Thanks And Stuff(ing)
A thank you note to all the generous blog enjoyers out there.
I started Bad Faith Times back in 2022 because I had more to say than I could fit in a microblogging post, or even a thread. I didn't much care at the time if the site took off in any real capacity. I've been a writer since grade school and like any egomaniacal writer who thinks they have something important to say, I needed an outlet.
Three years later it's not as if Bad Faith Times is a massive political newsletter supporting my family. It's not. But BFT has grown steadily over the past eighteen months almost entirely thanks to BFT subscribers and supporters sharing my shit online and the algorithm-less Bluesky, that glorious microblogging alternative to the fascistic X platform. Bad Faith Times would not have grown at all without folks sharing links on their socials and within their friends and family circles (one subscriber recently told me he sends BFT blogs to his right-wing family members. I laughed).
Follow me on the Sky that is Blue!
With thanks being given this week, I thought it a good time to send a thank you to all the people who have supported BFT both with cash money and by spreading the good bad-faith word. The site's subscription base isn't life changing by any means, but it does make it possible for me to justify sitting down to write a couple essays every week during the football season and three and sometimes four pieces per week in the offseason (for those unfamiliar with my work, I'm a football writer and podcaster for NBC Sports). Selling my wife on taking on a part-time blogging job meant I needed to bring in some grocery money or car payment money or Christmas money or money for the dog's shots and grooming and fancy-ass food, things of that nature. Your backing made it possible. I'm more grateful than I can say.
You're my boys (and girls), Blue.
I keep your support in mind when I'm feeling a little burned out – I write a lot every week in various capacities – and think a piece is good enough to publish. I remember that people pay money for this stuff, so I stop and do a little more research and add a little more context and maybe share a little bit more about my personal life – the anecdotal stuff that (I hope) makes BFT blogs readable and enjoyable, even when I'm writing about small-d democratic decline or the end of thinking via AI or the right wing's daydreams of ethnic cleansing or societal dopamine addiction or other pleasant topics.
Subscribe to Bad Faith Times and join the good folks in the BFT discord community!
I had planned to write this little thank you note to BFT folks before a recent BFT piece went giga-ultra viral on Bluesky, per the zoomers. Tuesday's blog on anti-education school board members being wiped out in the November 4 elections was spread far and wide on Bluesky and is now (by a long shot) the most read BFT post in the site's long and storied history. I guess it resonated with folks looking for a reason to hope as we grapple in the darkness of the present moment.
I suppose a piece like that is part of the BFT brand. Back in August 2024, I decided BFT would not be a beacon of doom and despair in trying times, but a clear-eyed analysis of what's actually happening under the surface of our terrible political and cultural turn. The point was not to help people cope, but to stop good folks from giving up in the face of a monstrous political movement that wants nothing more than for you to disconnect, to give up. This movement feeds on your dooming; it cannot survive without widespread belief that it is inevitable, invincible, unstoppable. That's why it's always in your goddamn face, preening and taunting you all day every day. It's not invincible, of course, but it sure seems like it is a Leviathan sometimes.
We'll continue to fight the fascism-food that is dooming on Bad Faith Times (thanks to all the good folks who have contributed essays to BFT over the past couple years). Thanks for subscribing and reading my stuff. My promise – or threat, depending on who you are – is that I won't stop anytime soon.
Follow Denny Carter on Bluesky at @dennycarter.bsky.social.
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