Substack is social media, whether we like it or not
Jane Austen is good but she never mentions the Minions movie
It is 02:37 in the morning and I am writing. Phrases knit together into sentences; sentences tangle up as paragraphs – edits come and go; I scrabble in the blue light of my screen to render my vision – to carve my Davide from the marble:
Perhaps I was put on this planet to scrap together late-night diva worship for animated supervillains, but seeing a single Note outperform my last three proper posts still stings. A large, Scarlet Overkill-shaped shadow looms over The Crank.
My articles fester in Word Documents, in thrall to the twin beasts of Content and Engagement; every time I open my Dashboard, I watch as viewership graphs quiver.
I have long since accepted that the best things I create will never appear here. My proudest achievement writing-wise remains my undergraduate dissertation, which analysed how digital techniques of representation produce new human, animal and technical subjects in bioscience laboratories.
It is brilliant and incisive, and I have complete confidence that posting it on Substack would net me less engagement than an AI-generated cartoon of Stephen Colbert taking a dump on Bari Weiss’ desk. If I were serious about success and glory, I’d stick to the tried and tested formula of stealing viral tweets and repackaging them as new for millennials who pivoted to BlueSky years ago.
I am probably part of the problem. My articles are shorter now, less complex: you could publish the Unabomber’s manifesto on here and do well so long as it’s under 600 words. I can feel the quiet, cold pressure of algorithmic optimisation on my neck.
It is easy to see myself less as a lingering, bohemian creative and more as a data-obsessed businesswoman now. I’m like Gollum if The Precious was 21- to 45-year-old women, who I’m told are my key demographic behind lepers and the illiterate.
In times like these I have to think of Jane Austen. Clearly, she never had to worry about this kind of thing: Sense and Sensibility never had to compete with Fruit Love Island TikToks. However, a look at her writing beyond novels is revealing.
Written to her publisher after some suspicious delays with what would become Northanger Abbey, one furious letter wonders whether the manuscript she sent them was “by some carelessness […] lost”. Demanding the return of her manuscript and her money, she signs off with a fake name and a pun:
I am Gentlemen &c &c
MAD–
She is commercially minded, unafraid to yell at her publishers for screwing up. In other letters, she gives input about font size and paper quality, suggesting that they choose something cheaper for a better return on investment. Her career as a novelist was important to her – and that clearly includes the ruthless, commercial side of it.
Substack is social media – we have to face up to that fact. If you believe the veritable Mayan death-cult of doom-mongers on here, we are slowly being fattened up by some ghoulish venture capital firm. Algorithms are tweaked, blockbuster, big-name content is prioritised; if you can’t beat them, concoct new polyamory discourse and join them.
I can feel annoyed that nobody wants to read my ten-page diatribe about EU border securitisation programmes in Mauritania, but in the end I have to remember that nobody owes me that.
Besides, I am one of the lucky ones - it’s easy to forget that I enjoy a small but fanatical sect of zealots waiting at my disposal on here.
In the end, writing has always been a business (just ask God how many editions of The Bible he’s sold). Perhaps all we’re seeing now is that business, not writing, has to change. All I’m saying is that, if Jane Austen had included some short quips about the Minions movie in Northanger Abbey, maybe it would have gotten published sooner.
let’s all rebel by posting our strongest work here. i don’t really care anymore if i’m screaming into the void, i just wanna write.
that Scarlet Overkill note was a showstopper tho
i bury my head in the sand by posting my best writing here, idiotically