European Elites Have Announced Their Social Media Alternative “W” – And It’s Exactly as Bad as You’d Expect

The European elite clowns have announced plans to invest €500 million in building an alternative to X. And where will this €500 million come from? Directly from European taxpayers. Since Germany is the main contributor to the European system, I guess that makes me personally responsible for funding this disaster. You’re welcome, online ether!

The World Economic Forum technocrats are cheering. The politicians are padding themselves on the back as always. And the feminist are happy too, because they’ve appointed some woman as the figurehead of the project—so at least the female quota is ticked off.

But beyond that, there’s absolutely nothing to be found.

The platform won’t offer any technological innovation, it won’t solve a single user problem, there is no cultural relevance, and it won’t even be as useful as the platforms that already exist.

Instead, W will feature mandatory ID and photo verification for users, centralized control, speech censorship, and a direct link to Brussels’ bureaucracy and pre-approved activist groups. Has any user ever asked for more censorship, state control, and centralization on social media?

In short: W is not a platform that users need; it’s a platform that the state needs to control the users. And here’s the fundamental problem, as social media only works if users actually adopt it out of necessity.

There are countless alternatives to YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram that are superior in many ways—but none have managed to achieve mass adoption. YouTube still dominates the online video market, despite platforms like Rumble and Odysee offering more freedom and even simple crypto-features.

And if we look at X, we already have Gab, Bluesky, Mastodon, and countless others. None of them were able to get the people to abandon X. And these alternatives actually offered some advantages in regard to freedom, decentralization, and functionality.

If you want a social media platform to succeed today, you not only need to solve a real problem that users face with existing platforms—you also need the luck to get the masses to sign up.

W solves zero user problems. Its purpose is controlling the narrative—and with it the speech, behavior, and ultimately, thoughts of the people. W is just a statist’s wet dream that can’t comprehend that people are more than blind sheep following the lead of power-hungry technocrats.

Nobody will join W voluntarily, except state puppets, activist groups, and politicians.

Perhaps the clowns in Brussels will push for mandatory sign-ups at some point. In ten years, you might only receive welfare benefits if you have a W account, only be able to apply for government jobs through it, and only book public healthcare appointments via this platform. But even then, who is posting their political, cultural, and personal opinions voluntarily on W? Right, nobody!

On paper, W looks like a €500 million grave. And judging by the history of state projects, that €500 million will quickly balloon into a disaster of around €5 billion. But hey, it’s just my taxpayer that is being wasted … so, who cares?

Certainly not the clueless fools in this video about the project presentation:

Does It Make a Difference Whether You Give Away Your Books for Free on Weekends or Weekdays?

Normally, I give away my short story books for free from Monday to Friday. For my latest issue, No. 11 The Wheel, however, I made it available for free starting on Friday (the promotion will run until Wednesday). Over the weekend, I may have seen a small increase in downloads, but nothing spectacular.

So far, my best-performing short story was downloaded 45 times in German and 8 times in English over five days (KilltimeUS – DE). My worst performer was Protocol: Twilight (US – DE), with 13 downloads in German and 4 in English.

Book cover of the wheel

The Wheel had 22 downloads in the US and 16 in Germany over the weekend alone—you can still grab a free copy here: US – DE

That’s a slight increase compared to my average. Compared to my best issue so far, it’s roughly on the same level.

I wasn’t sure whether people look for books to read more often on weekends, even though online traffic is higher during weekdays for most of my other web projects. After this experiment, I’m still not convinced that they do. Sometimes, it’s simply the cover and the title that spark more interest in a book. Killtime, for example, just sounds more exciting than Protocol: Twilight, right?

Maybe the cover of The Wheel is one of the better ones I’ve created, which could have led to its above-average performance. Even if that’s the case, the download numbers aren’t dramatically higher than usual.

The Wheel download numbers for the free promo

For now, I’d conclude that it doesn’t make much of a difference whether I set my books to free on Fridays or Mondays.

I’ll run more experiments in the future, but for the moment, I’ll go back to running my free promotions starting on Mondays and leaving out the weekends.

Do Teenagers Still Think About College?

I watched a few episodes of Smallville over the last couple of days. I remember watching it as a young adult when it first aired on TV about 25 years ago.

The stories and characters are very simple: there’s the good guy, Clark Kent; the monster of the week; and the always-ambivalent Lex Luthor, who wants to be good but is constantly pulled back to the dark side by the world, his family, and his inner demons.

It’s easy to turn you brain off and just relax with a show like this for 40 minutes.

Nowadays, TV shows are very different.

But it’s not just the change in character construction or story development that stood out to me. What struck me the most was how every young person in the show talks about college: They want to go to UCLA, Harvard, MIT, and so on.

