R.S. Benedict
Welcome to Rite Gud. The podcast that helps you write good. I’m RS Benedict. There are many podcasts about writing, but how many podcasts are there about wellness? Approximately a million billion, and they all want you to know you’re doing everything wrong, and you should buy their products to fix it. Tan your butthole, eat raw testicles. Wake up at 4am every day. In this episode, Kurt Schiller joins us to talk about our pivot to wellness influencers. Thank you for joining us. Kurt. Kurt, what supplements would you like us to buy?
Kurt Schiller
Well, the main supplement, I would say, would be meat, meat in copious, copious quantities, but not just any meat. My My special, very expensive designer meat. As it turns out, actually,
R.S. Benedict
you too, can have the body of a dead with a podcast. That’s right. The most enviable body there is. This is the ideal male form.
Kurt Schiller
That’s right. This, yeah, this is, sorry, but you’re looking at peak performance.
R.S. Benedict
That’s right. Peak podcasting.
Kurt Schiller
I do. I have a body for podcasting.
R.S. Benedict
I don’t know about you guys. I think Carlo mentioned it, but we did get reached out to buy some sort of product that was trying to sell magic productivity juice. Oh,
Kurt Schiller
yeah, we’ve gotten a few things on from they
R.S. Benedict
offered us a matcha flavor. It sounded really gross. It was like mushroom coffee or that shit.
Kurt Schiller
We get a lot of we get less wellness stuff. We get more like business hustle, grind set, where it’s like somebody wants to come on to talk about their flawless business networking systems to to think fluence, your, your your way to giga bucks or whatever,
R.S. Benedict
on pod side picnic, that’s right, yes, ideal target audience for that content, yes, but yeah, there’s a, there’s there’s A lot of wellness out there. There’s entirely too much of it. It’s terrible. We hate it. We hate wellness. We would like a cure for wellness. It is a very lucrative industry. Every podcast except us, I think, will give you a little ad breaks to sell unregulated apps for therapy services, gray market, pharmaceuticals, supplements, just all kinds of fucking bullshit in the hopes of making you well again, of making you better. It’s a lot of money. It’s a lot of money selling you insecurities. It’s a lot of money telling you, oh, you should be living like this, but you can’t live in this impossible way. You can’t eat raw liver every day, but since you’re such a piece of shit that you can’t do that fucking buy my product, you trash bag, there’s
Kurt Schiller
been a strange pivot towards very like dystopian cyberpunk style wellness ads, I feel like on I assume it’s just because Millennials are reaching midlife crisis age, and so you’ll see stuff where it’s like, Are you sad? You need mushroom coffee, you’ll feel great. And it’s Yeah, as as you said, there’s like, there’s stuff where it’s like, it sure is being advertised as if it is a pharmaceutical, even though there is text on the bottom of the Facebook ad that says, This literally does nothing. But look at the smiling people. You know it the vibes are very strange. They’re very like techno shaman kind of vibes. Or it’s always some kind of it reminds me of God. What was that thing that the devil, low tax from the something awful forums got, got wrapped up in mangosteen. I believe it was for, I
R.S. Benedict
remember hearing something about that. I assume that’s not mangosteen, just the regular fruit.
Kurt Schiller
It was supposed to be like a super fruit extract, like, 20 years good.
R.S. Benedict
It’s, it’s delicious. It tastes good. Yeah, it tastes amazing. I would not eat the extra because that’s what’s the point,
Kurt Schiller
yeah. But yeah, it’s, it’s definitely weird how you see these startups, and it’s like, well, what’s the startup? Well, we’ve come up with a fake drug that. Not FDA approved, but we also have an app that goes with it. Therefore, yes, technology now,
R.S. Benedict
I find it interesting how aggressively these things are gendered, too, how they’re sold so differently for men and women, women still do have very much the sort of feel better and fix your gut issues. I love that we’re all talking about gut issues now. Just feels really good hearing someone talking about my guts all the time. It just doesn’t feel like a science word. I’m sorry, and doing that thing where it’s like, look, this is a weight loss supplement, but we don’t want to admit it yes, because you don’t want to admit you’re on a diet. You don’t want to admit it. You’re supposed to be beyond that. You’re supposed to be like POS body positive, blah, blah, blah. But, of course, you want to lose weight, and this is supposed to help you lose weight. But we’re not going to say that. We’re going to say it regulates your gut health. Yes,
Kurt Schiller
irregular, yes. Take, take the pill that truckers used to take in 1991 so that they could drive for 19 hours straight. And also, do you know a five minute telehealth video conference with somebody who says, actually, it turns out that the just, just so happens that the thing that you need is exactly the thing that we sell?
R.S. Benedict
Yeah, it is, and that’s a factor of it. I mean, a lot of the time wellness is just a euphemism for conventional beauty and thinness. When someone says, I want a girl who takes care of herself, what he’s really saying is, yes, hey, no fat chicks. But it’s kind of not really acceptable to say that anymore. So now we say, oh, take I want someone who takes care of themselves. Like, what do you mean? Takes care of themselves. What do you mean? I took care of myself. I take it, oh, oh, okay, that’s not what you know. Yeah,
Kurt Schiller
it takes care of themselves by transforming themselves into the ideal person, the end mate that I have imagined inside, inside my head. So if you would please just conform to my own, plus societies, plus a bunch of other expectations, like, you know, like God intended. I mean, that’s that. That’s what healthy means. I think there’s also a weird angle where, like this, this really feels like a social media thing in part, but it always feels like there’s an aspect of wellness that is also, like, larger lifestyle and esthetic, because it’s, it’s, yeah, it’s not enough to just be to just have, like, super ripped abs and huge muscles and stuff, you know, you you also need to be doing whatever your ideal super gendered lifestyle is. You have to be swinging an ax while wearing plaid shirts, you know, on top of a mountain while a marine does, you know, push ups behind you and you save, you know, a blonde woman from a burning building slash you need to be in. You know, a $2 million home like, I’m sure they exist. I’ve yet to see a wellness influencer who’s like, I live in a trailer, you know? Yeah,
R.S. Benedict
I live in a trailer, but I look hot. Guess what? Yeah, exactly, yeah. So I was like, Oh, well, you’re eating raw honey, but did you harvest the honey yourself, right? Yeah, bee colony. Did you make your own beekeepers outfit? Did you did you raise the sheep that you made the wolf from, did you? Yeah? No, no, you did not. So, so it’s never good enough, and it just drives you fucking insane. It’s demonic. But most of our most of our listeners, know this. I, rather famously, wrote an article about about the weird expectations about the human body. And it strikes me a lot that a lot of the talk of wellness and health and weight and stuff, there’s this idea that like well people and unwell people are these two distinct separate categories, like your different species, and not that these are modes that we all switch between as we move through our lives inevitably, because fucking shit happens, man, you’re doing pretty good, and then you’re not doing pretty good, and then you’re doing a little better. And so,
Kurt Schiller
right, yeah, I mean, we’re we’re all dying, we’re all good. Like, this isn’t ending well for any of us in the end. You know, there is no like you. You know you tortured your body enough, and therefore you live forever. And you know we’re, we’re all gonna get old and sick and die eventually, regardless. So you know, there seems to be, to me, there’s an element missing of the way that we talk about wellness in culture. That is what you said. It’s not like you need to Achieve Wellness, and now you have your ideal lifestyle, and everything is great. It’s, you know, challenges arise in life. You need to life is change. There is no secret to learn apart from, you know, maybe listen to your body and your brain, and if it feels bad, maybe stop. Yeah, stop doing the things that you. Know, Like the old joke, you know, I went to the doctor, and I said, Doctor, it hurts when I do this and and the doctor says, Well, don’t do that.
R.S. Benedict
Yeah, I remember the start of the pandemic, seeing these, like editorials or whatever, by very health conscious, fit people who had gotten the illness and were shocked to learn that they got really, really sick and had to go to the hospitals, like, but I took care of myself. It’s like, yeah, you’re you’re thin, you’re not immortal. Yes, you really got to get this idea that, like, if I’m get the right body composition, I will never die. Like, No, bro, then people also die. I’m sorry. You’re not invincible. You’re obviously gonna improve your chances at surviving illnesses, and, you know, cut down on some of the conditions you’re gonna get. I’m not gonna deny that, obviously, but it’s bizarre to me just to think, Oh, I’m, I’m not immune to disease, but I do yoga like motherfucker.
