It’s over, Motherfuckers.

Fuck You. I’m Not Trying To Sell My Books Anymore.

I’ve unwittingly become a digital fuck ferret.

Frank T Bird

--

FTB’s brain on cornflakes

And look, have I tried posting content every day for three centuries like a good little marketing fuck?

Well no. But I’ve tried it for a long time, and very intensely for a few months, and honestly, I feel like I’ve been in an orgy with a gang of randy dementors.

And sure, if you believe the inventor of the sandpaper wank, Gary Vaynerchuck, you need to take more than a few Expecto Patranuses if you want to make it in this digital hell.

But how long do you have to flap your arms around like a dickless turd?

The result of four months of posting every day for me: My average views per post went from 3 to zero.

And yeah, I could keep dangling my scrotum in the NutriBullet.

Cos sure, it probably takes years, and I probably could dedicate my life to sitting up till 3 am every night at my chafing station, sucking radiation into my gonads and going gradually blind, but I’ve got a bigger reason not to:

Because I don’t fucking want to.

You know, Frank, we’re all sick of hearing you bitch about this. You’re killing our marketing vibe, Man.

Yeah, well don’t worry you little fucksquirrel. I’ll be out of your hair soon enough.

Ya know ya set out on this romantic writing journey with a cherrywood pipe hangin’ from ya gob, and yer think I won’t have to sell my anus. You give the world respect. You give the internet the benefit of the doubt. You think,

People will read my books, review them, and that will be that.

I’ll be signing books for young maidens and letting them fondle my hard nipples out the back of international bookstores before you can say,

Circle harder, Eddie, circle harder.

But it hasn’t worked out that way.

And you feel like such a bastard shouting that people should read your book and getting drowned out among all the other bastards shouting the same thing.

You hold up a filthy sign on the piss-stinking street corner of your online portfolio. It says,

I’m different, you Schnitzelmunchers. Can’t you see?

But the fucker is written in invisible ink.

And you know, the people listening — the readers — all see you as just another default author yelling about how you should read their cliche-packed novel about some werewolf with herpes who gets a trans vampire pregnant on Christmas Day.

It doesn’t fucking matter if your writing is original or beautiful.

Cos yer just gonna drown anyway.

And you watch as heartbreaking genius pours from the golden feathers of writers like Mike Knittel only to get minced through the pork factory of the content mill of Medium to end up on the slaughterhouse floor, washed away by the bleach of big data into nothingness.

And the worst thing is that nobody is fucking grieving. It just seeps unnoticed into the ocean of binary micro-sewage.

And you’d like to think people will find it in fifty years and see its insight and beauty.

But they won’t. Because there’s too much now. It would be like finding a beautiful grain of salt in the Dead Sea — no, more like in a million Dead Seas.

Art is dead. Humans are burying it. And if that dark trifle isn’t enough, the sour cherry on the top is that we are inventing machines that will exhaust every artistic possibility before we get a chance to express them.

It’s such fun being born on deadhead planets like this. Remind me why I’m here again:

You are here to write and sell books, Frank.

I am? That’s it? Just fucking kill me now. Slice me up like horsemeat and feed me to the piranhas already.

No, Frank, you have to put in the work to sell your books. Don’t give up.

Fuck you.

I’m not doing it anymore. I’m done with making beautiful quotes in Canva or trying to find new ways to attract an audience, like some literary rentboy.

And I can’t keep watching as Henry Cockslinger makes millions writing his goatshit Jack Flashcock Series because he has invested 40k of his Dad’s fuck you money into marketing the bastard. And people think it’s good writing. They love it.

The internet is fucking laughing at me. That fucker.

And I want to spend less time glaring at this luminous electromagnetic box and more time among the dandelions and mosquitos.

I want to sit on the old rotten green bench at the end of the garden, watch the breath and the bees, and merge with them into a state where Frank the writer is just another stupid idea.

But instead, after six months off the cereal, I’m sitting here four bowls of cornflakes deep, considering writing a damn kid’s book cos I just want people to acknowledge that my shit is alright.

A kid’s book, though? Why?

Great question, Number Six.

It’s because it might just be the golden ticket to the back door of Willy Wonka’s magical chocolate pudding.

But then I get up, rinse my mouth with the titty milk from the translucent spectre of my self-respect, punch myself in the macadamias and drop the entire idea down the porcelain slippery slide.

And I stand in front of the mirror, smile with my Pepsi Max stained teeth and red stained-glass eyes, and I say to myself,

‘Don’t worry, Frank. You still have your copywriting business, right? Frank? Frank? Hello?

I’m afraid not, Number Five.

Because people think it’s better to have a robot write an article one per cent as interesting for one per cent of the price.

Never mind. I still have my dignity.

I might become an accountant or something. Numbers, right? Surely, they’re less of a mindfuck than the quicksand of words, anyway.

Yes, that’s it. A grey office where one queues to wash one’s cup in the breakout room. Yes, with some of those grey, carpeted separators, so you can’t see up the girl’s skirt who works next to you. An office where there’s silence except for the odd clicking of keyboards and where you get sucked off by the office whore at the Christmas Party and then have to go work for a competitor so your wife doesn’t find out.

Yes, that sounds alright. Anyone know any good Accountant courses?

--

--