Substack IS Social Media
Notes: People in glass houses throw stones at sinking ships
This isn’t some kind of dunking. This is self-inquiry.
Is anyone else playing the game with
’s essays where you substitute all the mentions of Instagram for mentions of Substack?Likes, follows and comments apply in both cases.
We can see how vain selfies map to the vanity required to believe your special unique hot takes are important.
We can see how public intellectuals are just one kind of influencer.
We can look at the demands Substack makes on us to post according to its rhythms, to create micro content to promote our personal brands, to conform to writing about subjects that are rewarded visibility by the algorithm.
Are we being manipulated here? We can examine what types of Notes the algorithm favors and query how they lead us to approach our relationship with the platform.
Why do people seem unable to tally all the gushing praise for Substack on here and wonder whether it impacts our own perception—whether there’s really that great a vibe or just a Stepford style plastic smile that we force because we’ve subconsciously deduced the algo rewards it.
We can look at the “Subhack” genre of writing about writing that shows up endlessly and quickly pick out the parallels on other platforms. The influencers who influence influencers to further subjugate themselves to the algorithm.
What sort of relationship with the platform do Good Vibes and Subhacky articles promote?
The same kind of relationship Freya is so good at denoucing with her
articles about social media.(At least
knows this is social media, even if the person being replied to doesn’t seem to.)Before you say it, yes, I understand the irony of making this comparison. If I were calling out Freya for hypocrisy in a Substack Article of my own, it would be hilarious, right?
I just keep wondering. Is being a public anything ethical?
This is something I consider all the time as a writer on Substack: I wonder whether our attempts at tough love broadcast through mass communication technology—and with a theoretically infinite audience, inevitably arriving before the eyeballs of both those who might benefit from starting with the man in the mirror and those who it will crush, who are genuinely in a crisis of despair—has the same oomf as sitting down with someone whose situation you’ve taken the time to understand? Someone to whom you can show all the squishy gestures of compassion and unconditional positive regard that help them believe they deserve to save themself? (From their phone addiction, or from anything else we criticize on here.)
After all, just as Freya decries—talking about the mental health impact of comparing ourselves to others—do I not find myself jealous of her gig editing Substack Reads? When I look at the 1.5k little hearts on her stuff, yeah, I’ll admit to a twinge of bitter discomfort with the reality that I will never measure up.
Does that indicate that I aspire to have that high status for myself? Should I shoot for being a Cultural Billionaire (as rare as financial billionaires) who earns a living with my art? If so, what do I contribute to the world? Pettiness? Vanity?
Hm. Hello, Cognitive Dissonance.
Even as I type this… A little piece of me hopes a few people will read it. A little piece of me hopes I’ll get a like or two. And I’ll probably wake up tomorrow and reach for my phone first thing to check my notifs.
And I’ll either get a ping of dopamine milked from my grey matter by this stupid hypno-rectangle (as Duncan Trussell says) or I’ll feel the thirsty withdrawal.
The tightness in my chest that craves something bubbly, breathy or burning.
The craving.
The despairing yearning for deliverance that had me delete all my other social media back in December after I caught myself with the half-asleep, highly-metaphorical impulse to open my phone’s “knife app”… and open my wrists.
Yes even the drama, doom and divisive content right here on the infinite scroll of Notes can get a person to that level of desperation.
But hey, I tell myself, maybe it’s ok that we’re all on here because we feel we have some special perspective to contribute to the discourse. I tell myself this because I can’t seem to shut up, even when I try.
Maybe it’s OK that we want to have a little influence, though most of us will frantically denounce wanting “fame.”
It’s a problem to be an individual that forgets you’re part of a whole, but dammit Mr. Rogers taught me being special was important. When a body has to fight off an infection, every cell and organ has its own specialized part to play, right?
Whatever we’re doing must be the right thing to do, because there’s no other thing we could be doing. We can look at others’ instagram lives and feel superior or inferior, but in reality, if we traded all our experiences, influences, neurochemistry, and acculturation, we’d be making the same damn posts those Others are.
We aren’t made of better stuff.
Ram Dass often said creation must be perfect, because it “is as it can only be.” (What a bold guy that Ram Dass was. How did he get away with condoning the terrible suffering in the world?) It’s paradoxical. Reality is in obvious, desperate need of improvement at the same time. Perhaps the special callings you or I feel to improve the world are part of that perfection.
And yes, I guess some small fraction of my specialized role is to joyfully support my wife’s Instagram hobby by knowing the compositional rule of thirds.
Another is to gratefully accept her support of my Substack addiction in return.
I love Freya’s blog but I have to be careful not to go too extreme on her end- too puritanical where her views become cultish like the church and where selfies are ‘sin’ and suddenly you only belong if you’re a snobby intellectual. That’s no fun. I honestly don’t feel like I fit in on any social media platform but I love to write so just doing the best I can to stay in my lane and trust I’ll attract the people I’m meant to.
Hurrah! Nothing beats good old fashioned honesty. That we are here and posting must indictate that, even here on this platform of intellectuals and creatives, we can still make a difference. In the aggregate of marginal gains, in a slowly but surely manner, people are beginning to own up to their complicity in creating the reality in which we all live, love and outgrow. So that perhaps it is possible to become All that we can Be by pulling ourselves up by the bootstraps of our own consciousness and creative will, to Be the Change that we All Wish To See in the world. Is it narcissism to want to make a difference in the world, isn't it the real reason why we live in the first place. Whilst it's questionable that anything substantial will be acheived by being a presence upon these pages, particularly if all we are after is the approval of others, the quality of consciousness in the world is gained by the increment of our choices, and the Intent that lies behind them. And if it is true that we, as spiritual beings in a physical world, are all connected through primordial consciousness, perhaps we are not only changing ourselves but also the whole larger consciousness system in the process. It's all a matter of perspective and what we choose to believe - futility or function - we are what we see ourselves to Be. 🙏