Last week, while visiting Prague for the second time in three years, I happened upon a trombone trio playing a rendition of Lennon’s “Imagine” in Wenceslas Square.
Josh, this is just lovely. So much yearning right now for authenticity, all around. So much opportunity for bringing good people together. Bless you. You're not alone.
Thank you for saying so! I seem to have a resurgence of idealism every time I visit Czechia. It's refreshing, even if it makes me feel a little rebellious :)
I feel the same way when I go home to the UK. Sick and tired of "happy joy joy" performative crapitude. It brings out the inner dragon the old WWII ladies gave me. :)
The issue is that Substack is a for profit company that achieved a valuation during a period of highly unreasonable valuations. They have a responsibility to their investors to find ways to earn into that valuation.
That's it in a nutshell.
The conundrum is that as writers who love the community we want Substack to succeed and keep all their ideals. The two goals are often going to be at odds.
Thank you, David, but I suppose I find it hard to fit so much history and so many warnings to the West into a nutshell. How do you suggest reconciling the ideals with the practical exigencies? And how does an economic structure like this one avoid the automatism Havel describes?
You ask this question: "Might the platform be leveraged as a source of collective power against the corporate publishing monopolies?"
I think the question is whether Substack can act as an adjunct to what already exists. And are there ways to use the platform to promote independent publishing or even to create a new publisher? Collective, however, probably means a small group of motivated people who band together to do something different.
I'd say focus on small victories, try to not have bad dreams and as a writer count yourself as a King of infinite space.
King of infinite space indeed. And cheers to small victories. Whether a small group can indeed band together is a question I’m really interested in exploring. It seems that some form of gatekeeping always ensues.
Another thing is that Substack allows people who like to read and write to get to know each other. I'm grateful for this platform, for instance, since it allowed me to get to meet you.
Thanks Mary. Though I suppose the "Havel's Place" metaphor welcomes dialogue more than controversy? Maybe it's not possible to write directly about Substack without inviting some of that. But I hope that's not all there is in the piece.
Glad you have given voice to this concern I share. The Havel test is a good one. One of the odd structural features is the push to recommend other Substackers to your readers. I find a lot of writing here phenomenally good but I do not presume that my eclectic reading tastes are of any interest to those who are reading my work on a specific place with a narrow focus. The structures are set up to reward those who are already famous and rich. It appears to be reproducing the structural systems of dominant culture despite circumventing traditional economic models for social media platforms. Am I surprised? No, not really. Is there a bit more room for resistance? I remain somewhat hopeful as it has offered benefits that are non-monetary like the real connection I have made with you and your writing.
I agree, Jill, and if Substack had not created space for those genuine connections (which I never found during my previous twenty years publishing in lit mags), then I would not have cared enough to write this piece. I suppose it's not enough for me to simply put a wall up around my work and ignore what's going on outside. The platform invites us to participate in its public messaging, to promote one another (as you say), and implicitly to promote the entire enterprise. That's a lot to ask, and for it to work well there must be room for dissidence.
Josh, this is an intriguing piece. I read it slowly while enjoying my coffee this morning. Certainly, I am going to need to check out some of Havel's work at some point.
Over the summer I spent quite a bit of time thinking about Substack even though I was mostly absent from the platform. The question I kept asking myself is, "What do I want this space to be for me?" It kept coming back to my mind because someone had asked me why I solicit for paid subscriptions.
Getting paid was never why I started writing but inevitably the platform pushes you towards that because that is how they profit. I do believe that writers should be compensated but does the incessant cry for paid subscriptions overshadow the real truths we are trying to seek?
I do think that Substack is better than other systems out there. It offers a place where voices can come out of the hidden darkness. How those voices get amplified though is a completely different matter and that normally comes back to money.
It remains to be seen whether Substack as an entity can do anything against the great behemoths of publishing. However, it has, at least for me, been a place where dissidents can gather and find one another and dream.
