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Joel Morris

@gralefrit.bsky.social

15K followers 520 following 20K posts

Writer & highwayman. Ladybird, Cunk, Wipe, Be Funny Or Die, Framley, Candidate band, Comfort Blanket, Broken Veil etc https://ko-fi.com/gralefrit AGENTS, website, links, bio etc: www.gralefrit.co.uk

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Joel Morris @gralefrit.bsky.social · Nov 9

Hello new followers!

If you want to know anything, it’s all on my website…

www.gralefrit.co.uk

I’m doing lots of stuff on Substack, including podcasts and writing and that.

joelmorris.substack.com

Also: Be Funny Or Die, How Comedy Works and Why It Matters… from all the usual book places.

Be Funny Or Die book jacket

Joel Morris @gralefrit.bsky.social · 2h

If you’re interested in them, do check out martinrossiter.co.uk

on coercive control

(Originally published on Tumblr on August 26, 2021 at 11:41am. Link here: https://at.tumblr.com/xzx-xzx/660576151664738304/9dwbjgdip8pr —…

martinrossiter.co.uk

Reposted by Joel Morris

Michael Hogan @michaelhogan100.bsky.social · 3h

Cosy crime! Duffel-coasted, curly-haired hero! Hot chemistry! Windmills! I had a hoot talking about the magic of Jonathan Creek (and its connection to my own debut novel, The Dogwalkers' Detective Agency) with @jnraeside.bsky.social on @boxdelightspod.bsky.social podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/b...

Podcast Episode · Box of Delights · 10/10/2025 · 21m

podcasts.apple.com

Joel Morris @gralefrit.bsky.social · 3h

A mate is launching a (very necessary) subscription channel for funded podcast / audio comedy. You need big names in there. But big names are the people who subscribers are unlikely to feel need direct support. Even though their projects will need funding the same as everyone else. Catch 22.

Joel Morris @gralefrit.bsky.social · 3h

“What if everything was replaced by a busker’s hat?”

Joel Morris @gralefrit.bsky.social · 3h

I like the old system where creator earnings were at least vaguely related to audience consumption and satisfaction. Disentangling that link, while ostensibly claiming it was a new more directly accountable system has been fucking dreadful.

Reposted by Joel Morris

Simon Parkin @simonparkin.bsky.social · 1d

In 2014 I wrote for @newyorker.com about @kurtjmac.bsky.social, a YouTuber who began walking in Minecraft and never stopped. His quest was to reach the Far Lands, a place at the limits of the algorithmic world, where the landscape breaks apart. On Saturday, after fourteen years, he arrived:

A Journey to the End of the World (of Minecraft)

www.newyorker.com

Joel Morris @gralefrit.bsky.social · 4h

I like that it’s one woman who makes these, so you can slowly piece together her daily life. Has she been for a drink? What was for breakfast? What was on TV last night? What’s on her headphones? It’s oddly prurient. Like being unable to resist peering over someone’s laptop on a train.

Joel Morris @gralefrit.bsky.social · 5h

Populism relies on a mythical consensus of “common sense”, which is patently stupid, because if it were true there wouldn’t be any elections or politics.

In Monty Python Election Night Special terms, the Sensible Party is the silliest party of all.

Joel Morris @gralefrit.bsky.social · 5h

Things nowadays appear to be complicated at best, and often counterintuitive. In which case I’m the worst person to ask, because I either won’t know the answer, or will have exactly the wrong opinion to be useful. And there will be way more of me (misinformed by my gut) than well informed people.

Joel Morris @gralefrit.bsky.social · 5h

I worry about the next bunch of elections being fought on “common sense” issues. Cos if there was an agreement on what was common sense, if solutions were obvious, we wouldn’t need politics at all, or those expensive buildings where our elected officials argue what’s best. There is no common sense.

Joel Morris @gralefrit.bsky.social · 5h

If I can’t expect news media to inform me of what’s going on, because they’re chasing clicks and ratings, and I can’t even trust a basic internet search for data, then I need a serious amount of briefing. Before I vote, I need to be brought up to speed.

Joel Morris @gralefrit.bsky.social · 5h

The utopian idea behind democracy is that you are informed by the ambient culture, rather than misinformed, or disinformed, so can be asked your opinion with confidence. If that’s no longer true - and ‘common sense’ has fractured or become useless - you need to be briefed properly.

Joel Morris @gralefrit.bsky.social · 5h

The argument that it’s inevitable is exactly what someone who’d massively overinvested in the tech would say. And for a lot of the agentic uses to work, you have to surrender your privacy, rights, property and data. Which, again, is something that is ardently desired by the planet’s worst arseholes.

Joel Morris @gralefrit.bsky.social · 5h

Pivoting to using it in your work is going to be economically disastrous for freelancers once they start charging us what it actually costs per use. Way better to learn your craft and employ your mates.

Joel Morris @gralefrit.bsky.social · 5h

Yeah. My objection to AI is that it does a fuckload of environmental, cultural, artistic, economic and social damage, and mainly doesn’t work. It’s a hype bubble that is about to take down the US economy like shit mortgages. And so I’d like to be as far from the explosion as possible.

Joel Morris @gralefrit.bsky.social · 5h

The old system, where stuff people liked was charged at unit cost, and rich people who’d done well out of that were asked to contribute to redistribution via taxation, seemed to work. I don’t think the new system (everything kind of free, but rich people overrewarded) has really proved itself.

Joel Morris @gralefrit.bsky.social · 5h

It’s why it’s vitally important to laugh at people who use it, and call them big twats. Social shame is our only practical sanction.

Joel Morris @gralefrit.bsky.social · 5h

So I’d argue that it’s a good idea to never use it, unless you really can’t help it (medical data crunching say) and err on the side of assuming it’ll be hard to put that bone-idle genie back in the bottle once it’s loose.

Joel Morris @gralefrit.bsky.social · 5h

The problem comes because once you say “OK for ethical use” then the tendency is for capitalism to creep (and lobby) towards highly profitable unethical usage, that swamps the ethical version, out-competing it, while insisting that’s natural market forces.

Joel Morris @gralefrit.bsky.social · 5h

For me, it’s basically the same argument that the Luddites had. They weren’t against the technology itself. They were against the technology being used to damage workers’ rights and against the good of the community / society, to benefit a small number of powerful people.

Joel Morris @gralefrit.bsky.social · 6h

If you’re a well known comic, say, and want to make a podcast series that you own, and you go to your fans for funding, it’s not unknown for the response to be “why should we subsidise you?” in a way nobody did when they bought, say, the new Radiohead LP in the old days.

Joel Morris @gralefrit.bsky.social · 6h

Conversely, it is mad to insist that someone shouldn’t be paid for their work just because they have been successful, and demand hasn’t dropped off. That’s an issue with stuff like crowdfunding as a model. People treat it like charitable support; you have to stay needy.

Joel Morris @gralefrit.bsky.social · 6h

Was talking about the Oasis tour, which someone said was “to pay for one of their divorces” and thinking that’s a hell of a lot of ticket money to pay for a thing that could definitely be covered by publishing royalties. Especially after that single Black Sabbath gig raised $170m for charity.

Joel Morris @gralefrit.bsky.social · 6h

Democratic Captcha.

Tick the boxes that contain prime ministers.

Joel Morris @gralefrit.bsky.social · 6h

The only form of democracy that actually works, the smart analysis says, is citizen assemblies. Which is basically insisting there is an entrance exam, or at least a bit of revision cramming. Like jury trials. I think this isn’t unreasonable.