There are simple things like truth, news, and gossip. And that’s a big part of what I’m doing here. I feel the stuff I have has value and encourage others to share things they find valuable.
But I wanted to write down, at least this once, some of the reasons I have for publishing beyond the factual stuff I’ve already put in print.
1. Performative. This is in some ways a parody of the news we consume and the people we admire. The ultimate question of a lot of my work is, even where corporate malfeasance is legal or ostensibly legal, is it a good idea? And similarly, even though all that I do and write about is legal, is it a good idea? I have difficulty with performative acts in the traditional sense that we know them. Best I ever did was a silent role in the Clinton Hill Halloween Show. But through the keyboard that has been an assistive technology to me my whole life, I am able to continue this performance for as long as it feels right. It extends to my social media activities, where I’ve planted several seeds to see if one grows. For this to work, I had to come to a place of not caring how the world sees me. Only a special few like you will ever know that this thing I do is, at times, an act.
2. Social experiment. Can the decentralized court reporters work together enough to tilt things in their favor versus the very centralized money and power represented by the big box brigade? Right now, corporate consolidation means the money in this field will be running through fewer hands as time goes by. If those fewer hands don’t choose you, it might be the end of your career — at least that’s the direction we’re headed. And with those fewer hands eliminating our jobs in favor of digital, that means fewer of our students will have the opportunities we had. Simply put, if I carry on knowing that what we’re doing will ultimately end in better outcomes for our students and future reporters will have the same opportunities I had, will others follow? Will enough follow that it makes a difference? My bet is on us. As part of the social experiment, on a more personal note, I also get to see the lengths people will go to ignore those of us willing to admit to having mental health issues.
3. Propaganda awareness. By using propaganda techniques to tell the truth I hope to open minds to the different ways corporations and governments manipulate populations. This also encourages the question, “is manipulating people into believing truth wrong?”
Bonus points if you can point out ways that your employer has propagandized you. For example, in a workplace I was a part of, we were referred to as the office “family.” I bought into this completely. I soon learned that “family” in the context of work means nothing. It was a good lesson to learn despite how much I yearn to trust others.
4. Side income. There are people that pay for my work and I am forever grateful to each of them for it. But again, this is, to some degree, performative. When people use money as an excuse to screw other people, “it’s just business.” So if I make it a side business to screw the corporations screwing you, “it’s just business.”
5. Lawsuit deterrent. As someone close to my heart says, I’m a prolific writer. There are hundreds of Stenonymous posts. Anyone that thinks they’re going to threaten me is only going to open my work up to more exposure and cost themselves a lot of money, and I take pride in that. The thought of creating billable hours for lawyers just brings joy to my heart. Alas, it’ll never happen, because nobody is stupid enough to fall for it. Naegeli almost was. In that same vein, the research I’ve done as far as unionization means that the larger companies will probably never bother me. If it became more common knowledge that reporters could do the same job and make more money, that would be very, very bad for their bottom lines.
6. Good cop, bad cop. Given a choice between dealing with the nice, sweet court reporters that let themselves be bullied into compliance with whatever big boxes want or dealing with Stenonymous for literally the rest of their careers, companies might just treat court reporters better just so they can keep the status quo. If they treat you all bad enough, the chance of you looking to someone like me for solutions goes up. I realized how much I was able to “move the needle” of this field with about $10,000. With relatively little buy in, we’ll be on top. Guarantee it*.
7. Workers Rights history. People don’t know how bad things really were. Not everybody, anyway. Workers and employers had armed standoffs in the past. This lampooning that I do is a revival of age-old traditions of nonviolent action to achieve political and social change. This is in the context of a time where greater publications like More Perfect Union are sprouting up in defense of the working person. It’s really an exciting time to be alive viewed through the lens of workers rights and the emerging unionization efforts across various industries. I’ve written before that in my world union was a dirty word until I started reading, researching, and learning about it. For example, a lot of people think union contract means lowest common denominator. But you can make a union contract whatever you want and can get people to agree to. If we successfully unionized a big box agency office, the contract could include ratios for digital v steno. That’s right. Digital could be contractually capped. What’s behind a contract? The force of law. You could also write a contract that rewards merit / hard work. The fact that so many people disparage unions without ever knowing these things or bothering to think about them turns me right off. But I digress. My overall point is just one moment in workers rights history. And if my following grows, it might grow to be many moments.
In my view, social change to a more worker friendly society is required. When money is in the hands of the working class, we start businesses and create jobs through demand for goods and services. When it’s in the hands of the banks and so forth, they kind of trade the money amongst themselves in that high-end billionaire economy. So money in working hands gets shared upward and downward. Money in JPM Chase’s “wallet” stays in its wallet or gets loaned to big oil. As awareness increases that the takers of society have taken too much, perhaps the givers of society will realize that they need to take some back if they are to continue giving. And of course I’ll concede that givers and takers can be defined differently than how I’m using it here. But at the end of the day if you have people whose mantra is “I want millions/billions of dollars” versus people who “just want to live a decent life”, the ones who want the millions are going to steamroll the good lifers and extract — take — from their economy all they can before moving on to the next population. The only thing you can do to avoid having all the money sucked from your ecosystem is fight back. It doesn’t have to be a physical fight. Look at the Stenonymous performance. Big brand names in the business abandoned the Speech-to-Text Institute rather than deal with a blog on the internet. That’s power. And my point to you is that you have that same power. Let it manifest in its own special way.
That sucking of the ecosystem is more or less what has happened in our case. The corporations have squeezed as much as they can. We’re working for a fraction of what they’re charging. It’s still not enough. Now they move to a population of digital court reporters to squeeze them. So I’ve done my part to preserve our history in a way that no organization has had the guts to do.
8. Government accountability. I was shocked to learn just how ineffective law enforcement is when it comes to false claims by businesses. I’m pretty sure most of America would be, on some level, surprised by some of the things I’ve seen and documented. If ever this work gets attention, the government’s inaction is why jobseekers were allowed to be defrauded. And if people in government feel embarrassment over letting thousands of people be defrauded in plain sight, then so be it. Perhaps they’ll help the next thousand or so people that come across such a situation. We are special. But our situation is not so special. Our situation is happening to many, many working people, including doctors. If we fight and win, we become a blueprint for others to follow.
9. Brand recognition. One of the most valuable things I learned about in continuing education was building a brand. More people know about Christopher Day and the Stenonymous brand every day. The bigger the brand gets, the more likely I’ll be able to do something big with it. Even the negative attention ends up being worth it in the end. I regret that we’ve structured society in such a way. But I’m willing to do what has to be done to make a difference in this world. Whether that difference is a small part of the world, such as our market, or something grander, makes little difference to me. At the end of the day, I guess I’m a writer, and the world has become just another thing to write with.
*The words “guarantee it” were part of a propaganda technique. Comment if you spotted it.
Enjoy your Independence Day. Remember the words of FTC Chair Lina Khan. “…you don’t want an autocrat of trade in the same way that you don’t want a monarch.”
Although, perhaps given the Supreme Court’s recent decision to give the president immunity for all official acts, we do indeed want a monarch.
Perhaps we are no longer the America that I was born into.
Then again, it was the same for everyone ever born. Countries, kingdoms, and populations changed around them.
Humanity endures.