Matthew, you've hit on the fundamental issue, which is that our participation in the system shapes us, just as we shape the system by our participation or dissent. So it's quite easy to say that we can each make of Substack what we will or cultivate our own private gardens on the platform. But none of us can realistically do that without being influenced by others and by meta-conversations about good practices for growth and income anymore than we can use Facebook or Instagram without surrendering some control over our thoughts. So we do have some personal responsibility and choices, but I think the system has a responsibility, too, to promote a culture that does not drift too far into hucksterism.
How voices get amplified, and for what reasons, is also a salient concern, as you say. There is, as yet, no transparency about how writers are selected to edit Substack Reads, for instance, or how certain newsletters are ranked within certain genre or topical categories. I think it's impossible to be ambitious about one's writing on the platform and not care about these things.
So I agree -- this is a wonderful gathering place. It is also a big tent, capable of including many different voices and projects, like Wenceslas Square. Even so, it is a SYSTEM. And Havel has taught me that systems always require scrutiny.
21 minutes into Robinson's Podcast interview of Michael Hudson, Hudson says that for the nth or 20th time after he first tried, publishers wld not promote his books about ancient debt cancellations to trade pback issues because the editors did not believe the evidence of ancient proclamations (hamurabbi) and tablets about loans forgiven. Anthony Weiner, born 193x? Artist resident of Amsterdam described the effect of the market thusly: " you can make it if you are willing to be a token of your underprivileged type, or a something else: if you obey the dictat" .
One of the draws of indie publishing, as more of us are calling it, is that there is no dictat. There is also no status, really, or any of the other rewards that typically come from making it through a carefully curated gate. Whether that matters is a question every writer must answer for themself.
“There is something sacred about carrying our mirrors through the streets, doing our best to catch our own humanity and that of others in our words.”
Thanks for this thought-provoking essay, Josh.
In my imagination, I stood under the astronomical clock in Old Town Square as I read your words.
I love how Prague has infused your vital questions about Substack, writing, capitalism, our modern world.
People build systems, and then systems shape people. It is essential we are conscious of what we build and its impact, and your questions shine a bright light. Thank you!
Thank you, Jackie! The astronomical clock is indeed lovely, if you can catch it early in the morning when the crowds have not descended on Old Town.
Your last point is much appreciated, because I think we are often blind to the influence that systems wield over us. We know this more or less about the intentionally addictive features of social media. But it's also true about this platform. I am grateful for an audience and for the discipline that writing once a week on a self-imposed deadline (sometimes more) has brought to my writing life. Yet I'm also mindful of the subconscious need to "feed the feed" and chase growth, which is not unlike the pernicious ability of Facebook to infiltrate your thoughts and translate every private moment into a status update. These are not simple things to resist.
"we are often blind to the influence that systems wield over us"
This is so true. I have worked in a field where understanding organisational and system dynamics was crucial. And even with that background, when I first joined Substack, I got caught up in the current. It's taken me several months to find my own rhythm here, discover how I like to do Substack, and I've realised this means I'm swimming against the tide in a lot of ways. But the only way for me to write words I'm proud of is to stay tuned to my own dial, not Substack's. As you say, it's not easy.
'I believe the printed word is more than sacred, beyond the gauge of good or bad', so writes Andy Partridge in 1992. As a writer, I agree in principle, but as Weber said of charisma, writing by itself and in itself is value-neutral. Our poesis must engage a praxis if it is to encounter either power or freedom. And yet in so far as it grounds itself in the world, it correspondingly loses its art. What a delicate balance then, for a contributor to the human conversation to strike! Here are two pieces in latent response to your own that I hope your readers will find interesting:
Thanks for sharing your pieces, Greg. I'll look forward to reading as time allows. I wonder if writing can be value-neutral, since even aesthetics derive from our worldview? As for engaging with the world, I find Havel's essays more evocative than his plays. But that is a matter of taste, which I think also is an expression of one's values.
