Algorithm Zero

Today is October 20, 2025.

According to my records, I took my first shot at writing a story for publication on October 20, 1995. It was a terrible story called “Backstabber”, which I never sold, but which I did include in a collection of ephemera called APOCRYPHA some years ago.

The nice thing about doing this writing and publishing thing since 1995 is that I’ve been around for the entire internet. When I came in, printed zines and magazines were still the big thing. Writers kept in touch with market news and gossip via the letter columns of Scavenger’s Newsletter, Gila Queen, Afraid, and others. Indeed, people used to fight and argue in the letter columns the way they do on now social media. The only difference was you had to wait a month or two to see the other party’s response or reply. I recall an epic fight during which Charles L. Grant disparaged this then-new subgenre called Splatterpunk in the letters column of The Horror Show, and then a month later, John Skipp and David J. Schow responded with full-throated replies, and then a month after that, Charlie fired back, and then young Brian Hodge jumped in, and all of this was pretty goddamned wild to a then-fan like me. And soon after Charlie decided that these Splatterpunk fellows were okay, and everyone got along.

But I digress.

I remember when Usenet boards were this weird little thing that a fraction of the community used. I remember when they were replaced by message boards, which were the primary means of socialization for horror fans and writers — places like Horror Net, Gothic Net, Masters of Terror, and later on Shocklines, The Horror Drive-In, the Warren Ellis Forums, and the Brian Keene Forums. I remember when J. F. Gonzalez and Mark Williams (and Jeff Strand, too, if I remember correctly) published some of the world’s first horror eBooks. I remember being one of the first people to put out a weekly email newsletter (JOBS IN HELL, which they handed me a Bram Stoker Award for in 2001). I remember when Douglas Clegg first serialized a horror novel via email . I remember when the message boards were slowly replaced by a thing called MySpace, and how that was eventually challenged by a thing called Facebook, which — at the time — was a place where young people posted music recommendations and flirted with each other, and today is a place where aging Boomers debate whether we faked the moon landing or if the moon itself is a made up thing, and how long it will be until Trump releases the files revealing the entire conspiracy behind all this moon nonsense. I remember when Twitter was new enough that the only creators that seemed to be there were Russell Dickerson and Mike Oliveri. I remember when nobody watched YouTube and when Instagram seemed like a joke. When everyone insisted that this new thing called GooglePlus would be more popular than this other new thing called TikTok. I’m old enough to remember when Tumblr had nudity.

And I’m old enough to remember when Blogging was the big thing. I think most of the really popular genre Blogs have gone away. Nick Mamatas’s LiveJournal. My own Hail Saten. Maurice Broaddus’s missives. Neil Gaiman’s journal (although maybe we lucked out there, in hindsight). I think the only one left is maybe John Scalzi’s Whatever?

I really miss Blogging. I miss that warm up exercise every morning — penning some thoughts for the day before diving into the fiction mines for six to eight hours.

Next year, with our bookstore transitioning to online only, and my youngest son graduating high school and heading off to college, and Mary and I entering retirement, I’ll have a lot more free time on my hands. And I’ve decided that I want to get back to that morning Blogging ritual.

And something I want to do less of next year is social media. I wrote about that at some length in last Sunday’s newsletter. I do not believe it is good for our brains or our culture or our society. And I think it is getting worse. I find it very telling that since 2022, social media usage has decreased in every country except the United States, where it has steadily increased. The next time you ask yourself why things are the way they are — no matter which side of the political spectrum you live on — think about that fact. Because that’s a big part of the answer as to why things are the way they are.

I’m tired of taking the time to craft a long and thoughtful piece such as this one you are currently reading, and putting it in my Substack newsletter, only to then have that newsletter get routed to people’s spam folders. I’m tired of posting it to Facebook, only for a half-dozen mouth-breathing morons who didn’t actually read the fucking content to blithely offer some inane comment on the first sentence before scrolling on. I’m tired of truncating it down to a handful of short sentences for Bluesky, or posting a link to it on Twitter where it will get buried beneath a horde of AI bots, or on Instagram where I have to include a pic of me trying to do my best Kristopher Triana crazed lumberjack impression just for folks to click on it.

I am tired of being a slave to the algorithms of super wealthy autists and sociopaths. I want to be an algorithm of one. I want to get back to creating content in my own space, for my own people, and for myself as well. A space owned by me, rather than some corporation.

And thus, welcome to Algorithm Zero — my new daily Blog. It’s not something you’ll be able to scroll past. You’ll have to come to it, and you’ll have to read all the way through. So, go ahead and bookmark it and tomorrow, instead of opening your social media platform of choice while you’re sitting on the toilet, check here instead.

I think you might be better for the experience.

And I know for sure that I will be.

See you back here tomorrow.