made me think of the sufjan lyric “we celebrate our sense of each other / we have a lot to give one another.” kinda still figuring out what i want out of substack but appreciate what ur doing here 👍
Totally agree about the letter writing part. like there's no shortage of super-detailed essays & longform pieces out there (which is great!), but what I've gradually come to like most about the newsletter form is how casual it can be. All I want is to know a bit more about a person's life, and for it to feel genuine and not just to boost SEO and a person's brand. It's nice reading people that are coming from a similar place!!!
Agreed 200% and thankfully if you step beyond the main "substack recommendations" page, or all the top 5s of the day, there's a lot of small communities of writers genuinely and humbly interested in one another and in what they think. It's very reassuring imo
So true!! This is literally why I’ve started writing my Substack posts as digital postcards, makes me think that I’m talking to a friend online rather than trying to prove myself to an invisible audience, love this vibe!
The realization that Substack is my OYSTER dawned on me last month, I was playing around with the platform and all the features it offered, how easy it was to embed a voice note with your essay, how you can read along AND offer a commentary about your own work, and just have puuuuuure FUN. Read and be read, see and be seen, share, overshare, extend a virtual shoulder for other people to rest their heads on. I LOVE THE INTERNET. I LOVE YOUR POST.
omg THANK YOU!! I love this comment and I love the way you voice it, but anyways I love this space too and I'm so so happy to be able to share it with all of you, to me it feels a little bit like we're passing notes back and forth in the back of the classroom when the teacher's not looking but the notes are all like 1,000 words of digging deep and understanding our lives, thoughts, and feelings with and for one another. It's a beautiful space. Idk if it's hopium writing this now, but I really do feel a cool little subculture bubbling up here and I'm so so so so so so so so so so here for it.
Amazing comment! TO US!!!! TO SELF DISCOVERY THROUGH 1K WORDS LONG NOTES EXCHANGED WHILE THE TEACHER'S NOT LOOKING (let's preserve this bubble for as long as possible)
Recently having started posting on substack, I have felt this is a safe place to practice writing whatever is in my head. I am always scared of using colons and semicolons wrong though. Anyway. I love going to my lil capitalistic desk on a monday at 8am knowing that one of the first tabs that i'll open is substack.
When I first saw that this post had to do with twitter I thought you'd be talking about how people are posting screenshots of tweets through their notes. I feel as though twitter finds its way to every social media platform. Before deleting instagram/tiktok, I always saw posts of screenshotted tweets or sad tiktok slide shows of tweets; but I cant roast the sad tiktok slideshows because they introduced me to some of my favorite songs ever (Keep the Rain by Searows in 2022). I do still have twitter though because it is my way to keep up with pop culture things. I was gonna go on a ramble next about how deleting instagram has made me less in the know of music releases, but i'll save for another time. I got distracted in my own thoughts writing this comment. Apologies.
Enjoyed this post very much from my 8am capitalistic work force caffeinated life sucking desk :)
Well, the problem is that we have already been doing this internet/ social media thing for a while. It transformed from being social networks to being social media, which means we are all broadcasting. Early Twitter was really something new, while for Substack, it's mostly just another platform. People are bringing their weird 'let's-make-money-quick-scheme' here, because that's mostly what you find in the internet. And it also goes directly in favor of what these big tech companies want. The more we believe that we can make money out of the platforms, the more invested we will be, the more free work we will produce for them, the more time we will spend on them.
That's a good point. There's an exhausting number of get rich quick bs and people grinding and hustling away to try for paid subscribers, but if one can keep the thought of making money here away from one's thinking about Substack, it can be a very cool place to be and it certainly does feel different from any other social media website I've used (I think the lack of advertising likely contributes to that feeling)
agreed with all of this so much and love how you've worded it! i, like quite a lot of people it seems, am also new to this platform (well, sort of, i was a spectator and reader for years before). i'm honestly pretty cynical about most online spaces in general, and that applies here as well, but part of me hopes just a tiny bit that maaaaybe this place can be something more.
also, i think a lot of people (me included) would love to relentlessly bully elon, if only he wouldn't suspend our twitter accounts for it 💔
there's definitely a chance i think (even if a small momentary one lol),—and yeah but at the very least users are leaving twitter in droves, there's some karma to that
I've really been enjoying these dispatches from chicagoland and/or internetland, it's been consistently entertaining and thought provoking in a way that predominant forms of social media rarely are for me. I am SO tired of the habitual, passive, lurking which becomes my tendency on those other platforms. So far, substack seems like a place more conducive to engaging with people in an active way. Thanks for sharing these thoughts and inspiring me to make my own foray onto substack as an active user... as of right now. Wooo!
