About this blog

Oct 12, 2025

Why to blog anonymously

I want to have full liberty in selecting topics and expressing my opinions here. I don't want to self-censor, and I feel that some of my essays won't make me more employable. Like the vast majority of the population, I work for a living; I don't write for a living. That is the main reason I want to stay anonymous here.

It's not that my takes are particularly subversive or controversial. In fact, what I am advocating for is radically plain, simple, and even traditional - a turn towards more humanistic thought and life. So, don't think of anything like Mencius Moldbug; think of Camus, or anything taught in public schools around the world. But why would anyone shy away from that? We live in interesting times, when a publicly praised investor endorses Italian Futurists in a widely circulated manifesto.¹

It's a funny paradox that to remain employable, it's better not to reveal too much of independent thought or critical thinking. You would think that these are useful skills, but as the LinkedIn feed proves, it's the herd thinking that's the safest strategy nowadays. Praise cryptocurrencies yesterday, metaverse today, and AI tomorrow. Never look back on what you cheered for yesterday, only to jump straight on the bandwagon of the next fad. Don't question, just adapt, as only those who embrace change survive. Become the entrepreneur of yourself.²

However, isn't staying anonymous a form of cowardice? I don't know, I am still thinking about it. In the meantime, I want to publish something, so for now, I am writing anonymously.

Also, I am a member of the professional-managerial class (PMC)³. In this position, regardless of your exact role, and believe me, I am a low-profile person, you need to perform a certain persona nevertheless. Build your own personal brand, they say.

How should you present yourself? There are so many facets of the desired image that it would make for a full post just to name them. For starters you should feel enthusiastic about technology and whatever changes are proposed by big business. You should show yourself as an early adopter of new things, regardless of their nature or the direction they lead to. The sure way is not to think at all, while presenting yourself as a thought leader.

Still, these concerns are somehow manageable - there's a need for originality in the media landscape. The core of my fear, the thing that I feel that you, as a good PMC, should never reveal about yourself is frustration. You are supposed to be stoic: distinguish what you can affect and what you cannot. Once you encounter an issue, you should identify actionable steps to remediate it and track progress using objective measurements. Whenever you feel stuck or unhappy, reframe the situation as a problem that you can address through technical means, by following a sequence of actions you are in control of. As Catherine Liu said in some interview, one of the central skills for PMCs is affect control. Thinking about anything not directly actionable, writing about such stuff, feeling frustrated or enraged, is not exactly the best display of cold affect control.

Again, isn't it precisely the cowardly opportunism, one that I seem to feel so strongly about, to stay anonymous then? Or, rather, shouldn't I quit the PMC class altogether? Wouldn't it be a truly principled stance to become a proud class traitor? I don't know, I may consider it at some point. In the meantime, I want to publish something.

Why in two languages

I want to write some posts in Polish and others in English. I don't intend to translate between them.

While Polish is my mother tongue, my English is far from perfect. Then the question may arise - why write in English at all? Currently, I don't have many opportunities to practice the language, so that's the first reason. I read a lot in English, particularly about a pet peeve of mine - how technology develops and affects people and societies. Therefore, switching to English may make quoting some authors easier.

I am not a skilled writer in any language anyway. I will work on it, I promise.

Why now

The question can be split into two. The first question would be: why only now?

The idea of writing down some of my thoughts has been bugging me for a few years. As I mentioned, I don't feel particularly well-equipped to be a writer, so the self-doubt is a big reason for sure. There's a fear of starting too, as you have some idealized version of the things you would like to produce. You would like them to be good. At least, you would like them not to be low-quality. And what is a better way of ensuring that than not to start at all?

I hope that the following thought will help me: quantity, over long time, leads to quality. That simple, bordering on simplistic, observation sounds banal, and for sure is not true in some sentimental way some would like it to be, but it's trivially true in the sense that you cannot get better by doing nothing.

If I hesitated so long in starting the blog, another question comes up - why exactly now? Is there something happening right now in 2025?

There are so many things happening currently worldwide, many of them far more important than my struggles with technoutopianism. My annoyance with the idea of technological salvation started well before the popular tech-backlash, which I would say was already well in motion at the outbreak of Cambridge Analytica scandal in 2018. That was the moment, I mark, when even in the popular imagination the Zuckerbergs of the world were no longer regarded as technological geniuses and started being perceived as robber barons of the 21st century.

