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I started a newsletter over at MOUNTOWN.SUBSTACK.COM and this was what was sent out to the small amount of people who were freely subscribed on November 30th, 2024 — AND — I figured I might as well make a blahg version of that newsletter over here, for those who don’t want to click over to Substack and/or for those who’d rather just stay where they already are (also… maybe I’ll pick up some random SEO traffic by having the newsletter readable on my HI54.BLOG / MOUN.TOWN domains as well).

But enough with the jibber jabber… here’s more jibber jabber:

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Back on ‘9/5 (In The US…Eh?) Day’ (aka: September 5th), I announced that I was going to be running a “DIY blogging exploratory committee” during the #LocalAreaElectionSeason that was set to pass through the Highway 95/A area in the fall of 2024 (ie. Kimberley by-election in September, BC provincial election in October, US presidential election in November).

Well, November has dang near come and gone at the time of me writing this sentence AND… it’s already a winter wonderland around these parts:

So let’s just jump straight to the main point (for once) and say it in a bolded heading font:

Due to a Continued Imbalance in 'Effort > Engagement/Support’ I Will Be Switching to a Monthly Newsletter in December 2024.

When I first started this MOUNTOWN SIGNALS Substack — which was back on August 1st, 2023 — I originally started by attempting to put a newsletter together EVERY week (ie. a “THE WEEKLY EH?!”… which was something I had previously experimented with doing as a recurring blog and/or social media post for quite some time).

However, back then, I was also attempting to run a more involved & functional version of The 95EH Events Calendar, which is a local area events calendar that freely aggregates Kimberley AND Cranbrook area events into a single calendar (which I still currently run a more scaled-down version of over at: moun.town/events) — AND AT THE SAME TIME — I was also hoping to engage local businesses & organizations (and people) in a way to help support the human work that goes into keeping a diy community project like 95EH going through an idea (that I still think is pretty decent) called “Mutually Beneficial Employment”.

Unfortunately, I was only ever able to entice 5 local businesses/organizations to sign up for ‘MBE’ before I had to pull the plug and “get a job” (ie. after sending out a bunch of digital feelers & follow-ups and getting minimal engagement about the idea on Instagram + Facebook, I decided to re-focus my attention on work that came with the bonus of increasing the ‘incoming funds’ column on my bank statement for a stretch… which, for me, ended up being online work training AI chatbots).

And if you’re thinking to yourself:

“Surley, if somebody was doing a free weekly newsletter that highlights and shouts out local area events/organizations/people, EVERY WEEK, surely something like that would be able to generate a meaningful amount of local area interest in supporting the human work that goes into it all, at least at even the most basic version of support that is possible through freely signing up for a newsletter or even just freely engaging with and showing public support on social media (especially if that same local project was also sharing other locals’ social media posts on their Facebook and Instagram feeds quite consistently for quite some time). Surely.”

Well, unfortunately (again)… that has not really been my general experience while attempting to make 95EH “happen” sustainably around the Highway 95/A area since the summer of 2016 (but I will throw my hands up and acknowledge that my experience may be mostly down to my imperfect approach not being considered the most easily agreeable/digestible — which can rub some people the wrong way, which tends to rub off on others and eventually become the general rub).

In fact, when I was running this newsletter as a weekly mailout and compiling highlights of local area events happening each week (because I was also running an events calendar for the Kimberley AND Cranbrook area) + sharing subjective thoughts on different items of “some locals’ interests” + sharing news of all of that on both Instagram and Facebook (and posting ‘an Eh a day’ over on the 95EH.CA Tumblr and creating even more content over at MOUN.TOWN), all while also signal-boosting other people’s Facebook & Instagram posts on a regular basis through “Daily EHs” & Instagram Story shares… from August 2023 to May 2024, the total subscribers that this MOUNTOWN SIGNALS newsletter was ever able to attract was 86 — which feels like a low amount of interest for the high amount of effort required to keep all of that going (which is also a hard-to-avoid sign that things aren’t connecting, whatever the interconnected reasons).

