Consent (The Ticket)
This piece touches adult-content branding/marketing, burnout, outrage-as-currency internet culture (including references to extremist rhetoric), and a heavier thread about mortality and legacy.
If politics-as-content, doom, or death anxiety are tender right now, read this only if it feels clarifying—not like lighting your nervous system on fire.
It’s okay to skim, save, or walk away halfway through if your body starts tightening up more than it opens—especially once it shifts from the “internet noise” into the deeper current underneath it: burnout, survival math, and that quiet mortality/legacy pressure that can make everything feel sharper than it needs to.
— Zan
Scene (The Ride)
When I used to work in corporate-level advertising, the way people talked about campaigns always sounded like we were planning a crime.
“We’re gonna eat their market share and leave them with nothing.”
“We’re gonna put their brand in a shallow grave behind the loading dock.”
“I’ve got the competitor’s URL pinned to a board with a big red X on it. I start my day wiping my ass with it and praying for the swift death of their business.”
Meanwhile, the product was… pool cleaner. Or gift baskets. Or bottled water. The work could be so mind-numbingly mundane some days we had to push into the outer limits of delusion just to justify our existence while building out five-star promotional campaigns.
Secretly, I always hoped we’d land a client that did something spicy on a national scale. Adam & Eve. Hustler. Hell, I would’ve taken Playboy post–Hugh Hefner era.
No such luck.
It wasn’t until I hung the imaginary suit and tie in the closet and pulled out the imaginary leather and biker hat that anyone started taking me seriously as an asset to adult content creators.
Because, shockingly, the people selling orgasms, humiliation, and parasocial devotion for a living don’t necessarily trust someone who sounds like they’re about to walk them through quarterly projections in a spreadsheet. At the time, at least, many could not relate to “brand synergy” and “audience segmentation.” They want someone who actually understands why a custom three-minute clip of them spitting into a camera lens can outsell a perfectly ring-lit nude set.
Lurking in the shadows, helping build someone from “who da fuck is this?” to “here’s another cum tribute, mommy oink oink” — no shame — is honest work. It’s satisfying, too: watching an attractive body grow into a name, helping them cut through the endless field of “clones” and turn themselves into something brandable that will outlast the passage of time on one’s body.
I would try to plant the seeds of Cam Girl 102 in their brain so they’re not delusional enough to think they can keep selling the exact same brand of “hot 22-year-old airhead chaos” straight through their 30s, 40s, and 50s.
Spoiler alert: you grow your business outward, into different avenues — not inward into a one-trick pony. Don’t take my word for it; go look at the case studies. Selena Gomez. Pharrell Williams. George Foreman and his Lean Mean Fat-Reducing Grilling Machine.
I’m just saying, before I turn this into a marketing course: it’s about staying alive in a shifting market that has an identity crisis mixed with night terrors.
The work was real, the money was real, the results were real — but the name on the marquee was never mine.
Alas, marketing for others was never the final destination for me.
Becoming something of significance in front of a lot of people used to take more patience—and more talent.
Now it can take the right mix of a hyper-personality, unobtainable genetics, and dumb luck.
It’s an age of being an entertainer.
And half the time, it feels like the loudest people in the street are just… talking. Talking like volume is a credential.
These are our thought leaders?
Pushing dead dictators like they’re edgy philosophy cosplay. Repackaging “ethics” like we didn’t solve that homework decades ago. Acting like schoolyard shock-and-awe is the fastest path to relevance for grown adults.
And let me be clear: I’m not publicly sparring with the idea like I think I’m going to debate-bro the internet into enlightenment.
I’m talking about the sale of it.
Because there’s a whole class of people right now making money off “genocide-as-edgelord content” energy—not because they believe anything, but because they understand one ugly truth:
Outrage is a currency.
Certainty is a product.
Cruelty is a brand identity you can rent for fifteen seconds at a time.
And the ones cashing the checks aren’t the ones who pay the cost.
They’re perched somewhere safe, with distance and plausible deniability, selling a personality costume to people who are already hurting—and don’t know where to put it yet—so they grab the nearest prepackaged worldview that makes them feel powerful.
It’s not brave. It’s not original. It’s not even intelligent.
It’s a payday built on third-hand rhetoric and first-hand misery.
And if someone reads that and gets mad enough to leave, fine.
Because the only ones threatened by this being named are the ones selling the grift.
And once you see that machine clearly, you start craving something real enough to survive it.
So yeah—here’s my theory:
We’re in some kind of hell, and art—in all its forms—is the only thing that actually matters.
And given those two extremes, I’m probably at least half right that it’s one or the other.
The theatrics that come with embracing a lifestyle role come with some of the same pitfalls as anyone who sells their body and their brand to strangers online:
burnout.
And when I say “lifestyle,” I’m not talking about a couple scenes a year. I’m not talking about a “spice things up” season in the bedroom. I’m not talking about the way people get off to 50 Shades and call it BDSM.
I mean: this is who I am.
And when it’s not present in my life—when it’s not available to me in some form—I don’t just feel bored. I feel dead inside. Not dramatic-dead. Not attention-dead. Just… like my system got unplugged from the thing it was built to run on.
Now—this doesn’t mean I have to be running full dominance theatrics and raw sexual voltage every waking hour.
It means it needs to be there.
Ready.
On standby.
A part of the atmosphere.
