The other day I took a break from writing articles and asked my readers for some feedback on how I can best use this platform to do as much damage as possible to the oppression machine, and the response was pretty amazing. I received around a thousand emails, comments and private messages suggesting all kinds of ideas I’d never considered or hadn’t been paying enough attention to, and now I can honestly say in all sincerity that I’m more excited about this weird job of mine than I’ve ever been before.

Here in no particular order are some of the changes I’m looking at implementing:

I’m definitely going to start asking my audience for ideas and information more often.

It’s absolutely stupid that I’ve got this giant brain pool of interesting, wise and learned minds available to me who are always eager to chip in whenever I ask, yet I hardly ever avail myself of this resource. It’s like having a super power and never using it. I have this thought every time I ask my readers to contribute stuff, but this time I’ve made it very conscious: the Caitlin Johnstone project is going to be much more of a two-way conversation going forward, with far more guidance from my awesome readers.

For the record I have been reading most of the comments you guys make this whole time, though I don’t usually have time to respond. I’m sorry I’ve been grossly under-utilizing this powerful resource you’ve all been offering me.

I’ll be re-starting my podcast with a few changes, and adding a video version.

The two most common suggestions I received were podcasts and videos, and when I checked in with myself about these I was surprised to notice that I’m okay with it now. Being thrust into the public spotlight with my standard-issue 44 year-old female body and a mind where my capacity for speech was damaged by abuse has always been extremely daunting for me, so I’ve avoided public speaking and hidden behind the written word as much as possible while healing that stuff. But the healing seems to be mostly done as far as that’s concerned, and I feel much more capable now.

I actually did have a podcast going for a few months with my husband and co-conspirator Tim Foley, which I stopped because it just got too much for me. It pretty much consisted of a discussion about whatever essay I’d just written, but we decided that in our new incarnation it would be a lot more fun to talk about the news of the day and whatever else is on our mind instead. There are always tons of subjects and news stories I don’t have time to write articles about, so it’d be good to have an outlet where we can just chat about the latest developments in Kashmir or Hong Kong or the Democratic Party or whatever.

So the plan is to do a podcast released in both audio and video formats consisting of three segments: an introduction and a discussion about the things that have been on our minds that day regarding the human condition and the plight of our species, then a news segment, then answer some questions from the audience. Then maybe if we have time we’ll cut out little segments and circulate videos of them, too.

We’ll be rolling this out in the next few days, and we’ll keep it up for as long as it’s fun and productive. I’ll keep going with the near-daily written output like I’ve been.

Once I’m comfortable with the podcast I’ll try accepting interview requests again.

This one was another frequent suggestion. I’ve been turning down interview requests constantly because I’ve found them so stressful due to the aforementioned issues, but I think maybe that’s behind me now. I’ll probably try to bring Tim on with me too since he’s just as much a part of this whole project as I am, and I’ve always felt like I’m only presenting half of my magic whenever I’ve appeared alone. Might even start interviewing people myself on our new show, who knows.

I want people translating my stuff into as many languages as possible.

I’m going to keep tossing out reminders that anyone is free to re-publish any of my stuff whenever they want free of charge, and this includes translations into other languages. If you want to just translate and circulate my work and monetize it to pull in some money for yourself, by all means please do so. No need to ask. I’ll keep inviting people to do this, and just generally to share my work around if they feel so motivated.

I’ll probably use memes more.

Whenever I’ve got a solid line in an article that conveys a key idea I’m going to try and put it in a shareable graphic like I did at the end of my last article. A lot of people who won’t read a full article will still ingest a line of text presented in an interesting way.

I might start doing more humor/satire pieces.

This was another suggestion that came up a few times. Humor is a great way to get a message across, which is why the propagandists have been trying to use it. It’s always going to be a populist and anti-authoritarian medium though, so we should try and use it more. I find humor articles much easier and faster to write than serious research pieces, so if it’s an effective way to open some eyes I should definitely start looking in that direction more often.

I’ll start posting regular collections of random thoughts.

This was another cool suggestion I hadn’t thought of before. Lots of people don’t do Twitter, and even if they do they’re not paying attention to all my Twitter posts. Maybe once every week or two I’ll collect all my stand-alone thoughts that I put into tweets and other places and compile them in an article for anyone who’s interested.

Those are the changes I’m definitely going to look to implement, and there are a few other potentials I’m toying with as well. These all look very feasible without being too taxing on my time and energy. Thank you all so much for your wonderful suggestions, and thank you for caring so much that you desired to offer them. I try not to get all gushy and meta too often, but I really do have the best audience in the world and I deeply appreciate you guys. I am very excited about where this is all going.

https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/some-changes-ill-be-making-thanks-to-your-suggestions-6699d92df8fa