I finally left Facebook
I know, I know, I am **way** too late to this party.
The last time that I posted something on Facebook was March last year, the only reason I still had Facebook installed was to watch what friends and family were up to. Instead of just talking to them like a normal human, I was some creepy voyeur seeing what they had for dinner, or watch them publicly argue with trolls about Covid in comments.
But this week two things happened, two straws that broke the camels back and pushed me away from the platform for the foreseeable.
"They pay *you* to post? Sounds like a scam"
I recently referred a friend to Leofinance and noise.cash, he was already aware of cryptocurrency, had a good knowledge of finance and most importantly to this story, knew of Facebooks bullshit. When I told him about Leofinance he simply asked for a link. Easy.
Yesterday I tried the same with someone I work with. The response was: "They pay *you* to post? Sounds like a scam". This is how brainwashed big tech has people. Despite monumental amounts of money being involved, people can't fathom that some of it belongs in their hands.
This is what decentralised social media has to contend with. The masses are so used to being screwed over that the promise of no censorship and not being treated like digital cattle sounds too good to be true.
*Times are tough for Facebook and compensating people for their content, being bombarded with adverts and selling their data to anyone with cash would surely sink the company*
The second straw happened today when I realised the valentines gift I ordered for my girlfriend last month was never going to arrive, and the website had been removed from the face of the Internet.
*Yep. The baby yoda craze claims another victim. Yes, I feel ashamed.*
What does that have to do with Facebook? Well it was a Facebook advert that I bought it through.
One of the data points they must have on me is that I've watched the Mandalorian as I've been getting several targeted ads. And weeks ago I could overlook the creepiness and think of it as useful.
Something existed that I would be interested in buying and had they not used my data maybe I would have never found it by myself.
But selling my data to someone that would use that data to scam me? Unforgivable. After the Cambridge Analytica scandal I knew that they were selling my data to scum, but somehow it wasn't personal enough. I felt like I wasn't susceptible to having my mindset changed by propaganda so shrugged it off. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge%20Analytica
Using that data to outright steal my money has finally opened my eyes. I may have lost $27 but I have a feeling that my absence will cost them a lot more.
I was invited to be a gaming youtuber
Being paid to play video games is every teenagers dream. And I'm sure a lot of us have looked at what big names on YouTube can earn with envy.
But the reality is that it's a huge task, with a large start up cost that may even fail to get off the ground.
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A few months ago I was approached by a colleague who runs a new YouTube gaming channel with 3 of his friends. He asked me if I was interested in making some video thumbnails for them, and eventually asked if I wanted to join in with some games so that I'd have context for the thumbnails.
I had some free time and who doesn't want a shot at being a youtuber? So I agreed but quickly realised it wasn't going to be a simple task.
Start up cost
My laptop is 10 years old, it doesn't have any hope at playing the latest games. And in the world of YouTube that's very important. New PC capable of playing and recording newer games? **£700** and that's being Conservative. And that was only the start.
- The majority of these games aren't free, potentially **£60** a pop.
- A good mic? Anything from **£20 to £100**
- External hard drive for footage **£80**
- A flawless Internet connection **£30 monthly**
Well, every business venture has start up costs, that's to be expected. I didn't have the above but I could hop on for a few games of Among us as a video guest, as my laptop didn't struggle with it. That's when the other hidden cost appeared.
**Time**
Youtubers don't just play a game for an hour and cut out the best 30 mins for their video. It can take days to capture something entertaining. In our case it was the entire weekend, and I was warned that sometimes after two days of gaming, inspiration never comes and they're left with hours of footage that nobody would bother watching.
This was the first deal breaker for me. When a side hustle starts taking up more time than my full time job I have to ask if its worth it, and after noticing that I had hardly spoken to my partner that weekend, I wondered how professional youtubers managed to hold together a relationship.
Keeping in character
If you were to meet your favourite youtuber in real life I would be willing to bet that they would come across totally different to how you would expect.
A side effect of trying to make funny and entertaining content is that you begin playing a character. Emotions get exaggerated and it's *exhausting* keeping it up for hours every day. Gaming is fun when you can sit in silence and enjoy the game, but that makes for terrible footage, that silence has to be filled.