I was referring to writing as an empiricity of culture, as simply the written word, not its culturally diverse contents. But even there, I would agree, it is possible to argue that writing in itself, since it occurs in specific kinds of cultures and does not in others, heeds some kind of worldview which values perhaps memory at first, legacy next, posterity next, and so on.
Substack is the most sane form of social media. You get the choice to be free or paid. You can like/comment, read or delete and nobody will know. I think it’s the news 2.0. Your articles could fall under the Culture section.
Perhaps, but Havel, Solzhenitsyn, and many others who issued warnings to the West in the 1970s and 80s would now ask whether any form of social media can be sane. I agree with you -- there's lots of personal choice. There are also plenty of the subtle and refined manipulations that Havel describes.
I'm fully aware that this essay swims against a mainstream current and all the default settings of capitalism. But that is the point of dissidence.
I so appreciated this post. Substack has been great for certain kind of content and certain kinds of people. The readership is still mostly from the US, the UK and Canada. But, more and more, people from other parts of the world are joining. My main beef with Substack is that you have to have sufficient technical equipment (mobile phone isn't enough to publish, at least not easily), it requires substantial data to load and publish, and Stripe doesn't work everywhere. In fact, despite the presence of Stripe Global (which still requires you establish a US bank account) in 4 countries in Africa, monetizing a Substack in Africa is next to impossible if not cost prohibitive. So, definitely, Substack is not (yet) a platform for lifting all voices and being a refuge for all. In the meantime, I use my two Substacks to bring those voices here... the question is, does anyone want to hear those voices? The jury is still out for me.
Emily, you make a great point about lifting all voices. And, as is often the case, I have to check my privilege and remember that intrigues or frustrations with this platform are pretty much all First World problems.
I understand that Substack is a start-up and that it is still trying to find a sustainable long-term model financially. And I hope that this post does not read as a rage against the machine piece -- I tried to include more nuance than that. My attention is more to how easily systems become ends in themselves. The real appeal of Substack is that it has allowed some of us to transcend that in some ways and sometimes. Whether that is sustainable or just a feature of the venture capital honeymoon, I suppose, remains to be seen.
But I think your point and mine converge in this sense: if Substack is to be truly different, it cannot be a platform that simply helps the rich get richer. Theoretically anyone can start a Substack for free, etc, etc. But we all know that when the service is free, the user is the product (typically). And if the algorithms are designed in such a way as to privilege those who already have the loudest voices, then the democratic entry point is really a ruse.
Gotcha. Yes, we're converging for sure. I hope that Substack can figure out a way to be financially sustainable while also enhancing accessibility and making the coveted paid sub feature available to millions (billions?) more potential users by selecting a secondary third-party pay app like PayPal. I'm ignorant of the economics of building a platform like Substack and so acknowledge there is likely a complicated web of capacity, scale, and other issues at play. But, it does seem that at some point Substack investors could increase (or hasten?) their ROI by making a few tweaks. For one, make some of the key writer dashboard features accessible on the App so people with mobile phones can actually maintain a publication instead of just playing in the kiddie pool of Notes; although Long-Form Posts is an option. By adding a secondary third-party pay app like PayPal, more people could monetize their content. Conceivably, Substack would then be able to take its cut and investors would be happy. I realize I'm whisking us away from your main point, but I appreciate the conversation and thought partnership. Right now, I'm advising friends from Africa, many of whom are community development and grassroots organizers writing about climate change and food insecurity, to set up Ko-Fi.com accounts and use the custom button. That is, if they can get on (and stay on) the web-based platform. To help with upload and data issues, I am an Admin for two Substacks. They send me conten on What's App and I help them get their images or video up. We're getting there... slowly!
Yes, good points about external payment options. I am not a fan of "Buy Me a Coffee," since it sounds like panhandling, but "Tip" seems appropriate. I hope you and your friends find a way to make this work! If you'd like to DM me some of those posts or write about this for a collaborative Substack that I run with two others, I'd be glad to chat privately.
