Hello to those of you who’ve followed Virgil, the Emperor and Jang as they navigate the world of Joy City. I appreciate everyone who gave me the boost to keep going.
But here’s the thing. I started this not knowing a lot about Substack other than its basic setup. It sounded like a place I might have some success. That was the hope anyway.
And I never thought that success would happen quickly. I was in it for the long haul, prepared to do what I could to build a following of like-minded weirdos.
I like weirdos. I like outcasts. I think anyone who has read Joy City Blues probably has an idea already what my politics are. And that’s fine with me, I wear them on my sleeve. I’m that crazy leftist the media warns you about. That’s me.
Recently, it came to my attention that Substack was promoting a new partnership with Bari Weiss and her publication The Free Press. I didn’t like that, so I looked deeper. What I found was a history of platforming right-wing hate speech. Not just platforming but cutting lucrative deals with.
And we could have a discussion about free speech. And if it was just that there were some bad actors on the platform, I would be given pause but ultimately would probably stick it out. There seems to be no escaping the hate machine these days. They insinuate their way into every corner of the internet. They make sure to stay on just this side of the line, whatever that line is, keeping just enough plausible deniability that you can’t say for sure why you’d ban them. And, of course, they’re always, “just asking questions.”
And sites tend to err on the side of letting them do their thing for two reasons.
They don’t want to appear to be unfairly denying someone’s free speech. They don’t want the bad press, the loud protests. They don’t want to be seen as the bad guys.
These guys always manage to drive a lot of engagement. They interact with each other, sure, but they also draw the attention of a lot of people who find them abhorrent and want them, and the world, to know.
The second point is important. Substack is funded by venture capital. To justify its existence, it needs to show a certain level of engagement. Engagement is the metric by which all web activity is measured. You can do a lot with people who are actively using a site. You can advertise to them. You can pillage their data. You can monetize the shit out of them. Which is how you justify that next round of funding.
Nazis are good for this kind of business. They are engagement magnets. Good or bad is irrelevant, remember. If there’s a guy whose comments are just hundreds of death threats, well, that guy has gotten hundreds of clicks.
I could go through how an entire ecosystem has been built around these kinds of voices. How there’s an entire infrastructure out there designed just to promote them. They serve all kinds of purposes for the monied interests.
Hell, how much has the twisted realities of Fox News or Tucker Carlson or Peter Thiel contributed to the absolute horror show that is modern American politics? Times of uncertainty tend to make certain kinds of authoritarians attractive to certain people. The right-wing ecosystem amplifies that.
What’s my point? Why am I babbling on about this stuff?
The fact is, it’s impossible to avoid. I will never find a place to post and promote my writing that is free of these people. And I will likely never be able to convince a site to really come down against them. They are doing measurable harm to the world and to the people in it.
But the money is so shiny and pretty.
All I can do is make my decisions based on what feels right to me. That’s all I’ve ever been able to do.
So, going forward, I will not be publishing Joy City Blues on Substack. Its ultimate fate is, as of right now, up in the air. I may bring it over to Medium, where I already have a presence. (You can find me there as Grim Flandango, if you want to see more of what I do) I might also take it to Patreon- which I’ll undoubtedly find out is a sewer within days of opening a page there. That does seem to be my fate.
Wherever I take this story, I can promise you I’m not done with it. There’s a mystery to be solved. A few actually. Virgil’s in hot water. The Emperor has had a wounded girl land on his lap. Jang is probably in over her head.
And there are even more characters on their way. As well as flying machines, riots and assassins. It’s going to be a trip.
When the time comes, I’ll announce where I’m going. It shouldn’t be long. I hope you’ll join me there.
Thank you for your kind words and support. There are a lot of great people in this community. I’ve been honored to know you.
Grim Flandango
Sad to see you go, but you are doing so on an ethical and moral decision, so I applaud you there. I suspect we have a lot in common politics-wise, so I would just say that without people like us, a website like this becomes more of an echo chamber quickly; story being a particularly powerful way to change minds and all--- makes it a good tool to inoculate an echo chamber without having to engage in the common "what-aboutisms". Not trying to dissuade you from leaving (yes I am), but it is something to think about.
Make sure you download your mailing list before you leave, that's yours (you earned it) and is something other "platforms" don't let you build. You can take that list to https://www.authoremail.com/ for your newsletter, as an example. The features there kinda suck, but they are cheaper than Mailchimp. Take care, I love your work!
Yeah the reason why I didn't join Substack for the longest time, was because of their tolerance of hate speech. They had a controversy where they paid some famous writers, including famously transphobic writers who write hateful posts, a mini fortune (a big advance, if you will). Some prominent trans writers left the platform because the CEOs did not do anything with their harassment reports. (Some of the bigots harassed these trans authors.) Some of these eminent trans writers did accept the money, but just because Substack paid trans writers as well, doesn't erase the fact that they keep subsidizing hateful posts by transphobic writers.
But later, Medium's boost nomination program became so terrible, pretty much squeezing the views out of everything that's not boosted, I even preferred Substack. I'd rather deal with hateful trolls (and keep blocking them), than to stay on a platform where I'm pushed into a smaller and smaller space, even if Medium technically leans the same way I do politically. I did praise Medium before for being an openly queer and trans friendly platform, and they still are. But getting single digit read stats (not exaggerating) is not worth it! It's not just grasshoppers like me who are suffering, too. I know one writer who used to get an average of 2 million views per month on Medium. But now he gets 10 K views on a good month. RIP.
That said, you've got to do what's best for you! Patreon (and Ream?) are potential options. For my fiction, I prefer writing serials rather than stand-alones, so I've been posting on Wattpad and Royal Road, for instance. My Substack only has my nonfiction articles.