Hello from the Muse on a Hungarian Diet

Leave Facebook, they said. It’ll be good for you, they said. 

So I did. You have probably no idea who the hell I am. My name is Sandor Esik, and I am the author of Diétás Magyar Múzsa, a Facebook page. I have some 50k followers. That’s a big deal given the fact that up until this article here, some 12-13 million people on this planet understood my articles. I am a Hungarian lawyer who tries to be the voice of Sanity in a sea of Russian propaganda and overall Eastern European frustration. 

My articles are usually about how Hungary, this beautiful country, should work. I write about causes, scandals, politicians, political philosophy, pipe organs, locomotives, birds, cycling…  To my utter astonishment, people like to read what I write. 

Facebook…I was a blogger writing about the same shi…stuff. No one ever heard about my blog. In 2017 me and my partner in crime, Balazs Kertesz decided that this Facebook page thingy sounds promising. Around that time we and another partner in crime, Tamas Kürti had a single-issue facebook page, which ran quite well. Cue the epic music, three geeks start a Facebook publication! 

It turned out quite well. With the Hungarian media pretty much collapsed, people were looking for things to read. Diétás Magyar Múzsa (The Muse on a Hungarian Diet. I’ll explain later) started to grow. That’s actually BS. It didn’t grow. The audience grew. 

No bikinis? No Facebook reach, matey!

But Mr. Zuckerberg doesn’t like us, the writing kind. Our Hungarian posts go under the proud title: Long and boring. We grew up on bulletin boards, blogs and whatnot. I am old (42). I am grumpy and I hate tiktok. That sh** is addictive. I like to explain, to discuss, to elaborate. I have no self-control when it comes to writing. Zuck and his algorithm hate us. Short videos, pictures about cute animals reach our readers far easier than we do. 

Let’s find someplace else. I was looking for a good newsletter plugin for my Wordpress page, when I stumbled upon Substack. Some weeks later I came back to take another look. Lo and behold, they have a newsletter engine, a podcast engine, a page… I read about the controversies. But I am here because I like to write and I don’t like to manage wordpress pages. 

True to their Eastern European spirit, my readers gave mixed reactions. Most of them give me a lot of advice I have never asked for. This is why I know I’m on the right track. That’s Eastern Europe Lesson 1 for you: unsolicited advice is the love language of this part of this world. If they give you advice, they love you. They also think you are an idiot who could not breathe without their advice but still. They love you. 

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