Kurt Schiller
Yeah. It’s, it’s funny, because I feel like and maybe this is just my own blinkered view, but it seems to me that the people claiming that you could do something and never get sick in, you know, 20 or 30 years ago, were seen as Kooks like it, yeah, was assumed. It was generally assumed that that was cookery. If someone was like, you know, if you, if you do this one thing, you will not get sick and you will live forever, affect, right? And now it seems like we’ve discovered that the trick is to not directly say you won’t get sick, but instead, if you’re sick, we say, Oh, well, that’s because you did this wrong. So I’m not, yeah, won’t get sick, but, but it’s, it’s because you know you’re, you’re eating the wrong polarity water or whatever it is, you know you’re not, you’re, there’s not enough hydrogen in your ice. You need to buy my, my special or, or you need to start, you know, doing, gosh, I love the like, the time management, wellness people, where it’s like, like, the guy who, there’s that, that famous video of, I think he’s like,
R.S. Benedict
there’s like, I get 20 extra days every day, yes,
Kurt Schiller
yeah, exactly, yeah. My very,
R.S. Benedict
very red face, weirdly red face,
Kurt Schiller
exactly, yes, yes, which generally not speaking as not, not a doctor. But I would assume, if your face is red and you’re sweaty all the time, generally speaking, not a good medical
R.S. Benedict
he’s on something he is injecting something that he probably shouldn’t be injecting. It strikes me as instead of looking at health and more of a scientific way, it’s this very, very religious way where the idea is wellness is a virtue, and unwellness is a sin, deserving of punishment, and the sin of unwellness is disease, ugliness and death. And that’s not quite how it works. It’s not good, it’s not good, it’s not great. I mean, as weird as things can be now, it’s hard to understate how bad and nasty the sort of early 2000s were on obesity was like, How fucking casually cruel it was. You’d turn on the news and see stock footage of like, fat people with the camera, you know, frames that their heads are cut off on the top, just walking around. And it’s like, Man, that guy just was just like, going, That guy just went outside today. Now he’s like, the symbol of everything wrong with our nation. This dude was just going to the store. This sucks.
Kurt Schiller
Yeah, it was really, it was really upsetting. It
really fucking
Kurt Schiller
it wasn’t just criticizing people for being obese. It was also using obesity as a stand in for every, every other problem. It was a stand in for poverty. It was a spit it was a stand in for like, cultural degenerate. It was very often, I was thinking, as you were talking about, like, you know, those classic Jerry Springer episodes, where they would always get on a bunch of fat people and say, these are white trash. Look at how terrible they are, you know. And it was, it was part and parcel of the criticism. It wasn’t enough to criticize their body. You also had to criticize their self, their lifestyle, their habits, like everything about them.
R.S. Benedict
Yeah, it was just really, really fucking cruel, and I don’t think it made anyone healthier, but goddamn, a lot of people I knew who grew up during that era developed eating disorders at some point. It’s not,
Kurt Schiller
yeah, I mean, I know that this is like, well trod territory of. But it even really crops up in in stuff like Idiocracy and wall e like, anything where you’re showing, like, oh, society is shitty. It’s like, well, now we have to show everybody being fat. Of course, you know, yeah, that’s how you know that it’s shitty now. So,
R.S. Benedict
yeah, it’s, it’s, it was really ugly and really shitty. There’s, there’s also, I think, not just the physical health, but mental health in a weird way, the idea that if you’ve got some sort of mental issue like that’s a failure on your part, right? There’s this aspect of social control to it. There’s Americans have this expectation that you’re supposed to be happy all the time. That’s not realistic, and that’s very specific to our culture. Other cultures do not have that expectation that you’re going to be happy all the fucking time and that you failed somehow if you’re kind of a bum bummer. And given that we live in a society that is particularly isolated, particularly lonely, we have got this hyper individualism that leads to loneliness. It’s especially, I think, kind of fucked up where, oh, you’re not happy. There’s something wrong with you. Like, yeah, to a certain extent, you do need to try and take, find your own happiness where you can, you can’t expect everybody to fix you all the time, but, oh, you’re not happy. You fucked up, you failed. Like, man, that’s, there’s an inability to grief. I noticed that when my father passed away, like, I got a week off of work, and that was it, I was expected to be sort of functional and productive after a week,
Kurt Schiller
yeah, yeah. Or otherwise, it’s like, what’s your problem? What’s wrong with you? Yeah, I,
R.S. Benedict
like, I started crying, like, maybe after two or three weeks later, in front of a friend, she’s like, You should schedule a therapy appointment. It’s like, this is a normal emotional response. You’re supposed to feel that way. It’s not a mental illness to cry when someone you love dies. You You are that is normal. So with this expectation of like, any kind of unpleasant emotion is, is it almost an illness to be cured? It doesn’t really give us space to, like, actually work through the shit the way we need to, which I think just makes things kind of worse.
Kurt Schiller
I do feel like in the course of my career or working life, which I guess is like 2020, something years now, I’ve been, I’ve been working, geez, the I do feel like that’s gotten a little bit better. Because I definitely feel like the first time that I saw somebody cry at a job, I feel like everybody freaked out and treated it like it was, like a big problem, like, such and such as crying, like, What the fuck are we going to do? What? Like, what’s wrong? Oh, my God. We need to do something about this. And and do something was not like, ask if they’re okay, you know. Like, you know, make sure that they’re they’re doing okay, as as a human would to another human, but like, we need to tell them to go into a room and cry in there, because we can’t, we can’t have people crying at work. There’s something wrong. Or like, do you remember that movie and this, this is a depressing thought that I think it was George Clooney, and I forget, I forget the other actor up in the air, where they’re like consultants who were firing people and haven’t seen that. It’s well, the concept is basically George Clooney is like an old school consultant who gets brought in to fire people, basically. And he gets paired up with, like a young Hot Shot who has developed a system to fire people remotely over video camera. And, you know, of course, when they actually try to put it into practice, the person on the other end of the call just starts crying and freaking out because they’ve just been fired over a video call. And then, you know, she has to learn from George Clooney about firing people in a more human but, but, but, suffice to say, it is kind of depressing to think that actually, that that is just kind of that scene is totally acceptable now to just fire people over a video call like that, like, Yeah, the thing that in that movie was positioned as the, the irrational bad thing is, is now just like, No, actually, it’s, this is totally fine, yeah.
R.S. Benedict
Or you just log into the company slack chat and you can’t log in. And, yeah, you can’t log
Kurt Schiller
- Yes, I forgot the company that was where it was like, Oh, they just turned off their card. So people were just, like, walking up to the door and like, oh, well, let me add, I guess I’m fired, that
R.S. Benedict
I’m sure there were that’s a lot of companies that doesn’t narrow down at all. I probably told
Kurt Schiller
this story, but I worked at a company one time that did a firing pizza party.
What so?
Kurt Schiller
So what they did was they did an announcement on, I think it was on the PA system, which was, it’s weird to think about, like an office that has a PA system now, but this one actually weird. This is like an, like an older company. This is a very like 1970s 1980s company. And. And they basically, they announced, everybody, please come to the lunchroom. We all came to the lunchroom and there were pizzas out. And they said, so we are doing layoffs. Approximately 1/3 of you will be laid off. Oh, my God, do not leave the building. You may stay here or go back to your office. Have some pizza. Somebody will be around shortly to tell you if you’re fired, that’s amazing. And so we sat around and we ate the layoff pizza, and it was the worst and saddest pizza I’ve, I’ve ever, I’ve ever eaten. I was not laid off, but like everybody else that I knew there was, and it was very strange, suffice to say, not a great, not a great way emotionally, treat, treat other people,
R.S. Benedict
yeah, yeah. God. Isn’t that the way? Though, you know, a job sucks when they keep giving you food. Like, you know, it’s like, it’s basically them admitting, like, yeah, this place sucks. Have some pizza I’ve never had, like, a great job where they’re just pouring food on you. It’s always just places that are complete trash. It’s like, we know, we know it’s trash, so we got you some fucking chocolates. Here you go.