I think it's an inevitability that Substack is destined to become the new publishing behemoth of the near future, and the more successful it is the more sealed is this fate.
As a very limited-resource user and reader of the platform, I can already feel the increasing weight of Substack's meteoric success on my reading privileges. Access are becoming increasingly restricted and some beloved writers and contents that, at inception, were open-access are now slowly but surely narrowing the gate. Of course, this is the price of success, and the stellar the success the higher the price levied.
I foresee a major migration of some big players in the publishing industry to Substack (provided it maintains its current rate of growth) in order to have a bit of the pie.
Interesting take. I'm not good at these kinds of predictions, but my sense is that Substack's success so far has stemmed largely from its ability to foster genuine communities. That's what has kept me here. As others say, that idealistic goal lives in tension with the more crass business strategies.
Fabulous essay Josh. You've put your finger exactly on the sorts of tension within Substack that I can get a little shy articulating out loud. "Dissent" seems like a melodramatic position - but it's also absolutely true that the structures in place inhibit me from expressing myself publicly in the conventional market - and that's true for everybody else I know. I assume there are similar dynamics in place in academia. I think that the cheery emphasis on growth, optimization, etc, obscures Substack's real 'purpose.' I like to put more of a positive spin than you do on that side of Substack, but I think you're basically right - the value is in the free space for writers, as opposed to growth for readers.
Thanks, Sam. I suppose I feel that when we stop saying things out loud, we're no longer living in the truth. I have another essay brewing about Sinclair Lewis's "Babbitt," which I think provides an unsettling mirror for many aspects of our current culture, including academe and publishing. Fantasies of endless growth, and the boosterism that fuels those fantasies, creates a hollowness in Lewis's Zenith that is very much with us now.
“Increasingly, I wonder how long those two faces of the platform can live in tension.”
It’s in the tension that creativity can thrive. Comfort is a killer and power is not immutable. I agree with @davidroberts in that we each must find our own power within the imperfect system and relish our small victories—as you have.
Your essay is lovely in its breadth and scope. Powerful. That said—I can’t see a Substack kumbaya anytime soon. Too many conflicting interests. Ultimately we will each define our own success within it.
Thanks, Dee. It is in fact possible to approach it in a more libertarian way -- live and let live. However, I think there is something more personal about this platform. It invites us to really care about the larger enterprise in ways that other platforms like Zoom, which simply offer a service, do not. So I think meta-reflections like this have their place if we are truly all building this thing together. I might gently push back on the kumbaya point, since our writing group and other collaborations keep me here just as much as my own separate project.
Yeah for sure on the community and on our group. I just don’t see the powers that be straying from their business responsibility to their investors. We are in a capitalist society and it’s always about the Benjamins. Dissidents either have the need or the privilege as you put it—but ultimately they simply rail against the system or choose to live within it.
Ah, well, I will have to disagree with you about that last binary. The capitalism we have is not the only option available, and a system that divides voices into boosters or protesters is an unnecessarily narrow one. The fact that people who suffered under Communism and either survived it or overthrew it saw many echoes of the same kind of power abuse in Western capitalism. To use a capitalistic term, all of us on this platform might consider ourselves Substack’s target customers or perhaps even their business partners. My opening and closing metaphor is “Havel’s Place,” the table with two chairs. I’m prepared to sit at that table and listen to another side. But if all another party hears is me railing against it or choosing to fall in line, then there’s no dialogue at all.
I don’t disagree that the discussion and the dialogue is worth having. I’m just not hopeful—or perhaps idealistic enough—to expect it to change anything.
Josh, this is just lovely. So much yearning right now for authenticity, all around. So much opportunity for bringing good people together. Bless you. You're not alone.