Adding on to that, after re-starting this newsletter as a bi-weekly-ish effort at the start of September 2024 — after initially shutting down the weekly newsletter back in May 2024 (see Instagram and Facebook for social engagement) and after announcing the end of The 95EH Events Calendar (again) back in April 2024 (see Instagram and Facebook for social engagement) — now that I have come to the end of my self-assigned commitment to put out a twice-a-month newsletter with this mailout, I can also confirm that I have only managed to gain 25 more subscribers to this MOUNTOWN SIGNALS newsletter since “re-launching” three months ago (making the current grand total of subscribers to this newsletter… 101).

And it’s not that I think that having 101 people signal that they are (sometimes) interested in hearing what I have to say/share is something to stick my nose up at — because I don’t think that and that is not what I am trying to communicate here (so “THANK YOU!” to all 101 of you… or whatever the number ends up being after this post makes its rounds 😅).

In fact, I often tell people that if you can get just a handful of people to genuinely connect with something you’ve created yourself, that connection can be more than creatively fulfilling enough (it’s just that your landlord is likely going to feel differently when rent time comes along and they need help paying off their mortgage again… which seems like it happens every month tbh amirite 😉 jk not jk).

I also strongly believe that “the work” still counts (and all of the effects that can come from the work being actually done are a lot more “real” than if the work didn’t get done at all), even if, in the reality of how the world currently works, not enough people actually found it worth their finite time/money to support the work in a way that makes rational sense to keep plugging away at it (at least not in the same ways). This is especially true if continuing to do “the work” will negatively affect one’s ability to survive comfortably and sustainably (which uncompensated work often eventually does).

Multiple things can be true at the same time.

That is why, 101 free subscribers, after all the work, is a very hard number, after all the years, to show oneself when trying to justify the amount of time/energy that is required to keep doing the kind of work that seems to always fall in the category of:

“Good luck finding someone/anyone to support what you are doing publicly or financially (I would if I could but I can’t/don’t)… but thanks & best of luck if you keep deciding to plug away at it regardless or whatever” 🙏

But please don’t get things misconstrued… MY specific struggles to find “meaningful enough for survival” support for all of the unbillable work I choose to do through my online & irl projects is just one of the many examples of unfunded/underfunded labour being done out there in our communities, on all kinds of levels, by all kinds of people — SO — please go speak to your nearest registered and/or unregistered non-profit worker/volunteer (or anybody trying to do “creative” work or “art”) to hear about some different-but-similar struggles (if you’re not already personally familiar with this particular brand of burnout yourself).

I’m just trying to openly share my situation (because, despite what the numbers seem to say, people’s in-person opinions about most of “the work” I’ve done through 95EH are usually quite positive, which has made the signals received over the years quite mixed).

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This bummer is especially bumming when I factor in the near-0% engagement that my 95EH & HI54LOFI accounts often get on social media (and I speak from the experience of successfully running an unsuccessful “music blog” for over a decade ON TOP of my interconnected mountown experiences).

Because, if one can’t even fuel themselves off of the many types of free support that are available for people to use to freely show support for other projects/initiatives in their social networks (ie. with likes, shares, comments, clicks, etc), it doesn’t seem that there is much else to do (after a certain point of effort) but try to listen to the public-facing disengagement and focus one’s effort and intent in different ways and/or elsewhere (for example: on work that helps procure food & rent… and maybe a nice little treat every now & again).

To show how ‘sad face emoji’ it can get out there when I try to get people to click away from their devices to check out more context on their devices, the most recent newsletter I sent out (ie. the one where I attempted to write about the need for more people to realize that there are real “left” values to confidently organize around, but we first have to get better at talking/thinking openly about politics & religion), when I posted it to the 95EH Facebook page, it received a whopping ZERO likes/comments/shares from accounts that are not me.

And, according to Facebook insights, with the 95EH Facebook page having 1.3k likes and 1.5k followers, the post received only 397 views with a reach of 119. And that’s even with me sharing the post to the often volatile Kimberley Corkboard FB group (where my post drew crickets until eventually being deleted by a moderator).