It made me wonder: Do today’s 18-year-olds still think this much about going to college?

Social media has exposed countless bubbles in the Western world. Politics, finances, migration… during the pandemic, even healthcare was revealed as one. Colleges are surely another bubble ready to burst.

If I were 18 again, I wouldn’t go to college at all. I’d attend trade school and build an online business in my spare time. As soon as trade school was over, I’d set myself up to start my own electrician, carpenter, or mechanic business in the real world—while my online business generated additional side income.

Right now, that seems like a much better plan than aiming for UCLA to study computer science, going to law school in Princeton, or trying to become a doctor in Harvard.

AI is coming for many jobs that are primarily computer-based. Western governments are running out of money. And constant socio-political upheaval makes many career paths a risky bet. So why go into six-figure debt for a degree that may not make you more employable in the future?

That’s a question that comes to mind when I try to see things from the perspective of today’s youth. And it’s also a question I never asked myself 25 years ago, when I chose college over trade school. Because back then, college was the end all be all. My parents told me it’s all, high schools told me so, culture did it too, and even TV-shows like Smallville told me that college should be the main thing to think about for an 18-year-old.

Times have changed. TV shows have changed. Massively.

Thanks to social media, young people can see these changes much earlier than my generation ever could. I hope they use that advantage to their benefit and make the right decision.

Get My Latest Short Story The Wheel for Free (STORY52 No. 11)

Usually, I make my short stories available for free on Mondays. However, since I already published No. 11 of the STORY52 series, The Wheel, yesterday, I decided to run a little experiment and make it free from Saturday through Wednesday to see if this helps me reach more readers.

On YouTube, fewer people watch my tutorials from Friday to Sunday. Viewership starts to rise again on Mondays and typically peaks on Wednesdays. I assumed the same pattern might apply to book sales—but maybe I’m wrong.

It could be that people are more likely to browse Amazon for new books to discover on weekends, when they’ve got more time for leisure activities. Let’s find out.

As always, the digital edition is free. You can read it on a Kindle device or via the Kindle Online Reader if you don’t own the device.

Synopsis:

A village. A wheel. A task that must never end.
When Joseph Richter becomes stranded in Treadwell, he encounters a community whose daily life revolves around a single, inexplicable duty: the relentless turning of a massive wooden wheel. No one asks questions. No one stops working. Never.

A dark, oppressive short story by Michael Brig, approx. 11,000 words.

US version | https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GJDSY9RR
German version | https://www.amazon.de/dp/B0GJF9XW2H

If you enjoyed the story, I’d really appreciate it if you left a review on the good old Amazon website. And if you never want to miss a giveaway, you can sign up for my mailing list here.

Take care,
BRIG

I Should Have Finished My STORY52 Project First

I bit off more than I could chew.

Trying to write 12 books in 12 months is still something I believe is possible for me—but not while I’m also trying to finish my short story project. Today, I uploaded story no. 11 (The Wheel). You can get it for free today if you have Kindle Unlimited. If not, just wait until next week, when I’ll make it freely available from Monday through Friday.

It’s around 11,000 words—roughly a fifth of a full novel.

When I look at the other 41 short stories I still plan to release as part of this project, I have to admit it will take more time than I originally hoped.

Whenever I try to write, edit, or translate another novel, that time has to come out of the STORY52 project. And when I focus on the short stories, there’s no time left for the novels. It’s a dead end with no easy solution, especially since my YouTube project takes time too—just like my real-life work.

I estimate that writing The Wheel took about 12 hours, followed by another 12 hours of editing and around 4 hours of translation. Today alone, I spent 3 hours designing the cover, finalizing the formatting, and uploading it to KDP, including the metadata. That’s roughly 30 hours of work in total.

For a full novel, I estimate around 60 hours for writing, 90 hours for editing, and 30 hours for translation. The additional 3 hours for cover design, formatting, and KDP setup stay roughly the same.

When I add up the work still required to publish the remaining 41 short stories, I’m looking at the equivalent of 6–9 full novels of work in this project alone.

Because of that, my main goals for 2026 have shifted:

  • Finish the STORY52 project completely
  • Publish the second part of my 17 series
  • Publish as many additional novels as possible—though certainly not 11 more

Last year, I published 10 short stories and 3 full novels. Reaching 42 short stories and 4–5 novels is now the new goal. If I can achieve that, I should be ready to attempt 12 novels in 12 months next year.

It’s not a great way to start the year—completely turning my main goal upside down—but I don’t see how I can realistically manage 12 novels in 12 months and 42 short stories on top of that. Besides, there is also private life which has thrown some serious health issues my way that I need to deal with.

It’s a mess.

I just hope I can clean up that mess and be ready to tackle the big 12-in-12 project next year.