Chapter 10: Revised May 26. Comms 101: The Medium Is the Message.

I originally wrote this post when I had my last fuck to give, which is not exactly the tone they teach in journalism school. That works out fine, because I am not a journalist. I am not a communications expert either, despite the fact that I can talk a decent game when I have enough coffee and moral outrage in my system. I am just a pissed Ontario resident trying to understand how gambling became this loud, this normalized, this embedded, and this hard to avoid in a province that keeps insisting the whole thing is regulated.

I want to be clear about that because I think people sometimes mistake visibility for performance. The internet trains us to assume that if someone is posting, they must want attention in the shallowest possible way. They must want followers, money, clout, compliments, face pics, likes, shares, cute little validation treats from the algorithm. Maybe some people do. I am not above being human, but that is not why I am doing this.

Someone actually wrote to me today saying they wanted more face pics like my character on my blog posts, which made me laugh because, honestly, why? Not because I am offended. I understand how the internet works. I understand that faces perform better than documents. I understand that people connect faster to a person than a spreadsheet. I understand that character images, outfits, expressions, and aesthetics can help a page feel alive before the heavier work has enough structure to stand on its own.

That is partly why I made those character pictures in the first place. They helped get the page started. They gave the work a face, or at least a character version of a face, when the project was still forming and I needed something visual to hold the space. People liked them, which is nice, I guess. To be honest, I kind of hate them.

That is not because they are bad. It is because I know what they can accidentally say. “Hey, look at me. I am cute and I have something to say.” Look at my outfit. Look at my necklace. Look at my carefully assembled little digital personality. Look at the version of myself that can be packaged, liked, and understood quickly. Look at me in my imaginary Van Cleef and my red bottoms, because apparently even the underside of a shoe can become a communications strategy if someone angles it hard enough.

That sounds bitchy because it is a little bitchy, but it is also true. Status has always had a language. The watch, the logo, the bag, the shoes, the filtered face, the curated room, the soft lighting, the filters, lip filler, the little symbols arranged so the audience knows what they are supposed to think before anyone says a word. Some people communicate with credentials. Some communicate with proximity to power. Some communicate with luxury objects placed just carefully enough to look casual. The medium is the message, even when the medium is pretending it is just taste.

I understand that world more than I wish I did. Years ago, I had all my shit burned down in a fire. For real. Do not sympathize; I am over it. I only bring it up because it taught me something I probably needed to learn the hard way. Before that, I was more materialistic and vain than I want to admit. I cared too much about things. I cared too much about the external proof that I was okay, desirable, impressive, safe, chosen, worth something.

Losing things has a way of humiliating your priorities in real time. When you have nothing, you find out what was actually holding you up. It is not the necklace. It is not the shoes. It is not the outfit. It is not the image of yourself you were trying to maintain for people who were not even paying rent inside your life. It is your nervous system. Your people. Your ability to keep going. Your capacity to help someone else when you are also tired. Your ability to look at a mess and still ask, “What can I do with what is left?”

That is where I am writing from now. Not from polish. Not from performance. Not from some fantasy version of myself who has perfect branding and a clean emotional arc. I am writing from the place where you realize that if people need education, support, systems navigation, resources, or even just someone saying, “You are not crazy, this is confusing and you are allowed to ask questions,” it does not matter what I am wearing. It does not matter what I look like. It does not matter whether the messenger arrives in designer shoes, running shoes, slippers, or bare feet at the end of her rope.

The work is the message. The receipts are the message. The map is the message. The support is the message. The point is not to be admired. The point is to be useful.

That is the part I keep coming back to. I live here. I am not watching this from some abstract distance. I am not floating above it with a clipboard, a blazer, and a perfectly neutral voice. I am inside the thing I am writing about, which makes the writing messier, but it also makes it honest. I am someone who got angry enough to start paying attention, and once I started following the paper trail, I realized I did not need anyone’s permission to keep going.

The funny thing about not being a journalist is that it does not actually stop you from asking questions. It does not stop you from documenting what happened, organizing public information, writing to regulators, building a media list, contacting politicians, or sharing resources with people who may feel just as isolated as you do. There is no special badge required to notice that something feels wrong. There is no official permission slip for being angry in public..