Thank you for saying so! I seem to have a resurgence of idealism every time I visit Czechia. It's refreshing, even if it makes me feel a little rebellious :)
I feel the same way when I go home to the UK. Sick and tired of "happy joy joy" performative crapitude. It brings out the inner dragon the old WWII ladies gave me. :)
The issue is that Substack is a for profit company that achieved a valuation during a period of highly unreasonable valuations. They have a responsibility to their investors to find ways to earn into that valuation.
That's it in a nutshell.
The conundrum is that as writers who love the community we want Substack to succeed and keep all their ideals. The two goals are often going to be at odds.
Thank you, David, but I suppose I find it hard to fit so much history and so many warnings to the West into a nutshell. How do you suggest reconciling the ideals with the practical exigencies? And how does an economic structure like this one avoid the automatism Havel describes?
You ask this question: "Might the platform be leveraged as a source of collective power against the corporate publishing monopolies?"
I think the question is whether Substack can act as an adjunct to what already exists. And are there ways to use the platform to promote independent publishing or even to create a new publisher? Collective, however, probably means a small group of motivated people who band together to do something different.
I'd say focus on small victories, try to not have bad dreams and as a writer count yourself as a King of infinite space.
King of infinite space indeed. And cheers to small victories. Whether a small group can indeed band together is a question I’m really interested in exploring. It seems that some form of gatekeeping always ensues.
Another thing is that Substack allows people who like to read and write to get to know each other. I'm grateful for this platform, for instance, since it allowed me to get to meet you.
I totally agree! That is one of the many blessings of the platform indeed.
A complex and bewitching essay: Let the controversy begin here.
Thanks Mary. Though I suppose the "Havel's Place" metaphor welcomes dialogue more than controversy? Maybe it's not possible to write directly about Substack without inviting some of that. But I hope that's not all there is in the piece.
Glad you have given voice to this concern I share. The Havel test is a good one. One of the odd structural features is the push to recommend other Substackers to your readers. I find a lot of writing here phenomenally good but I do not presume that my eclectic reading tastes are of any interest to those who are reading my work on a specific place with a narrow focus. The structures are set up to reward those who are already famous and rich. It appears to be reproducing the structural systems of dominant culture despite circumventing traditional economic models for social media platforms. Am I surprised? No, not really. Is there a bit more room for resistance? I remain somewhat hopeful as it has offered benefits that are non-monetary like the real connection I have made with you and your writing.
I agree, Jill, and if Substack had not created space for those genuine connections (which I never found during my previous twenty years publishing in lit mags), then I would not have cared enough to write this piece. I suppose it's not enough for me to simply put a wall up around my work and ignore what's going on outside. The platform invites us to participate in its public messaging, to promote one another (as you say), and implicitly to promote the entire enterprise. That's a lot to ask, and for it to work well there must be room for dissidence.
Josh, this is an intriguing piece. I read it slowly while enjoying my coffee this morning. Certainly, I am going to need to check out some of Havel's work at some point.
Over the summer I spent quite a bit of time thinking about Substack even though I was mostly absent from the platform. The question I kept asking myself is, "What do I want this space to be for me?" It kept coming back to my mind because someone had asked me why I solicit for paid subscriptions.
Getting paid was never why I started writing but inevitably the platform pushes you towards that because that is how they profit. I do believe that writers should be compensated but does the incessant cry for paid subscriptions overshadow the real truths we are trying to seek?
I do think that Substack is better than other systems out there. It offers a place where voices can come out of the hidden darkness. How those voices get amplified though is a completely different matter and that normally comes back to money.
It remains to be seen whether Substack as an entity can do anything against the great behemoths of publishing. However, it has, at least for me, been a place where dissidents can gather and find one another and dream.
Matthew, you've hit on the fundamental issue, which is that our participation in the system shapes us, just as we shape the system by our participation or dissent. So it's quite easy to say that we can each make of Substack what we will or cultivate our own private gardens on the platform. But none of us can realistically do that without being influenced by others and by meta-conversations about good practices for growth and income anymore than we can use Facebook or Instagram without surrendering some control over our thoughts. So we do have some personal responsibility and choices, but I think the system has a responsibility, too, to promote a culture that does not drift too far into hucksterism.
