Pip Rippon -- Stranger in a Strange Land
When I got here -- to Hellsborough -- I was rock bottom. You really can't get any lower than I was at that point. When I arrived in this place, I had nothing. I had nothing in the off-world -- in your world -- working for a PhD is time consuming, and expensive. My debts ran into the 000's, like £80k. Don't worry, I'm honest, I didn't run away; it's all paid back now.
But I know some scum in the off-world, that wouldn't have done.
Anyway, bygones. That first time through The Hinge, I had no idea what I could bring, so I just came through in the clothes I was wearing -- much like as Van went into the wisewood, that day that he decided to leave Hellsborough. Nowt but a dirty vagrant tyke was how he phrased it, if I recall correctly. And then, of course, I nearly died -- but I've told you that before.
But as I know now, you can pull yourself up by your bootstraps. You can succeed in this place. It's all really simple, really. There isn't anything mythical about making ¢hits.
Making ¢hits is just about giving people what they want, and in Hellsborough, making ¢hits is what life is all about. And marketing and margins. That's all.
Don't get me wrong, I'll never be Farantees, but then I have no desire to be Farantees either, but making a few ¢hits every day by telling you about the way to make ¢hits, when you've had to start at the bottom -- with nothing -- is its own reward.
On the serious case of the desolution of The Hinge...
You've all been asking me questions -- difficult ones.
The biggest query you have, is how I am able to communicate from another dimension -- or at least a parallel universe -- I'm no physicist, so I don't know the difference between one or the other to be honest, but I do get where you're coming from with your questions.
Back in the early days, when I first came here -- to Hellsborough -- that was 79.hail-ripperthroat. I didn't have a clue about much. I was flailing about this way and that, and I crossed The Hinge many times. I had to go back home many times. But I couldn't stay away either.
That was bad. Bad for me. Bad for the population of Hellsborough. And, I'm sorry to say, bad for you too -- if you are an inhabitant of Hillsborough, S6. That criss-crossing of The Hinge that I did, weakened it. That's why -- or at least, that's one reasons why, dark matter is leaving Hellsborough.
And from what I understand, dark matter leaving Hellsborough is not a good thing. In your world, when dark matter interacts with matter, the result is destruction -- complete annihilation. At the moment, I understand the leakage is minimal, but if I were to keep crossing The Hinge, it would get weaker and weaker, until finally it ceased to exist at all, and then all that dark matter would flow into your world and collide with the matter, and that would be that. That would be the destruction of the whole world -- not just Hillsborough/Hellsborough, not just The Dark Peak, not just Sheffield, not just the UK. Not just Europe -- the entire world.
I'm staying in Hellsborough now. That seems the sensible thing to do: D'divi! I don't want to cause the destruction of the world!
So I'm stuck here, but I'm not complaining. I have work to do, and one of the things on my agenda is telling you about my experiences as a fledgling in Hellsborough:
I had no ¢hits. I had not much of anything. But not only did I survive, I prospered. And I owe it to you to share my experiences and my learning -- and I'll do that. I'll let you know everything I know about surviving and strategies for making some ¢hits -- and I reckon you can use them in the off-world -- in your world too.
But I'm getting off my original topic. I wanted to tell you about how you are receiving this message.
I'm in Hellsborough. I have a contact in Hillsborough. He's my publicity guy. He's not a professional or anything, just some guy I met on the Middlewood road in a bar, and we got chatting, you know how it goes -- he offered to help me out.
Sorry mate, you know who you are, and you have my fullest gratitude.
Back in hail.ripperthroat, last year, I brought him hand-written notes and drawings and the like, and left it at that, that was fine for starters.
I'll not give you his name here, but he's not had to find, should you wish to. He's a proper fixture in a number of the bars on the Middlewood road.
But now that I am "stuck" over here, I had to find another way. This year is 79.squall.longleg, and I have been here long enough to understand and find another way to communicate -- I can't just call up Twitter or Facebook on my phone, because 1. I have no phone and 2. There is no Interweb.