Potentially all for nothing
After that weekend I decided I couldn't commit to the time needed to get on board with them instead I ended up finding noise.cash and from there, Leofinance. Neither required start up costs, I could be myself, could put as much or as little time as I wanted into it and I started earning immediately.
And compared to the $0.00 they've made so far, I think it was the right choice.
Because in the end it doesn't matter how much money you spend on fancy hardware, if you're not entertaining, or picked up by YouTubes algorithm. It can very easily be all for nothing.
To those that still want to gain a youtuber, some words of advice. Do what you enjoy. Not what you think people will enjoy watching.
Beware of imposters!
This week I have seen an alarming amount of people claiming that WallStreetBets have set their sights on silver, Dogecoin and Bitcoin. Despite this making no sense a lot of people are following the crowd and falling for these pump and dump schemes.
The source of this misinformation is mostly from this twitter account: https://mobile.twitter.com/WSBChairman
They have a huge amount of followers believing them to be a representative of the WSB subreddit.
Despite the WSB mod twitter account claiming otherwise.
I don't believe the account to be doing this maliciously, but because of the very vague direction from WSBs (because of legal reasons they can't be seen as being "organised") this is causing confusion and people to stray from the "movement".
Be careful people. Research people the same way you would research an investment. Don't legitimise people that want to derail something for their own gains.
Earning review: FaucetCrypto
*I've been trying out various sites offering "free" crypto-currencies. As we all know, nothing is truly free so I've been testing various sites so you don't have to! The basic requirements are cashing out in easily exchangeable coins, and no excessively high minimum cash out. Todays site is* FaucetCrypto https://faucetcrypto.com/ref/647254
What is it?
It's a crypto faucet (a site giving away small amounts of crypto-currency in exchange for exposure and advertising views) with a minimum withdrawal amount. Something that normally would make me run the other direction very quickly. But it has some interesting features and has already paid out to me in 3 days of use.
What's the catch?
Well it's a faucet so you can expect ads but it's not excessive. Weirdly and uniquely to FaucetCrypto, I haven't encountered CAPTCHAs so far.
Every task you complete earns you generic "coins" that can be converted to your crypto of choice once you hit 500 coins. (Yes they have BCH)
How do I make money?
There's a little more to this site than checking in once a day to claim. There is a daily reward, but the faucet refreshes every 30 minutes. If you're impatient you can also view adverts for slightly more coins than a faucet click.
An interesting feature is the experience system. Every task grants you experience, and every level gained grants you a 0.125% increase to your rewards. Judging by some of the levels I've seen in the inbuilt chat, it seems a lot of users put a lot of time into this site which is very telling.
How much have you made?
It took me 3 days of use to reach the 500 coins withdrawal minimum which equated to 0.000032 BCH. $0.013 At time of writing. This was from the daily reward and several of the 30 minute faucet claims. It should be noted that I've only claimed one of the Ptc and shortlink ads so there's a lot of missed potential there.
While $0.013 over 3 days normally wouldn't be enough to keep me returning, I'm very interested to see how the experience system effects that. I'm confident I can get it up to $0.01 a day, and with how rapidly the market is moving, that could amount to much bigger things.
If you're also casting your crypto net wide like I am, check out FaucetCrypto https://faucetcrypto.com/ref/647254
Did you know the French word for walkie-talkie is talkie-walkie? I wonder if FaucetCrypto is French... https://faucetcrypto.com/ref/647254
Earning review: Noise.cash
Earlier this year I reviewed noise.cash which you can read here, and while I was already very positive about the site, the admin team have made some huge improvements and I feel that a fresh review would be fair. https://read.cash/@Sneezewort/is-noisecash-worth-your-effort-71043387
What is noise.cash?
Essentially it's twitter, but if users find you interesting they can tip your post with BitcoinCash (BCH). Free BCH is distributed amongst users randomly and cannot be withdrawn, it has to be "tipped" to other users, with a minimum of 20% going into your own wallet. There is also the option to tip users with your own BCH via QR code.
