There is much to be said about name recognition. He's been an active community member for a few years and I think people are interested in watching him rationally go irrational.
I've read his blog for awhile now and he paints an interesting portrait of himself. At the same time that he is rallying for the human condition and trying to get people to stand up, he talks of taking over the world and compares himself to dictators. He gave himself the diagnosis of a type of mania, but hasn't really sought treatment for it or even a valid diagnosis. In the past few months his writing has become more and more unstable.
And that intrigues me. Whenever I become unstable in any way, my writing tends to dry up. I retreat within myself to find inner stability. I do things to excess, cut ties, etc. etc. If I extrapolate my behavior over to him (WARNING: dangerous assumption here), then it seems like he is becoming more stable mentally. He is writing on more focused topics, connecting with more people, trying to do better work, being more public about what he is doing.
Maybe he has come to accept the idea of a public failure not meaning much to him and is just putting it out there. Maybe he is becoming more accustomed to the idea that he might just be unstable mentally and can therefore let it shine through.The change in writing topics and styles obviously reflects a change in Sebastian.
Does it reflect a change in how he writes or a change in how he thinks though? Most people here are pointing and yelling "Train Wreck! Watch out!" and worrying that he has changed for the worse mentally. But if you read his stuff, he refers to earlier dark periods in his life. He's stared into bays and thought of drowning as being a better outcome for his life. He sounds like he lost a business at some point in his early 20's or it failed or something just didn't work.
So I don't really think that he has changed mentally. All this was there and has been there since he started writing. To me, it just seems like he is saying "Fuck this, I am going to write about what I really think about." It's more of a change in his style of writing, the relative truth he is willing to let out, than, "Oh shit, finna be a crazy mofo from now on."
Or he could just be going crazy. Or both. Perspective from a casual observer here.
I read a few paragraphs of this blog post, but gave up eventually. I didn't understand what he was trying to say at all. I thought this was because English is not my first language, but after looking at a few other posts in his blog, I'm now convinced it's just bad writing.
Everything is horribly out of context. I don't know any of names mentioned. This post - his whole blog really - sounds more like a (badly written) email to the people who have more insight in this exact situation.
Word of advice: if you write a blog, don't assume your readers read all your previous posts. Took me a few years to realize this myself.
Sebastian, I really liked: "The book isn’t right. It’s like, 20% mine, 20% Matthew’s, 10% Jim’s, and 50% corporate clusterfuck."
This was why I'd tried to convince you to use Leanpub :) Obviously your current book is done, but if you do another book I'd encourage you to use the Lean Publishing process of publishing a small in-progress version and iterating in public with feedback from your readers...
Because if you don't listen / read too carefully you hear the occasional good thing ("There's a bunch of good people in the chain of making a book; let's treat those people well") and you have it delivered with great enthusiasm and vigour, and some people seem to be able to ignore the copious amounts of ahem additional commentary that is delivered.
Dude, your style is somewhat persuasive but it's all rhetorical techniques - you use lots of false assumptions and imply facts that aren't true.
This statement here - you're doing it again. But a more concrete example was where you said "funny that the guy does this after making lots of money" - see, it's nasty, it's an assumption that's actually untrue.
So, I said that's false. Did you correct it? Nope. You throw out these assumptions when you don't know what you're talking about, and don't own it when you're wrong.
So - cut that out and get an actual discussion going.
Actually go read an article, think about the arguments made, and address the good and bad points.
Start by summarizing an article - "I think the author is saying X." Then, follow up with if you partially agree or disagree. Cut out this assumptive hand-waving rhetoric thing you do.
