RSD is a journal about ‘cultural’ bullshit.
Not the harmless kind. Nah, the structural kind. The kind of stories, systems, and habits people keep regurgitating long after they’ve stopped making sense. Like a zombie chewing the same piece of gum for forty years. No flavour left. Just dead-behind-the-eyes brain rot.
Most writing online performs politeness. It cushions criticism, frames disagreement as dialogue, and treats long-standing traditions as if longevity alone proves their value.
It is interested in the gap between official stories and lived experience. The distance between what institutions say is happening and what actually happens on the ground. The space where ideology, bureaucracy, culture, and ordinary life collide.
This publication isn’t interested in preserving those stories. It is interested in dismantling them.
The work here treats culture the same way a mechanic treats a faulty machine. It takes things apart. Systems, institutions, class rituals, bureaucratic habits, national myths, grief rituals, polite lies, and the strange performances people repeat until they start to feel natural.
Some of those investigations become long essays. Others appear first as fragments. Both forms are part of the same project.
👀 WHAT YOU’LL FIND
Two forms of writing live here.
🔥 Essays
These are the main pieces.
Longer works that dismantle a particular structure or story. Sometimes that means cultural critique. Sometimes philosophical argument. Sometimes class analysis. Sometimes narrative field observation. Often all of them at once.
Essays here treat ordinary experiences as evidence. A migration office encounter, a funeral ritual, a workplace habit, a city square. Small scenes that reveal larger systems underneath.
🧾 Scraps
Scraps are the smaller fragments.
Notes, field observations, partial arguments, and short pieces that appear before they grow into something larger. Some remain fragments. Others eventually expand into essays.
Think of them as the notebook pages of the journal. Early signals, stray insights, unfinished dissections.
📚 The archive
Paid members can access the full archive as it grows. Free readers see the most recent work as it’s published.
❓WHY THIS EXISTS
Because too many cultural narratives survive because nobody is willing to say the obvious thing out loud.
Institutions rely on politeness and braindead conformity. Myths rely on repetition. Class performance relies on silence. When nobody interrupts the story, the story hardens into truth.
This journal aims to interrupt the story.
📮 Posting
This isn’t a content mill, so there’s no content calendar here.
Essays take time to build, and fragments appear when they appear. On average you’ll probably see two essays a month, sometimes more, sometimes less.
Right now I publish WEB-ONLY. No inbox spam. No pushy pings.
But if you want a different poison, say so.
A practical note before anyone assumes the usual internet rituals: this publication isn’t built around engagement metrics, which means all notifications are turned OFF.
There are no alerts for likes, hearts, shares, or comment counts. I’m not refreshing dashboards or waiting for applause or hate. The internet already has enough people scrounging for engagement.
The work goes out. Whoever reads it reads it.
You can argue with each other if you want. You can read quietly if you prefer. Either way, I’m not running a live feedback loop.
💸 Some is free. Some is not.
Most essays are readable up to the final stretch. The wall usually lands somewhere around the halfway mark or later, depending on the piece.
Scraps are mostly open, though writer notes and a few add-ons sit behind the wall.
This isn’t about exclusivity or pretending writing is rarefied. It’s simpler than that: if the internet can charge for spectacle, bodies, and attention, it can charge for writing too.
Think of the wall less as a gate and more as the last room of the house.
🎟️ Membership
Paid membership supports the writing. It unlocks the full archive and the paywalled sections of essays. If you’re here to read regularly and want the whole thing, these are the options.
Monthly — £3.50
Full essays, paid Scraps, and access to the archive.Annual — £36
Same access as monthly, but cheaper if you’re planning to stay around.Founding Patron — £100
For readers who want to throw extra support behind the work and keep the field running.
Think of it as a nod of support, not a locked gate. A sub tip jar with better maths.
❓Why Subscribe?
Subscribe if you like essays that pick fights with systems people usually accept without question.
If you’re interested in class, culture, institutions, grief, mythology, bureaucracy, and the strange logic of everyday life.
If you prefer blunt analysis to motivational content.
Because writing takes time to think through and produce.
Because if the internet can monetise spectacle, attention, and bodies, it can also monetise writing that actually takes time to think through and produce.
Because you want work that doesn’t flinch.
Because you’re tired of polite metaphors and soft explanations for systems that deserve criticism.
Because a lot of writing online is designed to flatter the reader or perform shrink-wrapped as relatable™. This place isn’t interested in doing that.
Because you’re bruised by systems, stuck in bureaucratic rot, tired of recycled slogans, or just navigating the daily crawl.
If none of that sounds appealing, there are plenty of friendlier corners of the internet.
If this sounds like your kind of purgatory, stick around.
If not, the internet has plenty of nice lies waiting.
If you find us interesting, whisper it to the next poor soul.
There’s a leaderboard too, if you’re curious. Not of sales, but of who’s dragged the most readers through the door.
