I appreciated people weighing in on the Substack question, although I still haven't come to a decision.
Blogger is a zombie platform. Few people use it anymore, and Google retires existing features more often than it implements new ones. Substack is fresh, and it has a scene. Maybe I'm kidding myself, but it seems like Substack would be an opportunity to join in and contribute to The Conversation instead of talking to myself here.
Two things give me pause:
(1) I'm a bit of a packrat. I don't like the idea of tossing out over a decade's worth of Content. Although—maybe this would be a good opportunity to sift through it all, pick out anything that's truly worth preserving, and dispose of the dross.
(2) This is a Blog. My intention was never to Build a Personal Brand or focus exclusively on Topic X or Theme Y, but to just spout off whatever was on my mind during a given day or week or month. I feel like if I switched to writing a Substack newsletter, I'd have to make it about something. I might even end up pressuring myself to go topical, which I've never, ever been good at (except maybe when I was making comics about video games years and years ago). Then again, restricting myself to subjects situated within certain parameters could improve my output. Who knows?
I'm not ruling anything out yet, but I should probably make myself choose whether to fish or cut bait sooner than later.
I mean...can't you just post on both here and Substack?
ReplyDeleteBlogger is indeed a zombie platform, but one advantage it has is stability--there are blogger sites still up from 1999, but I don't know that Substack will be around in 2047. You may want to look into going independent with a Wordpress site or an HTML framework like Zonelets.
ReplyDeleteYou're a good enough and consistent enough writer to build an audience there, if you did make the move. The issue is mostly just the luck of getting noticed. I imagine a minimum of 95% of your readers here discovered you during your socksmakepeoplesexy days, and I don't have the impression that you have many connections with regular readers/writers on Substack to get yourself quickly promoted. So growing anywhere is effectively starting fresh.
ReplyDeleteThat's not to say don't try it. After all (I think) you can always post anything you write both here and there, and with search engines being so terrible now it's very unlikely new readers will find you if you're only posting here. In your position there's frankly little cost in trying. It's just a question of being realistic, and not letting yourself get consumed by the metrics and the "branding" of content creation, a demon that has destroyed everything interesting about so many people online. If you start writing endless pandering takes on every petty controversy while obsessively scouring your metrics and begging for followers, that is the day you have joined the content machine.
Your blog currently seems to be about deep meta-analysis of pop culture's origins, and analysis of pop culture. But I do suggest you don't trust any one platform not to stay up forever.
ReplyDeleteWhat I mean is, any paywalled stuff on substack won't be backed-uped by the internet archive so keep your own.
And the fact that substack has paywalled content is OK. The only substack people I follow only really use it to put thoughts out there that they want to keep from going viral in a bad way. Some subjects can easily be taken the wrong way by people in bad faith, and sometimes you don't want to show vulnerability to vultures.
DeleteI'd really prefer keeping the Blogger, if only for the fact that in an age of Substack detritus, Blogger lends the blog a uniqueness and an identity relative to the sea of Substacks out there
ReplyDeleteYou do not want to contribute to the conversation being had by the general internet population. You're not conservative in any way, so al those readers are going to hate you. You're also not left enough for the left wing mom's-basement psychos who have nothing better to do than make normal peoples' lives miserable. Look at the push to edit Robert Dahl's work just recently. Being spearheaded by essentially one girl who identifies as almost every left wing identity politics buzzword title you can think of. And Western society, for reasons full inexplicable, now bows to the loudest most ridiculous and irrational members of our society.
ReplyDeleteYour relative obscurity is your safety. Your self confessed admiration for Moby Dick would have you immediately flayed on the leftwing town square (of course, assuming anyone actually reads the book rather than just thinking its a story about a guy fighting a wale) for that book's position on the colour white. You'll be cancelled before you even start.
And if your goal isn't wider exposure, then why go through the effort?
Who is the girl advocating to change Robert Dahl's work? Are you referring to Alexandra Strick's company that did consultation work for Puffin Books on Dahl?
DeleteNo, I don't think that's who I'm thinking of. It wasn't about the company contracted to do it but the person behind the push to do so. I'm having a hell of a time finding the article. I only read it once when this first was reported and never since. I don't remember her name, was just some generic sounding name, generic looking girl. Title was something along the lines of "meet the HDGSJEY (insert alphabet ID here) person at the heart of changing Robert Dahl's work", or something like that.
DeleteSorry couldn't be more exact.
I'd switch to Substack. This blog has a demarcation problem (there's no way to just jump into, say, the Kant articles if that's all you're interested in) and you're right that Blogger isn't long for this world.
ReplyDelete