There are two main problems I continue to run into throughout my life: I dislike nine out of ten people and I’m hopelessly naïve.

I don’t aim for celebritydom with my blog. If I did, I would take a better effort. In fact, the main purpose is to share my ideas with people who may be similar to me, so I can meet people I am interested in. A secondary aim is to help other people avoid falling victim to my own mistakes.

As an example, I spent most of my teenage years suffering severe debilitating depression, a lot of my life has been effectively wasted because of that. It’s now clear to me that this wasn’t necessary, because psychedelics are quite effective at treating that problem. I spent years taking fish oil, vitamin D, vitamin B12, St John’s wort and other crap that didn’t work. I liked the idea that I can help other people avoid that problem, but in practice you don’t achieve that with an obscure blog on the internet.

Don’t take this as a personal insult, but I’ve had to conclude by now that the main audience I tend to attract with this blog consists of the kind of people I would rather avoid. In hindsight, it makes sense. When I criticize toxic subcultures, I’ll attract people from toxic subcultures. In addition, when you speak of personal problems you face yourself, you make yourself vulnerable.

When you want to discuss big problems instead of superficialities, you take on responsibilities too. In practice, that’s just not something I benefit from. People, even a lot of moderate sensible people, often get angry when some newspaper or social media “censors” controversial topics.

What those people don’t experience or understand is being on the other side of that equation, of the people who were expecting that they were creating a friendly community where likeminded people would meet each other.

If you publish a video on Youtube, or write an article for a magazine and get endless comments denying the Holocaust, preaching incel propaganda, issuing death threats against children or pushing other toxic ideas, you start wondering what you’re doing with your life. Part of the problem is that people in dark places have more time to spam the internet with their anger than happy people do.

That’s kind of the position where I find myself now. I’ve mostly failed to attract the kind of people I’d like to attract and I’ve succeeded at attracting all sorts of people I don’t want to attract. Another point I’ve failed to comprehend is that anonymity tends to bring out the worst in people.

The solution I see to these problems is that I’m going to take an indefinite break from writing. I’m not saying that I’m definitely done, because when you proclaim you’re definitely done with something, you’re back the next week. With a bit of luck I can figure out how to build the kind of community I’d be happy with, if not, then I hope to devote my spare time to other things.