Goodbye, 2024. Musing: The Dream

Stenonymous releases December 2019 to December 2024 viewer and visitor stats

Over half a decade ago I was told by multiple people that nobody would ever read my writing.

Over the last 750 posts, I proved ’em all wrong.

I have to tell you, whatever you want to do with yourself, just do it. Have fun. Don’t let other people talk you out of it unless it’s hurting yourself or others. Maybe you won’t be rich or famous, but “you do you” is wildly fulfilling. Of course, I acknowledge I write from a place of privilege. I have the time to “do me.” A lot of people don’t have the luxury. Overworked, underpaid people of all stripes.

You already know one of the reasons I write is for them. Every ounce of notoriety I gain is a step toward having the power to make a difference someday. It may be a lifelong project never fulfilled. But the same way I’m telling you to dare to dream, I tell myself, because I believe deeply in the Pygmalion Effect. Dreams can, in their own way, manifest into reality. In the words of William Blake, “what is now proved was once only imagined.” This is a part of human psychology. I’d bet money it’s how we’ve come so far as a species. As we learned from Martin Luther King, Jr., sharing dreams are a fundamental necessity to advancement.

And wow, do I have wild dreams.

One of my most recent dreams, I was one of privileged few who could have any one wish granted. In the dream, many used their wish for wealth, power, immortality. I deeply sympathized with these wishes. I thought of all the self-serving things I could wish for. But I came to a decision that my wish would be to end all suffering. A great deal of the dream was spent brainstorming the perfect wording. I wanted wording that would end all suffering without some terrible consequence, such as the end of existence. I awoke saddened that I never found the right words. It was in many ways familiar, as I have often agonized over the best way to “write for good”, sometimes taking liberties that risk repulsing the audience.

This is not to say I have my head in the clouds. I know the danger of being too entrenched in big-picture thinking, same as any human. But what of the danger of never engaging in the thought that there is a world larger than my own? Could I just tell myself I am living the dream without ever fearing that I might wake from it to find that I am chained to a bed by apathy, greed, burnout, and hatred? And what if the day comes where I realize I could’ve been a part of helping everyone live the dream, but for my own apathy? These are the kinds of things we’re all given just moments to ponder in our busy lives. Does that make them less important?

I wish all of you a happy and healthy 2025.

Words Warp the World — You Can Too!

Obligatory mention, we’ve had guest writers Chris DeGrazio & Deneé Vadell, as well as Cassandra Caldarella, over the last week. This is more or less why I built Stenonymous. A sharing platform. A blog for all our collective knowledge and ideas uninhibited by the politics of the field. If you have something to share, reach out to me about getting connected as a contributor or republishing your event information. I may ask for edits or more information if something is particularly likely to get me sued, but otherwise, you’ve got an ally to help spread your message. This includes corporations, associations, and all of you reading.

This is all written keeping in mind that the people that contribute to this platform with information, money, or time are an integral part of the success and “blueprint” discussed.

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Many speak through me as “Stenonymous sources,” and this helps us communicate ideas that could be used against individuals. The corporate climbers of the profession routinely copy and paste messages to their buddies in agencies so that agencies can retaliate against freelancers. This is not unlike what the cowards at Naegeli tried on me and other court reporters. Companies know they have a great deal of power over “solo practitioners,” and they’ll put their knee on the neck of any one individual whenever it’s convenient. And this is horrifying for freelancers. There are like 5 national companies in the United States. Despite the disgusting state of statistics on our field, Veritext reportedly has 16% of the revenue in this field and is the largest, so let’s just assume the others have carved out at least 4% each. 16 + 4 * 4 = 32. You don’t like big boxes? You could be locked out of 32% of the field’s revenue. Think about that next time you tell someone not to work for them. Think about what would happen if roughly 30% of the field tried to scramble to all the other agencies for work. Think about how difficult it would be to gain the cooperation of around 30% of reporters to even do that (accepting that that percentage may be, in actuality, higher or lower. My bet? Higher.) Our brains love easy solutions. Reality does not. There is no easy solution to “5 ‘people’ control a third of the industry that is my livelihood.”