And over on Instagram, the post I put together to share my November 11th newsletter achieved similar social silence, tallying up 4 likes that weren’t from me. AND IT IS IMPORTANT TO NOTE: on Instagram, this post got shown to both my 95EH account (with 1100-ish followers) AND my HI54LOFI account (also with 1100-ish followers), which, according to Instagram Insights, resulted in this post only being engaged with by 8 accounts (after achieving 629 views and reaching 192 accounts). Oof.

Combined with people who signed up to receive the newsletter directly in their inbox (of which around 69% opened, nice), AND, along with any of the other ways that people can find their way over to somebody’s newsletter these days—as of November 30th, 2024—my previous newsletter has received a total of 219 views (which inspired 1 new subscriber).

I even tried harnessing The Power Of Kitten™ — not just once, but twice — to try and draw some more eyeballs over to my newsletter (in a less “controversial” way), BUT, the overall views for the November 11th post, as well as my total newsletter subscriber count, have remained pretty flatlined (me-ow, indeed).

On the bright side, this familiar experience inspired me to create what I would classify as “a pretty decent meme, eh”… although, it should be noted, my pretty decent meme also did similarly low numbers on Instagram and Facebook (so who knows what anybody thinks is ‘pretty decent’ these days, eh).

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Of course, every social media situation is different and there are an infinite number of reasons why a post/account does not do well on the socials, locally or otherwise (especially if, like me, one doesn’t like to pay these billion-dollar corporations to “boost” posts inorganically — AND — especially if, like me, one also continues to publicly talk about topics that get one dinged by the algorithms… which also coincidentally seems to get one dinged in the minds of those with a tendency to be reactionary around the same topics that the algorithms don’t like us openly talking about).

However, not all of my newsletter posts have performed as badly on social media as my most recent one — ALTHOUGH — it definitely is not an outlier either (and I would invite anyone to go scroll through the 95EH Facebook homepage and the 95EH Instagram homepage to get a better idea of the range of typical interactions/engagement 95EH content gets).

For an example of ‘not bad’ engagement, according to Substack, my current “Top” newsletter is the one I sent out on October 8th, entitled subtly as, “To Send The Biggest Message of Change This BC Election, the Most Important Vote British Columbians Can Make is… NOT BC Conservatives" — which has amassed 548 views and inspired the sign-up of four people to the newsletter (so far).

As you can see in the stats below, when I shared this newsletter on the 95EH Facebook page, it generated more views & reach than my November 11th newsletter, HOWEVER, the interactions only went up from 6 to 8 (and some of those “interactions” are from my own accounts) — I think it is also worth noting that the only “comment” generated on Facebook was from me and that includes my share to the Kimberley Corkboard (where this seemingly “controversial” post curiously never generated ANY comments on the same Kimberley Corkboard where people tend to have strong opinions on even the littlest of things 🤔).

As you can also see from the stats above, this “DON’T VOTE BC CONS” post performed much better on Instagram than my Nov. 11th newsletter, racking up 52 more interactions and around 800 more views.

I think a lot of that “organic action” can probably be connected to the 20 comments that were left — which were a mix of positive and negative vibes (and where, of course, both the words “socialist” and “communist” were used in ways detached from their literal definitions) — although I also think that there are quite a few other factors as to why the one newsletter generated much more engagement (including the more catching first image of my “DON’T VOTE BC CONS” post, as well as simple timing, topics & etc).

But perhaps the biggest difference between how the two newsletters performed on social media is that I was able to get my “DON’T VOTE BC CONS” newsletter successfully shared to the r/kootenays group on Reddit, where the post generated 14k total views, 32 shares AND… 98 comments!

This one post helped make Reddit the 3rd biggest driver of traffic to my newsletter during the last 3-months (I also got some visits when sharing my October 23rd newsletter on Reddit), placing it ahead of the ‘clickovers’ that Facebook draws (and way ahead of the clicks that Instagram barely generates).

