It’s been a hair over a year since I started CC, so it felt like a nice time to write a year in review in September, because why not. 

First off, if you’re still here a year later, thanks! In transparency, putting myself out there and doing what amounted to meta commentary on a hobby where most commentary is extremely data-driven, pushing a referral link, or both was daunting. I’m glad that (most) of you seem to enjoy reading it.

The last year has certainly been an interesting one for MSers and churners. We saw explosive, needle-moving plays appear (and reappear, and disappear again). We experienced the final death rattle of both spend avenues and advantageous loop closures. Some of us even experienced some very bizarre asynchronous house calls.  

Through both writing the blog and being a general participant in the MS community, I learned a lot of things that I think will be helpful to keep in mind going forward. Of course, what’s true for me may not be what’s true for you. But if I was to summarize things that I’d want to keep in mind moving forward, it would be these:

• I set out being really prescriptive with myself that I didn’t want to talk in too much detail about anything that shouldn’t be on the publicly indexed Internet and that I’d delete anything that someone asked me to, no questions asked. I only got one (very specific) deletion request. After meeting him in person months later and finding out where he lived, it was a funny coincidence where my reference to a personal anecdote lined up with his street MS route, although unrelated.
  
  That being said, I’ve been doing a lot of self-policing. For example, my first post was about a specific card, and I thought it was ok to call out the card by name since it had a gargantuan marketing budget behind it. But in hindsight, that article wasn’t actually about the card – it was about what you’d use the card for. That doesn’t need to be shared online, and lately I’ve found it more and more necessary to vaguepost about the underlying concept vs. anything that is too specific.
• The reasons for my vagueposting are various. Shutdowns and plays dying are obviously the big one, but there’s more to it than that. I’ve had more than a few eye-bugging traffic sources show up in my reporting. Whether it’s a blog, or reddit, or Twitter, or App Store reviews, assume that the employees tasked with derailing the free money train are reading what you’re saying, because they are.
  
  On that subject, we as a community have a serious lack of discretion when it comes to discussing 2026 plays. I understand it to a degree, because couch MS over the last few years was shoved in everyone’s face and encouraged at every level. However, the best plays these days don’t have a table at ChiSem ready for a photo op. It’s not an all you can eat buffet where the facilitator makes money off of you throwing all caution to the wind – you may be affecting your target’s balance sheet. In those brazen days, MS was far from a zero-sum game. But it has certainly inched closer as the last few years have gone on. Think long and hard about what space you’re in before being frank about something you’d hate to lose. 
• The ability to mentally roll with the punches is so important in the hobby these days. Good things are dying so quickly (in some recent cases, on the same day). They may reappear in a different form, they may not. Will you even have any float because it’s all circulating in that other platform that didn’t exist a few days ago? We’ve all been “fired” by our targets a lot this year, but there’s often a new target that is “hiring”. 
• That maximizing to the nth degree is usually not the best choice, from top to bottom. As the oft-cited quote goes, “the optimal amount of fraud is zero”. To clarify, that is not a tie-in between MS and fraud, don’t commit fraud. This quote from the article sums it up best: “The marginal return of permitting fraud against you is plausibly greater than zero, and therefore, you should welcome greater than zero fraud.”
  
  This idea rings true for a lot of MS activities, too. Whether that means making peace with losing some money on liquidation to save lots of time, or, in my current case, taking the L on an exit node not working on vacation and accepting a loss in profit to avoid burning an account, there are many reasons to avoid 100% maximization of profit. 
• Beneath all the yay free traveling and financial independence rah-rah-rah of the hobby, there’s a dark underbelly to this hobby, in more ways than one. Some things aren’t what they seem, so look out for yourself out there.

I know that a lot of this sounded pessimistic. Part of that might be the recency bias of losing something good lately. Part of it might just be me being pessimistic. But a lot of this, as always, is just as much a reminder to me as is it anything else. 

Let’s all cross our fingers that the next year continues to reward churners willing to pivot away from the aforementioned ChiSem method and roll up their sleeves. 

Baxt!

Pictured: what MS in 2026 feels like. I need a cigarette