How voices get amplified, and for what reasons, is also a salient concern, as you say. There is, as yet, no transparency about how writers are selected to edit Substack Reads, for instance, or how certain newsletters are ranked within certain genre or topical categories. I think it's impossible to be ambitious about one's writing on the platform and not care about these things.
So I agree -- this is a wonderful gathering place. It is also a big tent, capable of including many different voices and projects, like Wenceslas Square. Even so, it is a SYSTEM. And Havel has taught me that systems always require scrutiny.
21 minutes into Robinson's Podcast interview of Michael Hudson, Hudson says that for the nth or 20th time after he first tried, publishers wld not promote his books about ancient debt cancellations to trade pback issues because the editors did not believe the evidence of ancient proclamations (hamurabbi) and tablets about loans forgiven. Anthony Weiner, born 193x? Artist resident of Amsterdam described the effect of the market thusly: " you can make it if you are willing to be a token of your underprivileged type, or a something else: if you obey the dictat" .
One of the draws of indie publishing, as more of us are calling it, is that there is no dictat. There is also no status, really, or any of the other rewards that typically come from making it through a carefully curated gate. Whether that matters is a question every writer must answer for themself.
“There is something sacred about carrying our mirrors through the streets, doing our best to catch our own humanity and that of others in our words.”
Thanks for this thought-provoking essay, Josh.
In my imagination, I stood under the astronomical clock in Old Town Square as I read your words.
I love how Prague has infused your vital questions about Substack, writing, capitalism, our modern world.
People build systems, and then systems shape people. It is essential we are conscious of what we build and its impact, and your questions shine a bright light. Thank you!
Thank you, Jackie! The astronomical clock is indeed lovely, if you can catch it early in the morning when the crowds have not descended on Old Town.
Your last point is much appreciated, because I think we are often blind to the influence that systems wield over us. We know this more or less about the intentionally addictive features of social media. But it's also true about this platform. I am grateful for an audience and for the discipline that writing once a week on a self-imposed deadline (sometimes more) has brought to my writing life. Yet I'm also mindful of the subconscious need to "feed the feed" and chase growth, which is not unlike the pernicious ability of Facebook to infiltrate your thoughts and translate every private moment into a status update. These are not simple things to resist.
"we are often blind to the influence that systems wield over us"
This is so true. I have worked in a field where understanding organisational and system dynamics was crucial. And even with that background, when I first joined Substack, I got caught up in the current. It's taken me several months to find my own rhythm here, discover how I like to do Substack, and I've realised this means I'm swimming against the tide in a lot of ways. But the only way for me to write words I'm proud of is to stay tuned to my own dial, not Substack's. As you say, it's not easy.
Saving this to come back to later. Just the first paragraphs are pinging so many connections. I want to read this with a notebook in hand. …
I'll be here for it!
:-) School for kids and meetings for us: tomorrow. 😳
'I believe the printed word is more than sacred, beyond the gauge of good or bad', so writes Andy Partridge in 1992. As a writer, I agree in principle, but as Weber said of charisma, writing by itself and in itself is value-neutral. Our poesis must engage a praxis if it is to encounter either power or freedom. And yet in so far as it grounds itself in the world, it correspondingly loses its art. What a delicate balance then, for a contributor to the human conversation to strike! Here are two pieces in latent response to your own that I hope your readers will find interesting:
https://drgvloewen.substack.com/p/writing-as-a-vocation?utm_source=publication-search
https://drgvloewen.substack.com/p/the-importance-of-writing-in-a-visual?utm_source=publication-search
Kudos to you, Joshua, for an important reflection. - Greg
Thanks for sharing your pieces, Greg. I'll look forward to reading as time allows. I wonder if writing can be value-neutral, since even aesthetics derive from our worldview? As for engaging with the world, I find Havel's essays more evocative than his plays. But that is a matter of taste, which I think also is an expression of one's values.