Kurt Schiller
Yeah, at least, at least it was a little bit better when it would be junk food. Now that it’s like, oh, well no, it needs to be to back to the topic of wellness, like, Yeah, well, now it needs to be food that sucks too. It also needs to be food that doesn’t even taste good, so you can feel sad and and and unsatisfy, yeah,
R.S. Benedict
yeah. Give me the good fucking if you’re going to treat us that bad, go, go full school and just buy a cigarettes. Yeah,
Kurt Schiller
honestly, lay off cigarettes. I’d take it
R.S. Benedict
that’d be sick. I would take the layoff cigarettes. 100% I’m trash. I’d do it because I’m well. But yeah, yeah, we’ve got this horrible, weird, fucking obsession with wellness in North America, and I think that has created this crab bucket reaction to it, like, you know, the idea that anything you have can and must be cured, and if you don’t fix it through your strength of will and dietary changes, it’s your fault, and you deserve to suffer. You find a space, you know, online spaces are very good for this to commiserate, and these spaces turn into self destructive crab buckets, really, really quickly. It’s, it’s really fucked up. Like, okay, yeah, you can’t cure everything with self care, but obviously, you know, some basic self care will make you feel and look a little better. It’s a good thing to do. Eating vegetables will will be good for you. It is good. And like the the perfectionism builds this all or nothing mindset. Here’s the, you know, the downside of it, if you’re not perfect, then you’re shit. Well, okay, I guess I’m shit, so I’m not gonna try. I can’t perceive I cannot achieve perfection, so I fucking give up. I’ve noticed this. I’ve noticed so many of these cute, little, relatable comics that get spread on social media are about like, Oh, you’re 30. It’s time for chronic back pain. Like, no, it’s not time for chronic back pain at 30. That’s young. You don’t have to be that way. You there’s shit you can do. You can just like, stretch, do some fucking Romanian deadlifts or something like, you’ll you’re gonna be okay. You don’t have to feel like complete shit all the time. It’s not inevitable, at least not at the age of 30, maybe, maybe we were when you’re like, 60 or something, sure, but not 30. But we’ve just accepted the fact that, like, Yeah, I’m gonna feel like shit all the fucking time. Haha, nothing I can do. Like, no, that’s something’s wrong. You need to stop whatever it is,
Kurt Schiller
yeah? And I think that attitude really extends to ever, to, like, not not everything, but a lot of stuff where it’s like, it’s going to suck, it’s good, it’s going to suck. Whatever it is your you know, your career is going to suck, your relationship is going to suck. You need to deal with with the suck. There’s going to be suck. There is an assumed level of suck about being a person. It’s, it’s like a very stupid sort of Buddhism. It’s like life is suck, actually, yeah, yeah, out you need to to break the wheel of suck. Sara, I guess,
R.S. Benedict
yeah, instead of all things are temporary, like everything sucks. Everything
Kurt Schiller
Sucks forever, until everything sucks.
R.S. Benedict
Sometimes it’s all right, yeah, yeah.
Kurt Schiller
And, you know, I mean, it’s, it’s definitely true that you know, like you are certainly, as you age, you are certainly going to have some problems. And as you say, it’s not good to deny that, neither is it good to be like, Well, I’m old, and I guess it’s time to die now. You know, my My joy is done. It’s, it makes me think of when people say, you know, it’s, it’s such a cliche, but you know, these are the best years of your life, and it’s like, I don’t know, actually, especially because people normally say that about being like a teenager, it’s like, actually, it kind of sucks being a teenager. It’s actually, it’s actually really cool being 40, actually, pretty it’s pretty great, as it’s life begins
R.S. Benedict
at 40. Yeah, yeah. And, and it’s frustrating, because I’ve found, as I’m going through my own periods of personal transformation, how many of the refuges kind of became traps after a while and became like crab buckets. I have former body positive and size acceptance friends who got angry at me for getting into weightlifting, and that’s bleak, because I love weightlifting. I am slowly becoming a himbo, and it fucking rocks. I love it. I love that shit. Immense joy into my life. I have a lot less I have a lot less pain in my knees. I for a really long time, for like, a couple years, I had my right knee, kind of had a good bit of knee pain, and I don’t anymore, because I built up the muscles around it, so there’s less stress on the joint and, like, that’s really fucking cool. I thought it was just, Oh, I’m just gonna hurt forever. Like, no, yeah, no, I, I’m not,
Kurt Schiller
yeah, it’s cool. It’s like, I mean, first of all, that’s awesome. Congratulations. It’s cool to be happy. Like, if something, if something makes, makes your friend or another person happy, and they feel good about it, and they’re like, Hey, this is, you know, I I feel better. I feel good about this. Why would you it feels like, like it’s such a weird psychological gymnastics to to try to turn it just feels it seems so bad and unhealthy, to try to turn that into a reason you need to be mad at them, like, how, how dare you, you know, how dare you find a way of being happy that’s different from what it means for me to be happy because, yeah, you wind up in this situation. I think of trying to police other people’s bodies in the opposite direction, where it’s like, well, you’re
R.S. Benedict
conforming. You’re
Kurt Schiller
conforming Exactly, exactly you sold out. It very much reminds you like you’re selling out to the man, you know, yeah, it’s that. It’s a very, like, weird, it’s, I don’t want to say it to me, it’s a very Gen X attitude, but applied to something other than like, work, you know,
R.S. Benedict
yeah, to the man. And by and by the man, I mean my primary care physician who’s very happy at what my cholesterol levels look like in comparison, cholesterol went down. Fucking, that’s cool. Good for you. And I get it like it. I don’t know how it is for someone raised as a man, but like, if you’re at least raises a woman, it’s kind of hard to end up being able to do something for yourself when you’ve been inundated since birth with this message that your body isn’t really yours. It doesn’t belong to you. You’re supposed to be thin so that other people can look at you. You’re supposed to be healthy so that you can, you know, push out someone else’s babies. You’re supposed to blah, blah, blah for everybody else. So I understand why it’s very difficult to actually, legitimately get to a place where you can truthfully say, I’m doing this for me, because a lot of times you will hear the I’m doing this for me, and it’s really like, I’m doing this for me, because people will like me better if I’m hotter, which, like, I guess that’s for you, but kind of not, you know, like, it is really, really fucking hard to even get to a point where you see your body is yours, because, like, it’s not just from birth, It’s not politically, it’s not you will have to turn on the news, and every day there’s a debate of, hey, can we force you to give birth against your will if you get raped? Like, Damn, that sucks. $7 for that. That’s not fun. So I do get it, and I do get the the impulse to roll your eyes when told like, No, this is something that is for you, and you should be doing this for yourself. But that is true, and whatever, whatever method you use to get there, I got there through lifting, because that is a thing that I was, you know, not raised to be supposed to do for me, exercise was always the purpose was always to, like atone for the sin of eating. You’ve eaten food now you got to punish yourself by burning the calories and like no lifting, at least, has been a very I know it can get to really toxic places, but for me, it’s just been very affirming and very positive. And. Terms of like, Hey, you’re getting stronger, your forms getting better. You’re doing things you’ve never been able to do before in your life. And instead of the the approach nutrition, of like, avoid this, atone for that food. It’s like, No, you need more protein because that makes you stronger. You need to have enough. Like, my trainer would ask me, What have you eaten today? And it wasn’t supposed to be this scolding, like, did you have a bad right? Did you do? It’s like, Have you had enough protein? Have you had enough water? Have you had enough sleep? Have you given Have you nourished yourself? Have you given yourself what you need to really achieve today? And it’s like, this is the polar opposite of what I’ve been taught my whole life, and I’ve found it so liberating to re approach it this way. So So that’s so that’s where I got through it was to that to that happy space. And I hope that if you’re there, if you’re listening to this, and you’re not there, I hope you find the thing that helps you do that. It might not be the thing that you’re raised to to do. It might not be the thing that you’re conventionally supposed to do, but I really fucking hope you find it, because it’s very, very nice over here in in muscle land. I’m enjoying it.