And this happened even though I only managed to get a few posts accepted on Reddit during this time (ie. because Reddit is a much trickier place when it comes to trying to share your own content, as it is all moderated groups that are very wary of shameless self-promotion and subjectively off-topic posts, which means the same “DON’T VOTE BC CONS” post of mine that got accepted in r/Kootenays got rejected from r/BritishColumbia — AND — my November 11th newsletter got rejected from r/Socialism but accepted on r/Substack, WHILE AT THE SAME TIME, I was able to get a David Graeber video into the r/BillSimmons group, SO… who even knows where “left” is these days, eh 🙃).

At the very least, there seems to be more “deeper than the first layer” conversations happening over on Reddit (at least compared to the Meta social alternatives) + you can also see/share actual “news” links over on Reddit (unlike on Canadian Facebook/Instagram), which makes me think that I’m going to look into spending more of my finite online “social” time over there (even if most of the people around Kimberley/Cranbrook seem to either use Facebook/Instagram or not much social media at all… but please holler at me if you’re a local area Reddit user + if anyone still reading uses BlueSky, let me know).

And on that note: I will be switching this MOUNTOWN SIGNALS newsletter to a once-a-month operation AND you can expect the next email update sometime in December (so please feel warmly encouraged to sign up below if you are not already) 👍

It would also be great if you could pass links along to anyone who you think might be able to find some value in the work that I put into this newsletter, as well as all the work that goes into 95EH.CA and MOUN.TOWN/EVENTS and THE 95EH FACEBOOK and MOUN.TOWN/RADIO and THE 95EH INSTAGRAM and HI54.BLOG and KEGG.CA and… ok, how about we just start with those for now, eh?

As for me, I’m going to do a mix of selective online/offline hibernating while I attempt to sort through the existential uncertainty that has come with, not only all of the above data (and the “data” that will come out of trying to share this information openly) — BUT ALSO — all of the below:

1. My 2009 iMac desktop—which I have been using for all of my “computer stuff/work” since the year two thousand and nine—has finally sh*t the bed for real this time (ie. the internal hard drive crashed on the week of Canadian Thanksgiving and I have not been able to fix it with my limited computer skills since). The nearest ‘Apple Official’ places to maybe get it fixed are Calgary or Creston (which require long drives from Kimberley), BUT ALSO, it’s a 2009 iMac at the end of the year 2024 and I have already not been able to update the Operating System for years (thanks, planned obsolescence). In other words, I believe the time for its replacement has long since come (although I would like to revive it enough to be able to continue using it as a retro video game machine, if that’s still possible).

2. Another reason I was delaying taking my ‘09 iMac to get it looked at by an official Apple store (or purchase a needed replacement) is that I still had a 2014 Macbook Air to use to get away with doing most of what I needed to do for online work at the moment — AND THEN — the bloody hard drive crashed on that computer the other night too!

Luckily, we recently picked up a 2015 Macbook at a good price from some garden friends — AND — even though that Macbook was given as a gift to the missus at the time, Charlie has been gracious enough to let me use her Macbook when she is not using it.

I also have an old PC laptop in my possession that belongs to a friend who moved back to the East Coast (who just launched a brand new baby daughter… congrats if your reading b’y!) — SO — I guess I also have an old PC laptop sitting in my desk drawer to use as a backup/alternate until I figure out what my next proper computer setup will be for the work I plan on doing going forward (which I also need to figure out better, as clearly demonstrated from all of the above).

So, on that note… “Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays To All!” if we do not connect before Jesus’ birthday — AND — hopefully the next time we touch base I’ll have a further update on what the plan might be going into another new year with all of the “non profitable” DIY work I tend to be drawn to!

And, in the meantime, I will sign off with this repurposed ‘Bernie meme’ that I shared on the 95EH Facebook and the 95EH Instagram nearly 3 years ago:

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Jeremy // HI54LOFI

* 95EH.CA’s Temp Intern

+ Vice President (of a garden)

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