Substack and Creativity
It's been now 6 weeks since olamina came to visit Brazil. We had many interesting conversations during those days we spent together, mostly about our families and lives. Two of them have stayed with me
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For example, i don't think i would ever read any of my LJ friends if they started journaling on Substack. In fact, one person i do know started writing about their travels on Substack and i haven't subscribed, because i don't want to "cross the streams".
I was one of the first readers on Substack because Bill Bishop is an investor in the company and Sinocism was the first major newsletter to migrate onto the site. Then the company took their VC money and forked out advances to an army of well-known political bloggers, some of whom i already read and thus were magically/creepily added to the pseudonymous account i used for Sinocism via email address linkage. Eventually i started unsubscribing from the writers who transitioned into publishing paywalled content that obnoxiously also included sponsored (?) segments pushing the platform's social features, instead of the original writing i was actually paying for.
The thing is, social features work on LJ because on LJ nobody is a journalist or a political blogger, we're all anonymous equals who write cozily about our personal lives. But on a platform that's literally founded to host elite political bloggers, the social features are more like shoehorning Twitter into what used to be a quiet, personal relationship. Nobody used to know or care what other blogs i read, least of all the bloggers themselves, but now apparently everyone has to know everything about what i read in my personal time. As a reader i feel shortchanged when i know my reading habits are being analyzed and sold back to writers as a marketing insight. My privacy has been compromised without my consent. I also find it offensive to be pushed to publicly "engage" with political blogs. If i wanted to get into performative political shitfights on the internet i would've joined Twitter in the first place.
So although i still read writers who publish through Substack, it's a transactional relationship, like i have with Amazon. I might go there sometimes to pay for something, but i don't see it as a place for making connections. I might be in the minority, though?
Anyway, the problematic nature of Substack was already evident right back from the very beginning when they paid advances to all kinds of right-wing and so-called centrist writers with reactionary views on trans people and other hot topics. The Very Woke made a point of abandoning Substack for other platforms years ago. I think one of them was called Ghost or something. End of the day, blogging platforms aren't rocket science. Dozens have come and gone over the past 25 years, so if or when the buzz of Substack fades, there will be plenty of other options. There already are plenty right now.
I guess the main question is if you want to go where the current buzz is... maybe that is still Substack for now? Certainly if you're looking to monetize your readership then it makes sense to go where there is an audience for whom subscribing to (and paying for!) another newsletter is just a one click exercise. You could try get people to pay for your content on LJ or set up a completely independent blog using Wordpress or something, plug in a Patreon or just a PayPal tip jar, but it'd probably take a lot more work to get noticed. It all comes down to your motivations for writing, i suppose.
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Thanks for you thoughtful comment. You've touched on a few points I've been reflecting on since I posted here on LJ.
The truth is that I'm preferring to spend my writing time focussing on my novels and improving my skills. I was already finding it hard to commit to LJ though I would love to post here more often - and maybe that's a more doable project for me in the new year.
With Substack, I thought it might cater to friends who keep asking me: "what are you writing about? You never share with us." But I might as well just point them to LJ and spend a bit more time working on what I post here. Also, I think the element of monetization, which goes hand-in-hand with the gamefication of writing and self-marketing, does put me off a bit.
I agree with you that there is an equality here on LJ that is very appealing and sometimes there's content that is better than on Substack. I stumbled by accident on a retired person's journal, who lives in a remote area and is dealing with illness and having to move into an age-assisted accommodation. I found their writing more soulful and touching than most of the stuff by very well paid writers I've seen on Substack. I think the pressure to "perform" and deliver with those newsletters, where some have paid for, must be great and ultimately affect the quality of the writing (or at least it would for me!)
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