Welcome, my friend.
I hope you’ll forgive me if this is a jarring change in tone; I thought that when I wrote the text of my previous article, it might be the last chance to say anything to you. I had contingency plans for if the response was mediocre; I put a lot of thought into how I could gracefully fade away back into my anonymous corner of the Internet if it turned out no one was listening.
All I can say is that I am so very sorry I underestimated you.
By the time launch week was over, UTW had over a hundred subscribers across all the platforms that track that kind of thing. We crossed the 200 mark within days of launch week ending, the Facebook page has now passed a thousand followers, and it shows no signs of stopping.
The entire production team was astonished by the strength of your response.
“Thank you” seems insufficient, but for lack of anything better: thank you!
(I’m also experiencing a very strange kind of time dilation right now. For you, it has been two weeks since I posted my previous article—perhaps even less than that since you first read it. For me, it has been three months since I wrote its text, having no clue what the turning of the season would bring.
(It’s very surreal to be editing a document in the very same folder, as though I were the very same Danielle Church who wrote the words “You Are Not Alone”.)
A New Weekly Schedule
Before I get any further, I’d like to announce a couple logistical changes for Unfucking The World.
First, I’ve shuttered the Discord server, Reddit sub, and Facebook group. I very much appreciate those folks who did poke their heads in, but some very insightful readers correctly pointed out that it would perhaps be a bad idea to keep a centralized list of “people who are actively working on helping with UTW” anywhere.
From now on, you can follow UTW (on Substack, Facebook, or Bluesky), and you can subscribe to UTW (on Substack, YouTube, or a podcast platform), but I’m not going to ask you to join UTW.
That doesn’t mean you won’t be hearing from me, though.
Starting now, Unfucking The World will be moving to a weekly schedule, for as long as I can manage it. I’ll post one article every Saturday at 12pm Eastern, 9am Pacific, in all formats and both languages.
It’s going to be a bit rocky to start—the video for this very episode won’t be going up for a few more days, and neither will the Spanish version—but I’ll do my best to keep to that cadence.
That’s enough logistics, though. Last time I asked for questions, and you’ve certainly had plenty since we launched!
By far the most common is:
“What can I do? No, actually, specifically, what can I personally do?”
Coming up very closely behind that:
“You know this will never work, right?”
These are both important enough to merit a full article each. I’ll tackle the first today.
Before We Begin: Two Clarifications
That’s not all the feedback I’ve gotten, though, and so I also have a couple of clarifications to make.
I may be an author, but that doesn’t mean I always choose the right words. Sometimes the meaning that comes across isn’t the one I’d intended.
I consider that a failure on my end. My goal is to spread hope, not fear. If I haven’t communicated that properly, it’s my fault, not yours.
What I Mean by a “System”
In “What It Will Take”, I introduced the concepts of systems reliability and failure states, using a few examples from across human society: a DMV, a wall clock, and an electric power grid.
That made some readers uncomfortable, in this world where our jobs are continually being replaced by machines, and in retrospect that was extremely predictable.
In hindsight, I wish I’d clarified how not all systems are manmade, and not all systems even have a function—some, like our Solar System, simply are.
It didn’t occur to me, though, and so I’ll just apologize for the discomfort and work on doing better next time.
What I Mean by “Risk”
The other slip-up on my part I’d like to call out is from “No Confidence”; I mentioned that state legislators would be unlikely to support ratification of the No Confidence Amendment, especially now, because it would be “too risky”.
I really ought to have clarified the type of risk I meant.
The risk is not to the American public, but to the legislators themselves.
The last few months before a re-election are an extremely vulnerable time for any politician. That’s a short enough window that an unpopular decision will still be fresh in voters’ minds when they go to the polls, and that could destroy a political career.
As much as they might personally like to help us, as much as they might believe in the principles of No Confidence, acting without the visible, public support of their constituencies could destroy their very livelihood, and I won’t ask that of anyone.
This is one of the ways the system discourages our legislators from acting, even when it would be to our best interests. That culture of caution and inaction is not an isolated phenomenon. As historian L.C. Francis writes:
“What we are witnessing is a profound structural shift. The House of Representatives, originally tasked with fiercely defending our liberty, now operates with quiet passivity as the executive branch steadily erodes the Constitution’s foundation.
“The data tells a story that is difficult to ignore. In 2023, elected officials enacted fewer than 100 laws, while federal agencies issued more than 3,000 rules. That imbalance strikes at the core of representative government. It replaces lawmaking with administration and shifts authority away from those accountable to the people.”
When viewed from that perspective, our current stymied Congress is not a failed system. It is the system working according to a new design.
Our current political system is set up to elect Congress that is at loggerheads; the evidence shows that it has consistently done so.
We cannot untie this knot with a system designed to tighten it; we must take hold of it and pick it apart ourselves.
How We Fix Things
That’s why our first goal is to build support for No Confidence, and based on the response I’ve seen to UTW so far, it’s well within our grasp.
I spent the month of June learning what does and doesn’t work to bring new people onboard. It turns out it’s really easy, because most people have been desperately waiting for something like this to come along.
All you have to do is be willing to offer people hope.
Here’s how I’ve been going about it.
Three Steps: Agree, Share, Inform
Every day, I poke around on my social networks, and I look for someone expressing despair about the state of US politics, whether that’s about the President, or Congress, or the Supreme Court, or any of the big political machinery in this country.
I’ve never had any trouble with this step.
Once I find someone who is despairing of things getting better, or frustrated about not being able to do anything, I post a public reply to them, appropriate for the platform.
In that reply I do three things.
1. Agree
First, I find something to agree with.
This part isn’t hard, but it is important. Everyone is feeling the pain of living in and/or dealing with this country, but most of us in America were raised into an environment of partisan politics, of thinking of other Americans as our enemies.