What's the catch?
Well there isn't one, the site doesn't even have adverts.
Come on man, free money doesn't exist. What's the catch?
As far as I can tell noise.cash is a method to pump the price of BCH, it's advertising its existence to more people and increasing transactions which in turn attracts attention from investors. I'd hazard a guess that the admin team, and investor Marc De Mesel have a huge amount of money invested in BCH.
So I suppose the catch, if you can even call it that, is the potential lifespan of the site. Nobody knows what's going to happen once the free tips run out. So get in while the going is good.
How do I make money?
Because you can't just claim the free tips for yourself, you're depending on the community to tip you. So if you're able to consistently make interesting posts, and engage with your subscribers, there's a good amount of money to be made.
For example, I've run an instagram page for my pet cat for the last 2 years. It has never made me a cent. On noise.cash I have been making around 5 to 7 cents per picture, not including other tips that come from interacting in comments. It all adds up. And now with the addition of "chambers" I'm able to post them in a topic dedicated to cat pictures, which increases my chances of being tipped further.
Another good method is giveaways. People don't want to give their free tips to spammers so they frequently make contests such as: Meme making competitions, movie trivia, etc. Something to show that their tips are going to an actual human that has put effort into their post.
How much have you made?
The time between joining noise.cash and writing this review has been around 20 days, and I've made 0.0375 BCH. At the time of writing this is around $15. Compared to other methods this VERY good.
When I was active most of the day I was making around $1 a day but this decreased as I returned to my full time job. However what's unique about noise.cash is that it isn't a chore like most faucets and earning sites. I'm talking to people online like I do anyway. I'm literally being paid to do something I enjoy.
And that is a very rare thing indeed.
Don't drive your heros
Anyone that has watched Top Gear has probably heard the term "don't drive your heros" before. It refers to idolising a car in your childhood and then either driving it or going as far as buying it in adulthood. The reason they warn against it? You're going to be disappointed.
And guess what I did?
In the past I have bought my cars based on people recommending them and it worked out pretty well. I had many years of fun with a Mazda MX5 (miata for any Americans) and several more pretending to be rich with a Honda S2000. Turns out if you take the badge off the average person has no idea what it is. I had never lusted over those cars, I had heard that they were great fun and wanted some for myself. And that worked.
I grew up watching Gumball and the Cannonball rally and one car really stood out to me. Amongst the flash Lamborghinis and Ferrari was an inconspicuous family sedan. And it **won**. It was the original sleeper car, some styling improvements but nothing obvious, but instead of a sluggish 3 litre straight 6, a ridiculous (for the time) 400bhp 4.9 V8.
It should have just remained a dream to own one. But sadly depreciation exists. And the car that retailed for £70,000 eventually dropped to £10,000, and that put it dangerously in reach of me. I calculated insurance costs, and what I thought would be the worst thing, the fuel costs. And came to the conclusion I could do it.
I viewed about 4 of them, and several were in a very sorry state, which should have alerted me to the other less obvious cost of owning a car like this. However the 5th was beautiful and I had to buy it. And it wasn't long until the trouble started.
To drive the car is a dream. Even though its 20 years old you can be driving for hours and struggle to find another car that can keep up with it. And as you'd expect, the V8 sounds amazing.
However when you're washing a car, and being thorough, the last thing you want is to wash under the sills and put your hand through where there should be metal. The tin worm had been at it. £1400 repair bill.
Then came it's annual inspection. It failed because the headlights wouldn't adjust, the tester decided to drill a hole in the lenses and bodge a fix. £1200 for new lights (that one was partly on me, I told him do what it takes to pass it)
Oh boy, this is starting to get expensi- oil leaks, one serious, £3000, oh and all the brakes need replacing £700. OK this is getting out of hand.
At this point I haven't had a chance to enjoy the car. I've not had the money to take it on tour of Europe for obvious reasons, the constant mechanical issues mean I've not had a chance to clean it up and go to a car show. The car that I dreamt of owning as a kid is now a nightmare, I'm scared of driving it for fear of something else breaking.
