What you need to do is this…

‘What you need to do is this,’ said my friend, lifting another box of rubbish out of the house. When I was renovating my place years so, I had lots of unsolicited advice, often well-meaning, from friends and acquaintances about what I needed to do. It was always prefaced with the phrase,’ what you need to do,’ and after a while, it became background noise as everyone pitched in with their spin, their views, and their perspective.

Their DIY solutions were sometimes so ambitious that I laughed out loud, and looking back, it was good that I ignored them completely. I feel this is the same with Freedom Matters Today and the future of Jesus for Busy People.

Everyone says, ‘what you need to do is,’ and the steps seem so enticing and attractive that they might be true. They say, ‘You need to build your subscription, do your SEO, and then build a community, and then when you go to paid content, build it on the free stuff, or link it to bonus content, and get people to hit those subscriber buttons, and so on.’

Challenge 1: People Lose Interest

Sure, to be popular on YouTube, there is a model, and while there are a few that have been around for a while, most die out after a while because what they are offering fails to sustain interest, and that is the problem. People lose interest.

Challenge 2: The rise of ‘fake’ experts

The other reality is that the internet thrives on fake experts, and I could list them, but you probably know who they are. They usually have no educational or professional background in the area in which they claim expertise, but they have built their online community, and have become ‘experts by force,’ and use their position, effectively to spread disinformation and misinformation.

They are adept with the latest tech and forms of social media and are now being interviewed by major news agencies as ‘experts’ on some topic even though their expertise comes from nowhere.

Many of the famous online experts are also political operatives, or crafted commodities. The future of fake expertise is tenuous.

Challenge 3: Cancel Culture

The third challenge is that of ‘cancel culture,’ and that is that any of the platforms could be taken down tomorrow, and accounts could be frozen tomorrow, and subscribers could be lost at the flick of a button.

This happened during the Covid era for many people and still does for many others. They followed the advice. They did what they were told to do. They built subscriber bases but then they said something that didn’t fit the views of the people who own the platform, and they were shut down and they lost everything.

Challenge 4: Disruptors

The fourth challenge is disruption, and that comes in the form of new tech, or in the form of new methodologies. By new tech, I mean things like short-form videos, and by new methods, I mean approaches that subvert the conventional wisdom.

What we have seen in recent years is that the attention-span of most people is getting shorter and this will have a huge impact on future generations. We have also seen the shifting of authority from the truth to those who are popular, so this cadre of fake experts is now, largely, the source of truth for millions of people.

Discernment is out the window, and the potential for mass indoctrination is here, right now, so that while we can see the footage of war, or we can see the problems in our society, our minds are being trained to ignore what is not politically expedient.

Challenge 5: A.I.

The final one is AI, and this is going to devastate everything. Already, there are thousands of fake videos online and soon there will be fake videos of political leaders doing illegal and corrupt activities and they will be used to start wars, destroy individuals, ruin reputations, and brainwash the population.

A.I. is not, a problem, but the problem is that people invented it, and the human condition is such that it is, and will be used in nefarious ways to advance selfish goals.

The internet has changed nothing

In a way, the internet has changed nothing. People often lose interest in something and something new comes along.

In the past, there have always been fake experts, snake-oil salesmen, or in ancient times, false prophets.

Cancel culture is also not new, as politics has often condemned those outside the narrative. In the past, the unapproved were killed, or imprisoned, but these days, they are simply deplatformed, demonetized, and denounced.

The use of A.I. for nefarious purposes is simply a new form of propaganda and that has been around for centuries.

The way forward: disrupting the status quo

What does all this mean for Freedom Matters Today?

Well, I am not going to accept the conventional wisdom, or play the game, but rather, stick to the message, be consistent, and build an authentic readership around the world.

The path forward in presenting the good news is simply to provide a daily reflection on the life of Jesus, in audio form, for busy people, and this will, God willing, become a way to encourage people to follow Jesus, as we journey together to see the authenticity, the identity, the spirituality, and the freedom of Jesus, the presence, the power, and the person of God.

There is a laziness inherent on the internet which, I believe, is a glitch in the system, and is probably going to cause us all kinds of grief. The way forward for anyone is not in the system, but in communication in authenticity.

Communicating authenticity is not possible with A.I.

Communicating authenticity is not about online characters, or personalities, but rather, in the simplicity of following Jesus. That is the goal of Jesus for Busy People, no agenda, no politics, just Jesus.

Remember, freedom matters today, because you matter to God.