Damn the Man, Save the Empire

I never unsubscribed from the Substack corporate emails that you get when you sign up for an account. They’re usually about new features or tips and tricks for being a writer on this platform. Most of them have sat in my unread email pile which is more like an unread email landfill. (It’s seriously tens of thousands of emails.)

Recently I got an email with the subject “Own a Piece of Substack.” It was an investment pitch telling me that for the low minimum price of $100, I could “help build a new economic engine for culture.” That’s quite an impressive tech bro word salad. I have to hand it to Apple Mail for flagging it as potentially being junk; I certainly agree with its assessment.

In the email they state:

The past couple decades of the internet have created a media system in which writing has been economically devalued and advertisers have been served above all others. These dynamics have led to an attention economy that coarsens public discourse, reduces trust, and strips readers of agency and writers of financial dignity. But while this internet-driven revolution has created a crisis for the media system, it has also brought opportunity.

Sounds great! We’re all tired of being bombarded by ads. What was intriguing to me was the line about the attention economy coarsening public discourse because that’s certainly true. So many highly-nuanced topics have been boiled down to memes and character-limited posts which is why this medium of long-form writing is so attractive.

About a week after I received that email, Substack sent out an announcement about the addition of Notes.

It’s described as such:

In Notes, writers will be able to post short-form content and share ideas with each other and their readers. Like our Recommendations feature, Notes is designed to drive discovery across Substack. But while Recommendations lets writers promote publications, Notes will give them the ability to recommend almost anything—including posts, quotes, comments, images, and links. Our goal is to foster conversations that inspire, enlighten, and entertain, while giving writers a powerful growth channel as these interactions find new audiences. 

So to recap, writing is the foundation of the economic engine for culture and the attention economy has coarsened public discourse, so Substack is going to improve everything by giving people the option to write less in order to be more entertaining.

Oooookay.

They go on to say:

While Notes may look like familiar social media feeds, the key difference is in what you don’t see. The Substack network runs on paid subscriptions, not ads. This changes everything.

I have to give a round of applause to their writers because that is quite the yarn they’ve spun. What they’ve created doesn’t change anything. It’s nearly identical to how Patreon makes their money.

What Substack isn’t saying is that the network currently runs mostly on the paid subscriptions of celebrities and creators who had sizable audiences on other platforms that they brought over to Substack. That can only go so far. The tech industry being the capitalist behemoth that it is requires constant growth. The whole gig economy relies on corralling folks into hustle culture bullshit by leveraging the few who do well as a way to entice others to try their hand at it. They all use the same empowerment rhetoric. “You are the owner and are free to make as much money as you want! If you’re not making that much money at it, promote more! Work harder! Look at all these features we’ve created just for you to succeed! We care about your success!”

On the one hand it’s great that there are so many outlets for creative folks to get their work out into the world and to potentially make a living from it. On the other we have to remember that as much as tech companies say they care about their users, it is and always will be about the money.

While I debated it initially, I can’t imagine creating a subscription platform on Substack now. I add a Ko-Fi link to the end of each post as a way for readers to tip me if they so choose, much like a busker leaves their instrument case open. Money is great, but I don’t want it to be the main motivation for my writing.

I completed my journey on the Monetize The Thing You Enjoy Express a few years ago and it took a long time to recover from it. I have no interest in buying another ticket; the convenience fees are ridiculous.