I suffered the next waves of cryptocurrencies, web 3.0, metaverse, and what else, with no writing on my side. Then came the current wave of AI in 2023. The hypothesis of the dead internet was constructed around that time. In 2025, the dead internet is no longer a theory, but a reality on many platforms, where bots create a significant portion of the content being "consumed" and commented in large parts by other bots. And that wave seems to be coming for the web itself, many publishers complaining about lack of visits on their websites due to Google introducing AI features in their web search. I've heard people on podcasts reminiscing about the old web. Imperfect, weird, quirky, created by hobbyists for hobbyists. These were times of ugly, yet personal, websites with blue Comic Sans text on a yellow background. It was colourful, it was authentic, it was fun! Over time, the web has homogenized and become commoditized. That process found its logical conclusion in generative AI, giving birth to the dead internet.

So, it's the longing for creative joy coupled with bitter disappointment, or momentarily burning rage, at what we seemingly are forced to accept as the next web, that was the direct cause of starting this blog for me. It's fair to say that while the idea of blogging was sitting in me for long, the final nudge to make it happen was generative AI. This is my little act of disobedience. At some recent moment, I finally felt like doing it right now, only if out of spite.

I hope it's clear that I don't incorporate any generative AI content on this blog. This site is low-tech and amateurish. Funnily enough, I may use here some graphics that are called "generative" in the old meaning of the world, one covered in books like Code as Creative Medium. By "generative in the old sense", I mean graphics generated by programs you wrote by yourself, it's a category that existed for at least as long as Logo existed. Logo was created for didactic purposes and many people found it very useful in attempts to inspire next generations to learn programming. But that's exactly what bothers me with any new wave of technosolutionism - they (i.e., techbros) forcefully invade any territory of human activity, silence anyone opposing them, and claim they actually invented the whole thing. On occasion, they will come up with their sophistry of "well, aren't people with pencils some sort of generative AI anyway?"

I may start sharing my drawings / paintings here as well. I need to find a way to digitize them and present them here in a pleasant form.

Why such name

The name of this blog in Polish refers to a blog posts series by Michael Sacasas called "Is this anything". I deeply admire Sacasas's Substack for its depth and breadth. I read a lot of criticism of technology. His writing stands out in that regard, that despite being unequivocally critical, it always leaves me calm and hopeful. It's a rare trait.

I think over time he incorporated his "Is this anything" series into his larger "The Convivial Society". You can see the traces of the old name in a few places, here's one of them: The Results are In.

On quotes

It might be a bit embarrassing: I am a huge fan of noting down quotes. I am intuitively a bit suspicious of collecting as an activity, I am afraid that material belongings brings some potential of corruption with them. Still, I have to admit: I am a collector of quotes. I like them because they provide an entry point to thoughts I had several years ago. They remind me of bits of wisdom I encountered a long time ago. They help me to get fresh perspective.

Therefore, I would like to warn that I may overuse quotes on this blog. Who knows, maybe the main reason to write anything is just to be able to finally share some of them?

Yes, I do have a strong need to end this post with quote. I believe that one by Rainer Maria Rilke will do great:

I am so afraid of people's words.
Everything they pronounce is so clear:
this is a hand, and that is a house,
and beginning is here, and the end over there.

Their meaning frightens, their mockery-play
and their claims to know what's coming, what was;
no mountains thrills them now; their estates
and their gardens abut directly on God.

I warn; I ward them off. Stay back.
It's a wonder to me to hear things sing.
You touch them, and they stultify.
You are the very destroyer of things.

1: I am talking about Marc Andreessen’s Techno-Optimist Manifesto published in 2023, which within the section "Patron Saints of Techno-Optimism" includes Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, the author of The Futurist Manifesto. Andreessen quotes a fragment of The Futurist Manifesto in his own:

Beauty exists only in struggle. There is no masterpiece that has not an aggressive character. Technology must be a violent assault on the forces of the unknown, to force them to bow before man.

If such poetics makes you uneasy, it's for a good reason, as Italian Futurism influenced another ideology of the 20th century...

2: Byung-Chul Han's The Burnout Society:

Today’s society is no longer Foucault’s disciplinary world of hospitals, madhouses, prisons, barracks, and factories. It has long been replaced by another regime, namely a society of fitness studios, office towers, banks, airports, shopping malls, and genetic laboratories. Twenty-first-century society is no longer a disciplinary society, but rather an achievement society (Leistungsgesellschaft). Also, its inhabitants are no longer “obedience-subjects” but “achievement-subjects.” They are entrepreneurs of themselves.