Kurt Schiller
Yeah, I think that the racism demand perspective is a little different. It felt less like being told that you have to be one thing, and more like you have to pick from one of a range of things, especially like once you reach high school, there was a big push to be a certain sort of man in a physical sense, not one that not necessarily one type, there was a range of acceptable this is, you know, and I’m, what type of guy are you? Yeah, exactly. It’s like, Are you like, a football guy, and then you get big, you know, and then you have to be, you have to be, like, strong, but big and slow, or are you gonna be, like, like, like a basketball guy? Are gonna be like, like a wrestler or a swimmer, or like, running. And then in college, there was also, like, the kind of, like, hacky sack frisbee, you know, class became available, but there was more flexibility. But again, in in 90s terms, and this is changed, I would say, thankfully, it was also like, well, you don’t want to see gay, you know, like, yeah, that’s the other it’s like, what? So, like,
R.S. Benedict
what if I’m a dancer type guy? No, you’re not. Yeah, exactly,
Kurt Schiller
exactly. Well, no, that’s, that’s gay, but, but if you are, you have to be, like, the, the most macho dancer ever. And, you know, it like you you have to offset it. So it definitely sounds worse, you know, from like, the raised female perspective. But I think it’s the same system acting upon you in different and probably not quite as direct ways, which you know definitely doesn’t
R.S. Benedict
sound great, yeah,
Kurt Schiller
yeah. Like not not great, maybe not as bad, but still, still not great.
R.S. Benedict
Yeah, yeah. My
Kurt Schiller
thing, I will say has been walking. I just I started going on. I call them wizard walks because I imagine that I have a wizard in my head. I don’t dress as a wizard.
R.S. Benedict
Come on, Kurt, yet you’re missing a branding opportunity you could, like, sell a whole new line of F leisure, of, like, wizard. Thought
Kurt Schiller
about it. I have thought about about the wizard system, but I just go for, like, a really long, several mile walk and and the other thing that I have changed in the last year is I actually sleep a reasonable amount of time. What? Because? Yeah, because this, I think, is starting, it kind of gets into one of our later, you know, subjects is like I felt for a long time. I felt such a drive to accomplish things artistically or creatively, that I was like, well, I need. I need all this time after everyone else has gone to sleep that I can, I can devote to that. And so I’d be, I mean, to be perfectly honest, like the first seven or eight issues of blood knife, I basically would be up for almost 24 hours, just like in, like a long, like a non stop blitz of editing and updating sites and stuff, and I reached a point where I was like, I’m gonna die if I can. Like, this is not this is this is bad. And it turns out that if you actually sleep more, you’re you feel better. It turns out that it’s better for you. Yeah, but, but to what you were saying about like the crab bucket mentality, it’s definitely become this thing where we feel judged by Non, non judgmental activity. We feel judged when someone pursues something different from from us. Uh, at some level, and I think that that’s a natural human reaction of like, oh, well, they’re doing something that I’m not. Can I do that? And this is, this is speaking personally, I do always feel like a jolt of uncertainty, or being like, man, maybe I should be doing that. And like, I do feel a little bad, but I do think it’s important to recognize when that originates within your own head and that you don’t necessarily need to listen to that the problem might not be other people living a different life. It may just be your your brain, you know, yelling at you, yeah, and it’s certainly not. It’s certainly not good to like to externalize that and attack other people. I mean, again, imagine attacking somebody for for wanting to be happy. Yeah, it doesn’t seem very doesn’t seem very good. Yeah,
R.S. Benedict
right. So let’s start turning this toward writing. Oh my god. This is a writing podcast, not just a wellness podcast, okay,
Kurt Schiller
let’s talk about lifts. Yeah,
R.S. Benedict
let’s talk about lifts. So let’s bring it to art. I think both of us think in the art world, there is this sense that self destruction is normal and acceptable. There’s a workaholism that you got to keep you got to keep doing it. You gotta, you gotta always do it. You should be missing sleep to write. You should be waking up at four in the morning and writing. You should be staying awake for hours writing, yeah, if you only have a little time for art because you have a day job, you you failed, you’re bad. Or if you take a little time away from art to recover or raise a baby or whatever Fuck you, you’re bad,
Kurt Schiller
and it’s not good. If you consider that you also need money to not die so that you can do art that that also is bad. You know, at some level, that’s that’s, of course, the the much feared selling out, you know, I, I had a relative at one point. I won’t say who my original thing was. I wanted to be a journalist. And dear listeners, you may not know this, but journalists make approximately no money, and it’s really hard. It’s really hard, you know. And I mean, God, this was, this was like 15 years ago, like, you actually made a little more money that you faked out, but it still wasn’t much, yeah. And when I decided, you know, actually, it sucks to not make any money as much as I like being a journalist, I had somebody in my life who was kind of like, how could you do that soul crushing job? But when, when I decided that I wanted to go into marketing, and they were like, how, how can you do that soul crushing job? Aren’t you gonna hate it? And I was like, I don’t know. It doesn’t doesn’t seem like it. Turns out the answer is no, and not being super poor and exhausted and paid nothing for doing some of the hardest you know, creative work around it actually doesn’t suck. It’s actually really great, yeah, oh
R.S. Benedict
yeah, and getting paid dog shit so that your your newspaper can run like a six figure a year, columnist to write articles that are about like, I don’t know, are gay people secretly bugs? We don’t know. We simply can’t tell that. I am simply asking questions, god damn it,
Kurt Schiller
yeah. And also, I think there’s an assumption, and this is something that you hear, that I heard a lot when I paid a lot of attention to sci fi and fantasy publishing and writing. You know, discourse was like success depends upon hard work, which, which, which is mostly true, granted, but given that hard work itself does not guarantee success, certainly not in anything creative, like, it’s a really unhealthy attitude to justify being unhappy from overwork. Because you’re like, Well, if I, if I don’t do this, I won’t succeed. And it’s like, well, you might not succeed anyway. And you kind of at a certain level, I think you need to be okay with failing and being happy instead of the alternative, which is you might fail and and also be really unhappy and sick and tired and poor. Isn’t a great way to be, like, maybe raising your chance of failure a little bit isn’t, isn’t so bad, yeah, if it allows you to function as a as a human. But there’s definitely, like, a push against that, like, you’ll, you know, you’ll, you’ll see people talking in, you know, slight, slightly guarded terms at a time. Is about, well, you know, you need to be willing to put in the work. If you’re not putting in the work, you’re not in, yeah, you’re not going to make it.
R.S. Benedict
I mean, you do need to write to be a writer, right? Not gonna deny that, but I don’t think you should hurt yourself to do that,
Kurt Schiller
yeah, or do it so much that you don’t enjoy the thing that you love anymore, yeah,
R.S. Benedict
or just give up the rest of your life. Like, it’s kind of funny, every time George R Martin is photographed doing anything out in public, there’s this chorus of screaming, like, why are you writing on the book? Like he’s I would not fucking work on the book. If I had that kind of money, I would just be fucking partying like crazy. I would be on a yacht. You think I’d work on a book? Fuck you.
Kurt Schiller
I would buy so many little sailor hats, yeah, whereas they I’d be getting like, gold custom sailor hats with, you know, some kind of crystal enamel on them, yeah, Sailor hats with little goldfish inside of them. I’d be out of the club. Absolutely.
R.S. Benedict
I’d definitely be doing some rich person hobbies. I’d be sailing, probably, that’s, that’s a good rich horses. I’d be on the ranch, you know, riding, riding my purebred horse.
Kurt Schiller
That you would give, like a cool fantasy name to, yeah, ice main or something along
R.S. Benedict
those, yeah, I would 100 be percent. Be doing rich person hobbies. I would not be working on some fucking book. He has no need to do that. So who cares? It’s weird too, because the people who yelled at him for it are the ones who are like, Oh, he’s a bad person. His books are bad. It’s like, why do you want him to make more Yeah, make up your fucking mind. Yeah. Do you want these books or not? If you if you think his books are bad, then tell him, Yes. Keep partying, stop writing, sir.
