Stephen Walker — Opinionated Ad Man, Writer and Author, Professional AI Hater, Marketer and Trader.

60

The Woo Woo Was Wrong

I got roped into taking a break. I happen to have quite a few people who operate in the whole woo woo space. From law of attraction to full blown astrology and everything in between, and while I don’t have anything against them. They’re absolutely amazing…
60

Why does everything feel like wet cardboard?

And what can we do about it? I had to try really hard to not do the whole RE: RE: RE: No, Seriously, Why Does Everything Suck Now type of subject line… You know me better than that. I may or may not have also had…
60

I am grateful

That you show up every time and read my emails and reply and just interact. I’ve had so many great conversations and also views on the topics and ideas I write about and share with you, that doing this is what keeps me going. I genuinely…
60

The Art of Whore

Here’s a little social media “game” for us folks who still require those platforms to feed into our own platforms… After all. Our audience/clients/customer numbers aren’t going to increase themselves magically (I mean I wish they did) but we still have to do some work and…
60

The great dumbification

The world is systematically dumbing itself down to feed the dopamine starved masses, and we’re all complicit in this intellectual race to the bottom of the barrel… Everything is getting shorter, simpler, more digestible. Books become audiobooks become podcast summaries become TikTok highlights become tweet sized…
60

Size doesn’t matter

I had an interesting conversation with a fellow creator today, who sadly got sucked into the world of generative AI. They were lied to by some of our favourite marketing tech bros. The lie was that generative AI would help you grow your audience indirectly because…
60

Why you shouldn’t over socialise

Stop over socialising. Seriously. Every coffee meetup, networking event, and “quick catch up” is stealing time from your actual work. We get deluded into thinking that we’re building relationships. Although what we’re doing is just masturbating our social anxiety while our creative projects die of neglect.…
60

Your last chance to be irreplaceable

2026 is the best push you’ll ever get as a creative to make work you’re actually in love with. Why? AI is eating everything. And I mean everything. It’s churning out blog posts, social media captions, email campaigns, video scripts, and probably grocery lists by now.…
60

Hemingway would’ve hit send

There’s this Hemingway quote that shows up on every basic bitch’s Instagram story next to a picture of a typewriter they’ve never touched and a whiskey glass they bought off of Amazon. “All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence…
60

Girl at the coffee shop

…had 47 browser tabs open like she was re-creating the matrix. Eyes half shut. Posture of someone who’d been clinically dead for twenty minutes and just decided to come back because her coffee wasn’t finished yet. Hair doing something ambitious. The laptop was practically breathing harder…
60

Your favourite guru lied to you

And the funny thing is, you paid for it too. The lie is so fucking obvious that I’m embarrassed it took me this long to call it out. In the MMO space. They told you that flashing income screenshots and Lamborghini photos would attract high quality…
60

No Skool like the old Skool

Got a few people reply who were hesitant about getting Telegram, cause they thought I was going to do what everyone and their dog is doing, which is build an “app” on Skool. And frankly. That’s a valid question. Firstly. The app ecosystem sucks. It runs…
60

It’s Friday the 13th

And you know what you gotta do. You need to take it easy. Then put on Friday the 13th (1980) cause it’s the best one in my opinion (Which also happens to be fact) and watch the camp counsellors get brutally murdered one by one at…
60

The Black Coffee Effect

You walk into a coffee shop. It’s one of those coffee shops. The kind where the barista has a tattoo of a French press on their forearm and the menu board looks like it was written by a calligrapher having a panic attack. The line is…
60

The Escape Hatch Pt2

Got a few replies asking about what other things will be shared in that group. So I might as well drop the full menu. These are just a lot of notes and concepts I’m researching and building but it’ll cover everything from: Psychology & Human Behaviour,…
60

The Escape Hatch

It feels like an eternity since I sent the last email. Best friend didn’t die, which is obviously good and he also jokingly said that I’m supposed to die before him anyways… So it just goes to show that a dark sense of humour can get…
60

Yes, England. You know?

…fish, chips, cup ‘o tea, bad food, worse weather, Mary fucking Poppins… ENGLAND! “I don’t like leaving my own country, Doug, and I especially don’t like leaving it for anything less than warm sandy beaches, and cocktails with little straw hats.” “We’ve got sandy beaches…” So,…
60

Liar’s Poker

I’m heading back from London as I write and send this… Pick it up and read it over and over. It’s essentially about the wall street sociopaths who turned greed into a game (And what it truly reveals about human nature) Michael Lewis exposed the primal…
60

The Century of the Self

If you’ve been questioning what’s going on in the world and wanting a deeper dive into western society and how we’ve all been tricked and lied to… This will arguably be the best thing you watch in 2026. Marketers think they know things until they’ve watched…
60

Fickle Family Fuckery and Friends

One of my best friends nearly died a few days ago. We were hanging out, having a couple of beers and planning a little holiday together to see some family we’ve not seen in forever. That’s when it happened. He dropped to the floor clutching his…
60

I hit a wall.

The last 24hrs and the next 24hrs are going to be touch and go. I’ll catch up soon. A few weeks ago someone asked about getting into this whole world of copywriting and what not. So here’s a challenge/thread that might be helpful. Stephen Walker.
60

Be the anti marketer

Don’t worry. No soap box rant today. Although I’ll probably be fast asleep after hitting a massive caffeine and stale cookies crash by the time you read this, so if this email makes even less sense than usual, that’s why. (Thank God for automation that isn’t…
60

Roll the dice

Here’s one of my favourite poems from my favourite poets… Roll the dice by Charles Bukowski: if you’re going to try, go all the way. otherwise, don’t even start. if you’re going to try, go all the way. this could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives, jobs…
60

Rage merchants

Every blue tick wanker on Twitter and Facebook has suddenly become a rage bait merchant. And trust me. You’ve seen them. The verified accounts posting the dumbest, most inflammatory takes imaginable just to farm engagement. It’s especially popular on Twitter because engagement of any sort =…
60

Do the things you hate

So this weekend I have to embark on a journey. The journey is deep. Not as wild as Shackleton’s famous advert for an Endurance expedition: “Men Wanted for Hazardous Journey Low wages, bitter cold, long hours of complete darkness. Safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in…
60

You missed out on Polarizuasion

So my main man Ben Settle just launched a mini course just over a week ago. Inside said mini course he shares some profound insights about polarisation and persuasion. Arguably it’s probably the best $20 I spent in a long time. Now unfortunately you just missed…
60

The insanity antidote

You know what keeps me from losing my shit completely when everything’s going wrong? Gratitude. I know, I know. It sounds like something a wellness influencer would say while selling you a $47 journal with motivational quotes. Although it’s 2026 now, but hear me out. When…
60

WCYD

January is a cursed month for me. I don’t know if it’s the moon, the stars, Mercury in Gatorade, or Cthulhu himself waking up cranky, but every January things go sideways. Shit breaks. People lose their minds. Plans implode. The universe decides to test exactly how…
60

We don’t know what we don’t know

This is gonna be quick. A friend of mine runs a group teaching economics and market movements to a hyper niche audience. Smart guy. Knows his shit. But today he asked me how to make his presentations more interesting. And in soap box fashion I shared…
60

The land of literally

We’re accelerating toward a culture where people take everything on the internet literally and it’s fucking terrifying. I’m not talking about your aunt who believes every Facebook post about how microwaving your phone charges it faster. I’m talking about a wholesale collapse in people’s ability to…