oh i love this so much!! i love your points about collaboration; we truly gain so much from listening to and chatting with other writers. also substack as writing letters to each other is such a beautiful idea and i'm obsessed with it. happy early birthday <3
thanks sm sarah!! and yeah i really think writing is a close relative to performing music and since we're all in this same concert hall performing these songs we're writing, we might as well build off of one another's melodies and rhythms, etc etc.—and also i think part of me is just nostalgic for letter writing lol
It’s truly amazing to see what you’ve been doing with your substack and ultimately, I’ve been thinking about how connections can truly change us! Had we never talked about Clarice Lispector’s complex and wonderful writing style, we wouldn’t have accomplished all this. And i say “all this” because it’s really great what we did! That is the point of this app for me. Making friends and meaningful connections and being able to make something beautiful and insightful with them, directly or indirectly. Something to make people reflect and make decisions with a wider perspective. Making my post inspired by your words was SO much fun and reading this felt like so much fun because oh my god what a joy it is to read genuine content. What a joy it is to be inspired by someone!! This has been a fun journey!
SUCH a fun journey! I definitely wouldn't have written this had you not written your piece last week,—it's cool to have someone's word stir something in my thinking to such a crazy extent that I can throw together a piece like this in less than twelve hours. I love the spirit you bring to this place, and i tend to be so cynical about everything but there's a real possibility here for something new and groundbreaking just by all of our listening and building off of one another. It's wonderful is what it is. And to think it was Clarice Lispector of all people who made that first connection haha
that was a very good piece, although I felt a little guilty because my style of writing veers towards old school blogging- but hey I is what I is
One thing about nFT's - I haven't encountered much quality short story fiction on substance ( maybe because I'm always reading stuff on the political/spiritual side.... but literary NFT's seem a neat way to publish wholly outside the trade publishing matrix...
and one more thing, if all this thing is - is a gathering place where we talk talk talk it won't mean much, but I think we are very close to an age where people starting applying their ideas to design their lives ( or that is my hope) but a good article
Glad you enjoyed!! And hey there's wrong with some old school blogging vibes.
Ok so my thing with NFTs, besides how annoying the craze was in 2021, is that i do genuinely think information *should* be free. Paul Mason wrote a great book called Postcapitalism: A Guide to our Future, which lays out the idea that the internet has forever destroyed a cornerstone of the american capitalist economy, that being the information and media sector, by allowing information to be freely transmitted via the internet,—and this destabilizes the whole capitalist framework of control beyond repair,—ushering in the necessity of a future beyond late-stage capitalism.
NFTs seem to me like a hackneyed attempt at band-aiding the capitalist system by incorporating art literally into the stock market by people with no real interest in art the same way that AI is a hackneyed attempt for the tech sector to stay relevant when they can't seem to innovate really at all. They want to make literature and paintings something to be traded like stocks and that's their only real idea for the future of art. Look how quickly the tech bros jumped, once that idea was dismissed as kinda silly, to where they are now preaching about the death of art because "AI can do it better" or whatever.
That's not to say i don't see there being any potential uses to something like a blockchain, but the only uses i can imagine would not be flashy whatsoever: like for instance it could probably be used well as a ledger for information infrastructure, public archives, and potentially nationalizing healthcare/housing/education sometime down the road. I really don't think it'll be used for art or literary publications personally, but hey who knows.
And on your last point, i hope too that people design their lives better by interacting with one another in this space but i hope too that we can came together to design the world we live in to better fit our lives, yk?
I will get the Paul mason books that looks good and right up my alley - I’m no supporter of the modern free market/late stage capitalism behemoth corporate model - but I do hope that if one day my writing got popular, that if I wrote a book and people enjoyed it would enable me to back off “ working” so damn hard. Do you discount the idea of making money off your art as sorta corrupting the process.. tainting it. which I definitely think does happen on the margins, but damn I want to get away from wage slavery world….
yes that was one of my favorite bits too!! lately I’ve been very excited by the idea of “writing for an audience of one” (an idea Diana Kimball Berlin introduced me to) because when people optimize too early for an imagined audience of thousands, the writing can get quite…bland?
whereas if the goal is writing for ONE PERSON, somewhere out there, as delightfully strange and fanatically interested in the same esoterica as you—then the writing often has sm more personality and energy and verve
made me think of the sufjan lyric “we celebrate our sense of each other / we have a lot to give one another.” kinda still figuring out what i want out of substack but appreciate what ur doing here 👍
love a good sufjan lyric, Illinois might be in my top three all time albums
I’ve had a couple of in-person meetups now from people I’ve interfaced with on Substack. It felt like meeting a pen-pal after exchanging many letters.