I was referring to writing as an empiricity of culture, as simply the written word, not its culturally diverse contents. But even there, I would agree, it is possible to argue that writing in itself, since it occurs in specific kinds of cultures and does not in others, heeds some kind of worldview which values perhaps memory at first, legacy next, posterity next, and so on.
Substack is the most sane form of social media. You get the choice to be free or paid. You can like/comment, read or delete and nobody will know. I think it’s the news 2.0. Your articles could fall under the Culture section.
Perhaps, but Havel, Solzhenitsyn, and many others who issued warnings to the West in the 1970s and 80s would now ask whether any form of social media can be sane. I agree with you -- there's lots of personal choice. There are also plenty of the subtle and refined manipulations that Havel describes.
I'm fully aware that this essay swims against a mainstream current and all the default settings of capitalism. But that is the point of dissidence.
You are a great writer and thinker. No question about it.
Thank you, Krista -- appreciate your interest.
I so appreciated this post. Substack has been great for certain kind of content and certain kinds of people. The readership is still mostly from the US, the UK and Canada. But, more and more, people from other parts of the world are joining. My main beef with Substack is that you have to have sufficient technical equipment (mobile phone isn't enough to publish, at least not easily), it requires substantial data to load and publish, and Stripe doesn't work everywhere. In fact, despite the presence of Stripe Global (which still requires you establish a US bank account) in 4 countries in Africa, monetizing a Substack in Africa is next to impossible if not cost prohibitive. So, definitely, Substack is not (yet) a platform for lifting all voices and being a refuge for all. In the meantime, I use my two Substacks to bring those voices here... the question is, does anyone want to hear those voices? The jury is still out for me.
Emily, you make a great point about lifting all voices. And, as is often the case, I have to check my privilege and remember that intrigues or frustrations with this platform are pretty much all First World problems.
I understand that Substack is a start-up and that it is still trying to find a sustainable long-term model financially. And I hope that this post does not read as a rage against the machine piece -- I tried to include more nuance than that. My attention is more to how easily systems become ends in themselves. The real appeal of Substack is that it has allowed some of us to transcend that in some ways and sometimes. Whether that is sustainable or just a feature of the venture capital honeymoon, I suppose, remains to be seen.
But I think your point and mine converge in this sense: if Substack is to be truly different, it cannot be a platform that simply helps the rich get richer. Theoretically anyone can start a Substack for free, etc, etc. But we all know that when the service is free, the user is the product (typically). And if the algorithms are designed in such a way as to privilege those who already have the loudest voices, then the democratic entry point is really a ruse.
Gotcha. Yes, we're converging for sure. I hope that Substack can figure out a way to be financially sustainable while also enhancing accessibility and making the coveted paid sub feature available to millions (billions?) more potential users by selecting a secondary third-party pay app like PayPal. I'm ignorant of the economics of building a platform like Substack and so acknowledge there is likely a complicated web of capacity, scale, and other issues at play. But, it does seem that at some point Substack investors could increase (or hasten?) their ROI by making a few tweaks. For one, make some of the key writer dashboard features accessible on the App so people with mobile phones can actually maintain a publication instead of just playing in the kiddie pool of Notes; although Long-Form Posts is an option. By adding a secondary third-party pay app like PayPal, more people could monetize their content. Conceivably, Substack would then be able to take its cut and investors would be happy. I realize I'm whisking us away from your main point, but I appreciate the conversation and thought partnership. Right now, I'm advising friends from Africa, many of whom are community development and grassroots organizers writing about climate change and food insecurity, to set up Ko-Fi.com accounts and use the custom button. That is, if they can get on (and stay on) the web-based platform. To help with upload and data issues, I am an Admin for two Substacks. They send me conten on What's App and I help them get their images or video up. We're getting there... slowly!
