“It’s not that I don’t enjoy it, but it’s like a trip to Disneyland. You get excited about riding the Matterhorn, and then, when it’s over, you realize you wasted all that time in line for a minute and a half upside down and the chance to puke.”
–Murphy Brown
Today marks the end of a long creative decline for this platform. In the beginning, many lessons were learned, the main one being that quality endeavors take time—time borrowed from family life, career, and hobbies. Often, the “brightest” ideas come out in the dead of night, under the illusion that our partners won’t notice, only to face the consequences the next day by talking to the people who really matter. Regardless of opinions about The Chum, it represents a massive investment of effort. At first, it was not much of a concern. “A backlog of unvoiced creativity finally found a vent. The output is enormous, even if often nonsensical and amusing only to ourselves. The platform served as a gymnasium for our strategic thinking, a workshop for honing our writing skills, and a classroom for understanding a formidable new medium of which we knew nothing. .
However, eventually the situation turned serious.
Dear readers started paying attention, we accidentally pissed off some corporations, and we received our first cease and desist letter. The increase in the number of visitors is addictive, however, it introduces a pressure to “perform” that influences our behavior.
Therefore, it marks the end. We disable author login and stop all fresh content.
I can’t thank my wife and daughter enough for watching me struggle to find content every night. Long live the Chum Nation! We have cultivated a real community with lots of active participation. Your humor, feedback, and support have truly enriched this journey.