Partisanship got us into this mess. It will not serve to get us out.
Right now, it doesn’t matter whose fault it is that we got here. It matters that things now are worse than they’ve ever been.
So, when I agree with them, I say what it is I’m agreeing with, both for their benefit and for anyone else who reads the exchange, and I don’t mention any political party or ideology.
Someone who is complaining about conservative Justices on the Supreme Court is complaining that the court has been politicized in the first place, when it was always promised to be politically neutral.
Anyone who can’t stand how Trump is riding roughshod over our rights, institutions, and traditions is upset that Congress has utterly failed in its duty to defend the nation and the Constitution from a disloyal President.
If nothing else, one thing that everyone agrees on is that the US Government should be more accountable to its citizens than just letting us pick the lesser of two evils every couple years.
2. Share
Second, after agreeing with them that there’s a problem, I share what I’m personally doing to address it.
“I know, it’s awful how the Supreme Court gets to do whatever they want without anyone keeping them in check. That’s why I’m gathering support for an Amendment that will let the American people throw them out.”
“You’re absolutely right, our electoral system will never give us a Congress that actually cares about Americans. I’m helping start a movement called Unfucking The World that will let us finally change it.”
“Yeah, the President can’t be allowed to keep doing what he’s doing. The No Confidence Amendment I’m helping with will cut his term short, once we can get enough support to ratify it.”
Or even just:
“Yeah, it’s true, things are really awful right now. I’ve been listening to a podcast called Unfucking The World, and it’s been giving me hope that we’ve got a way out of this.”
I’m not telling them what they must do; that basically never works on Americans.
I’m not telling them that this is the only way forward; it’s demonstrably not.
I’m not mentioning either political party, because that will get people on both sides angry, and anger won’t help us yet.
All I’m saying is that I see the same problem they see, and that I’m actively doing something about it, right now.
3. Inform
The third and final thing is I let them know how they can find out more, if they want to get involved, so they don’t have to come right out and ask.
The UTW.vote shortlink is handy for this, as is the UTW.vote/explainer link to the No Confidence text, but sometimes I’ll link directly to one of the UTW articles or videos that explains more about the topic in question.
Other times, I just share the name Unfucking The World and say it’s available both on YouTube and as a podcast.
It depends in large part on what platform I’m on.
The key, I’ve found, is to leave it open-ended and not ask for direct feedback.
Right now is not the best time for being political as an American, either online or in person, and so I’m careful to avoid asking people what they are willing to support, even rhetorically.
“Don’t you want to live in a country where…?” gets people defensive.
“I would rather live in a country where…” gets people to empathize.
I almost never get replies to these comments—but every time I write one, another one or two subscribers sign up for UTW.
You can do this too.
Once a day or so, when you’re feeling at your best and ready to deal with the world, go look for some darkness online.
When you find it, share just a little bit of light. Just one comment, two or three sentences long.
Remember when you do that you are writing not just to this one person, but for anyone who happens to see what you wrote, even if they’re too shy to speak up.
If the person you’re replying to disagrees with you or doubts you, let them! Being one of the vanishingly few people on the Internet willing to publicly say “You don’t have to agree with me, that’s okay,” will make your opinions stand out from the crowd basically everywhere.
If you’re not the kind of person that engages with social media, you can do this in person too.
It’s the same three steps:
Agree. Share. Inform.
Just once a day, every single day you can scrounge up the energy to do it.
A Tiny Bit Of Hope
It might seem implausible, in the face of everything going wrong in 2026, that something so tiny—just you bringing a tiny bit of hope into one single person’s day, as our country of hundreds of millions falls apart around us—could possibly make a difference on a big enough scale to change things.
I’ll admit that I had trouble believing that, myself, before I launched UTW.
All the logic, analysis, and intuition in the world could tell me that No Confidence is needed, that America does want this, but I just didn’t have any numbers to back it up.
My friend, you are the one who brought me those numbers, and for that I am grateful beyond words.
With the kind of support that you demonstrated simply by being willing to listen to someone you’d never heard of before, you’ve proven that not only do we have the kind of momentum that can build into a movement powerful enough to reshape our government, we can do it faster than anyone, even I, ever imagined.
Next Time
Fair warning, I’m gonna get a little more into the numbers next time, but I’ll do my best to keep it interesting.
Aside from that, there is one other type of feedback I’ve heard a few times since I launched UTW which I suppose I should address.
I won’t bother to repeat it here, because it’s a little too vulgar for Unfucking The World. I’ll just say that the reality where I cared even a fraction of an inkling what anyone wants to call me bears absolutely zero resemblance to this one.
Our government is falling to pieces around us and people think I care about pronouns.
Please.
Right. Aside from that, my friend:
Spread hope, but stay safe.
Thank you for being part of UTW as we move forward! I’ve personally found that the practice of consciously finding hope I can share with people every single day has paid off in more ways than just subscriber count: my depression is easier to shrug off when it gets bad, it’s easier for me to interact with other people in person, and I have more energy for everything I do.
Make sure you’re subscribed so you don’t miss the next one, and do me a favor and hit that Like button if you’re so inclined. UTW is and will always be free, but that means I don’t have the insight of “who’s willing to send me money” to remind me that what I’m fighting for is worthwhile to more people than just me.
Questions, challenges, additions, and thoughtful disagreements are encouraged in the comments; bring your good faith, and others will do the same. Today’s topic: Have you tried advertising No Confidence or UTW to anyone you know, either in person or online? How did it go?
Share this with someone you know who brings light into the world, and stay safe.
–Danielle
P.S. The UTW production team continues to grow! You might notice this article is a little easier on the eyes and is much better organized than those prior, and as I’m sure you know by now, that certainly isn’t in my wheelhouse. Share your appreciation in the comments!