Kurt Schiller
It does make me really long for the days when what you knew about an author was whatever you could get from like three sentences at the back of the book, and that was it. There was no other information available about whoever these people were. It was just like you would get a very shrunk down, eight by 10, the same one for, like, their entire career, maybe, and like, maybe a paragraph, and half of the paragraph would be about other books that they’ve written. And the entire extent of your knowledge of most authors would be, you know, where they live, are they married, and how many pets do they
R.S. Benedict
Yeah, that’s a good thing, I think. But in general, there’s this romanticization of artistic self destruction. We’ve heard about the rock star lifestyle, the glamorous, self destructive rock star lifestyle, the 27 club. And the 27 club is this thing where a lot of really, particularly brilliant and influential artists die at the age of 27 like Kurt Cobain, Amy Winehouse, I believe, Jimi Hendrix. There’s this idea that it’s kind of beautiful to fucking kill yourself. And we have the question, how much can you sacrifice for art? Because to be real, you do have to sacrifice something. You have to sacrifice a good bit of time and energy to put into art and to make it good. But how much should you sacrifice for art? Is it really worth destroying yourself emotionally for it? Something I’ll note is that I know now we remember Amy Winehouse fondly, and there are these, like bio pics about how, you know, wonderful she was. I remember when she was still alive, no one was saying this shit about her, this movie when she was still alive. It was so fucking disgusting. It was really cruel. She was the butt of every joke. All the tabloids loved making fun of her. Every fucking hack Stand Up Late Night comedians opened a monolog making, oh, you hear about what Amy Winehouse did and up until she fucking died. And it kind of pisses me off seeing so much of the shit coming out of a lot of the same networks and publishers and companies that were very happy to make money making fun of her when she was very clearly profoundly unwell and profoundly just in need of help and on her way, just it was not a shock. When she died, no one was like, Oh, wow. We didn’t see that. You know, everybody knew it was coming, and no one gave a shit, because it was so easy just laugh. And then after she died, there were a lot of jokes about that too. It just took, like, 10 years for someone to be nice to her again. It’s
Kurt Schiller
it’s especially kind of darkly ironic that, like almost always the lifestyle of the famous artist, the rock star, it usually makes them incapable of making the art you. As well. Yeah, I was reading a short biography of Jerry Garcia, who, you know, I mean, he, he was in his 50s when he died, I believe. But according to people who worked with him, like, the last, you know, 10 or 15 years of of his life, he basically was, like, non functional as an artist, like he was struggling to sing and play, you know, people didn’t want to work with him anymore, because he was a mess. He was constantly, you know, using drugs. He He was like he was, he was just not able to be Jerry Garcia as people knew him to be, and yet that’s what we wind up romanticizing, is, you know, oh, the dying artist. But the fact that you are dying means that you can’t be an artist anymore. Like, it doesn’t, it doesn’t work, you know, like you you need to be well, or at least well enough, to be able to make art like that’s that, you know, seeking happiness and and wellness is part of what makes us, makes artists able to to create. And if you’re not, you’re gonna have a real fucking hard time making anything, you know, if you’re sick,
R.S. Benedict
yeah, I remember when, uh, the lead of stone temple pilot Scott Wayland died. He was, he had notorious problems with drugs and lifestyle issues. But it was kind of romanticized a little bit around the time he died. But right after that happened, his wife, I believe, wrote, or his ex wife, wrote an article for, I think it was Rolling Stone saying, like, please don’t, please don’t fucking romanticize this. There’s nothing romantic about throwing your ex husband into the shower and getting coffee into him so that he can hopefully be alert enough to be sort of coherent when he talks to your daughter. Because he’s just recently taken heroin, and he’s fucked up again. And the line that really stuck with me was, you know, such she gives the date and date of his die, his death, and says, this was not the day he died. This was the last date that he was able to be propped up in front of a microphone for someone else’s profit. He died a long time ago, and it’s like, God, damn, someone you had a kid with says that about you. Yeah, there’s nothing there’s nothing romantic. There’s nothing beautiful about that. It’s just fucking bleak. He made art about how he knew he was fucking up his life. And it’s like, man, that’s bad. But I it. But a lot of it is fans do kind of eat it up. I’m thinking about how, like Alanis Morissette, we’re reliving the 90s over and over again today. Alanis morissettes Follow up album where she, like, calmed down and presumably, got some effective therapy, was not a hit like Jagged Little Pill was. But on the other hand, it’s like, was she supposed to just make music about how mad she was at Dave Coulier the rest of her life? Like, you can’t do that. Yeah, yeah. Let’s do another album getting mad at Uncle Joey from full house.
Kurt Schiller
Yeah. It’s it’s it. I It’s it. I think part of the problem is it seems to be part of the human condition that you know, when you’re in your 20s and or a teenager, you can take a lot of punishment. Yeah, you don’t pay the bill right away. It’s gonna come due eventually, but, but our bodies will kind of train us that, oh, we’re fine. I drank 12 beers and I woke up and I wasn’t hungover. That means that it’s fine. I feel fine. Everything’s great. And at a certain point, you know, you definitely you can’t do that anymore. And really, you couldn’t ever do it. You just weren’t immediately experiencing the effects. But I think that people, fans, artists, everyone has developed this, this romance of the young, invincible person. And so, yeah, you know, by by dying young, you know you remain invincible and beautiful and perfect forever. You know you don’t you never have to deal with you. You get to remain the legend. You never have to deal with the the awkward reality of, you know being 67 and you know old, and you know old and not being able to go out and party and be cool and looking old and not looking, you know, young and hot anymore, you know. But like, it’s not any better to be a corpse. It’s much worse, in fact, to be a corpse. And like, I think we know that logically and rationally, but
R.S. Benedict
even then, people still get mad like this, this former rock. Sort of went bald. Like, yeah, most men eventually, I’m sorry I don’t know what to tell you, Yes, you lost his hair. Like, yeah, that’ll that’ll happen.
Kurt Schiller
I’m a big punk fan, and I’ve gotten off of most social media now, which I think was a big positive for me. So speaking of wellness, and there’s lots that we could say about, and probably should say about, like, the the interface of your own mental well being and social media and artistry, yeah, but I will constantly see people who I assume are like, 19 or 20 shitting on, you know, Fat Mike from no FX, for instance, because, you know, he’s, he’s old, and it’s, it’s, it’s never even, because, like, Oh, that guy’s an asshole, which by some accounts, he apparently may well be. I have no idea, but because, like, oh, well, he’s, he’s old and uncool. Now, what a joke. It’s like, well, well, no, it’s kind of, it’s kind of great that, you know he did die, and is, you know, he’s alive, Ozzy Osbourne is not pathetic. He’s still, he’s still alive. That’s remarkable. Grant,
R.S. Benedict
yeah, particularly that Ozzy Osbourne specifically, is still alive. There’s nothing short of America, Yeah, or like, Keith
Kurt Schiller
Richards, like, like, remarkable. Much better to be Ozzy Osbourne or Keith Richards and to be old and, you know, kind of like shambling around, that is what happens to us all. Then to be Jimi Hendrix, you know, yeah, and to be dead,
R.S. Benedict
yeah. Because ultimately, the question is, Who benefits from this? Maybe the artist will get a little fun, a little self fulfillment, a little money while they’re still alive, but probably not so. Many of these artists die in poverty, and then after they’re dead, someone else, yep, makes a lot of money off of them. Hooray for them. Fuck you, artist persons. This is, this is what you died for, so that some other company can make money off of you now that you’re dead. Are you happy about that? Probably not. That would not make me happy. I would like to rise from the grave and take revenge, if that was me.