But through me, Stenonymous sources are able to talk to you.

Insight shared from a Stenonymous source on the east coast of the United States.

Sometimes people want to be credited, or partially credited.

Insight shared with Stenonymous by Ashley, a Steno Student

Then, of course, I share my own insights, based on the very many interviews, conversations, and analyses I’ve had over the years.

Christopher Day’s musing on the Milgram experiment as it relates to modern leadership

Christopher Day’s musing on the confidence of people who are wrong.

When I was a young man, there was this debate of talk v. action. More or less it boiled down to “what you write or say online means nothing. It’s what you do that matters.” For a long time, this put me in a box of not speaking out and accepting whatever was done to me by others in the profession, rightly or wrongly. Because talking about it didn’t matter. It was only my actions that mattered. Right? After all, those older and wiser than me believed it. I’ve come to learn that talking matters a lot. Talking is the first step to action. We combine with likeminded people and come up with new information, solutions, and things that enhance our lives.

If nothing else, words change the framing of things we see and experience, thereby changing the way we think about those things, and consequently changing our actions. I’ve seen shared reality talked about in the sense of close relationships. Now imagine that in a wider, professional sense. When we shared the “reality” that the shortage was impossible to solve, things felt very hopeless. What was the point in recruiting? It wasn’t until well after I published my findings that the STTI Bloc had intentionally framed the issue to look as bleak as possible so that stenographers would give up that the National Court Reporters Association admitted Ducker’s report was outdated through STRONG and an NCRA president called it debunked. It wasn’t until after I called out the NCRA for its behavior that it released the white paper I had contributed to. It wasn’t until after I documented the Speech-to-Text Institute’s anticompetitive behavior that it got sued and shut down its website. It wasn’t until after I started publishing about the rates in New York that copy rates started to go from $0.25 to $1.00 and beyond. It wasn’t until after I spoke out against the shoddy reporting of Victoria Hudgins that the hit pieces stopped. Yeah, you can throw shade on me and say my writing and work didn’t do any of that. And you’ll even find people that agree with you.

Stenonymous.com shares a text demonstrating spitballer mentality.

But at a certain point it’s just denialism by the doomers of our profession that crave being right. “The golden age of court reporting is over.” “Tipping points are hard.” “Digital isn’t going away.” Repeated over and over by people that don’t know what they’re talking about, warping the world closer and closer to hopelessness and apathy. Perhaps we can learn something by examining the time that ChatGPT made up fake case law for a lawyer who foolishly relied on it. It’s trained off of our printed ideas, realities, and beliefs, and it can be a great asset. It can also confidently spout nonsense. At 33, I truly believe that this is a part of what makes us human. We mostly all have the capacity to be confidently wrong or unsurely correct. It’s no wonder that tools that study us pick up our same habits.

This is also very much why I take such a hard stance against propaganda meant to mislead people. It inspires them to be compliant rather than be their own people with their own ideas. What if I had simply complied with the groupthink of belief in the stenographer shortage and the futility of it all? My bet is that our median pay would fall faster. Who would that benefit? All the “people” telling you that your job is obsolete. All the “people” telling others that your job is obsolete:

Digital reporter reaches out to Stenonymous about becoming a stenographer.

NOTE: People is in quotes because “corporations are people.” This makes some sense in theory because groups of people should not lose their rights simply because they form a corporation, but in practice it’s twisted to offer more rights to corporations than people through their consolidated power (money). Succinctly, I accept the reality of the law we live under, but I strongly disagree with its everyday application.

