. If you’ve already seen the full Advanced Communication & Charisma session, let us know…​
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  ​I’ve got a backup waiting in the vault that bangs equally hard.
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​Unsubscribe | Update your profile | 5-420 Erb St. W, Suite 433, Waterloo, ON N2L6K6

Jokingly and for fun content.

A lot of us talk about our own little cults we’ve grown. (This email list as an example…)

Which in a nutshell is just a bunch of awesome humans who love my rants and ideas on everything I talk about on a regular basis.

However there’s not a enough talk about the malicious side of cults.

Especially the ones that operate covertly, online, while we live our lives as best as we can.

Are we blissfully ignorant? Maybe.

Or maybe it’s a lack of education because everything that’s being forced fed to us is AI integrated.

Don’t worry though. I’m not gonna get you to drink some weird Kool-Aid and then plan on a mass exit because of whatever.

But if you’re a parent. You definitely want to be aware of this type of thing that is going on and what’s happening at a rapid pace.

Ryan M. Montgomery is arguably the most insane hacker we’ve got, who is luckily on our side. He’s out there fighting the good fight, cause a lot of the stuff we hear about in the news, has been under investigation for many months and even years.

The scariest thing he’s found to date is a cult group called 764 and what makes it even more insane is that it was originally started by a 15 year old.

Now I’ve read my fair share of books on cults and the psychological effects it has on its members, while taking what is deemed dark and manipulative and spun it into the creative world. Where we can use it for good.

But that’s the thing. We can’t just have the good. We have to acknowledge that there is a lot of bad and evil out in the world and unfortunately more people need to get told about it.

Shawn Ryan has a micro interview here with Ryan and just listening to what is going on in this cult group is enough to make your stomach twist and turn.

I know this isn’t the lightest of things to read or listen to on a Friday but hey, being aware of these things is necessary. We can’t always drown ourselves in TikTok and Instagram reels.

The world is not always bright and cosy…

Stephen Walker.

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

It’s weird writing this.

I don’t usually scroll social media for long periods of time and that’s just the way I’ve always been.

Although today I thought I’d have a little poke and prod around.

Just over 4ish hours of scrolling and watching and holy shit…

Yeah, over the years I’ve joked about the asteroid coming to wipe us out…

But today, the wish of that same asteroid was out in full motion today.

I came across “tradwife” twitter defending themselves against the Boss-babe-we-don’t-need-no-man twitter women.

Which honestly shocked even me, considering the extreme thoughts and takes I have on subjects…

I stumbled on a section of Reddit/Twitter where people have honestly removed their brain and EVERYTHING they say or do is vetted by their LLM’s of choice.

Remember when we used to talk to people in person or read genuine books about a topic to learn more etc? That’s all dead to those folk.

Then I took a little scroll in some of the marketing and copywriting groups I’m a part of. Even a little scroll of the FB newsfeed too…

And EVERY respected marketer/copywriter and even some writers I’m friends with, have fully adopted and made AI their whole personality, to the point of where all of their writing, posts and ideas all bled the same overused patterns that are getting rammed into our faces on a day to day basis.

That shit is frightening.

Whatever bit of free thought and creativity we had has in the last 6 months or so, been totally eradicated.

We’re watching the death of original thinking in real time, and people are celebrating it because it makes their content creation “more efficient.”

I’ve got my predictions for 2026/27 all neatly scribbled down in my notebook but I’m dubious at best.

The world isn’t looking like it’s going to be in a good place for a long while.

So we best cash in the best we can before we’re stripped of our last bit of humanity.

And as the kids would say…

“We’re cooked”

Stephen Walker.

P.S. I’m busting out this gem to see if I can use anything inside there again to get me back to where I want to be. It’s tough when you care about the creativity and life blood of others, but it looks like you have to fix your oxygen mask before helping the person next to you when the plane starts descending…

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

Here are 3 lessons to learn from that film Idiocracy.

The thing is. Idiocracy was supposed to be a comedy.

It wasn’t supposed to become an instruction manual.

But here we are in 2025, watching Mike Judge’s dystopian satire play out in real time while everyone argues about whether water or Brawndo is better for plants and honestly I’m just about to just say Brawndo to stop dumb people from talking to me.

If you haven’t seen it.

Idiocracy follows an average guy who wakes up 500 years in the future to find that humanity has bred itself into complete stupidity.

Sound familiar?

(Especially with all of this AI mass adoption and people not wanting to do anything for themselves anymore…)

Here are three lessons from this cinematic prophecy that might help us avoid becoming the drooling morons we’re apparently destined to become…

Lesson 1: Stop celebrating ignorance.

In the movie, being smart is considered gay and elitist.

Sound like any political movements you know?

We’ve somehow turned expertise into a dirty word and made stupidity fashionable. Stop doing that.

Intelligence isn’t the enemy, but you know what is? Willful ignorance.

That’s gonna kill us quickly if we don’t calm down.

Lesson 2: Think for yourself instead of letting corporations do it for you.

In Idiocracy, people believe Brawndo is good for plants because “it’s got what plants crave.” They never question what plants actually need.

Today, we let algorithms decide what we think, what we buy, what we believe.

Break the cycle. Ask questions. Demand actual answers.

Lesson 3: Give a shit about something bigger than yourself.

The future humans in the movie are so self absorbed and instant gratification focused that they can’t solve basic problems.

They’re too busy being entertained to death to notice their world is falling apart.

Put down your phone occasionally. Care about something that matters.

Contribute to solutions instead of just consuming content.

Luckily we’re not doomed to become the idiots in that movie just yet, but we’re sure as hell heading in that direction…

The antidote is simple.

Be curious, think critically, and remember that other people exist.

It’s not that hard. But apparently, it’s hard enough.

Stephen Walker.

P.S. Go check out the trailer just in case you’ve been living under a rock since 2006

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