Most of the people who see my work are probably here in Canada. Ontario. My friends. People like me, I’m assuming. People who may also be sitting there fuming, wondering how gambling became so normal that you can barely open an app, watch a game, scroll a feed, or exist in public life without it being there. There are a few visitors from Europe, Russia, Seychelles, Ukraine, Germany, XE, TEXAS (interesting) what’s good? ...but mostly, this feels local. It feels like something happening right in front of us while everyone is being told to act like the wallpaper has always been on fire.

Before I went over the deep end of this issue, I used to think of myself as abnormally normal. That still might be true. I have had a hard life mentally and physically, and somewhere along the way I learned that some people live through bad things and then put more bad things into the world. My brain seems to do something else. It takes the burning dumpster fire and tries to turn it into art, writing, information, organizing, or whatever else might help someone else make sense of something awful.

That is not me romanticizing resilience. Resilience is not always pretty. Sometimes resilience looks like crying at your desk, wiping your face, opening another tab, and saying, “Fine. Let’s figure out who regulates this.” Sometimes it looks like being so tired you can barely think, but still knowing that if you do not write the thing down, it disappears. Sometimes it looks like anger becoming a filing system.

I entered into my day job for one reason: so that anyone suffering, no matter how alone or defeated they felt, would not feel completely alone in their problem. That is still the core of me. I know what it feels like to be overwhelmed and expected to function like nothing is wrong. I know what it feels like to be tired, embarrassed, angry, and lonely inside a problem that everyone else seems to think should be easy to solve.

I can say honestly that I feel lonely right now. I feel powerless. I feel betrayed. I feel tired. I also know that sitting quietly with those feelings does not help anyone, including me. The only way I know how to be there for anyone else is to show up where I can. Sometimes that means blogging. Sometimes it means making lists. Sometimes it means gathering resources. Sometimes it means pounding the system from my end with whatever scraps of energy I have left.

That is what this post is really about. Communication, but not the polished kind. Not the PR kind. Not the approved-message kind that sounds like it went through three committees and came out wearing beige pants. I mean the survival kind of communication. The kind that starts when someone realizes nobody is coming to hand them a microphone, so they might have to build their own signal.

Today, that signal is a map. I am working on a core list for Canadian gambling harm: regulators, politicians, researchers, advocates, media outlets, public-health bodies, consumer-protection offices, financial regulators, and anyone else who should probably be informed when people are being harmed, ignored, marketed to, routed offshore, or left alone in recovery. The project plan includes complaints, consumer protection, privacy concerns, media releases, political outreach, public reviews, follow-ups, and public documentation.

That might sound like admin work. It is not. A media list is not just a spreadsheet. It is a map of where attention lives.

If you want to move a message, you need to know where it belongs. A regulator complaint does one kind of work. A blog post does another. A podcast conversation does another. A press advisory does another. A TikTok does another. A formal letter does another. A public review does another. A conversation with one person who finally feels less alone does another.

That is where Marshall McLuhan comes in. Canadians may remember the old Heritage Minutes. There was one about McLuhan, the Canadian communications thinker connected to the phrase, “the medium is the message.” As a kid, I did not fully understand what that meant. I think I understand it better now.

It means the way a message travels matters. The container matters. The format matters. The audience matters. The room matters. The door you enter through matters. The same words become different things depending on where they land.

In a private note, the words might be grief. In an email, they become notice. In a complaint, they become evidence. On a blog, they become public record. On social media, they become signal. On a podcast, they become testimony. In a politician’s inbox, they become a constituent issue. In a regulator’s file, they become something that can no longer be unseen. In search results, they become findable. In AI systems, they become part of the machine-readable map.

That is the modern version of McLuhan, at least as I understand it from where I am sitting. The medium is still the message, but now the medium is also the algorithm, the archive, the screenshot, the search result, the metadata, the audience, the platform, the podcast clip, the public pressure, and the path the message takes before someone with power is forced to answer.

When I was younger, there was a dreamer in me who thought I might become a performer. One of my mediums was singing, and singing taught me something about communication that has stayed with me. The difference between a good singer and someone who makes you believe them is not always the note. Sometimes it is the breath before the note. The eyes. The body. The tiny signal before the first word that tells the listener, “I mean this.”