Kurt Schiller
It’s such a cliche too. Like, like, we’ve become so inured and cynical about that process that when somebody dies, the one of the first things that I think is like, oh, man, now every website is going to do, like a big retrospective, and their, their album sales are going to go crazy, or their, their books set, you know, like the ones that really depressed me were, like a few famous comics and graphic novel artists and writers passed away in the past few years in like, abject poverty. And you know, when they passed away, all of a sudden, all their shit sold super well, because people went, Oh yeah, that person. And it like, that sucks, like that. You know, it’s not like they’re getting that, that that money, it’s like the Final Insult is, not only did they die in poverty and obscurity, but they get to have a comeback, and they’re not even alive anymore, you know, to to see it,
R.S. Benedict
yeah, I just Oh, God, I remember when sinead o’connor passed away, and I’m so mad that one of the few people in the industry who actually, like, said the truth and was fucking Morrissey, of all people, like, god damn it. Why did he have to do right? But worst person, so, yeah, worst person, you know, makes a very good point, which is music CEOs, who had put on their most charming smile as they refused her for their roster. Are queuing up to call her a feminist icon, and 15 minute celebrities and goblins from hell and record labels artificially aroused diversity are squeezing onto Twitter to Twitter, their jibber jabber when it was you who talked Sinead into giving up because she refused to be labeled and she was degraded, as those few who move the world are always degraded. What is it? She had only so much self to give. She was dropped by her label after selling 7 million albums for them, she became crazed, yes, but uninteresting never she had done nothing wrong. She had proud vulnerability. And there is a certain music industry hatred for singers who don’t fit in, and they are never praised until death, when finally they can’t answer back the cruel playpen of fame gushes with praise for Sinead today, with the usual moronic labels of icon and legend, you praise her now only because it is too late. You hadn’t the guts to support her when she was alive and she was looking for you. It’s like, god damn it. I’m so mad that it’s Morrissey who’s saying something right about that, like, Oh, why? Couldn’t it have been someone else? But yeah, that is the pattern over and fucking over again and fucking over again. So that is the that is the reward of you destroying yourself, or your art, is that everybody who made fun of you. While you were alive and on your way down, will pat themselves on the back for praising you after you’re fucking gone, and then they’ll cash in on it, and that’s it. That’s what you get. So don’t it’s not worth it.
Kurt Schiller
You know, in like in death, of course, you know sinead o’connor stops being the problematic, confusing, controversial figure and magically transforms back into, you know, 22 year old Shane O’Connor. I know, in 1992 at the top of the charts again. And you know the it allows media culture and our own, you know, memories to just kind of shuffle away the stuff, the uncomfortable reality, you know, that that we didn’t want to think about where, you know, she wasn’t living up to what the expectations of her as an artist were, because she was being a person, you know. And it’s, yeah, it’s, it’s really unfortunate that we can’t just celebrate people as, as people, you know, yeah, what, and whether they’re how we would like them to be or not. Not to
R.S. Benedict
mention, a lot of art does come from mental issues and mental unwellness and like, it stop, and mental illness stops being sexy as you age in your 20s, it’s kind of hot when you’re, like, hitting 40, it’s not hot anymore.
Kurt Schiller
I think the one this, this is, this is corny, but the the thing that made me really rethink that was reading about Sid Barrett from Pink Floyd, where, you know, he, by all accounts, became, you know, extremely unwell. But he didn’t die. He just kind of disappeared. Yeah, and not in a cool romantic way, in like a very sad way, where he was apparently just like living at home and just kind of, you know, living out a normal, if seemingly not particularly happy existence, to the point where, I think famously, he came by one of the recording sessions for one of their later albums, and they didn’t even recognize him. And like, he hung out for a little while, and then they were like, oh God. Like, that’s, that’s, that’s it. And like, you know, it’s tempting even to romanticize that, but like, that’s, like, that sucks. And I think, I think aging myself, you know, has, has made me really rethink how you want to be as you get older, you know, like, we can’t stay young. Super philosophical writing for, you know, like, like, we can’t stay young. And if you’re going to keep living, you kind of have to come to terms and be be happy with not being a young, cool person anymore. And so that means finding a way to be old and uncool and still happy, you know, like,
R.S. Benedict
yeah, pivoting from just complete burning out and dying to more mild forms of self destruction and self harm when it comes to art, let’s talk a little bit about the industry as it pertains to writing, as it pertains to What we need to do to stay in the industry and promote ourselves. And I’ve, more recently, kind of walked away from short science fiction and fantasy publishing. I’ve been doing a lot more nonfiction and getting work published. I got a piece in Fangoria, which I’m really proud of. Hell yeah. Hell yeah. And work. Been working on a novel, still working on my fucking novel for years and years and years. I’m finally getting toward the end of the third draft. But I think it didn’t hit me how bad SFF publishing scene was socially until I started working in other publishing spheres and just working for the New Haven independent, working with the editors of Fangoria. These were really like cordial, professional, just great folks to work with. Versus SFF, which is this, like Jesus Christ, it’s bad. It’s so profoundly unwell and nasty and like, unbelievable. I know the word toxic is is overused, but yeah, like, being in that sphere just made me kind of meaner and angrier and shittier the amount of hypocritical self aggrandizement of people talking about how great they are, and just being the most like two faced, backbiting, nasty, petty, awful, fucking people, and then just going and working with, like the dude who runs fangorian, he’s like normal, and I kept realize I was bracing myself for something weird and fucked up and shitty to happen. It’s like you. Know, nothing bad happened. He was great. He was great to work with. He was super, yeah,
Kurt Schiller
it makes me think, I I really think that a lot of that, and this is, this is, maybe I’m leaning too much on this, but I really think that a big part of that is just how much SFF has come to rely on Twitter and similar platforms to drive your career, to drive visibility of articles, to function as your presence in the community, and the fact that those platforms are built like first and foremost to prioritize outrage effectively. Yeah, like, and, you know, if nobody is mad about anything, those platforms, like, basically don’t function, like, people need to be mad. Or, I don’t know what the positive version of mad is, like, like, crusading about about something, and I, I criticize myself a great deal for this, because a big part of the reason that I walked away, of, you know, from, like, social media, and sounds like you did, as well as is realizing, at least for me, there was two things, really one, one was I was going from, like, outrage to outrage. And I don’t say this in the in the sense of like, oh, the woke mind virus is causing people to just, just, like, I was always mad about something. And yeah, some things were correct things to be mad about. But suffice to say, you can’t be mad all the time. And I felt like it was always, it was always a new controversy, always a new blow up. I was always, I was always criticizing somebody and talking shit about somebody. I just realized it was just like making me like an unhappy, unpleasant person, and it has nothing to do with science fiction or fantasy. It’s literally, it’s
R.S. Benedict
just not about the craft. But that is the norm in sci fi fantasy. As much as it likes to promote itself as like, this healthy, positive space, it’s now it’s just really nasty. Every day there’s a new like, here’s the new person we’re mad at, and we’re deciding that this person is the scapegoat for the whole industry. For some reason, this person is usually a woman, disproportionately that everybody gets mad at. I don’t know if there’s a thing about that. I don’t know. It sure was noticeable, and I didn’t like being around it, and I didn’t like being part of it, and I know there are still people in SFF who are very interested in being mad at me despite me not being part of it anymore, yeah, still, still fucking obsessing about me whenever, like, a controversy happens. I wonder what that Benedict person says. I don’t fucking know, man, I’m not even I’m not even posting about this. Why are you bothering me? Um, I was making watermelon granitos. It was pretty it came out pretty good. I’m really happy about it. It’s very good. Um, I don’t a friend of mine once compared me to the tank character in an RPG, you know, like, if you’re playing a an RPG, you’ve got a party of, like, different types of warrior classes or whatever. You know, there’s your mage, there’s your healer, there’s your ninja, whatever. But the tank, it’s like that’s the member of your party who has a shitload of hit points, and he soaks up all the damage, which allows all the other party members to cast their spells or steal or whatever. So he said that that’s kind of what I was in SFF, like I was the tank, like I absorbed this really weirdly disproportionate amount of hatred and harassment and nastiness from SFF in a way that made it more acceptable for other people to publicly air criticisms of The industry and the way the scene functions and the dominant style. But like, and I know that was meant as a compliment, but it kind of hit me as like, yeah, I guess that’s true. But also that sucks being the tank sucks, man, I don’t. I don’t have that many hit points anymore. And like, I’ve stopped kind of engaging with SFF and railing against whatever stupid kind of bullshit they’re doing lately, because, you know, I’m not really a part of it. I’ve given up on it, and I’m happier for it. Like, what? What good did it do for me? What change did it make? It didn’t Yes, I don’t know. I do feel like, I do feel like I’m seeing more people these days who are a little bit more open about saying, like, No, this is fucked up. This sucks, yeah. And if I’ve been able to be a part of that, that’s kind of nice, but it’s like, I can’t be the tank anymore, man, I’m done. I got, I got, I got yoga class. I’m done.
