Housekeeping #4
Cleanliness is next to...
You know the saying…
A few months into this new year and 2024 has already been a trip. I’ve been up to a lot here and figured this month’s Housekeeping should just focus on some of the highlights.
Lots has been floating around on Notes (Substack’s Intra-platform social network) about burnout, reader fatigue, and general fear that as social media seems to be entering its death throes that Substack will be the next “place to be” online. I’ll address all that in closing, but first, here’s what I’ve been up to:
Not going to bury the lead; I posted this piece earlier in the week and I believe it is the most polished piece of fiction writing I’ve written to date. I’m super proud of it and would love for more of you to see it.
These three pieces were cathartic to write and release into the wild. I’ve been feeling a lot of feelings about my writing career thus far; I’ve been second guessing, reassessing, and just shy of quitting for a while now. I allowed myself to say so publicly, and boy did it help set some things straight.
Those three (Rearranging, Topsy, and Social) led to this one. Yes, I am quitting comics. Yes, I am going to finish The Rule of Nine.
Speaking of The Rule of Nine, the now de-canonized Volume 1 is free. Go read it, ya’ filthy animals.
Oh, and I wrote about 10 of these Vignettes. Each is about 100-300 words. Enjoy!
That’s the general Housekeeping stuff. Keep reading for commentary.
Death Throes
Is social media dying? Yes. It is.
Most of us are burnt out. Too many screens. Too many notifications. Too many opinions. It’s all too much. I’m sure some of the subscribers I lost after returning here to Substack were simply trying to avoid another weekly ping. I don’t know about you, but I get more junk email and robocalls these days then I can ever remember getting. I’m tired of the noise. Spam and annoying calls about vacations I never booked are one thing, but social media is the main driver of so much of our collective burnout.
Think about it, when in human history have so many people been aware of so much? Never. I can not only tell you what each of my thousands of “friends” across the internet are doing at any given moment, I can also log in and be inundated latest and greatest from any number of topics- sports, pop culture, geopolitics, healthcare, economics, domestic politics - before I’ve scrolled for 60 seconds. Let alone be hit with 3 ads, 2 influencer “testimonies,” and at least 1 conspiracy theory. This just isn’t sustainable.
You might be wondering how I can speak with such confidence on a matter such as this, and it’s simple: I grew up on social media. My generation has ridden this wave of online engagement from the days of AIM and dial-up internet to MySpace all the way to Tik Tok. I know how social media networks operate; I’ve seen firsthand how they became an almost irreplaceable part of the zeitgeist. They are losing steam.
Advertisers have shown up and started tossing their weight around and its sucked the life out of the party. Influencers pedal bullshit and have “niched down” so much that they don’t realize they aren’t really talking to anyone anymore. People are starting to realize that content and information are poor substitutes for discourse and nuance. The house is on fire, and people are starting to notice.
Personally, I barely log on anymore. And when I do it is only to Instagram and I use it (for the most part) like I did 14 years ago: to post boring pictures of a book I’m reading, my Garmin watch after a walk with my dog, the occasional family photo (with my child’s likeness protected of course), or to post a link back here. I know I can’t be the only one.
Which is why so many of us are on Substack. And in case you’re nervous about what happens here if/when traditional social media platforms die, I’ll leave you with this:
I’m seeing lots of conversations about metrics on my timeline today and it made me realize something:
Social media has seriously impacted our ability to feel good about what we do, how we live, and what we create.
Everything is measured by likes, comments, shares despite this platform aiming to be more than that. The possibility for Substack to remain different still exists, we just have to make sure we are engaging with it differently than we do/did our social media platforms.
These last few weeks I chiseled away at what is, in my opinion, my most polished piece of fantasy writing to date- metrics be damned.
-Me, on Notes
Listen, maybe I’m shaking my cane a bit here but I doubt it. I was a core user of the OG social media platforms and the reasons I used it are almost completely antithetical to how they function now. I’m sure advertisers and influencers will fight like hell, along with politicians, to keep our eyes glued to these things for as long as they can. But what happens once we decide to simply opt out?
My guess? The same thing that happened when my generation opted out of cable.
JL