What I do have is a psycmask which connects me to the hivemind, which is essentially the same a 1 & 2 -- but they don't connect back to your Twitter or Facebook.
Not directly at least, that is.
I have written before about how the murk crosses The Hinge. Of course it does -- and the Loxley river too. All air and water does.
and that got me thinking about communication. If humidity and water crosses The Hinge, couldn't data do so too?
The technology of The Dark Peak is far more advanced than yours, and it's all just atoms after all.
And I found a way to send my despatches to my contact in the off-world -- there's a way to connect from our networks here to your networks there -- don't ask me how it's done, I just requested it on the hivemind -- and it worked!
So there's your answer, if you were asking. I am here is Hellsborough. My publicist is the other side of The Hinge in Hillsborough, and he posts my communications on this website, on my email newsletter, on Twitter/X, or wherever I request. For more understanding about this world, you could do worse than reading my curated guide which helped me understand this place, and might help you understand it too :)
So this will sound very strange, since I am here, and you are there. All of my communications pass through a middleman -- my trusted friend and associate in your world, who does my marketing and turns many of my ideas into a reality that you can see and touch.
I'm stuck here now, I've written about why that is, and I've also said that I am going to tell you how I not only survived in this place -- as an immigrant -- but how I have flourished. There are 2 sides to that story -- 1. is making ¢hits in this place (for ¢hits, read money), and 2. is making ¢hits in your world, by telling you about the way that things are here, and how you can experience something similar to what I have done -- eg. The Dark Peak -- without putting your life in danger, like I have and traversing The Hinge.
How does #2 help me, I hear you ask?
I have written before about how the murk crosses The Hinge. Of course it does -- and the Loxley river too. All air and water does.
And that got me thinking about communication. If humidity and water crosses The Hinge, couldn't data do so too?
The technology of The Dark Peak is far more advanced than yours, and it's all just atoms after all.
And I found a way to send my despatches to my contact in the off-world -- there's a way to connect from our networks here to your networks there -- don't ask me how it's done, I just requested it on the hivemind -- and it worked! -- I'm told you have these things called GPT's now: Generative Pre-Transformers, that are a rudimentary technology similar to the hivemind, so try asking that.
And there is this thing called the blockchain. The blockchain allows me to get paid on my side of The Hinge too, as well as send ¢hits back to your side. It's just data. It flows like a river or the murk, inter-dimensional portals are no blocker to data transmission via the blockchain.
You can make ¢hits too, in your world, by listening to what I tell you and getting involved from a distance. Trust me, it's safer that way.
I guess maybe this feels a bit like some sort of LitRPG type thing, and you can think of it like that if you want, although, any levelling up that I do is strictly on a needs must basis. But there are games coming that you can play my role, and then you can level up as if you were me.
This is life under an alien civilisation. This is what life is about in Hellsborough.
If you read nothing else then pay attention to this. This is what has kept me alive and allowed me to prosper in Hellsborough -- it's what the past few months here have taught me.
My number one rule: You make the most money when you stop giving a chuff.
All of them jellyheads, they're caught up in status games and throwing their lives away -- most of them don't do anything. They do nothing at all, they take from the nascenti what they need to exist -- and they exist, that's all -- and that's the way the nascenti wants them -- subordinate.
The ones that achieve in Hellsborough are the Jellheads -- capital J.
The rest of them are slaves to the others -- if you let things go on around you, you are a jellyhead; if you make decisions and make the rules, you're are a Jellyhead.
I'm sat here in my bedsit above Corner News on the Middlewood road. I'm alone, I'm lonely, but I'm not sad and I'm definitely not depressed. I have found that here in Hellsborough, of you feel bored, or stressed, or tired, or lost, then there are things you can do about it.
Just focus.
This place is all about making ¢hits. That's all. Once you realise that, things start to fall into place. They did for me anyway. Since I got here, I've made quite a bit of money -- most of it by doing the wrong things.
