Oryx definitely did a great job, before he was documenting small conflicts but with the Ukraine/Russia war its not a surprise being burned out recording data for that.
There was definitely lots of errors accumulated with things like T72s being marked as Russian vs Ukrainian losses. There was corrections to this but when you are relying on Telegram, Twitter and other social media sources they aren't going to be reliable.
Trawling data and sanitising it... no thank you
> Oryx definitely did a great job, before he was documenting small conflicts but with the Ukraine/Russia war its not a surprise being burned out recording data for that.
Even before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Oryx considered stopping:
> Since late 2021, the act of writing feels repetitive, almost as if I've written every sentence before. For me, this realization serves as a clear sign that it's time to move on. In fact, I had already contemplated ending Oryx by the spring of 2022
Also, the ongoing war brought him lots of support from other OSINT folks (Jakub Janovky, acknowledged in the blog post, being the most prominent one) and it probably contributed a lot to giving him the energy to continue for one more year (and what a year).
Remarkably even the Australian OSINT person who focused entirely on finding errors in Oryx's dataset still praised it and said it was by far still the best approximation of Russian vs. Ukrainian losses.
Crazy to see how much he blew up, there was a video from last year where one soldier tells another (the one filming) to get a good shot of a wrecked Russian tank "for Oryx".
> “There's a website that actually tracks absolutely confirmed destruction of tanks, infantry fighting vehicles etc. It is called Oryx. I think it's a Dutch firm. As a Dutch-American I'm very proud of that.”
I respect anyone who can keep up a job with as much diligence as this definitely required over the years. I do not begrudge him wanting to live a life well lived and hope his future is filled with joy.
As an aside, seeing Sukiyaki at the end was definitely unexpected, but put a smile on my face.
> Interesting to hear he just doesn't feel like it any more
Influencer burnout is real. Especially if you started at a very different stage in your life.
One of the toughest things that happens (speaking from experience) is that you grow an audience and that audience starts having ideas and expectations. The audience starts to feel like an insatiable beast that just wants wants wants. What used to be the joy of sharing interesting stuff turns into an obligation.
What’s worse, you may have new ideas, new directions you want to explore, but your audience doesn’t care. They’ve come to expect certain topics from you and they care about nowt else. Some may even share mean words if you dare go off topic.
At that point you have to make a choice. Feed the beast, do your own thing and ignore the haters, stop and reclaim a bunch of time and mindspace.
Or you know, you start a blog documenting a couple T72s in Syria then the first modern war happens involving thousands of tanks and suddenly Russia and Ukraine are losing hundreds of every variety of vehicle
An unexpected explosion in scope creep combined with a similar explosion in the pissing contest that your losses numbers are having on thousands of conversations across Twitter, Telegram, and Reddit daily.
That sort of commitment needs to be a very well paid job with a team of helpers. Monetizing and professionalizing comes with its own downsides and not everyone is cut out for it.
Regardless plenty of people care about OSINT and many young autist-type tank nerds are capable of taking up this helm if they so choose. Oryx will be sadly missed and the demand is only growing. Maybe someone will take its place. Possibly an organization that accepts donations (Oryx never wanted to AFAIK).
That can happen with any creative endeavor, and if it happens, it's better to move on than to phone it in. Cartoonists are a good example; Watterman and Larson did the right thing by retiring rather than letting their strips go stale. Groening, on the other hand...
On Wikipedia it mentions "en wordt wereldwijd gezien als een van de grootste internationale dichters van de 20e eeuw." [1]
Translated to English (Stan is Dutch), that means that there's a Dutch consensus that this is seen worldwide as one of the biggest international poets of the 20th century. It should come to no surprise that a Dutch citizen who went to high school knows about such. It really sounds like something I'd have learned during CKV [2]
I think it happens if you write because you must/are obliged to, instead of writing just when you want to. Like, when you transform programming from a hobby to a job :-)
I’m not sure it’s the same for every topic, and I can’t say I’m anywhere near the author’s level, but I wrote about foreign affairs for a few years, and one does start to notice an awful lot of repetition over time.
Readit News
There was definitely lots of errors accumulated with things like T72s being marked as Russian vs Ukrainian losses. There was corrections to this but when you are relying on Telegram, Twitter and other social media sources they aren't going to be reliable. Trawling data and sanitising it... no thank you
Even before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Oryx considered stopping:
> Since late 2021, the act of writing feels repetitive, almost as if I've written every sentence before. For me, this realization serves as a clear sign that it's time to move on. In fact, I had already contemplated ending Oryx by the spring of 2022
Also, the ongoing war brought him lots of support from other OSINT folks (Jakub Janovky, acknowledged in the blog post, being the most prominent one) and it probably contributed a lot to giving him the energy to continue for one more year (and what a year).
> “There's a website that actually tracks absolutely confirmed destruction of tanks, infantry fighting vehicles etc. It is called Oryx. I think it's a Dutch firm. As a Dutch-American I'm very proud of that.”
https://youtu.be/L3qCYIPaPqU?t=2447
Call that a recognition.
But Oryx's favorite acknowledgement came from John Mc Cain, in 2014 after just one year of running the Oryx blog:
> Shocking revelation of secret #Russian base in #Syria shows how much Putin is helping Assad’s war machine
https://twitter.com/SenJohnMcCain/status/519153233303207936
As an aside, seeing Sukiyaki at the end was definitely unexpected, but put a smile on my face.
Influencer burnout is real. Especially if you started at a very different stage in your life.
One of the toughest things that happens (speaking from experience) is that you grow an audience and that audience starts having ideas and expectations. The audience starts to feel like an insatiable beast that just wants wants wants. What used to be the joy of sharing interesting stuff turns into an obligation.
What’s worse, you may have new ideas, new directions you want to explore, but your audience doesn’t care. They’ve come to expect certain topics from you and they care about nowt else. Some may even share mean words if you dare go off topic.
At that point you have to make a choice. Feed the beast, do your own thing and ignore the haters, stop and reclaim a bunch of time and mindspace.
An unexpected explosion in scope creep combined with a similar explosion in the pissing contest that your losses numbers are having on thousands of conversations across Twitter, Telegram, and Reddit daily.
That sort of commitment needs to be a very well paid job with a team of helpers. Monetizing and professionalizing comes with its own downsides and not everyone is cut out for it.
Regardless plenty of people care about OSINT and many young autist-type tank nerds are capable of taking up this helm if they so choose. Oryx will be sadly missed and the demand is only growing. Maybe someone will take its place. Possibly an organization that accepts donations (Oryx never wanted to AFAIK).
I'm just not sure about Joost Oliemans though. What is his story?
Translated to English (Stan is Dutch), that means that there's a Dutch consensus that this is seen worldwide as one of the biggest international poets of the 20th century. It should come to no surprise that a Dutch citizen who went to high school knows about such. It really sounds like something I'd have learned during CKV [2]
[1] https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naz%C4%B1m_Hikmet
[2] https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culturele_en_kunstzinnige_vorm...
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