On the fourth anniversary of the blog, I offer my customary reflections. But first, the customary sale: For two weeks only, you can get a subscription for 50% off! For that, you’ll get access to archives that include:
21 of my in-depth Books posts such as Woe unto You, Lawyers!, The Rejection of Continental Drift, The Lonely Crowd, The Credential Society, Race Riot, Fragging, and The Violent Gang. For the newbies: Each is less a traditional review than an extended treatment that summarizes and draws connections to related topics.
14 installments of my Explaining Behavior series, a now book-length guide on how to create social scientific theories that actually make testable predictions, illustrated with examples from sociology and other fields. Okay, okay, those posts aren’t currently paywalled—but the 6 extra installments sharing my classroom materials (quizzes, assignments, etc.) are.
30 monthly Links Roundups, where I riff on a variety of interesting items that don’t merit their own separate posts. I’m not a huge current events guy, so don’t be fooled into thinking the older ones are outdated. It’s always a good time to learn about Ugandan child sacrifice, 18th century balloon riots, and cases of people swallowed by whales!
9 posts in my Moral Cultures series, which considers manifestations of honor, dignity, face, and victimhood culture.
My fastest growing category of post these days are on my experience homeschooling—both my own two children, and a larger group of kids at our local homeschool hub, where among other things I teach gym, comics, and folk tales.
There are two podcast series. The first is where I interview people about their work— usually research, but sometimes other stuff like boxing. The second is a series on collective violence—lynching, rioting, and so forth—in American history.
And there are one-off posts on various topics, like my Dad’s run-in with Donald Trump, my pastiche of Lewis’s Screwtape Letters, or a report on self-censorship by liberal and conservative graduate students from my own survey research.
Don’t mean to bore the regulars with the obvious, but the new folks need to know what’s up.
The past year of blogging by the numbers:
I managed 32 posts this year, a slight decline from last year’s 35. As homeschooling ramped up, my pace of posting slowed a little. But I’ve held a minimum of two in the slowest months, doing three or four in better months.
I wound up writing almost all the pieces I advertised in last year’s anniversary post, except for one that I scrapped and one long podcast on riots that is still in the works.
My most-viewed article was the post on Rena Gazaway’s ethnography The Longest Mile.
In second place was the links roundup for October, which covered ghost stories, feminization and whether or not it explains victimhood culture, outlandish crimes and cons, the perils of deindustrialization, and weird biology.
My least viewed post was “Homeschooling Notes: Lyrical Science,” which was both niche content and paywalled, so I didn’t expect it to do numbers.
Notably, none of my posts this year were big disappointments. Over the past four years, I’ve gotten a better sense of what will be a hit in terms of views and interactions. Not that everything I write is a hit, nor is everything expected to be. Some posts are just a nerd being a nerd and hoping a small number of fellow nerds appreciate it.
I still share my academic work here, but through blogging I’ve slowly learned to be less academic in style. Good grief, my first posts had parenthetical citations! There does seem to be a correlation between writing better and getting more traction on Substack.
The problem for me is that I’m still an academic (at least until the wheels come off) and need to keep cranking out journal articles for my day job. But as I gain blogging experience, the journal format feels increasingly restrictive.
Say, if you made it this far, you’re a real mensch. Consider getting a gift subscription for a friend. Click here for 50% off a gift subscription!
Or if you’re really that cheap (I understand, I’m a university professor), you can earn a free sub by referring friends:
A preview of what I have planned for the future:
“Explaining Behavior: The Lessons of Sociology”
“Notes on Korea”
“When Everyone is on Welfare”
“The Relational Apocalypse”
“Books: Anne Orthwood’s Bastard”
“Books: The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life”
“Collective Violence in American History: American Riot” (I mean it this time!)
“Homeschooling Notes: Introductory Korean.” (How did I get roped into this?!)
“Homeschooling Notes: Our History Curriculum.”
That’s in addition to spinoffs from my academic work on lynching in West Virgina, how people respond to suicide, political conflict among graduate students, and whatever else I get off the ground this year.
I’m also open to content suggestions, especially from paid subscribers, who are of course the best kind of people and whose opinions I value above all others. And for a limited time, you commoners can join the ranks of this aristocracy of taste for 50% off!
As for all else: What is a bullfish hole, anyway?
Thanks for reading!
Yours,
Jason
Fairmont, West Virginia
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