And I don't mean "wrong" in an illegal sense. I just mean "wrong" as in doing the things that most folk don't do. Stuff I've done by mistake, or just without not really knowing what I was supposed to be doing. Call it beginner's luck, or the luck of an immigrant to this world.
My best piece of advice: Do things for fun instead of out of obligation. Don't concentrate on the money. Your work will be rewarded. Mine was.
Being driven by money is a horrible way to live your life -- just stop and ask any jellyhead -- they all seem to hate their lives -- a bit like Van did back when he first entered the wisewood all those years ago.
My advice to them (whether they want it or not), is don’t focus on the money. Money is a paradox. Whatever society tells you about money is usually the opposite of the truth.
Forget about results, don't stress about the future. Since I've been here (in Hellsborough), I’ve forgotten about my career. I’ve lived in the moment. I have zero regrets.
I used to suffer from bad anxiety. I’d spend a silly amount of time living in some fantasy world. Now I live in the moment.
I let the future take care of itself.
You spend so much of our lives obsessed with the future, you forget about the here and now.
The future is impossible to control, just live for the moment, and get on with it -- The exacid might be knocking on the door tomorrow.
You know, the best thing that ever happened to me was getting trapped over here in Hellsborough. I have a degree and a PhD, I also had a ton of debt when I was a student, and lived like an animal. I ate rubbish food. I went out with friends, but I couldn't afford to, I spent plenty of money on my passions (drink, and other extracurricular activities), but it made me broke.
Debt is crippling, let me tell you. And all for what? I did learn to talk to folks, that's for sure, that's what anthropology is all about. As for folklore, what was I thinking? When I think back now about what I was doing, I was just following my own selfish interests.
Don't get me wrong, without the knowledge of those two subjects, I don't think I'd have ever found my way here, so maybe the selfishness, stupidity and sacrifice was ultimately worth it.
Now I understand the human condition and myself so much better than I ever did, or would have ever done back on the off-world. I would have just been accumulating my own selfish knowledge about subjects that no-one really cares about.
Here, in Hellsborough, where capitalism rules supreme, I have had to learn to stand on my own two feet. There are no hand-outs here -- well there are, you'll not starve, you're too important to the nascenti for them to allow you to starve, and you'd make too much of a mess for them to clean up. But the way to really live, is to make more ¢hits, that is the measure of success by anyone's yardstick in this world.
It is a constant amazement to me that your average jellyhead is actually content to work for the nascenti and receive their daily bread. They're fine, they live their lives, they are able to have families, they get to go to the pub every now and then, maybe eat out once or twice a year, get to buy a pork roll for lunch a couple of days a week, rather than always relying on the DPDC issued bio-feed. But none of them dare to stick their heads above the parapet much -- but the truth be told, they don't need to stick their heads above the parapet, there is plenty of ways to earn ¢hits and live a much better life.
Most of them though, just don't bother to even understand the problem, never mind learn the fundamentals of making their lives better.
I suppose you could easily have levelled the same criticism against me back when I was in the off-world.
I was so wrapped up in my own existence, and full of the luxury of trying to learn about what I wanted to selfishly learn about, eg. anthropology and folklore -- I ignored the real needs that I had -- instead of spending my time pursuing things that would take me off the bread line, I just survived, I ignored the real and present danger -- that of being one pay cheque away from bankruptcy, not that I got a pay cheque back then, I just had an allowance and dead end side jobs working for the man, or nonsense jobs in academia.
I thank Dunlockslyn that I managed to find those semagrams and that I then made The Hinge so unstable, that I can no longer go back to the off-world. It has made me who I am now, and I'm not going to apologise for that.
So what did I do? How did find these ways to earn ¢hits and live myself a better life?
I'll save that for another day, but believe me, I will share all -- I've no reason not to.
When it comes to earning ¢hits and making your life better, there are many ways to do it. So many, that sometimes it can be difficult to narrow down your ideas so that you can concentrate on some of them without expending all your available time and energy.
