why starbreaker.org? | starbreaker.org
Author: Matthew Cambion
Description: rationalizing my desire in the classic Humean tradition

Any reasons I might give for this website’s existence are post-hoc rationalizations. Reason is, after all, nothing but a bratty sub to the passions, and should be bent over and spanked if it even appears to aspire to any higher office.

starbreaker.org exists because I want it to exist. It exists because I have the means and the knowledge to act on my desire. That is all there is to it. Having the ability, in this case, confers upon me the right.

You might also wonder why I’d bother running a website instead of merely settling for social media like a normal person. Well, I was never normal. Normal people don’t post on social media, let alone run websites. And if I’m to be ‘abnormal’, I feel no obligation to be ‘abnormal’ in a way that further enriches the already wealthy. If I want to make rich assholes even wealthier, I can do that at my day job. But if that isn’t enough for you, then keep reading; maybe it might help if you knew what this site is to me:

- starbreaker.org is métal hurlant.
- starbreaker.org is a sacrament of defiance.
- starbreaker.org is my exercise of free speech.
- starbreaker.org is my work, done my way.
- starbreaker.org is intertextual violence, a crime of literary shock.
- starbreaker.org is a refusal of societal demands that I specialize or simplify myself for the sake of those who cannot handle complexity.
- starbreaker.org is a gentle rebellion against the tyranny of capital, a use of my intellect that does not further enrich the already wealthy.
- starbreaker.org is where I let my shadow out to play and am most truly myself.
- starbreaker.org is an eigengrau sword forged of my rage, my compassion, and my eternal hostility toward every form of tyranny over the individual human mind.
- starbreaker.org is the scar I will leave on the face of my culture.
- starbreaker.org exists because that is my will, and my will be done.

It’s really this simple, and the reasons don’t really matter: I do it because I damned well can. I do it because I choose to. I do it because only God can stop me, and He has more pressing concerns. (At least, He damned well should; shall not the Judge of all the Earth do right?)

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## a tangent on Medium, Substack, and the attention economy

Regardless, perhaps the reasoning above isn’t enough for you, Occasional Reader? Maybe you wonder why I don’t instead post on Medium or have a newsletter on Substack? Well, Medium is accurately named; the writing on that site is neither rare nor well done. Also, Medium is trying to be Spotify for bloggers. This seems to work out as well for the bloggers as Spotify does for musicians: a lucky, privileged, and popular few make bank⸺and the rest make bupkis.

As for Substack: my beef with the platform is that it’s the Medium of newsletters. Worse, it’s even more exploitative toward writers because they take a 10% cut of the gross instead of charging a flat fee like Buttondown or paying something on the order of ¥0.666 per read (where ¥100 is worth roughly 50¢ to $1 in US dollars depending on market conditions) as Spotify, Medium, Kindle Unlimited (and most likely Kobo Plus) do. (In other words, you get paid an irrational and imaginary floating-point value between fuck all and jack shit per stream or read on most platforms.) The bedrock truth is that the attention economy runs on Hollywood Accounting when it bothers to pay creative workers at all, and the bedrock is not granite or even basalt. It’s coprolite.

If you’ll pardon my French, the fact that Schlubstack remains willing to monetize neo-Nazis is merely un gâteau de merde recouvert de ganache fécale. If you’ve already got a shit cake, covering it with diarrhea frosting can’t possibly make matters worse.

At least when Nearly Free Speech gets money from fascists, they donate it to organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center, are up front about it in their FAQ, and call it morons funding the fight against morons. They don’t claim to be neutral.

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## about that edge...

If it helps you to think I’m just playing the edgelord, knock yourself out. Kindly refrain, however, from burdening me with performative concern that I might cut myself with this edge. I’ve been manscaping with this edge my entire adult life, because Madam Catastrophy likes her criminals smooth.

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