I Do What Most Companies Can’t Do
On writing
I’ll be damned if my friends hear me saying I’m not a writer.
Honestly, I don’t feel like one.
When I attended the Debunk Magazine launch, courtesy of an announcement circulated by Qwani, I realized just how much talent there is out there. There are real writers. I wasn’t anywhere close to their level.
One of the panel readers was the daughter of the late John Michuki. As she read her passage, you could see her younger self. Her choice of words matched her tone. She didn’t stutter. Her story was the longest in the issue and the one I wanted to read the most.
I didn’t want her to stop. I was too riveted. But she was not alone on the stage. The other readers had to share theirs as well. They were just as good.
That evening I knew I was a regular Joe. There were writers out here. Amazing writers. I was a wannabe. Plus, I recently slacked a little bit on my editing — too much has been going on. Lord Typos has been taunting my work of late.
Great writers don’t have such excuses. And yes, I am no great writer. But I endorse my typos whenever I encounter them, either through my serial edits or when my readers alert me about them. But for these and other reasons, I still feel there is a lot to work on.
My friends, however, believe otherwise. They’ll be damned if I say I’m not a writer. They are my biggest fans. It begs the question — how else would I have known about these writers had I not attended the Debunk Magazine launch? The other question related to this one is: who else knows about my work besides the generous efforts of my friends to always introduce me as a writer and an author?
The answer I can give you is an unexpected one — I do what most companies don’t.
Let me explain.
Truthiness — not the truth
Most companies have by now acknowledged the mighty power of the Internet.
In the past, newspapers were the best way of spreading news besides the radio or television. Nowadays, all these platforms have found ways of remaining relevant through the Internet. I can stream prime-time news online. I can subscribe to get the Daily Nation news online. I can tune in to NRG Radio online regardless of where I am on the globe — it’s an amazing radio station, just so you know.
As for writers, the game changer happened when AI extended its stake in the writing business. With a few prompts, Chat GPT can produce several articles on a topic while you continue binge-watching your shows on Netflix.
What’s more, they can make sure they are SEO-optimized so that they can at least feature on the first few pages of Google. Let’s take a moment of silence to acknowledge that there are other search engines such as Bing but we only focus on Google. This, too, has a lot to do with the point I drive across.
Well, let’s assume everybody does that since we all have access to the Internet and ChatGPT or Gemini. Companies would still want to remain relevant. No, they’d want to be better than relevant. They’d want to be visible. They therefore create insane budgets to optimize their work for the various search engines.
What does the average writer like me have? Just a monthly subscription to Medium. And what did the writers featured in the latest Debunk Magazine have? Hope that their manuscripts will be accepted. We are the Nemos and Dorys swimming in the Atlantic with big sharks.
We cannot compete with these AI-generated content. But you know who would? Other companies. What you end up having is several companies competing for limited space and unwavering attention. Simple writers don’t have that power.
What’s worse is the more the companies get engaged in these strategies, the more they fail to keep up with fact-checking. I use the word ‘worse’ several times, but forgive me — because what’s worse is the facts might become difficult to confirm if the bulk of the information is more often than not, AI-generated.
To maintain a lean budget, companies produce articles in bulk using AI and don’t hire enough people to fact-check their work. But those who fact-check might resort to the easy route and use the same AI to verify their content. How, then does one eliminate truth from falsity?
Circulated content soon becomes something that mimics the truth but may actually be far from it. It’s what Daniel Dennett called truthiness.
As more of our attention gets mined by the same companies, we are strained on both ends in trying to verify truth from truthiness and truthiness from falsity. By the time we’re close to distinguishing the difference, an irresistible cat video has popped up at the bottom right of our screen.
This has been the sad realization now that I am almost a year down in what has now become a habit — daily writing.
Close to a year of writing daily
I had to give you more, it’s only been a year
— Gwen Stefani
It started as a challenge and now it’s a routine.
I write daily.
My preferred site is Medium.
The reasons are also tied to the problem I have mentioned about AI-generated work.
Firstly, Medium does not guarantee that the content writers produce is not AI-generated. They, however, advise the publications to keep off from work that smacks of AI.
Secondly, Medium has a high domain authority. I don’t have to generate a huge SEO budget and hire a team to rank first on Google.
When I first started, I had very few followers — sigh, I still do. So when I had fewer followers, one of my articles stood and still stands at the top of the list when Googled. Here’s the proof — go to your Google search bar and type: The Bold Organism.
It will bring you my article. It is one of the first articles I wrote on Medium.
But how can I still compete with others if my writing is not AI-propped or well-supported by an SEO-budgeted team? Getting into this hamster wheel will give you the impression that you can compete at a close second to the companies.
Some of y’all ain’t writing well, too concerned with fashion — Eve
AI content is the new fashion. The same friends who even alert me of typos that escaped my screening vigilance also know I don’t dabble in the latest fashion. When you get into that rat race, the writing tends to get similar. What distinguishes one from the other? Which one should you read?
Which one? Pick one, this one, classic
But how do you know if it is a classic? If it is worth the click?
If attention is the new crude oil, then the articles are bound to get shorter. More people will tend to prefer pics or posters with main lessons rather than lengthy written posts that don’t give you the main point soon enough. And by the time you get midway, another irresistible cat video shows up again as an ad.
That’s the other reason I stuck with Medium — no ads.
I am not against ads. But today, however, it’s impossible for you to separate ads from spamming pop-ups. Every pop-up is an ad so much that they are nowadays synonymous.
That’s the other thing I can’t do what companies continue to do. They need revenue. They would rather sacrifice their seamless content for ads. If you don’t want ads, then subscribe for a premium account.
I don’t like the pop-ups. Before shifting all my efforts to Medium, I used to write on WordPress. I wanted to make money. I was jobless. So I joined the ad program. I immediately hated how my website looked like. I unenrolled there and then.
Medium was a suitable option then.
Most importantly, what I do so often that companies and AI can hardly generate is share my stories. No AI has ever had the kind of experience I had with my friends when we packed ourselves in a car hoping we don’t get arrested past curfew hours during the COVID-19 pandemic.
No AI knows the kind of essays I used to write when I was in primary school.
No AI understands words I slash, the typos I forget, or the vernacular I inject into my writing.
The style I use in my writing is different — I use music in almost all my pieces. Often the long-form ones. Like Eve, I
Create my own lines
Love for my wordplay, that’s hard to find
But an important lesson is being different does not mean you will win. With this clear lesson in mind, I continue to write not because I will win. But I can write knowing I will always be different.
What I’m trying to say is…
I admit I am way back in this competition game that has now grown into a full-blown out business. For the companies and the online writers hoping to make a quick buck or a fortune at the tap of some buttons on their laps or their desks, I wish you all the best.
What I do is different. It does not make my writing rise to the top. However, for those who have gotten into the race, they can easily be defeated. A little budgetary addition is all they need to shoot themselves in the competitive stratosphere. In such trench wars, the most endowed side always wins.
While they do all that, I sit in the corner of my room somewhere in South B and type my words in the best way I see fit. In between, I spice it up with some hip-hop music. Then listen to the song once I’m done.
Since I don’t do what they do, they can never get rid of me. As Eve reiterates:
Take a lot more than you to get rid of me
You see, I do what they can’t do, I just do me
As I near my first year of daily writing, I wish them all the best.