Words are a game changer. And I genuinely feel I’ve proven that for anyone willing to explore what I’ve done. But what I’ve done is also a blueprint that tells you exactly how powerful you are. It doesn’t have to be related to court reporting. Any issue that is important to you can be given life if you are brave enough to talk about it and find others who will assist. That is a message I want to share with the world because my whole life has been dominated by people going on and on about how nothing can ever change because things have always been done a certain way, then followed by things being changed by those daring enough to change them, for better or worse. Political, family, social, and professional issues all silenced by “well, what can you do?” (🤷🏻‍♂️🤷🏻‍♂️🤷🏻‍♂️) In many situations in life, there is someone that stands to gain from your apathy. As we learned from Star Wars, they win by making you think you’re alone. They win by making you believe they hold all the cards. These are concepts that have existed for at least a thousand years wielded against you, often by people with money or power.

“I may be only one person, but I can be one person who makes a difference.” Vadra Francene, Age 10, Seen at a Disney World attraction

And to those that would make my fellow reporters feel they are alone, just know that your power over them has an expiration date. It turns out that reminding people again and again that they are powerful and that their thoughts and feelings are valid is terrifyingly effective at countering your power play. It turns out that when you tell people straight up “I will use my influence to make things better for all of you,” people start paying attention and contributing. It turns out that as soon as people realize that my neurodiversity apparently predisposes me to being more honest than neurotypical people, their natural, understandable bias against me being “weird” fades and they begin to trust.

Stenonymous statistics as of December 10, 2023.

STAR called for unity. Funny how the digital reporters are realizing that I’m all about unity, and they’re ready to make their voices heard too:

Digital Reporter Shares Field Insights with Stenonymous

Digital Reporter Shares Field Insights with Stenonymous – Verification Pending As of Publication.

We are everyday people. As James McAllister said the other day: We Are Power!

And this platform continues to thrive thanks to your…

Addendum:

12/14/23, a reporter mentioned to me that it’s possible the “digital reporter,” that passed me the information in the ending sequence is actually a bot. Upon review of the profile, it’s possible this is the truth, as it contains very little public information and seems to be a newer profile. I’m uncertain why a bot would come into my network to talk about issues with digital court reporting. But if I’ve learned anything over the last few years, it’s that anything is possible.

I subsequently re-examined my private messages with this person and if it is a bot it is incredibly convincing. There were concerns about anonymity among other things.

How 60 Stenographers Changed Reality

After unprecedented articles exposing the bad behavior of corporations in our field like US Legal and Verbit, with help from Protect Your Record Project, We were able to secure nearly $4,000 in donations from about 60 stenographic court reporters and stenographic reporting firms across the country. That’s an average of about $67 a reporter. All donations, big and small, have contributed to this moment. Advertising campaigns have been launched to facilitate consumer and public awareness via Facebook and Twitter. Many court reporters have shared the posts and/or tagged local state and women’s bar associations. If this is something you want to become a part of, it’s a great time to jump in and like or share the posts on the Stenonymous Facebook page or my Twitter. This publicity is getting people asking the important questions.

I must have been excited. I couldn’t even spell low cost.

Just for a recap, we got US Legal to admit to not using Sourcebook / PRO Link to recruit despite its contention that the stenographer shortage is impossible to solve. How can one make the claim something is impossible to solve in good faith when one has not tried to solve it? It’s consumer fraud at its finest and it’ll grow increasingly harder for them to dance their way out of it as more people know it’s happening.

We also exposed that Verbit, a company that misrepresents itself as being New York based and had posted family court deposition audio to the internet. I have a source that states the audio issue was known about prior to my investigation into it, but it didn’t get taken down until after the publication of my blog post. Stenographers, you did that!

When we speak up, people are forced to react.

It’s also notable that for all their money and “power,” the corporations have given us more valuable information. They are guarding an empty fort. I’m probably one of the easiest people on the internet to find and email, and they haven’t bothered to threaten me with a cease and desist letter. They have not bothered to do much of anything at all. Their strategy is seemingly to ignore the situation and hope that we cannot articulate these issues to the media, the public, and associations of lawyers. Their strategy is seemingly to hope that we are summarily dismissed without thought or question. Their strategy is to hope we declare mission accomplished and stop kicking down the gates of that empty fort.