By saving up and buying my dream car I've erased that feeling of wonder when I see them and replaced it with bad memories.
So what did I learn from this?
I should have bought Japanese.
The platforms I use to earn crypto with zero investment
Making money online without investing your own cash, or selling huge amounts of your private information used to be almost impossible. But thanks to crypto that's all changed. Here are my top platforms that I use to make near passive income.
Pipeflare https://pipeflare.io/r/5n9i
Most sites that give away free coins have a big catch, minimum withdrawal amounts. Meaning it can take weeks to withdraw measly cents into your wallets. Pipeflare grants Zcash once a day straight into your personal wallet. Leaving you free to covert it to your crypto of choice 👍
Global Hive https://globalhive.io/r/94127
Already knew about Pipeflare? Did you know about Globalhive? Exactly the same deal. Visit once a day for free Zcash that can be withdrawn to wallets immediately.
Faucet Crypto https://faucetcrypto.com/ref/647254
Faucetcrypto does have a minimum withdrawal but it's tiny. It also let's you pick from 20 different coins which includes BCH! A nice little faucet to supplement your noise/read.cash income.
FreeBitcoin https://freebitco.in/?r=23338990
Going slightly off topic as this site does have a minimum withdrawal limit. Normally if a site doesn't payout within a week I ditch it. But Freebitcoin operates more like a lottery. And who doesn't want a chance to to win £140 with a single click?
Publish0x https://www.publish0x.com/?a=APdRgKYqeG
Publish0x operates just like read.cash but instead of depending on a bot tipping you totally randomly, once users read your article they tip from a free pool. It's basically a mix between read.cash and noise.cash. It does have a minimum withdrawal but can easily be reached if you're an active writer.
The moment that I realised I don't want to be a parent
It's undeniable that the earth is over populated, yet I still get patronised for my choice.
It was a Saturday and me and my girl friend at the time drove to Tesco (British supermarket) to pick up something for dinner. Even for a Saturday it was incredibly busy, I drove around the full car park looking for a spot twice, before the third attempt I saw that the "parent and child" row was nearly empty.
Now for the record, I 100% agree with disabled spaces in carparks and would never dream of parking in one. Anyone that misuses them deserves any punishment coming their way. But parent and child spaces? Can't stand them.
I understand their intended purpose is to give more space to open the car door to remove your ~~crotch goblin~~ child from their car seat. Something that could also be remedied by just making parking spaces larger, an issue that has gotten worse and worse as new cars increase in size every year.
But that's not why I hate these spaces. It's the sheer **entitlement** of the people that use them. Demonstrated perfectly by the ~~breeders~~ family that I encountered that fateful day.
I decided to park at the far end of the parent and child row. One of the four furthest spaces from the supermarket itself. (the other three, occupied) Before I even had a chance to turn off the engine, a very large woman in a tracksuit who had parked further down the row marched over and peered inside my car. Oh boy, here we fucking go.
"Oi, you can't park there"
*These are literally the only spaces left*
"I don't care, you don't have a kid, go somewhere else"
*Fuck off.*
At this point the car was locked, we were walking away and another woman had exited the same car as the world's angriest piece of ham, followed by three kids that were obviously old enough to not need car seats. And SOMEHOW they had still managed to open their doors wide enough to ding the car next to them.
"if you go in there I'm going to key your car"
At this point I told my girlfriend to go inside without me. I'd wait with the car. I'm very protective of it and was already worried the porker had left grease on it from peering in my windows.
"you're disgusting, I hope you don't act like this when you have kids"
And there it is ladies and gentlemen. The sentence that put me off being a parent forever. **When** you have kids, **when** not *if*. To people like this the thought of someone not basing their entire existence on raising a family is so unfathomable that they automatically presume anyone without is working their way towards.
Do I want to work towards the same goal as someone that threatens to damage others property over a parking space?
As for the rest of the story. She informed me she was going inside to complain to staff. My girlfriend returned a few minutes later, before any other parent and child spaces were taken I might add and nothing else ever came of it.
Of course there are many other reasons why I chose to be "child free" but I'm sure I'll cover them in another article. But this was certainly a pivotal moment in my life.