Kurt Schiller
Yes, exactly is, is like, to your point about, like, what, what good was it like? I I really struggle, because I certainly made and and certainly still have a ton of criticisms that I think are correct. But I realized at a certain point that I was, I was over invested in them, and I was angry about them, and that it didn’t really mean. Matter whether I whether I was angry or not angry, and it didn’t really matter whether I liked or or disliked things. And no amount of activity on my part was necessarily going to convince people to agree with me. Yeah, certainly not being like, I genuinely feel bad for how many people I was mean to not because I think I was wrong. Like, I don’t agree with them, but, like, just because it was a waste of time, like, it wouldn’t be so much better for me to just be like, you know, maybe I again, like, I think it’s a fine line. I would still like to be able to make my criticisms and then, like, move on and forget about it. But to your point, like, becoming the tank, becoming the warrior. Like, is it good for anybody, except for Elon Musk, right? Like, yeah, it’s not. It’s not improving the world. Like, I think that that there’s a lie that cuts both ways, where it’s easy to convince yourself that it’s good to be angry for a good cause and it’s good for people to be angry at you when you are correct. And it’s not bad in and of itself, but it’s not like, it doesn’t actually accomplish anything. And so at a certain point it’s, it’s kind of becomes pointless. It’s like, well, what’s I’m saying the same thing over and over and over again. I’m still angry about it, and the world is exactly the same. And it’s at a certain point I just stopped. And I realized that when I stopped posting about it, I stopped thinking about these things, and then it didn’t matter anymore. Like,
R.S. Benedict
yeah, you start realizing, like, yes, who are these people? Exactly on like, five Hugos, but no one knows who the he is. He’s a loser, yeah, why? Why do I care? Yeah,
Kurt Schiller
exactly. Or, like, it’s not even like, you know, he’s a loser. It’s like, well, whatever. Why do I need to have an opinion on this? Yeah, what? What purpose is it serving, but to make me unhappy, and occasionally, like, maybe I’ll be mean to someone, and then they’ll be unhappy. And it’s like, well, I don’t, I don’t feel good about that. I definitely, you know, I didn’t become a writer because I wanted to argue with people and make them feel bad.
R.S. Benedict
Yeah, and like the SFF, you know, self like, circular firing squad drama mill, shit is gonna keep churning on, whether I’m there or not. Yes, I’m sure every, every bit of mainstream news that comes out of the current world con is like, look at this incredibly stupid fucking thing that happened. Look at these stupid assholes. Yes, look at Yeah, that’s fucking stupid that. I feel pretty good about not being part of it.
Kurt Schiller
Yeah, far too much of almost any online community, but especially SFF has become, look at these assholes. Whether I’m the asshole, you’re the asshole, they are the asshole. Like it’s any community that requires for somebody to be the asshole is probably not a great place to be a part of. And again, for like, I don’t say this in terms of like, I’m walking away from from the SFF community. I’m right. They’re wrong. It’s it’s literally just like, I’m just not going to think about this anymore. It’s just not making me happy. I’m writing stupid wizard stories right now, and I don’t even think about Twitter, and that’s I’m perfectly happy writing my stupid wizard stories. I don’t even know what I do with them. I just enjoy,
R.S. Benedict
yeah, eventually I’ll send the novel to someone and not deal with the discourse that probably it’ll generate. I don’t know there’s, yeah, I don’t want to you don’t have to podcast and promote it. I don’t got to see it. I don’t got to engage. I don’t let him be mad. It’s like, I know, I know there’s a tendency to want to think of walking away from an argument as looted, losing or admitting defeat. But, like, no, really, sometimes that is the best way, like, as to share zone taught us, you know, shit sucks, hit the bricks. Yes, that’s the right thing to do. It’s the triumphant ending of a gothic novel is to leave the vampire castle. Yeah, and that’s what I feel like I’ve done. I feel like, you know, one of those, like, cheesy 1970s gothic novel heroines who’s like fleeing the decrepit manner as it collapses behind her, and she’s running through the woods in like a diaphanous gown with like a candle. And she’s got great hair. She just has fantastic hair. And that’s kind of what I feel like, you know, let it just, I’m just, I’m just out of this shit, fucking I’m done goodbye. My hair looks great.
Kurt Schiller
There’s a song lyric I think about a lot not to be the song lyric guy, but it’s from a song called from here till utopia, by the band ramshackle glory, which is a very enjoyable like anarcho punk band, and the song is basically about, like, being a young, angry, political person, and the harm that that can do to you despite, like, it being a good cause. And there’s a, there’s a, there’s a line in there where they say, you know, no one’s going to stop you from dying young and miserable and right. Like it’s, it’s not, you know, being right isn’t always, isn’t always worth it. It’s not, it’s not surrender to say, you know, maybe, like, if I’m not getting anywhere as you say, maybe it’s time to hit, you know, hit the bricks. Yeah,
R.S. Benedict
do my own thing. Whatever you don’t. You don’t need that industry to succeed anyway. Yeah, yeah, you just don’t. The biggest sci fi writer, I would argue, Jeff VanderMeer is not a part of the SFF scene at all, and I’ve never seen him say anything positive about it?
Kurt Schiller
He mostly posts like, Raccoon pictures, doesn’t he like mostly?
R.S. Benedict
But whenever he talks about it at all, he’ll usually say something just like, yeah, it’s fucked up. The it all sucks, yeah? And that’s it, which like, Good for him. That’s admirable. That is the way to do it, yeah? Just stepping away from the soul crushing industry itself and stepping away from online more and more, as a writer, as an artist, you’re expected to be an influencer first, and an artist second. But that’s it’s not good for you. We’ve railed against it plenty. You know, you are the commodity. If you’re selling an identity, it’s a lot harder to change organically, as people tend to do, because now it’s like, Oh no, you’re my brand. It’s like, yeah, my brand. Like, this new brand might not be as as profitable or popular like I’ve noticed that the worse my life was, the more online I was, and the better I did on social media, and the more like followers I got, and the better Patreon subscribers I got. And as my life is generally going better, I’m just less online. I don’t do as much content. My numbers are going down. And I’m like, Okay, well, that’s fine,
Kurt Schiller
yeah, it’s fine, yeah, that’s yes. I had a shocking, oh, my God. I used to check so, so, like, blood knife is on like, hiatus right now. I’m trying to figure out what I want, like, how I want to proceed, because, like, I want to keep writing and publishing, but I fundamental, I realized that I did not want to be an online persona, like an online figure, even like a minor one, like it was just, it just became bad, like it was taking up so much of my brain. And so I’m trying to figure out, like, what does it mean to, you know? Like, how can I have a hyper online magazine without myself being hyper online. So I’m, you know, but I used to obsessively check, you know, subscriber numbers. Is it like, you know, traffic numbers? Is it up? Is it down with like, what’s going on and like, I realized that I felt so bad about the idea of like, moving away, of stepping away, because I knew that the numbers would go down, mine go down exactly. And it wasn’t even because of that that I stepped away, you know, my my grandmother, you know, passed away earlier this year. She was sick, not for a long time, but for, you know, like a few months, I reached a point where it was it had become overwhelming to me, and I realized that it wasn’t because I was I was emotionally overwhelmed about that specifically, but that I was just so emotionally overwhelmed by everything that I like, I had no space in my body to grieve or like to deal with the emotions of, you know, preparing for grief. And so I kind of just went, alright, like, I know that. I’m like, I’m either going to need to step away from my family, from grieving, from my job or from the magazine. I was like, I think of those choices, I probably step away from the magazine and not from my job or my family. Yeah.
R.S. Benedict
Sorry, children, Dad has to be online. Yeah, yeah. Daddy’s got
Kurt Schiller
a post. I’m sorry. You know,
R.S. Benedict
Daddy has to, Daddy has to post. My daddy is, is owning someone on Twitter today, children get out of here.