Totally agree about the letter writing part. like there's no shortage of super-detailed essays & longform pieces out there (which is great!), but what I've gradually come to like most about the newsletter form is how casual it can be. All I want is to know a bit more about a person's life, and for it to feel genuine and not just to boost SEO and a person's brand. It's nice reading people that are coming from a similar place!!!
Agreed 200% and thankfully if you step beyond the main "substack recommendations" page, or all the top 5s of the day, there's a lot of small communities of writers genuinely and humbly interested in one another and in what they think. It's very reassuring imo
So true!! This is literally why I’ve started writing my Substack posts as digital postcards, makes me think that I’m talking to a friend online rather than trying to prove myself to an invisible audience, love this vibe!
Just sending a thank you for the humanity and warmth <3 keep on going
damn, the concept of this being a place to publicly write letters HITS - so inspiring!!
Thanks sm!!
Enjoyed reading this
The realization that Substack is my OYSTER dawned on me last month, I was playing around with the platform and all the features it offered, how easy it was to embed a voice note with your essay, how you can read along AND offer a commentary about your own work, and just have puuuuuure FUN. Read and be read, see and be seen, share, overshare, extend a virtual shoulder for other people to rest their heads on. I LOVE THE INTERNET. I LOVE YOUR POST.
omg THANK YOU!! I love this comment and I love the way you voice it, but anyways I love this space too and I'm so so happy to be able to share it with all of you, to me it feels a little bit like we're passing notes back and forth in the back of the classroom when the teacher's not looking but the notes are all like 1,000 words of digging deep and understanding our lives, thoughts, and feelings with and for one another. It's a beautiful space. Idk if it's hopium writing this now, but I really do feel a cool little subculture bubbling up here and I'm so so so so so so so so so so here for it.
Amazing comment! TO US!!!! TO SELF DISCOVERY THROUGH 1K WORDS LONG NOTES EXCHANGED WHILE THE TEACHER'S NOT LOOKING (let's preserve this bubble for as long as possible)
Recently having started posting on substack, I have felt this is a safe place to practice writing whatever is in my head. I am always scared of using colons and semicolons wrong though. Anyway. I love going to my lil capitalistic desk on a monday at 8am knowing that one of the first tabs that i'll open is substack.
When I first saw that this post had to do with twitter I thought you'd be talking about how people are posting screenshots of tweets through their notes. I feel as though twitter finds its way to every social media platform. Before deleting instagram/tiktok, I always saw posts of screenshotted tweets or sad tiktok slide shows of tweets; but I cant roast the sad tiktok slideshows because they introduced me to some of my favorite songs ever (Keep the Rain by Searows in 2022). I do still have twitter though because it is my way to keep up with pop culture things. I was gonna go on a ramble next about how deleting instagram has made me less in the know of music releases, but i'll save for another time. I got distracted in my own thoughts writing this comment. Apologies.
Enjoyed this post very much from my 8am capitalistic work force caffeinated life sucking desk :)
Absolutely! And semicolons; are; so; easy; see; i'm; just; throwing; them; on; here; and; nobody; is; telling; me; to; stop;
The topic of twitter infecting all other social media websites is an interesting rabbithole, i think. Might be an essay for another day.
Well, the problem is that we have already been doing this internet/ social media thing for a while. It transformed from being social networks to being social media, which means we are all broadcasting. Early Twitter was really something new, while for Substack, it's mostly just another platform. People are bringing their weird 'let's-make-money-quick-scheme' here, because that's mostly what you find in the internet. And it also goes directly in favor of what these big tech companies want. The more we believe that we can make money out of the platforms, the more invested we will be, the more free work we will produce for them, the more time we will spend on them.
That's a good point. There's an exhausting number of get rich quick bs and people grinding and hustling away to try for paid subscribers, but if one can keep the thought of making money here away from one's thinking about Substack, it can be a very cool place to be and it certainly does feel different from any other social media website I've used (I think the lack of advertising likely contributes to that feeling)
agreed with all of this so much and love how you've worded it! i, like quite a lot of people it seems, am also new to this platform (well, sort of, i was a spectator and reader for years before). i'm honestly pretty cynical about most online spaces in general, and that applies here as well, but part of me hopes just a tiny bit that maaaaybe this place can be something more.
also, i think a lot of people (me included) would love to relentlessly bully elon, if only he wouldn't suspend our twitter accounts for it 💔
there's definitely a chance i think (even if a small momentary one lol),—and yeah but at the very least users are leaving twitter in droves, there's some karma to that
I've really been enjoying these dispatches from chicagoland and/or internetland, it's been consistently entertaining and thought provoking in a way that predominant forms of social media rarely are for me. I am SO tired of the habitual, passive, lurking which becomes my tendency on those other platforms. So far, substack seems like a place more conducive to engaging with people in an active way. Thanks for sharing these thoughts and inspiring me to make my own foray onto substack as an active user... as of right now. Wooo!