Is noise.cash worth your effort?
The answer depends on how much you value your time.
Are you the sort of person that is happy making $1 a day as long as it requires no financial investment from you? If so, stop reading this article and sign up to noise.cash immediately.
Just from posting the occasional meme, cat picture, and interacting with the community in general this week I've averaged about $1 daily, paid directly into my wallet. That's more than I've ever earned from any faucet and it's actually been enjoyable.
The only people I don't think would benefit from noise.cash are both opposite ends of the scale:
People that have ascended beyond crypto as a hobby and use their time trading it.
People that literally want money for no effort.
The first is pretty self explanatory. Let's face it, if you're investing thousands in crypto you probably value your time higher than $1. Although there may be another reason for you to be interested in noise.cash which I'll cover in a minute.
As for those that would treat noise.cash like you might a faucet. Like I said above the site requires a level of effort. If you interact with the community you're much more likely to earn tips than if you were to just spam quotes, interesting facts, random pictures or outright beg. People want their tips to go to deserving people, and for that to happen you've got to comes across as, well, **human.**
There is a halfway point. The money from tips might not be that attractive to you, but noise.cash does have another valuable resource. It's thousands of people that are aware of cryptocurrency and eager to earn, and currently noise.cash allows referral links to other platforms. For example you can be sure that I'll be posting the link to this article on there. But remember there still is the caveat that you still need to behave like a human. Not just spamming links like a bot.
Are you going to become a millionaire from noise.cash? Probably not. Are you going to earn a couple of dollars for very little work? Definitely.
And let's face it, anything is better than twitter.
My Crypto journey (so far)
The year is 2014. I'm between jobs and spending most of my time playing Anarchy Online on my Duo core Sony Vaio laptop. Bitcoin exists and I believe its around the time that a guy famously pays for a pizza with it, and Lily Allen turns down 200,000 BTC to perform a second life gig.
At the same time a new coin starts making noise. DOGECOIN. Everyone knows it's just a meme, but they're so easy to mine I can't help but set up a wallet and mining program. By the time I get bored (and my laptop has nearly melted) I've got about 60 DOGECOIN in my wallet. This is my first interaction with Crypto currency. It won't be my last.
Several years later and I'm deep in my new career. In the news people are talking about this new technology that has suddenly shot up in value. A "cryptocurrency" that is worth £12,000. Nobody knows how it works, but everyone wishes they took it more seriously. Me and my colleagues already know all about it. One of them mined BTC at its inception. He has 300 of them in a wallet. He doesn't know the password...
Another few years and it's 2020. And FINALLY I take the hint. My first investment isn't money, its time. I sign up to coinpot and click on faucets for weeks, and never meet the minimum cash-out requirement. Dead end.
I nearly bought $1200 worth of Litecoin mining equipment, thankfully I watched a YouTube video about the ventilation that they need and realised they run louder than a vacuum cleaner. My neighbours would have loved me.
One day while at work I find a coinbase referral link from someone and earn free alt coins through coinbase earn. $6 every time new lessons became available. Actual crypto that I own, and I'm hooked.
The topic of crypto currency comes up in conversation a few days later. "oh, that guy paid for his house deposit with bitcoin" sure enough someone I worked with had bought £200 of BTC and sold it for £20,000.
That was the push that I needed. I finally take the plunge and invest a few hundred pounds in Litecoin despite my girlfriend at the time telling me I'm throwing my money away.
I made £100 and felt like the Wolf of Wall Street.
Since then I've messed around with smaller amounts, made some and lost some. But overall made some pocket change despite coinbases awful transaction fees.
My most recent success is with noise.cash. Making $1 each day, paid directly into wallets for essentially shit posting. Something I've been doing for years for free!
I'm hoping to be like my unfortunate colleague with the 300 unaccessible BTC, a fortune stashed away and forgotten about. But hopefully I'll remember the password.
So now you join me on my latest endeavour. If this pays half as well as noise.cash I'll be a happy boy.
Want free Zcash with no minimum withdrawal? https://pipeflare.io/r/5n9i
@Sneezewort
