The whole point of creating something new, my 'Blasphemy' book, was to try to push people into a new direction, to explore something different. And yet what happened?

People started to unsubscribe. Some of them messaged me to say they didn't like what I was now doing and that I should make 'videos like the ones you used to make'. This was not just one or two - at least 200 subscribers left my channel the moment I started releasing my atheist poetry videos.

Promoting a book of songs is always tricky when your singing voice is as bad as mine, but I hoped people could see through that and listen to the words instead. It's amazing how naive I could have been to think that. On every single video I made, 90% of the comments were something like 'your singing is awful'. Really? Didn't I say exactly that on the title screen of the videos themselves? No shit, Sherlock - big surprise to me. Not.

Then, when I uploaded videos of me reciting the videos as straight, spoken-word poems, the comments were 'much better than your singing'. Again, few comments on the actual content. One or two people said, 'Bring back the singing' so I stupidly uploaded another singing video and it reverted to 'don't sing, you can't sing, you're a terrible singer... etc'.

And always, every time I uploaded a new video, people would tell me to go back to what I used to do, to make videos like I used to make, to be the old Gisburne2000, while my subscriber numbers just went down and down and down as people left my channel.

I worked for 14 long and hard weeks on my new book, and I did it because I thought it would be something I could enjoy sharing with the other atheists on YouTube. A few people left some appreciative comments, but they were in a minority. I have completely misjudged people and made the biggest mistake of my life by expecting atheists to be different from anyone else, expecting them to welcome something new and different. Far from enjoying the experience, it just left me feeling cold and hostile to the very people to whom I try to reach out every time I make a video. I have hated almost every minute of the experience of announcing my book release on YouTube, and that was something I did not anticipate.

Most people watching my YouTube channel seem to want more of the same. They don't want to be taken down other, new paths. Gisburne2000 to them is someone who makes clever statements about religion. Poetry? Nah, he doesn't do that, he makes videos about evolution, about Noah's Ark, about bananas and motherfucking pineapples. I am so sick of being told how great that video with the pineapple is, and how much people like the 'I am God' video. Fuck that. I am done with it.

My web site will be undergoing major, and I mean major surgery. Out with the old and in with the new. The new is whatever I put my mind to, whatever interests me. The 'old' are the videos I made long ago and which are gone for good. I have deleted all but a few of the videos in my YouTube account. I've done that before but this time I will not be reviving any of my old videos again. Ever.

People either don't like my new book idea or don't understand it, and that's fine, I can deal with that. To some extent that is down to my inability to communicate exactly what it is. But what I despise most of all is being asked to forget it, to take a dozen steps back, to do exactly what everyone else is doing - the same thing they always did. I am not who I was. I have moved on. I still believe in everything I said in those old atheist videos, but if you long for 'the good old days', tough luck. These are the good new days.

Welcome to the present, to my present. This is Nick Gisburne now, doing his own thing, in his own way, as all independent freethinkers should strive to do. That is what I've always tried to do. You just never noticed. Maybe one day I will be able to get your attention and make you think. I hope so. I'll try.

Cheers

Nick Gisburne