Please don’t ask me to explain exactly why this postcard is accompanied by a picture of very sensual marble rods piled up on my work bench… I created a tradition when I first started blogging from the Windowledge in 2014. Way back in Wordpress World, I liked to find a photograph for the top of each post, and back then I gave more thought to how it illustrated the words below. These days, I enjoy not knowing why that one, or how it makes sense with the words.
It has also been a while since I wrote directly into the platform, rather than creating something in a document, tweaking it a bit and then bringing it here. Not to mention, dear reader, I’m not entirely sure where I’m going with this, except I want to say a few things about Substack itself.
Pulling the threads I realise I hadn’t given much thought to Substack itself. I took at face value what Substack had to say about Substack. I did not poke it with a stick. I liked it because I understood how to functionally use it as a home for my blog. I came from Wordpress where with every advancement and upgrade it became more and more impenetrable to me. I just imported the people that were already reading my blog. I got the gist of the paywall thing and how growing an audience and cultivating paid subscribers is encouraged. I wasn’t so interested in pushing (promoting) for paid subscriptions, though was and am interested in growing my readership. I don’t have a paywall, and I won’t have a paywall. Anyone on my list gets whatever I have to offer… and, don’t get me wrong, I’m very happy to be paid for my work and writer is part of my job description. It’s more that here it is me sharing my notes from the frontline, and if you like my writing I’d much rather you showed your appreciation by purchasing my memoir, and if you like that, to recommend it forward to someone else.
Then there is the weird thing of supporting one another on Substack. I am a free subscriber to a wonderfully rich and diverse collection of writers, creators and teachers. If I took out a paid subscription to all those people I’d be spending hundreds of pounds every month that I don’t actually have. Comedy would have it that my paid subscriptions to others, arrived at via a motley crew of decisions, almost to the last pound or dollar, matches the same number of people that have taken out a paid subscription with me. That takes me to one of the threads of my enquiry: who are we writing for? Who are our students if we offer some kind of curriculum? Who are we entertaining or touching? Is Substack eating itself, or is it a barn doorway to different continents?
An unexpected encounter with AI is bringing me to some doorways to new rooms which is a blast - as well as the above new rooms being new kinds of dialogue, including much talk of how Substack actually works; subscriber list enquiry, and looking at growing an audience from different perspectives. As aforementioned, I’m not really motivated by getting paid subs, though I am touched and grateful to those that have been generous enough to give me some of their money.
Simple thing is, I love being read. It feels like connection happening and I like connection. I have cultivated a modest audience of readers via linking anything I write on here to my Facebook profile, and sending every post to my subscriber list. I’m in the hundreds and would love to grow into four figures - it’s a rather lurching about kind of work in progress. I am definitely not skilled at marketing!
Then there is starting to understand just how big Substack is - I didn’t realise. Now I’m falling out of more grassroots community into new to me geography, and it would seem quite a lot of noise and questions around Substack’s actual ethics and integrity.
The wonderful Jeanette Winterson is kicking up a storm about rabid misogyny and hate-speech on Substack, as it seems there are places where rightwing extremes are running wild. Then the equally wonderful Sam Illingworth doing a deep dive research piece on how new subscribers are not the same as genuine new readers. His investigation revealed that a significant number of free subscriptions are being automated and how it might well be that your new subscriber is an AI rather than a human.
I am trying to get my head around who Substack is, having allowed myself to fall for the idea of it being a bit akin to an old school village. My rose tinted lenses have broken, not in a catastrophic crushed underfoot sort of way - more like a bit at a time and trying to hold them together with paperclips and tape. The first crack was probably at the end of last year when I found a full-on AI slop story with its own fake account, telling the so called uplifting and inspirational tale of how Rowen Atkinson turned on an awards ceremony audience, passionately informing all the entertainment celebrities that if they were not giving all of their income over and above a basic needs level, away to philanthropic endeavours to heal the whole wide world, they were selfish, narcissistic arses… hmmm… I mean these weird shit posts are prolific on Facebook, but Substack too.
I felt ridiculously disappointed.
Then curious. I guess since then I’ve been trying to understand stuff that is actually pretty basic if you have technology literacy. I not only don’t have that, but I have been compensating all my life for my neurodiverse brain. It has been a very recent, late life awakening to grasp that I can think about anything I want if I don’t tell myself stories about what my brain is capable of. Yes, late to the table, but I have pulled up a chair and I don’t have to drag around shame these days, so I can tell you what I don’t know and what I’m curious about without needing to hide.
This postcard has no structure or destination. It is just me wandering around with my questions, having a conversation with friends and strangers, and I do enjoy that I can do this here. I bring brain and heart to whatever this Substack thing really is, alongside researching that question as I go. It is not nothing to let such a bedded in idea about my operating system fall away. It moves me to recognise and welcome my non-normative thinking as treasure rather than disability. So much power in normative structures everywhere you turn - all those mirrors took a chunk out of me, and continue in such an insidious manner to tell people they are not okay. I feel a kind of grief for all my earlier iterations, all the way back to being a kid in a posh ‘British’ boarding school, expelled, essentially for not fitting in.
And, if by chance you do like my writing, I made myself into a very non-binary memoir last year, which you can find via this link on Amazon, or order from any independent or high street bookstore.
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