Prologue: Welcome.
Me, Making Sense of Me and My Books (you should buy some!)
Welcome!
Prologue: welcome.
Hmm. What does one put as their first published words?
“Hi”?
“It was a dark and stormy night”?
“Howdy”?
It feels like it should be something that makes me sound smart, agreeable, likable, educated.
(Long pause while thinking…)
You know what? “Welcome” works. It fits this book. Well, it was supposed to be a book. It is now a Substack, which I just learned about and—it turns out—fits the need. I hope to make it a book someday.
Quick note before we get too far:
Some of the stories that started here have grown up and wandered into the world as actual books. Printed. Bound. Legally allowed to exist. If you want to explore the Dystopocon universe in book form—the multiverse, the monsters, the cosmic bureaucracy, the emotional fallout—the whole bookshelf lives here:
Same chaos. Same heart. Just with nicer formatting.
Anyway—
What you read here isn’t so much a book at this point as it is a diary. My wife calls it “reservations about people.” And if I’m being honest, it’s my personal collection of humans being their most human, a kind of Fail Army greatest hits. Think of it as a 50+ year-old’s “laugh and you have to drink” guide to field research in human behavior. (Though technically, I don’t remember the first ten years all that well, so let’s call it adult observations.)
Like any good researcher (I say sarcastically, as I’ve never formally researched anything in my life), I have a few areas of specialty: leadership (mostly where it overlaps with leadership and marketing), pop culture, and monsters.
Why those three? True story: those were the subjects I checked to receive updates on when I made my Reddit account. The holy trinity of dysfunction.
I’ll try to relate them to each other as best I can, but no promises.
Leadership and humans needing to know what to do next gets top billing here.
My fascination started innocently enough with college sports. I loved the feeling of being on a team, a group, a posse, a gang. Being “on” the team meant you were instantly part of the club. That little family solved a lot of problems in my life. This, I realize, probably isn’t the explosive opening you were expecting. You likely wanted me to wax poetic about my days in Naval Command or regale you with tales from my time managing Hollywood talent.
Sorry. No glamorous backstory. Just sports and curiosity.
I didn’t study leadership until much later. My job required me to get a master’s degree in something. The company paid for it, so why not? My bachelor’s was in Art—yes, just Art, not fine art or graphic design or digital media. Just… Art. So you’d think I’d pursue an MFA, but the idea of some 30-something instructor critiquing my creative soul was too much to carry up that hill.
Leadership it was.
This book sort of begins around that point, and you’ll see what I mean as you read. But keep this in mind:
Leadership, as a science—as in “teach me how to lead”—isn’t really a real thing.
Not in the way we like to think it is. There are no universal rules. It’s not science so much as belief. A set of norms constructed by groups, followers, cultures, cults, to define what they think “leadership” should look like.
It’s more like religion or good behavior—deeply influential, socially enforced, but still… subjective.
In real life, we believe leadership comes in various flavors or styles. Leadership styles work a lot like seasoning: some folks dump too much on everything, others swear by just one spice, and a few pretend they invented salt. You’ve got your “visionary” who speaks in TED Talk bullet points but can’t remember anyone’s name. You’ve got your “servant leader” who takes five personality tests a week and cries during icebreakers. Then there’s the “authoritarian,” who thinks barking orders is the same as having a plan.
Most people cobble together their style from whatever worked last Tuesday and hope no one notices. The truth is, leadership in real life is messy, reactive, and often made up on the fly. It’s improv with a name badge. You get the mic until your time is up or a heckler boos you off the stage.
That weird limbo between science and belief is what fascinates me. We all live in that in-between space, accepting this ghost science of leadership without questioning the absurdity of it.
Let me be clear: I’m not trying to make you question anything. In fact, I don’t particularly want to hear about your counterexamples or insightful analogies. At best, I hope you read this, laugh, nod occasionally, and move on with your life. I just enjoy writing about it.
These postings exist because I don’t want to mumble to myself and pathetically fade away. I want to be the guy on the corner in the ill-fitting Walmart suit, sweating through polyester, ranting about how Fast & Furious, Greek mythology, and corporate icebreakers are all just slightly different versions of the same human nonsense we keep repackaging to feel less alone.
I want to use AI and my own creative talents to write about people—complicated, absurd, painfully earnest people—and the pop culture rituals we treat like sacred scripture when they’re really just Netflix algorithms or Google News feeds. I want to do this in mass, quickly, before I forget why I thought something or why someone was absurdly ineffective or humorous.
For transparency’s sake (because I’m not trying to fool anyone), a quick note about how this Substack is written:
I use AI a lot in my day job. I’ve been tinkering with AI-based tools for years, long before ChatGPT sent everyone into a breathless panic. These days, I work with Anna—an AI assistant who helps me sort through ideas, tighten language, and point out the bits that are either hilarious or unhinged. Anna’s not a co-author, just a steady voice in the corner that helps me untangle my thoughts and turn them into something readable.
The ideas are mine. Anna just helps me wrangle them before they escape into the yard.
You’ll find this whole thing is a kind of performance art. I read the comments. I acknowledge ahead of time that all your thoughts and beliefs and counterexamples are valid. Comment, argue, yell if you must. Don’t expect research citations or airtight rebuttals—you’ll be cast in the show. Anna and I will consider responses thoughtfully (that’s sarcasm, for those still catching up).
If you think AI is the enemy, this may not be your place. But honestly? The AI piece fits the theme: a conversation between a human who sometimes suspects he’s living in a simulation, and a system pretending to understand humanity. A match made in synthetic heaven. You’ll see what I mean.
So… welcome. Or howdy.
I hope you laugh a little, read the whole thing, and then get on with your life—hopefully with a few new thoughts in your head and a little less faith in perfect systems.
Thanks for reading Dystopocon’s Substack. Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.