We Just Want Nice Things
In Which I Give Some Good Advice To Social Media Purveyors
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Unhappily, in the midst of all my running back and forth, I am battling the cold Matt brought to our house this week. Yesterday I thought I had come to the end and would soon perish off the earth, my gray hairs going down in sorrow to Sheol. Today, I’m starting to feel ever so slightly alive. There is a growing chance I will be able to face all the festivities in the days to come, but I am full of sadness that my house is such a wreck and that all my children are still slogging away at their schoolwork or going to their paying jobs. How dare they have lives and work that don’t include rescrubbing the kitchen. Which is to say, I don’t have seven takes for today, I have one, but hopefully, it will be sufficient for the hour.
Earlier in the week I read a piece in the New York Times about how Elon Musk wanted to buy Substack, but that Substack refused. According to the the Times, Substack is “unprofitable” as in, it is carrying a substantial financial loss even though so many writers are making vast amounts of money on the platform. It’s an interesting article if you are flush with time in this busy season, or need something to distract yourself from your shopping list.
As for me and my tiny blog, I’m so happy that Substack retained its independence. I’m so grateful it hasn’t fallen prey to the censorious mob. As I’ve scrolled around the app, I have noticed that everyone—really, every single person—who is on other platforms is also here. Even Karla Kamstra, the deconstructing queen of TikTok mentioned in a post recently that she’s “migrating” to other platforms and that we’ll all be able to “find her on Substack.” I should have saved the link, sob. It seems like it is becoming the place to be, which is fine with me. The more the merrier—as long as no one tries to cancel anyone else, ever.
My great fear, of course, is that as it gets bigger and perhaps even profitable, the inevitable process of enshittification will begin. That’s where the platform itself begins to set rules and customs that make it harder for “creators” and “consumers” (gosh I hate everything) to post and share. Like how Elon has followed in the way of Zuck so that you can’t just post an article that you found interesting or wrote yourself but you have to make a post and then put the link to the article in a comment underneath. Elon and Zuck both want you to “make” content for their platforms and therefore punish those who just want to post links. They also want you to spend time—lots and lots and lots of time—on Facebook and X and so they organize it so that you will just scroll, mindlessly, and never, at least not without extraordinary psychological and spiritual effort on your part, see longer, more substantive content.
Please, Dear Heavenly Father, Spare Substack from falling into this horrible trap. For I do like how I can go to notes and take a sip—see an interesting comment or an article, read it, and then go away to think about it. I don’t feel compelled to scroll because I read interesting writing and then, satiated, get on with my life. And the great thing is, though most of the articles are Substacks, that is not always so. I found the New York Times piece linked from Substack and read it like a normal person.
And here’s the thing, if X and Facebook would privilege long-form content wherever it comes from—what used to be called “an article”—and would give users the benefit of the doubt about their desires instead of trying to manipulate them, not only would the world be a better place, but I would not be so frustrated and might consider spending more time there. Or maybe I wouldn’t because, on top of everything, they don’t even let you see the people you have “followed” but have junked up everything with thousands of advertisements and random “content” that you never asked to see and aren’t interested in. Instagram much? What a dumpsterfire.
Remember how Google’s tagline, back when they first got started, was “Don’t be evil?” And then they turned out to be really really evil and suppress news and information and also cozy up to the Chinese? That’s what happens. Someone invents something interesting and even useful but then after a few minutes, it is wrecked because of stupidity and avarice. Add to the list the wretched horror that is Grammarly. All we wanted was a really good spell checker and yet here we are, having to dismiss the option of having our deathless prose rewritten by a tiny stupid demon.
Anyway, Come Lord Jesus. Pretty soon this whole world will go up in a ball of apocalyptic fire, all of our devices will be pried out of our cold, dead hands, and we’ll have to look up and see something real for once. Personally, I can’t wait. In the meantime, may the Lord bless and preserve Substack, and may all our dreams of sugar plums and good writing come true.
Have a nice day!
I like both substack and X but do wish they would get along better.
But Facebook is a dumpster fire. It keeps showing me stuff I have no interest in while suppressing stuff I actually try to follow.
And Google really is evil.
Chesterton has a couple of rants on rich people as misers. Fake humility in eating beans and dressing down, for instance.
In “The Man Who Was Thursday” one of his characters paints the rich as being anarchists.
“You’ve got that eternal idiotic idea that if anarchy came it would come from the poor. Why should it? The poor have been rebels, but they have never been anarchists; they have more interest than anyone else in there being some decent government. The poor man really has a stake in the country. The rich man hasn’t; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht. The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all. Aristocrats were always anarchists, as you can see from the barons’ wars.”
“As a lecture on English history for the little ones,” said Syme [another character] , “this is all very nice; but I have not yet grasped its application.”
“Its application is,” said his informant, “that most of old Sunday’s right-hand men are South African and American millionaires. That is why he has got hold of all the communications….”