2023
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Ragebait, Deepfakes and the Death of Trust Online
This has been bothering me for a while, and it’s finally tipped over from background noise into something I can’t ignore. Ragebait isn’t new. Sensationalism isn’t new. People twisting stories for attention has been around as long as people have been selling newspapers on street corners. What is new is how little effort it now…
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The UK’s Online Safety Bill. A Nation of Crybabies and Thought Police?
The UK’s Online Safety Bill is plodding its way through, and from the looks of it, even the politicians pushing it don’t fully understand what they’re doing. But hey, why let basic tech literacy get in the way of a good bit of moral panic, right? Apparently, we’re all a bunch of dangerous reprobates for…
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Andy’s Man Club Louth. Walking Through a Door
A few months ago, I walked into Andy’s Man Club for the first time. No real idea what to expect. Just… went. A couple of months after that, I was invited to become a facilitator. Which, honestly, I didn’t see coming. So we got our local group set up in Louth, Lincolnshire. A couple of…
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I Didn’t Ask For Any Of This – You Didn’t Either
I remember hearing something in the news, years ago, about people saying they didn’t ask to be born. I can’t remember the exact story now. It might have been someone threatening to sue their parents. It might have been one of those social media arguments that sounded completely ridiculous at first, then somehow ended up…
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ADHD and the Pain of Rejection Sensitivity
A look. A pause before someone speaks. A sigh. A raised eyebrow. And somehow, before a single word has left their mouth, your chest is already tightening. That’s not weakness. That’s Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria, and if you have ADHD, there’s a fair chance it’s been quietly running your life for years. Your Nervous System Doesn’t…
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ADHD and the Inability to Leave Things Alone
I just lost two and a half hours to a warning (well, a subtle suggestion) that didn’t matter. Wasn’t earth shattering. Not in any real-world sense anyway. The website loaded fast. Faster than most. Faster than it needed to. Under 1 second on mobile and under half a second on desktop. Nobody would ever notice…
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Big Tech Is Stealing Your Life and You’re Paying for It
This video addresses a harrowing question: How much of our finite lives are we actually surrendering to Big Tech, and what is the true cost of our “free” social media addiction? The answer is as stark as it is depressing: the average young person is on track to spend 93% of their remaining free time looking at screens.…
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I’m Going to Be an Andy’s Man Club Facilitator
It’s been a couple of months since I first walked through the door at Andy’s Man Club, and I’m still not entirely sure I can explain what it does to you. Not in a way that doesn’t sound a bit soft, anyway. But something shifted. It’s hard to put your finger on it at first.…
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ChatGPT Won’t Replace Your Copywriter (Unless You Let It)
Everyone’s flapping. Marketers, freelancers, armchair philosophers… all losing their collective minds because ChatGPT wrote a half-decent haiku about oat milk. “It’s over for copywriters!” they cried, mid-scroll, while reading yet another AI-written LinkedIn post that sounded like it was penned by a sentient beige cardigan. Here’s the blunt truth: ChatGPT is clever – bloody clever,…
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Where’s Google? The Search Giant’s Awkward Dance With AI
Google’s not asleep at the wheel. And that’s exactly what makes this moment so blooming interesting. OpenAI has lit the AI fire with ChatGPT, Microsoft is pouring petrol on it with a multibillion-dollar deal, and the one company sitting on the biggest pile of data and infrastructure is suddenly looking… slow, cautious, and oddly vulnerable.…