Kurt Schiller
I don’t think I ever neglected my kids, but there was certainly times where I was, like, out doing something, and I was posting and trying to own someone online and like, I feel badly. No, you know, like, and at the time, I was like, hot, you know, I’m having a great day, and I’m owning someone and like, that is kind of fun, but at a certain point it’s like, you know, like, that’s also kind of pathetic, yeah. And what’s nice is when you step away, if you if you step away completely, you don’t even see the numbers anymore. It doesn’t matter. I haven’t looked at this in months like, you know, yeah, could be zero for all I know. Who cares? It doesn’t matter.
R.S. Benedict
I finally deactivated Twitter on my posts like tears in the rain. It feels good. Fucking shit. Used to that I’m on blue sky, but I don’t use it because it’s terrible. Yeah, it’s just like the most insufferable nerds of Twitter. I’m on Insta now, and my Instagram is mainly pictures of my cats, and the Instagrams that I follow are pictures of other people’s cats, which is pretty good. I think it’s pretty healthy. Yeah, it’s just sort of a cat communication system. I
Kurt Schiller
post mainly about Cub Scouts and vinyl.
R.S. Benedict
That’s pretty good. That’s so dead. It’s,
it is strongly
R.S. Benedict
dad coded. It’s
Kurt Schiller
inevitable.
R.S. Benedict
Yeah, you got to get into World War Two history.
Kurt Schiller
I kind of already went through that phase. I kind of burned out. I might do Roman history in a non problematic way. Oh,
R.S. Benedict
good, yeah, that’s good. Roman history rocks. I
Kurt Schiller
did read the book Rubicon a number of years ago, and I did really enjoy this. And then I watched Rome last year. That was fucking great. That was a great show. Oh, here’s really
R.S. Benedict
good. It’s really
Kurt Schiller
good. It’s cool, it’s funny, it’s charming. I enjoyed it.
R.S. Benedict
Yeah, that’s on my to watch list. When I get through the Nick, I’m enjoying the Nick. Oh,
Kurt Schiller
I should watch that too. TV. Yeah, it’s really sweet. It
R.S. Benedict
starts off. It starts off with a doctor injecting cocaine into his penis so that he can do a surgery,
Kurt Schiller
again, destroying yourself for art. You don’t need to inject that cocaine into your penis. Just do the surgery and get more sleep.
R.S. Benedict
It’s really, really good. That is how you know a show is going to be sick. I’m invested.
Kurt Schiller
Yeah, it’s funny how, like, we used to think that TV was, like, the worst thing for you, but it but it turns out that TV that you also talk to is actually even worse.
R.S. Benedict
Yeah, I one thing I will say is that TV generally, uh, illegalizes child pornography on like Twitter, apparently now, where the CEO himself personally intervened to reinstate the account of a guy who posted a video, a few stills from an infamous child pornography video. Really good. That’s That’s great. That’s really, really good. That that happened and that no one went to I feel like someone should be in prison for that. Yeah, that’s the kind of thing you’re supposed to go to prison for at least someone or everyone involved in this.
Kurt Schiller
I feel like maybe the internet isn’t good. Much as it pays me to say this as like a cyberpunk guy, maybe it’s not good. Maybe I misunderstood. I thought that the moral of Neuromancer was that all this stuff was good. It turns out, maybe I misread these books.
R.S. Benedict
Yeah, I’m not, it’s not it’s not great. It’s not great, right? Harley? What do you think he’s been quiet today? Yeah, maybe,
Kurt Schiller
maybe Harley’s contemplating, contemplating our discussion. Yeah,
R.S. Benedict
he’s not online either. He’s like, I’m not creating content for you. I will not yell. I will not yell for your entertainment. You puny humans. All right, so we’ve been talking for like, an hour and 20 minutes. Why don’t we start winding down before we go? What would you like to plug?
Kurt Schiller
Oh, man, nothing. I’ll plug the real world. You know what get like? Yeah, go outside. Don’t go on Twitter, you know, go run to kayak. Yeah, yes, yes, yes, yes, return to kayak. It’s
R.S. Benedict
summer. We still got a little bit of summer left. Go, go fucking kayaking or fishing or something. Man,
Kurt Schiller
yeah, you know, blood knife is up. It’ll be up forever. We’re not taking pitches, and we’re not publishing anything currently. I want to publish some stuff in the near future. You know, everything is available for free and probably will remain so. So please, I paused billing. I hope it remained paused. I should probably double check on that. But, you know, I I feel like Patreon is a very confusing platform, yeah,
R.S. Benedict
but it’s weird, yeah, I’m, I’m
Kurt Schiller
interested in maybe doing like a zine, like a physical zine, not like an online scene. I’m curious about that. Dude, are
R.S. Benedict
we gonna do a burger punk scene? Are we gonna do a burger punk scene? We should? I will 100% take part in that. Yeah? We should I know a local executioner who runs a zine. He could probably offer advice. Would
Kurt Schiller
you say executioner? Okay, so
R.S. Benedict
Troy, New York, there, there’s like a little local publisher called Hyperion, and Hyperion has like a spin off mag called Castle jackal. Castle Jackal is run by a local guy who goes by the stage name, Castle jackal. I assume that’s not his legal name. He is also a DJ he’s an interesting person, but his whole, his whole thing is he constantly wears an executioner’s mask, all right, times, all right, while DJing, while out and about, while eating ice cream at at our fine local establishment. I
Kurt Schiller
see utterly high difficulty level, delightful man wearing a hood
R.S. Benedict
and and his magazine has a picture of him also in the executioner’s hood, standing in the forest on the back cover, which, because he’s the editor in chief. So like I guess, we have a local executioner who publishes fantasy magazines. Also, I’m gonna see if I can pick his brain on how to do this. Well, incredible branding. I gotta say, I’m
Kurt Schiller
glad that civilian is making, you know, good use of his free time.
R.S. Benedict
Yeah, yeah, the capital region’s amazing. It’s really special. I was accosted by a wizard the other day too, which I did mention.
Kurt Schiller
I think I missed the wizard part. We Oh, yeah, local wizard.
R.S. Benedict
Yeah. We got a local wizard. He’s got like, a cape and a staff. So, you know, he’s legit. He asked me for $1 the other day so that he could procure reagents to do a spell to improve the weather. Yeah, and I did give him a buck. And you know what? The weather this weekend was gorgeous. There you go.
Kurt Schiller
I mean, what he fucking, he
R.S. Benedict
did it.
Kurt Schiller
That’s the great value for $1 Yeah, honestly, yeah, we have, there is a local horror zine, as it turns out, that nice. I haven’t met the P I actually, I probably have met the people who run it. I just don’t know that it’s them. And it turns out that they operate out of the mill complex. That’s or I think they might also have, like a photography studio and have a zine that they do like for fun, but, oh, you’re gonna love this. I was looking up how to submit to them, and the first thing they said was, please, no emails, you know,
just send
Kurt Schiller
us a letter, please. I was like, oh, first of all, I love that. The other local weirdo I’ve become aware of recently is a fine art dealer who also has a vampire museum that he operates out of his house. Hell yeah, I haven’t gone there yet. I have some friends who went there, and they said that as you are leaving, there’s a plaque that says, you know, I hope you were enriched by this experience. He has a display of the holy books of all the major religions. And then it says, you know, I hope that what you have learned from this experience is that demons are real and powerful and we need to fight them. That’s incredible. So I hope that there’s some conjunction between the horror zine and and that gentleman. If not, maybe it’s an opportunity. Maybe I can make
R.S. Benedict
it Yeah, yeah, but we should sign off and talk about this offline to avoid getting people’s hopes. Yes, we should. Yes, we should. Thank you very much for coming on the show, and thank you all for listening. If you like what you heard, head to patreon.com/ritegud and subscribe. Until next time, take care of yourself and keep writing good.
Matthew Keeley
This has been Rite Gud with RS Benedict. It was hosted by RS Benedict and produced by Matt Keeley for KS Media LLC. Theme song by OK Glass. For comments and concerns, please write to us at ritegud at kittysneezes.com. That’s R, I, T, E, G, u, d. At kittysneezes.com. If you’d like to support us, please visit our patreon at patreon.com/ritegud. This has been a Kittysneezes production.
Kittysneezes.com. In color.
R.S. Benedict
Oh, God, Where’d I put the mouse? Hold on. There it is.