Well, we have seen firsthand how that will work out for them. How well were things going for us when we sat idle hoping things would be okay? Compare that to what happened when 0.2% of this field stood up and said “no!” No, you cannot take our jobs with your inferior product. No, you cannot scapegoat digital reporters. No, you cannot lie about our shortage. No, you cannot post people’s proceedings on the internet to train your offshore transcribers and get away with it! If 60 of us can do that, what are 27,000 of us capable of? This field could afford to pay an advocate like me for nearly two decades with a one-time payment of $67. Heaven help whoever’s talking impossible shortage if we ever secure that much money.

Our strategy? Part one was to show all of you your own power. Part two has two prongs. One, we must continue to apply this social pressure so that the companies stop behaving badly or fold under the incredible weight of their own incompetence. It’s clear they know nothing about the field they insinuate having expertise in. Two, this pressure and publicity will bring people to stenographic court reporting. Young men feel lost? Here’s a direction. Caption advocates don’t like autocraptions? Time to make friends.

Stenographers aren’t perfect either, but ASR has such wacky ranges of accuracy that we outmatch it every time. We can help these people and we need not be shy about letting them know!

The publicity is a big thing. In the next ten years we could easily double or triple the size of this field and start expanding into new markets. Why not? Humans like being listened to. There’s an obvious human need to be heard. Computers can’t do what we do. What is business but profiting off of human need? What is court reporting but our quest to memorialize what others have to say? Even the grimmest view of our field, that only maybe 10% of the population can do what we do, means that there are over 30 million people in the United States that can learn this skill. Look how many thousands of people stenographic reporting has gone in front of already. And this movement has only just started.

Four days did that. People haven’t even had the weekend to see our stuff yet.

Four days of ads done. Now we’ve booked 50 more.

Try to remember prior to this week what our reality was. “Nothing we can do.” “Impossible.” “A dying profession.” “An industry ripe for disruption.” That changed because we willed it to change. If you have ever doubted your own power, I urge you to stop, reassess what’s not working, and push for the things that matter to you. Push to change the things people claim cannot be changed; 60 brave reporters have just shown you they are wrong. History is filled with all sorts of winners and losers, including winners that beat overwhelming odds. If you, reader, allow others to dictate to you what your chances of victory are, you are already halfway to losing, and you have a choice to win.

If you would like to support the campaigns going now, take to Twitter and Facebook and start directing news people, legal professionals, and bar associations to my articles. If you would like to contribute financially to the advertisement campaigns running, please feel free to donate to my PayPal at ChristopherDay227@gmail.com, Venmo at Christopher-Day-141, and Zelle at my email or 917 685 3010. As this continues to grow, I will look into advertising in other media so that our message makes the largest impact possible.

Of course, to our beloved corporations, you too have a choice. You can get in line with the industry standards or cease to exist. You can help recruit stenographers or lose all of your investors and customers to them. Trying to outsmart all of the people all of the time didn’t work out. Do the right thing, suck up your pride, and move forward with us. Let your digital reporters know that stenography is worth looking into. As we have just shown you, we will accept no less. I personally will accept no less because as I admitted to everyone, I am a product of the sad side of the industry that took from me and my colleagues until we had no more to give. I now have no compunction against taking it all back, giving it to our next generation of reporters, teaching them the tricks of the trade, and exposing to them the silence that allowed the abuse of mine. It was a simple calculation for me. I knew we had more people and better funding. I knew we had the more advanced technology. I knew that if the narrative remained “nothing we can do” my job would probably be at risk sometime in the next ten years. All I had to do was let go of the embarrassment and shame associated with saying “my industry has problems and I’m willing to be a part of the solution.”

My early career was defined by people telling me there was something wrong with me because I was not as successful as them. Now that I have success, I move into the rest of my career with a message for every entity in a position of power that thinks it’s going to use it against our young people and our newbies: We are coming for you.