Switching to Windows Content (And Other Major Changes)

I was hanging out after work the other day with my three best friends: Mike, Twister, and Guinn. We were sharing an entirely modest amount of drinks at our local pub that afternoon.

It was only after we sipped some of our lemonade that Mike brought up the idea of himself starting a blog. Twister, laughing as he sipped his tea, brought up how I still have the most experience with that from our group, pointing out this very website. Both of them laughed together because they had both forgotten I had started this site in the first place.

But our other friend, the Irishman known as Guinn, however, surprised me entirely. Not only did he not forget I had this website, but he commented specifically on a few of my posts, including how I actually convinced him to switch away from Spotify to TIDAL a while back.

Sadly, his praise ended there. Instead of me getting the blind love, praise, and acceptance my website rightfully deserves, he started to give me feedback on what to change. After listening to that initial feedback, Twister and Mike chimed in with their takes and fresh ideas as well. It seemed like a fun little activity for them, the three giving unsolicited feedback to change my entire website.

Now, keep in mind that the three of them don’t really care about this site or the topics I cover for the most part. For instance, Guinn is the only friend of mine who uses Linux, and it’s just Manjaro on a Windows-hosted VM. Mike is also a Peter Griffin-looking guy I talked about in my 12 Week Year book club post who annually gives up on all of his fitness goals by January 3rd because he’s always too busy drinking his favorite lemonade (sorry if you’re actually reading this, Mike). The point is that none of them really care about my site, but that’s still no reason I can’t listen to all of their valuable feedback to upend and change everything to their arbitrary liking when they aren’t my target audience.

That said, they gave me a lot of interesting notes and tidbits I thought I could implement into my site. Starting from here and onward, I will be taking everything related to their feedback by heart! I’ve broken everything down to the three major changes I plan to describe in further detail, so expect to see the new and improved Sudo Science from here on out!

More Windows Content Is Coming!

Guinn was frank with me about how my focus on Linux wasn’t very useful for most people. He pointed out how the vast majority of people are using Windows and said that it makes the most sense to make posts and content for Windows users only.

I countered immediately with how I actually enjoy Linux, how I last truly appreciated Windows back when XP was the latest and greatest. Despite how using Linux can be a little more difficult, it’s easy to appreciate when you know how it works.

After downing a few shots, Guinn snapped at me over how Windows has the highest market share of desktop operating systems in use right now, telling me not to pay any mind to how the market share has dipped over the past two or three decades when Windows was an unstoppable behemoth.

He added that I was too harsh on Windows 11, saying that the Recall feature looks genuinely amazing. He claimed that he uses his Office 365 subscription to do all of his office work for him while “those other suckers at work” have to actually crunch numbers or type documents manually.

And you know what? Maybe he was right. When is LibreOffice ever going to type my documents for me? Windows and Microsoft “get” it because they are removing the human element from everything with AI-driven features, although I’ve talked at length about how great AI is for everything, especially at substituting our common sense.

As a result of the conversation, I’ve deleted my Arch Linux partition and am now booting into Windows 11 regularly. I’ll start writing some of the generic stuff about Windows that everybody already knows very soon, like using Ninite to install packages on a fresh install, or downloading Start11 from Stardock to get the old school start menu again. I’m even ready to start whining and complaining about how Microsoft removed more loopholes that would let me sign into an offline user account.

I’m going to go all-in on Windows 11 from here on out because it’s the most popular desktop OS right now, and things that are popular are automatically good. Why should I learn to think for myself when I can just follow the herd?

The Benefits of Pseudoscience

The biggest feedback I got from the guys was about how my site’s name is “confusing.” I had to explain that I got the name from “sudo,” a common terminal command on Linux. That wasn’t enough of an explanation for my friends, especially Twister, who says that the “Terminal” app on his MacBook makes him queasy.

Guinn initially suggested I merely rebrand. Instead, Mike came up with the better idea to keep the branding and to pivot the overall focus of the site to pseudoscience itself. His reasoning for this was how he once went swimming in a lake and got some leeches on the bottom of his feet. Then he slurred something along the lines of, “Oh, and like, didn’t those people in the Middle Ages use leeches to cure cancer back in 2000 B.C. or something?”

Keep in mind that I don’t know much about pseudoscience, but after doing a little research, it looks like some of Sir Isaac Newton’s own contemporaries promoted pseudoscience back in the day. Robert Boyle, a brilliant man by any measure, believed that powdered feces could cure cataracts. I mean, medicine is really expensive, but feces is so abundant and plentiful. There’s no shortage of it! It would be far cheaper to use feces than purchase medicine. He published these brilliant findings in 1948, just a few years after Edgar Allan Poe died.

In short, my friends urged me to ignore the previous few millennia of medical science and research, to employ what the Ancient Greeks used to call eligo testium. In other words, I should only select what I believe in, what seems most convenient for my purposes and views, and ignore the plentiful evidence that contradicts my views and ideas. Additionally, it’s also important to shut out any other dissenting views because I might be convinced into changing my mind. Everyone knows that our views are precious and fragile, and the idea of anyone saying something contrary to them is, as we say in this field of study, “really scary and stuff.” That’s why echo chambers are so comfortable to so many of us. We just want to reaffirm what we already believe in as humans.

