Welcome to the Sin Eaters Guild Substack

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You should have received an email yesterday that gave a very brief overview of what’s going on here, but I’ll explain more now.

You’ve got these emails because you’re subscribed to the Sin Eaters Guild mailing list. If you’re not interested in getting anything but product updates etc, then hit unsubscribe from Substack or drop me an email and I’ll get you off this part of the list.

Times are currently turbo strange, I think most of us feel that in some way or another. It’s been an interesting time for me personally over the last nearly 18 months as I stepped away from running SEG full time to work in a completely new industry with a fairly vertical and constantly moving learning curve. This wasn’t a decision I took lightly, it was a necessity and I know I’ve done some things to do with SEG very badly during this period, so thank you for still being here.

One of the major challenges during this period has been navigating the constantly moving landscape for businesses who rely on online platforms for their ability to reach customers. The fact is I didn’t really have a plan I was confident in and because I was working full time elsewhere, no real bandwidth to identify my chess pieces and deploy them well. So SEG was essentially in treading water mode whilst I worked out the best way forward.

A combination of factors means that I’m now in a position to dedicate more of my free time to SEG and a path forward that takes into account the elements I believe are vital to success. Some of these are personal and some are business requirements, with a crossover in some cases.

The ability to speak freely is essential to sanity. We know that our belief in Personal Responsibility and Service is unfashionable and we can no longer trust every platform to be balanced in the way anything we produce is distributed by them. I look at actions when analysing this stuff and although, due to our legacy followings, we have no sensible options for moving away from Facebook and Instagram, we can choose to support those platforms who are at present making the right moves in my view. Two of these are Substack and Twitter. I know Elon is a dividing character to some, so here’s my pragmatic 2 pence for clarity. He’s a human and humans are flawed. They will usually ensure their own interests are met before looking outside of them, perhaps this is sensible. He’s also a businessman with ambitions. Currently a by product of Elons’ needs being met means Twitter is more aligned with free speech than Twitter used to be, this serves our needs, for the moment. Substack have become a magnet for people who are still interested in being true journalists and not people who regurgitate the party line or read out-loud on TV. Currently they’re doing the right thing by providing an outlet for independant writers. Whilst that continues I think it’s important to support it.

The World is unpredictable and SEG cannot afford to have all its eggs in one basket. It’s no longer a workable solution to have all business coming through one gateway. It’s sensible for us (and everyone, by the way) to have multiple streams of income independant of each other. As it stands today Substack and Twitter (I know there are others, and we may consider them in future) offer the ability to allow subscriptions for specific content. They allow us to support what we believe in directly, financially.

So what can you expect from the SEG Substack in particular? My intention is to split the content into two pathways, free and paid.

Free content will be anything that can be considered directly relevant to ALL of the SEG community. It will be as free of personal opinion as I can make it and will centre around anything to do with Personal Responsibility and Service, living the ethos. I’ve tried to walk a fine line throughout SEG’s existence of never trying to speak for the community, despite the core ethos of SEG being based on my worldview. We are from all backgrounds, experiences, politics, religions, beliefs etc and it’s not appropriate for me to conflate my opinion with the wider community.

Paid content will be my opinion. I’m not arrogant enough to believe my opinion is worth paying for, there are practical reasons it needs to be paywalled. The reality is that I’m still working a 9-5 day job in addition to contributing to SEG in my spare time. The professional in me (irritatingly) recognises that what I say publicly is very difficult to deconflict from my position in that business and it’s possibly they could see that as damaging. If it proved to be, that would be unfair on the other employees, so I need a way to ensure only those people who really want to receive content, receive it. I find this corporate hell incredibly frustrating, especially currently when expression of non mainstream thought is so essential. The paywall also allows a dividing line between SEG and Me. I’ll know that anyone who chooses to be a paid subscriber is capable of mentally dividing what I say - which could be mental - from the remainder of the SEG community.

What forms of content can you expect?

I’m going to suck it and see with this as I discover what’s popular and get used to the best ways to leverage the possibilities of this platform. I have the ability to distribute written, audio & video, long and short form content via Substack (this stuff is coming to Twitter too - Elon may even buy Substack, it’s been floated as an idea). For the moment free content will be primarily long and short form written pieces with some short form video along with access to the chat. The intention with the paid content will be to have access to all features, short and long form everything, along with the return of a Podcast that will include solo thoughts and getting the old Group Podcast members involved again. Good chance of guests too long term. The Podcast with Ben, Luke and Nick (sometimes) HAS to be behind the paywall or we’re not going to be able to say anything interesting without getting me fired! Methodology wise, in most cases I’m going to try and make the decision about whether something goes out free or paid after it’s written, so that there’s a fairly even spread, but I’m sure sometimes there’ll be a rant that’s obviously too suspect for free and I don’t want to infect everyone with it.

On Sunday the first paid written piece will be sent out. It was something I wrote under a pseudonym on Substack a while ago and gives a good flavour of where my head is on things currently. I’ve made a couple of pieces I wrote in 2018 available to everyone also, just so there’s more than one thing to read when you first long in, they’ll go out Saturday. I’m on holiday from the 9-5 for the next 2 weeks and I’ll use this time to test and adjust with the different features, so keep an eye out.

As ever, thank you all for your support and what you do each day to not be dicks.

Gaz