Real Man Sports on Nostr: I was on the fence about going all in for NFL or just half-assing this substack and ...

I was on the fence about going all in for NFL or just half-assing this substack and refunding everyone their money. On the one hand I will definitely have some fantasy teams and be watching on Sundays, but on the other do I want to be glued to the TV for seven hours every week and write up all the standalone games again?

I’m definitely half-assing baseball and enjoying it. That’s why I outsourced my teams the last two years, and I don’t feel I’m missing much. I guess my lack of close watching of MLB has kept me out of the MLB conversation on social media, but I feel like that ship had mostly sailed anyway when that community lost its mind in woke psychosis and pharmaceutical salesmanship zealotry. The NFL crowd is, on balance, more normal. Baseball’s conduciveness to statistical measurement is apparently to ideologically-compliant laptop-class midwits like Taylor Swift to teenage girls.

But the main reason I’ve decided to go all-in again on NFL (and hence this substack) is from a chance post I made on nostr yesterday that opened my eyes to what’s possible there. I mentioned Heather is writing a tourism/restaurant guide for Lisbon to send to the legions of friends and friends of friends who are constantly visiting, and immediately some of the protocol’s most prominent developers responded saying she should definitely post it, and there would be great interest in such a thing. (Heather has not yet agreed to do this, but I am working on her.)

And I thought, this niche social media protocol (which I firmly still believe is the future for reasons enumerated elsewhere) is the perfect place to make quality content because its readers are committed to growing the decentralized alternative to corporate social media platforms. Anyone will support (and zap, i.e., pay with bitcoin via the lightning network) quality content in which they’re interested much more than on Twitter where there is so much of it already, algorithms favoring established players and no particular loyalty or enthusiasm for the platform. It’s a small, but rapidly growing and well capitalized niche of smart and indepdent thinking people looking to promote and support freedom technology.

So I’m going to give it a serious go because the opportunity there is suddenly interesting to me, more so than simpy increasing readership/revenue of the newsletter. Don’t get me wrong, I like to make money as much as the next guy but revenue is just gross. (This joke fell flat on Twitter and nostr, but that’s no reason not to foist it on my substack readers too.)

I still won’t do waiver wire bullshit or tell you who to start and sit each week. You should just subscribe to RotoWire (in which I no longer have any financial interest) for that. I’m going to post a lot of observations, which means I actually have to observe a lot of NFL. And of course, I will post it here too (the articles at least), but for the daily posts, you’ll have to go to nostr. (I would post those here, but I don’t think you want to get 5 emails a day from my substack.)