Yes, good points about external payment options. I am not a fan of "Buy Me a Coffee," since it sounds like panhandling, but "Tip" seems appropriate. I hope you and your friends find a way to make this work! If you'd like to DM me some of those posts or write about this for a collaborative Substack that I run with two others, I'd be glad to chat privately.
Id like that very much. I have a post that I will send you on the subject. 😁
I think it's an inevitability that Substack is destined to become the new publishing behemoth of the near future, and the more successful it is the more sealed is this fate.
As a very limited-resource user and reader of the platform, I can already feel the increasing weight of Substack's meteoric success on my reading privileges. Access are becoming increasingly restricted and some beloved writers and contents that, at inception, were open-access are now slowly but surely narrowing the gate. Of course, this is the price of success, and the stellar the success the higher the price levied.
I foresee a major migration of some big players in the publishing industry to Substack (provided it maintains its current rate of growth) in order to have a bit of the pie.
Interesting take. I'm not good at these kinds of predictions, but my sense is that Substack's success so far has stemmed largely from its ability to foster genuine communities. That's what has kept me here. As others say, that idealistic goal lives in tension with the more crass business strategies.
Fabulous essay Josh. You've put your finger exactly on the sorts of tension within Substack that I can get a little shy articulating out loud. "Dissent" seems like a melodramatic position - but it's also absolutely true that the structures in place inhibit me from expressing myself publicly in the conventional market - and that's true for everybody else I know. I assume there are similar dynamics in place in academia. I think that the cheery emphasis on growth, optimization, etc, obscures Substack's real 'purpose.' I like to put more of a positive spin than you do on that side of Substack, but I think you're basically right - the value is in the free space for writers, as opposed to growth for readers.
Thanks, Sam. I suppose I feel that when we stop saying things out loud, we're no longer living in the truth. I have another essay brewing about Sinclair Lewis's "Babbitt," which I think provides an unsettling mirror for many aspects of our current culture, including academe and publishing. Fantasies of endless growth, and the boosterism that fuels those fantasies, creates a hollowness in Lewis's Zenith that is very much with us now.
“Increasingly, I wonder how long those two faces of the platform can live in tension.”
It’s in the tension that creativity can thrive. Comfort is a killer and power is not immutable. I agree with @davidroberts in that we each must find our own power within the imperfect system and relish our small victories—as you have.
Your essay is lovely in its breadth and scope. Powerful. That said—I can’t see a Substack kumbaya anytime soon. Too many conflicting interests. Ultimately we will each define our own success within it.
Thank you for the thought-provoking piece.
Thanks, Dee. It is in fact possible to approach it in a more libertarian way -- live and let live. However, I think there is something more personal about this platform. It invites us to really care about the larger enterprise in ways that other platforms like Zoom, which simply offer a service, do not. So I think meta-reflections like this have their place if we are truly all building this thing together. I might gently push back on the kumbaya point, since our writing group and other collaborations keep me here just as much as my own separate project.
Yeah for sure on the community and on our group. I just don’t see the powers that be straying from their business responsibility to their investors. We are in a capitalist society and it’s always about the Benjamins. Dissidents either have the need or the privilege as you put it—but ultimately they simply rail against the system or choose to live within it.
Ah, well, I will have to disagree with you about that last binary. The capitalism we have is not the only option available, and a system that divides voices into boosters or protesters is an unnecessarily narrow one. The fact that people who suffered under Communism and either survived it or overthrew it saw many echoes of the same kind of power abuse in Western capitalism. To use a capitalistic term, all of us on this platform might consider ourselves Substack’s target customers or perhaps even their business partners. My opening and closing metaphor is “Havel’s Place,” the table with two chairs. I’m prepared to sit at that table and listen to another side. But if all another party hears is me railing against it or choosing to fall in line, then there’s no dialogue at all.
I don’t disagree that the discussion and the dialogue is worth having. I’m just not hopeful—or perhaps idealistic enough—to expect it to change anything.