you absolutely should!!
oh i love this so much!! i love your points about collaboration; we truly gain so much from listening to and chatting with other writers. also substack as writing letters to each other is such a beautiful idea and i'm obsessed with it. happy early birthday <3
thanks sm sarah!! and yeah i really think writing is a close relative to performing music and since we're all in this same concert hall performing these songs we're writing, we might as well build off of one another's melodies and rhythms, etc etc.—and also i think part of me is just nostalgic for letter writing lol
It’s truly amazing to see what you’ve been doing with your substack and ultimately, I’ve been thinking about how connections can truly change us! Had we never talked about Clarice Lispector’s complex and wonderful writing style, we wouldn’t have accomplished all this. And i say “all this” because it’s really great what we did! That is the point of this app for me. Making friends and meaningful connections and being able to make something beautiful and insightful with them, directly or indirectly. Something to make people reflect and make decisions with a wider perspective. Making my post inspired by your words was SO much fun and reading this felt like so much fun because oh my god what a joy it is to read genuine content. What a joy it is to be inspired by someone!! This has been a fun journey!
SUCH a fun journey! I definitely wouldn't have written this had you not written your piece last week,—it's cool to have someone's word stir something in my thinking to such a crazy extent that I can throw together a piece like this in less than twelve hours. I love the spirit you bring to this place, and i tend to be so cynical about everything but there's a real possibility here for something new and groundbreaking just by all of our listening and building off of one another. It's wonderful is what it is. And to think it was Clarice Lispector of all people who made that first connection haha
that was a very good piece, although I felt a little guilty because my style of writing veers towards old school blogging- but hey I is what I is
One thing about nFT's - I haven't encountered much quality short story fiction on substance ( maybe because I'm always reading stuff on the political/spiritual side.... but literary NFT's seem a neat way to publish wholly outside the trade publishing matrix...
and one more thing, if all this thing is - is a gathering place where we talk talk talk it won't mean much, but I think we are very close to an age where people starting applying their ideas to design their lives ( or that is my hope) but a good article
Glad you enjoyed!! And hey there's wrong with some old school blogging vibes.
Ok so my thing with NFTs, besides how annoying the craze was in 2021, is that i do genuinely think information *should* be free. Paul Mason wrote a great book called Postcapitalism: A Guide to our Future, which lays out the idea that the internet has forever destroyed a cornerstone of the american capitalist economy, that being the information and media sector, by allowing information to be freely transmitted via the internet,—and this destabilizes the whole capitalist framework of control beyond repair,—ushering in the necessity of a future beyond late-stage capitalism.
NFTs seem to me like a hackneyed attempt at band-aiding the capitalist system by incorporating art literally into the stock market by people with no real interest in art the same way that AI is a hackneyed attempt for the tech sector to stay relevant when they can't seem to innovate really at all. They want to make literature and paintings something to be traded like stocks and that's their only real idea for the future of art. Look how quickly the tech bros jumped, once that idea was dismissed as kinda silly, to where they are now preaching about the death of art because "AI can do it better" or whatever.
That's not to say i don't see there being any potential uses to something like a blockchain, but the only uses i can imagine would not be flashy whatsoever: like for instance it could probably be used well as a ledger for information infrastructure, public archives, and potentially nationalizing healthcare/housing/education sometime down the road. I really don't think it'll be used for art or literary publications personally, but hey who knows.
And on your last point, i hope too that people design their lives better by interacting with one another in this space but i hope too that we can came together to design the world we live in to better fit our lives, yk?
I will get the Paul mason books that looks good and right up my alley - I’m no supporter of the modern free market/late stage capitalism behemoth corporate model - but I do hope that if one day my writing got popular, that if I wrote a book and people enjoyed it would enable me to back off “ working” so damn hard. Do you discount the idea of making money off your art as sorta corrupting the process.. tainting it. which I definitely think does happen on the margins, but damn I want to get away from wage slavery world….
yes that was one of my favorite bits too!! lately I’ve been very excited by the idea of “writing for an audience of one” (an idea Diana Kimball Berlin introduced me to) because when people optimize too early for an imagined audience of thousands, the writing can get quite…bland?
whereas if the goal is writing for ONE PERSON, somewhere out there, as delightfully strange and fanatically interested in the same esoterica as you—then the writing often has sm more personality and energy and verve
heck yeah! excited to see what you cook up