Something I can reach for when I’m in that space—because it’s where I feel most content, most clear, most myself.
And if you’re in a dynamic with me, a healthy expectation of balance—on both sides—isn’t a bonus feature. It’s the baseline.
I can tell you what to do, keep you accountable, and build you into someone sharper while I’m playing Super Mario or rearranging old papers in my closet. That’s not a contradiction. That’s the point: the role isn’t cosplay for me. It’s a way of relating. A way of holding someone. A way of moving through daily life with structure intact.
But that kind of comfort only happens after time.
Somewhere between someone auditioning for a role… and someone being in it long enough that they understand who I am—and what they are to me.
And to get there, you don’t show up confused and hope I’ll magically turn you into a person with clarity.
You show up honest.
Committed.
Sure of what you want—or at least sure you want to find out for real.
I can be mythical and mysterious all day, but I can’t turn wet bread into toast without lighting my circuits on fire. I’m not in the business of conversion. I’m not here to drag “both hands on the wheel, no funny business” people into the deep end while they trauma-dump and then act betrayed when the water feels wet.
If you’re curious and you don’t know what you like yet, do the basics:
Read.
Watch.
Listen.
Lurk in a server.
Pay attention to what makes your body lean forward and what makes it pull back.
Let your own experience teach you what you want.
Just don’t approach me in a role, invite me to treat you in that role, and then try to Uno-reverse me because you didn’t like what the role actually implies.
And none of this exists in a vacuum.
Being loud about kink has never been an easy path—stigma has always been part of the landscape. But lately the climate feels even more volatile. People want simple villains. Easy labels. One screenshot and a pitchfork parade.
Which is why that George C. Scott line from Angus sticks with me:
Superman isn’t brave. Superman is Superman. He’s indestructible—and you can’t be brave if you’re indestructible. Brave is being crushable and still going out there anyway.
I know the fucking cost to play at this table.
When you get seen, the risk stops being hypothetical—and I don’t get to pretend it only lands on me.
That’s what makes me dangerous by design: I don’t confuse being loud with being free. I build, I choose, and I hold the line — and I’ve got the miles on my soul to make that line expensive.
And there’s something else under all of it—something I don’t talk about as often, because it’s quieter than outrage and harder to posture around.
The danger isn’t the noise. It’s the clock.
I carry a fear of death in me now that used to not be there.
It shows up when things get quiet.
When I’m standing outside the world for a second—outside the noise, outside the roles—and I can feel the outline of my own life like it’s a finite object.
I’m not going to hit you with “you don’t understand,” because I wouldn’t wish anyone to understand this feeling: the idea that there might be nothing after all of this. No credits. No continuation. Just… a hard stop.
So we do what humans always do.
We inflate everything.
We make tiny things sacred, call it tradition, and pretend that’s the same thing as meaning.
We build entire lives around rules that were decided by people who died before we were born, and we pretend the structure is the point.
And then one day you ask the question that changes you:
Why is that the rule?
Why is that the measure?
Why is that what we’re supposed to want?
Who benefits from everyone agreeing to keep playing?
That question will clarify a lot.
It will strip away fake urgency.
It will reveal what actually matters—who you love, what you protect, what you refuse, what you’re willing to build with the limited time you’ve been handed.
But it won’t answer the only question that keeps your throat tight when you dissociate hard enough that a few seconds stretches into a lifetime.
It won’t tell you what comes after this.
And that—honestly—that’s the single scariest thing I can think of.
If manifesting is screaming into the unknown and hoping something good screams back, consider this me doing exactly that — the only thing I haven’t done yet.
Because—
I’m ready to collect on my spoils of war from decades of pain, regret, and bullshit.
I’m coming for a gravestone that says more than a name I never chose, a production date that was an accident, and an expiration date yet to be determined.
I’m coming for financial security for myself and the ones who share my blood, so the people after me inherit runway — not the wreckage I did.
I’m coming for minds and bodies that choose me back — that I can touch with intent, shape with my ethics, and meet in the places our pain overlaps.
I’m coming for what’s mine this time, and any stray asshole who brushes me the wrong way, tries to slow me down, or throws themselves in front of this train is going to get more than a wall of text in their face — they’re getting more attention than they were bargaining for.
To those who dare: don’t act surprised when I turn my focus, my skill set, and my razor-sharp ethics in your direction.
This is me consenting to the cost—because I want the legacy more than I want the camouflage.
You don’t even know my real name.
I’m the fucking lizard king.
Companion track: “New Noise” – Refused
Aftercare (The Comedown)
If this one hit loud, slow down before you turn it into a message, a post, or a life decision. You just read about outrage-as-currency, adult branding, burnout, and that sharp mortality/legacy pressure—through a Dominant voice that doesn’t soften the edges. If you feel keyed up, it doesn’t mean you’re broken; it means your system clocked the weight.
The internet sells urgency, but you don’t have to take it at face value. Take the useful truth—time matters, and your choices matter—lead yourself with conviction, not hollowness. If you are feeling “dangerous by design” energy, keep it in a real container: discernment first, consent first, and no intensity without care for yourself and others.
You don’t have to solve your whole world in a day. Give it a little more time. If you want a better tomorrow, you’ll choose it on purpose—steady, not reckless.
Cycle II – Coming of Age (The Hidden Life) · 13 (v1.00)
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