So I figured that there were some things that I absolutely didn't want:
First -- I didn't want to be famous -- I'd like to go about my daily life with as little fanfare as possible. I don't mind working hard, but I have no interest in having my face plastered all over posters, or even my photograph. I don't want to be appearing in ads on the hivemind. I'm not interested in performing -- the clowns have that market all sewn up anyway. I'm not someone who is into public speaking. So, I wanted my business to be effectively anonymous, not because I am doing anything illegal, just because, well, I have anxiety issues and I'm just not comfortable with face-to-face contact so much; I'm just shy, I guess -- you know, I'm an anthropologist and folklorist -- a back-room worker, I don't mind the intimacy of being an anthropologist, but I'm a listener and a writer, not a talker.
Second -- I didn't want the burden of managing people. Managing employees is stressful and not necessary. It's not important to me to start a big business, and so I can concentrate on building systems that do my work better and quicker. I don't need anyone else to help me making ¢hits, so I can keep all of the profit for myself: No paying salaries, no liability insurance, just me, myself and I, adding value for my customers.
Finally, third -- I didn't want to carry stock -- I have no space. I live in a tiny flat on the Middlewood road, above Corner News. Plus, when starting out, I wasn't sure what would work and what would not, and my supply of ¢hits wasn't very large back then, so I had no cash for stock in any case.
So when you rule out those three F's: Fame/Face, Folk, and Funding, where does that leave you?
Well, either using your Mind, or using your Muscle, that's where it leaves you. But there is always a third way -- and I'll keep thinking about what that third way is.
Using muscle is the easy option for getting work. Someone always wants something to be done in a place like this, whether it be moving books from place A to place B, or serving behind a bar, or digging a hole in the road. Trading your time and effort, exchanging your time and muscle for pay, is easy money -- but the pay is never great, since anyone can do it -- if you can't, then you have some serious problems -- and I get that some people do have problems -- I'm one of them. Although I could physically do the work, and I have done before, it doesn't scale.
What do I mean, it doesn't scale?
Well, consider this: You get yourself some work in a bar. You're good at it, you can serve pints; you can serve snacks; you can serve food to a table. All well and good. But so can everyone else -- the barrier to entry is minimal, which means that anyone can do it, which means that the pay is minimal because it's simply a race to the bottom with something like serving drinks and food -- because it's easy. That's why your pay is so low.
How can you increase your pay in such a situation? Well, you can become a proper expert in the drinks and food you are serving. That will set you above someone who really doesn't care, and just does the job because it's a job, but additional knowledge will only take you so far -- at the end of the day, you are still trading your time and physical effort for ¢hits.
Let's say you use your mind instead. Let's say you know how to code, and you get a job with a business building their website. That's great. The pay may be better than working in the bar I mentioned above, because you have skills that fewer people have (the ability to code), so the barrier to entry is higher, and that costs an employer more, but you're still trading your time for ¢hits, even though you're using your mind. It still isn't scaleable.
Now, don't get me wrong, sometimes, just doing the work is what needs to be done. Do work. Get paid. Simple. I've done it many a time, and I will provide you with plenty of examples of how I have done this, and how you can do it to, but whilst necessary sometimes, just to get the ¢hits in, it's not the ideal, and you should be aware of that. You should always be striving for work that is an alternative to trading your time for money.
So what is the alternative? The alternative is to use your mind AND do work that is scaleable.
There's that phrase again: Scale. What is this Scaleability?
Scaleability is simple. It simply means doing something once, and selling it multiple times.
In the previous example, when you work the bar and trade your time for ¢hits, you do the thing once, and you get paid for it once. You can't scale it to work in any other way. It's the same with the coding. You do the work once, and get paid for it once. You have no option to re-sell the work you have done for your employer, even though you have created something from nothing with your mind.
But, let's consider putting your time and effort into something which doesn't pay you immediately, but which is scaleable...
I'll leave that for the next diary entry.