Doing Anything for Sponsors

My friends gave further feedback by saying I should really be more like everybody else, like those blogs or websites stuffed with affiliate links to Amazon, or those YouTubers with obnoxious sponsored segments.

I initially claimed that I would much rather focus on good content for readers instead of prioritizing profits with reckless abandon, but they had the following counterarguments to make to my stance:

• “Aww, but like, come on, dude!”
• “What do you mean? You can be a rich guy like that one dude on social media, what’s-his-face…”
• “Come on, just do it for the cash!”
• “Dude, just take the sponsors’ money and run. You get paid no matter what.”
• “So what if the products are bad? If Raid: Shadow Legends gives you money, you should take it!”
• “As someone with a platform, you need to use it for social good!”

After this discussion, I dug my smartphone out of my pocket and did research at the table. That said, I’m seeing things their way now! I’m going to be selling out from now on!

I’m going to start with the aforementioned Raid: Shadow Legends. They already sent me B-roll footage to upload and host here, so all I’ll need to do is copy and paste a boilerplate script they supplied me and attach it. Anyway, I’m totally going to do it soon. Raid: Shadow Legends is a wonderful game, the absolute best I can think of in the history of video games and entertainment as a whole. Who doesn’t love running down fantasy-themed hallways and watching numbers and meters go up and down? It’s truly riveting and magnificent stuff. I’m just glad the developers of the game let us have the privilege of downloading it for free so we can happily buy power-ups with real world money as intended.

The lesson my friends taught me was that I should do anything for money, even if it means foregoing common sense and only doing things for extremely short-term gains. I’m now accepting all of the sponsors I normally turn down when they reach my inbox this time around. I’m also going to start stuffing affiliate links to every little thing in my future posts, and I’m only going to do Sudo Science Book Club posts if I get a commission from the authors or book publishers. I will embrace my role as a massive sell-out.

Pandering to The Smallest Crowd Possible

This was another idea that we discussed before leaving, but the others all agreed with it. Instead of trying to write general posts that appeal to various people who may use Linux or be interested in productivity, they claimed I needed to straight-up pander. Not just pander, but they wanted me to find the smallest possible demographic and pander to just the people in that group. Now, at first, I really objected to the idea and almost fell from my booth seat with laughter. Once we had our next several rounds of drinks, however, I started changing my tune. After I drove home that night, I realized how right they were.

What really persuaded me was Guinn pointing out about how free-to-play games on phones (kind of like Raid: Shadow Legends) make most of their money from the 2% of people at the top who spend their entire paychecks on in-game items and power-ups. It was there that I started to think maybe, just maybe, they were on to something…

Mike also suggested pandering to a few different groups and demographics, but they were still all too large. For instance, he suggested the pride community, but Twister, slapping Mike in the back of his head, reminded us how that’s still a staggering 4% of the population, far too large of a demographic. No, I needed something much smaller than 2% of the population if I expected to make a serious chunk of change. “To think big,” Abraham Lincoln always said, “I need to think smaller, as small as possible!”

After the four of us mumbled, slurred, and laughed our words while talking over one another, here’s what we all agreed on:

Sudo Science will now pander to teenage males between the ages of 31 and 31½ at a height of 5’7″ with a moderate amount of facial hair who bought over 20 power-ups in Raid: Shadow Legends while still owning a Sega Dreamcast console with exactly three controllers.

Keep in mind that I wrote this whole thing down in my pocket notebook with unusually bad handwriting, so I have a difficult time reading to see if I wrote it correctly. Regardless, this is what I’m going with; I can’t think of a better demographic to cater towards.

Stuffed between having Windows 11 watching over my shoulders as I write more content, future sponsorship deals, and diatribes on how to extract sunlight from the horns of goats, I shall give a confident wink to my most loyal readers, who are part of the aforementioned demographic I just described. These are my whales, the readers who will find ways to throw unprecedented amounts of money into my wallet. I’ll have this tiny sliver of the population throwing so much money at me from their hard-earned retirement nest eggs that I’ll have to buy a second wallet. After all, it’s just like Socrates used to say, “If this be treason, make the most of it!”

Cheers to the Future of Sudo Science!

With these brilliant adjustments to the site coming, expect the style and feel of the site to change drastically. I’ll be welcoming the changes by changing the Nord color scheme of the entire site to look more like Solarized Light. That’s when you’re going to know that the changes are finally here. Look for the next several posts on this within the following few days.

Of course, before you leave, be sure to use my promo code to start off with 10,000 in-game Leprechaun Molars (new accounts only, terms and conditions apply, subject to credit check) on Raid: Shadow Legends. Another thanks to them for agreeing to sponsor the site. Unfortunately, I cannot pander to myself with my own writings, as I am taller than 5’7″, I still have three power-ups to buy from the game before I hit 20, and I own four working Sega Dreamcast controllers without a console.