u/GlyndaGuy

Okay, imagine hypothetically you're an award-winning developer, recognized for enabling access to third-sector support and community resources. You help reach more people through what you might play down as just a lil bit of NLP here, and a bit of lived experience there. But really, there's some ridiculously good, autistic big-brain logic under the hood. It strictly mounts relevant directory listings based on user intent before we send Gem in to respond. It’s so efficient that, going by last month's API bill versus the user volume, I had to double-check I actually pushed to prod! So, the platform’s good, audits are done, had a second pair of eyes over GCP and GitHub, and thumbs up all around.

Now, you're fully aware that discussions are happening with one—let's call it an enterprise organization—who are keen to align. Apparently, proactive engagement with communities helps the happy chemicals in the brain. So, you take the opportunity to jot up a little license scope at this stage that says:

>I've got you while we’re grassroots, but anything commercial is paid for by the corp. A) Because neither I or you exist to bankroll commercial or public health initiatives, and B) Because while the original agreement is you don't pay to use my software, that isn't to say it isn't worth something.

That was the rough fag pack structure I teed up, on the basis that if and when that happens, I take a week's holiday to survive the red tape brigade, and we move to a commercial license. Lovely job.

Then, who else but the world's largest grossing dating app (I call it the yellow pages) wants a nibble. And so an entire campaign around suicide, dr*gs and s*x is launched with ex-pro sportspeople, influencers, specialists, advocates, media outlets, other charities. Lovely.

I volunteer to appear on a national TV special to talk about my experiences and try to lend a relatable voice to the campaign. But of course, being biologically unfiltered whilst suffering from chronic hotnspicy syndrome, I impulsively air some concerns around user safety on their platform itself. Because my brain didn't really care that it was the PR team I was talking to and not Product, they decide not to involve me in said campaign feature and opt for a more moldable, predictable option. Fair play.

But it upset me quite a bit, because in my view, sitting me down for a chat before meeting a journo to talk about my perspective doesn't include rehearsals of a lovely three-page talking point doc with my name at the top already saved, locked and loaded. This rattled the organization, rattled the founder, rattled me, and the only concern on their end was ensuring the national channel just nuked the whole thing. This upset the founder. I'll take that. But you only have to Google me to see that I am quite the advocate for our boys and their struggles, so if PR forgot to Google me before sitting me down for a chat about my life, maybe they should have done that before presenting me with a talking point list with no answers to obvious questions. Anyway, I digress.

Three weeks go by. I'm on the Gram, and there it is. The Big G posting about something campaigners and advocates have been calling them to prioritize for years. Very proud. Very proud of them too.

Oh wait... Hang on.

They're pleased to announce my platform is now being used as one of two UK resources in their Trust and Safety centre. Oh lovely.

Checks emails: Nothing.
Checks CF: We are actually definitely live somewhere other than our Linktrees.

So, obviously, we immediately broach the subject of licensing. I ask—probably in more of a passively progressive tone than I'd normally do—for all the details: What could we be expecting traffic-wise? What's the budget situation? (Because like, not sure how you've managed to cost that without looking).

Oh no, it's not a financial campaign. The £250k is just "the value of the reach" they get.

Right. We are now signposting our support resource as one of two options in the Trust and Safety centre for the world's largest dating app, with a user base of ~985k MAU.

And well, I did push back, with a figure I think actually on balance, was quite fair considering I've spent over 900 hours to build it for the charity pro bono, so I didn't think the $0.5B tech giant should inherit its free license when in the UK it is actually a requirement for a platform of that size. I think, anyway. My letter to Westminster and its response regarding OSA is a whole other novel for you to read another day.

Fortunately, I had anticipated funding bottlenecks at the beginning of my endeavours. LGBTQ+ support and funding is difficult to acheive, especially around some of the specific topics we cover. But because I spend my alt focus time braindumping lyrics into Suno to turn them into actually quite relatable songs for both the Fiesta esta Noche, and the Noche Noche, believe it or not, every 3 streams on Spotify UK is enough to power a good 5-6 turn chat with Bobby. If you're on YouTube Music, or live literally anywhere else, your 3 streams will pay for around 3 conversations. A safe option for most people would be "Five Minute Fantasy" which is about the country being run by clowns and escaping into my own spiral for a break. The rest, maybe skip if Soho vibes aren't your thing! But love if you do!

Fortunately, I have funding for my original org (which is what led their founder to me in the first place), and I've landed some commercial bits and bobs off the back of this. I’m not out of pocket. My org and the little trickles coming in can sustain it, and frankly, the tooling between the directory and Gemini is done for this very reason.

Charities, grassroots organizers, and people like me have ridiculous reserves of determination and energy for impacting the causes we feel passionate about. It's relentless. We will build the tools and carry the weight because we care.

But sometimes, you know what? I'm old fashioned. If you've been asked for funding by the dev building the tool you're referring people to and you decline to help out, but you still want to use the platform... I don't care if you're a half-billion dollar tech firm, an email just saying, "Hey, good job man. Sorry we can't splash out, but we appreciate you, and thanks for letting us continue to signpost people to you," is literally all you need to do. Bonus points if you share an interest in the reactive harm reduction ideas I've been harassing about, and the queries you'd need to measure said impact. I may even actually have some good commercial stuff in the brain to milk too, who knows, but where I grew up as a kid we would bring a gift to a party and be sent home with a bag of sweets without fail wherever it was. Not to be reciprocal or fair, but because sometimes its nice just to give something.

But then, this is the first time I have been in this situation. It's like ponsing a fag from someone at the bus stop and you ask for a lighter too, the standard response is “want me to smoke it for you too?”

If you made it all the way over here, what a ledge! If you didn't, well, more air for me!

If you're interested in the projects you can find them here at youareloved.org.uk or glynda.org

You can also find me on Spotify, Apple Msuic, Youtube Music, or ask Alexa, Siri or Google to play Charlie Garnish (if you dare shuffle!) All revenues go directly to keeping Gemini fed with chips, and the racks nice and cool.

If you would ;like to know more about either organisation, would like to make a donation, or think you may be able to help in some way in our mission to improve wellbeing across the LGBTQ+ community, feel free to DM me here.

The independent views expressed here represent those of Charlie Garnish, Glynda.org

p.s if you hadn't gathered I am a neurodivergent individual and so AI was used simply to create structure from what can only be described as a stream of consciousness. Happy to DM the original if you'd prefer to read the original. Gemini 3.1.

Played on BBC 🥹