My Traitors UK and AUS plans, and other fun updates

Happy Monday! With the exciting news about The Traitors now being legally available in the U.S., I wanted to share my plans about that—and then I realized I had a few other updates, too. So here we go!

🏰 My Traitors UK and Australia plans

Last Wednesday, Peacock dropped both The Traitors: UK and The Traitors: Australia. This is so very exciting!

I am a little annoyed that 1) Peacock didn’t announce this to media, and 2) I’ve been launching Peacock regularly to watch Poker Face (an absolutely wonderful show!) and Peacock has yet to recommend UK or AUS to me, despite the fact that I watched US. But I digress into complaints about companies who have great things and don’t know what to do with them.

Anyway, I am so very excited to see these two seasons, and also to write about them.

While I don’t want to treat a gift like a burden—to quote one of the mantras repeated regularly on Happier in Hollywood—but 24 episodes all at once is a lot. (Each season is 12 episodes, unlike the U.S.’s 10.) I didn’t have 24 hours of time budgeted this week or next, especially with a few days vacation planned, and the all-at-once drop means we’ll all be at different points yet again, never mind on different seasons!

I know some of you have already seen them, via methods, or have already binged what Peacock has offered. I’m excited to hear what you think.

My current plan is to write about The Traitors UK the week of March 6. Since it is nearly identical to the US version, I may not recap it in the same way—or maybe the new cast and small tweaks will inspire me to do so! We shall see. Then I’ll tackle Australia later that month.

😍 New ways to support! Without money!

reality blurred has survived and thrived for almost 23 years now thanks to all of you. It earns money from advertising (thanks, Mediavine!), plus affiliate fees and direct support from many of you.

That a hobby, which I started by waking up early to search the Internet for links, has turned into a business is especially meaningful to me now that I’ve recently decided to leave my day job, undergraduate teaching, after 20 consecutive years of teaching.

So, my side hustle is becoming my full-time job. That’s slightly terrifying since both ad revenue and web traffic are highly variable, and ultimately out of my control. Also I’m still one person, and can’t suddenly start publishing 10 articles a day, unless my cat steps up her productivity.

reality blurred will always remain free, but those who can support help it stay that way for everyone.

That doesn’t mean giving money! Honestly, the single-best way to support reality blurred is to read it (you’re already doing that!) and share it with others.

If you’re so moved, please text links to your friends; share stories on social media, your blog, or forums you frequent; or stand on the street corner and scream out the URL. Just kidding about the last one.

If you do have the budget, or an expense account:

• I refreshed the support page with colorful boxes, which detail several different options
• You can now set your own support level, which is available via subscriptions to my newsletter. You can choose how much per month, and cancel or adjust any time. If you’re already subscribed, just click the upgrade link in the footer of any message, or type your e-mail address in the box here and you’ll get an option to upgrade.

Thank you all! ❤️

🐘 I’m on Mastodon, and have advice if you want to try it, too

With Elon Musk burning Twitter to the ground, It’s been nice to find a social media space that’s not at the whims of a billionaire man-child or venture capitalists who are relentlessly focused on profit, Andy writes a few paragraphs below asking you for money.

I’ve really been enjoying Mastodon, which has #caturday, too, but also fun things like #windowfriday (which taught me about my second-favorite word) and #tombtuesday (which I contributed to once).

Also, I’m only just beginning to learn about the Fediverse, but I’m quite attracted to the way this decentralized group of protocols and services returns us to aspects of the early 1990s and 2000s web, with individuals connecting directly with individuals, rather us gathering in corporate spaces to do so.

I’m exploring ways to incorporate reality blurred into the Fediverse, so if you’d, say, comment on Mastodon, that comment would appear on the story here, too.

But for now, you can follow me on Mastodon. If you’re on a different server than I am, you just copy and paste this into your search box: https://mastodon.social/@andy-dehnart

For sure, Mastodon works slightly differently, and it’s also not perfect (as if Twitter ever was).

If you’d like to join Mastodon, but aren’t quite sure how to start, I recommend any or all of these:

• Entertainment Weekly founder Jeff Jarvis’ On Joining Mastodon
• The Compassionate User’s Guide to Mastodon
• The in-depth Navigating Mastodon: A User Guide for Newbies

I am continuing to automatically publish stories to Twitter, and occasionally check in there—both because that’s still where so much TV conversation is, and because I cannot fully break my addiction even despite the increase in toxicity and the crumbling of its infrastructure. Alas!