That is communication to me. It is not just what you say. It is whether people believe you felt it before you said it. It is whether your mind, body, mouth, eyes, and nervous system are all telling the same truth at the same time.

So yes, this is a strange post. It starts with gambling harm, wanders through media theory, nods at Heritage Minutes, detours through performance, takes a petty little swing at luxury signalling, and somehow ends up at spreadsheets. That is fine. Real life is not organized like a press release.

The point is that templates are easy now. Anyone with AI can go cook up a letter, a complaint, a statement, or a press release. The harder part is knowing where the thing goes. Who needs to see it. Who has power. Who has influence. Who has failed to act. Who can investigate. Who can amplify. Who can no longer say they did not know.

That is the map I am building.

It includes the obvious places, like regulators and government offices. It also includes the less obvious routes, like podcasts, social platforms, advocates, researchers, public-health voices, affected communities, financial oversight bodies, consumer-protection offices, journalists, creators, and ordinary people who may not have formal power but know exactly what this feels like. It includes demographics, because who is being reached matters. It includes lobbyists and industry groups too, because pressure does not move in only one direction. If the industry gets organized, the public has to understand how to get organized too.

Maybe someone in Ontario is reading this and thinking nobody will listen. I get it. I have thought that too. The system can make you feel like you are yelling into a padded room while someone outside takes notes on how unreasonable you sound. It can make you explain the same thing over and over until you start wondering if you are the problem.

You are not the problem. The maze is the problem.

If you do not ask, you do not get. If you do not document, it disappears. If you do not organize, the system gets to use your exhaustion as part of its design. If you stay quiet, they get to pretend there was nothing to hear.

This is for the tired. This is for the weak. This is for the beaten down. It is also for me, because I am not writing this from some mountain of healed wisdom. I am writing it from the middle of the mess, where the coffee is probably cold, the tabs are multiplying, and the only thing louder than the rage is the part of me that still thinks something useful can be built from it.

Sometimes, when the days are tough, you have to show up for yourself even if you are exhausted, angry, shaking, lonely, and completely unsure what comes next. You fight, not because you feel strong, but because you are still here.

If you need a ridiculous biological pep talk, remember this: the average sperm entered the race with no map, no shoes, no strategy, and basically the confidence of a drunk Roomba vacuum. Somehow, one of them made you. Apparently, showing up confused and underqualified is literally the human origin story.

So yes, fight. Build. Get up if you can. Not beautifully. Not inspirationally. Not with background music. Just enough to take the next step.

Make the list. Send the email. Write the post. Document the thing. Ask the question. Share the resource. Find the office. Find the regulator. Find the advocate. Find the journalist. Find the politician. Find the person who might look at the same facts and say, “Wait. What the hell is going on here?”

This too shall pass, not because everything magically gets better, but because you keep moving long enough to outlast the moment.

Today, I am showing up for myself and for anyone else who feels alone in this. I am showing up for people in Ontario trying to recover while gambling is everywhere. I am showing up for people who think nobody will listen. I am showing up for people who are tired of being told to be quiet, polite, reasonable, and grateful for crumbs.

No.

Today we organize. Today we ask. Today we document. Today we fight with paper, receipts, pressure, truth, and whatever scraps of energy we have left.

Media list for Ontario and Canada coming soon.

I know this post is messy.

Good.

So is the system.

Sorry, again, if this sounds blunt, but I do not need pretense to make it look like I deliver.

Fuck the shoes.

If you want to watch pretty people prance around in expensive things doing absolutely nothing, Instagram, TikTok, and oddly enough LinkedIn have that covered.

I am not taking glory shots of my breakfast in an empty board room.

I am not posting a tribute reel to my lip filler.

I am not here to model a lifestyle, sell aspiration, or make systems navigation look cute.

I produce results.

Here is the communications list, as promised. https://www.recoverwithsara.com/communication-list-ontario

This one is local: Ontario-focused, with Canadian contacts included where they matter. Regulators, support routes, media, advocates, politicians, researchers, and public-pressure points.

If there is someone else you think should be on it, email me.

I will do national next.

Then international.

I know what my most valuable assets are, and they are based on results and the way I show up not off for others.