Done with Discourse

I hate what being online has made us. I want to be something else.

Obligatory note: These are just my opinions. You may disagree. This does not mean that either of us are terrible people so like, take that into account.

Happy 2024! I have been spending the first few days of the year, as is my wont, getting my freelance finances together (we freelancers spend a lot of both mental and physical time making sure the numbers add up to a livelihood), and formulating new yearly and quarterly professional goals. One of my goals is to keep writing my newsletter, hopefully with a few more people who want to read it.

And my other goal is to opt out of Discourse. In favor of action.

The Substack Discourse

I didn’t love this platform when I moved here in the first place. I knew full well lots of bad people used it. The mealy-mouthed, technocrat defenses of free speech as an argument to keep Nazis, people who literally discuss my right to exist as a “question” is disgusting. If the marketplace of ideas worked so dreadfully well at extinguishing hateful rhetoric, then why exactly is facism still being sold in that marketplace, a solid 80 years after we all realized what horrors it held?

The thing is: Lots of good people also use this platform. Good science people. Voices I respect. The platform has several things going for it which justified my use when I joined.

1. Recommendations, which are easy and organic, and allow readers to find me (this feature has yet to be replicated on any other platform I’ve seen). These recommendations are the reason most of you are here today.

2. People recognize the name “Substack” as being a place where legitimate people publish, much like publishing at The New York Times still has cachet. I imagine some of my Very Online readers may scoff at this. They consider Substack and The New York Times deeply unserious due to the people they platform and the harms they cause. Yes. They platform bad people. These people cause harm. But other readers, most readers, aren’t Very Online. Substack has legitimacy in the same way that, back in the aughts, Wordpress had legitimacy as a blogging platform over Blogspot or LiveJournal.

3. It’s free. Free for me, and, unless I ask you to pay, free for you. Many other newsletter platforms I’ve looked into require payment.

4. Substack, though it’s trying, is not a social media network. You see only what you want to see, read only who you want to read, and most people never visit the Substack platform itself at all. It’s a publishing platform more like Wordpress than it is like Twitter or Facebook.

Some writers I respect have migrated over to Ghost (which, by the way, also provides a platform for some bad people, Very Online people just don’t care yet) or Buttondown. Migration for me is not so simple. I do not have a newsletter publishing team. I don’t have a large, paying following who will eagerly follow wherever I go.

People of course may not like that I’m still here. My “silence” is loud. My support is “implicit.” As I thought about this whole issue I loved the podcast Material Girls put out on “platformitization.” They noted that in the real world, whether you say something or not has no impact on whether or not you exist. You still really exist. But online, your words are your existence. Your posting location, your loud support for the right cause at the right time.

The net result of this is a lot of confusion, a lot of people going off half-cocked, and a lot of shame.

I have allowed myself to be shoved off platforms before. As Anne Helen Petersen notes, this is no way to fight!

An independent writer like myself — and like the other writers you read and admire here on Substack — finds themselves with very few options. They can flee this platform, as we have fled Twitter, as we have fled mainstream news organizations that have opted for “both side-ism” on any number of issues including but by no means limited to fascism, as we have fled Facebook. The Nazis will follow. It has become more and more clear to me: This is no way to fight.

I also love Cat Valente’s thoughts on this, she puts into words a lot of what I’ve been feeling and thinking about.

I don’t want to support the Badness by being here. And yet, if I go, does that not just abandon another space because bad people are also here, handing them control of yet another hugely-recognized platform, control they could never achieve on their own just on numbers and popularity, while the people who have any moral compass whatsoever have to continually start over from scratch?

On Recent Developments at Substack

If I stay? I am a voice saying I’m still here. I’m still here, Nazis have no right to debate my existence, and trans people are perfectly good, normal people and just let them be already. I’m a voice ready to sign right the heck on telling Substack to stop allowing these white men to do this, and to believe in, and create, a better platform.

I like the way Chrissy Stroop put it:

I’m still pondering that question, even as I try to make a living within a cruel system that makes ethical purity incompatible with survival, so we can all only do the best we can to pressure those with power under capitalism to behave more responsibly—unless and until we are able to achieve the major structural reforms to our politics and economy that are necessary for a more just and democratic future.

Happy New Year, You Filthy Animals

And if I go? I am reminded of when Joe Rogan said something stupid on his podcast (I mean, when has he said something smart?) and people started agitating that we should all leave Spotify. Neil Young left and went back to vinyl. A friend worried he would have to leave too, to make a statement. To be on the right side of history.

In doing so, he would lose more than half of his listeners.

Months later…do you even remember that Spotify kerfluffle? Are you still using Spotify? Would you have noticed if one small maker stood on the right side of history? Would you have supported him then? How about now?

In light of all this: Should I leave Substack?

I don’t know. Right now I am keeping my options open.

But I do know one thing.

I am so sick of Discourse!

Because the Discourse isn’t just here. It isn’t just about Substack.

It happened almost faster than I thought it would. But it has happened. BlueSky is indeed already becoming a place that causes my stomach to sink when I check it. Because, as I suspected, the problem wasn’t Twitter, or the algorithm. The problem was us.

My feed has already become a dingy cesspool of rage, pain, and people lashing out at others. A place where the only smiles are wide, stretched rictuses, the kind you get when you know you are going to own that guy. A place where the only positive things are people fawning over the same “wonderful” people over and over and over again for existing, when I know it’s a matter of time before they find out something new about their favorite star, and tear them down from the sky.

A place where I see way more screenshots of Twitter than I thought we ever wanted to see. Come ON.

The average op-ed writer. Photo by Photoholgic on Unsplash

None of the actions are in themselves wrong. But I also don’t think they bring out the best in us. We are so busy telling people what they should care about, who they should scorn, where they should leave and who is Problematic that…we aren’t actually doing anything.

I say we, because I do this too. As I did my finances, tracked my time spent, and thought about goals for 2024, I realized that I spent more time talking about climate change than tackling climate change. I spent more time scolding people about causes they don’t care about than contributing to the causes I DO care about.

What difference did any of this make? None.

I do not love what being Very Online has made most of us. And I hate what it’s done to me.

Anti-Discourse Action

So this year I want to do something different. I want to stop feeling the shame that other people are so eager to pile on. I want to stop feeling that sink in my gut from checking online. I want to do something worthwhile with my actions. Those who think I need to post loudly to prove that I am on their side? I…don’t think those people are my friends.

I want to do something.

I am putting it here because I want accountability in doing it.

When I feel the urge to participate in Discourse. When I feel the rictus grin of judgement rise, or the sinking hopelessness that makes so many people turn to social media and post?

I’m going to DO something instead. I have given myself clear, easy options.

1. Write a representative about a cause I care about (whether or not writing to my specific representative can make a specific difference in that vote may not matter, registering public opinion is useful).*

2. Donate a small amount to a cause or work toward a charitable goal (as an example, an organization I work for donates baby blankets, hats and gloves every year, and I crochet. Is this minor? Yes. Does this in any way prove that I care the way you want me to specifically about your cause? No. Does it keep a kid’s head and hands warm when they need it, hopefully with an item they don’t hate? Yes. Little things are worthwhile).

3. Complete a letter asking people to vote in an upcoming election.

Each of these are short. They are cheap.** They can all be done in 5 minutes (if I stick to one row of the blanket anyway). I have created a folder of links to the places I can take action with only a few clicks.

And I’m going to try to be accountable. I will post in my newsletters what I’ve done. Calls/emails made, letters written, donations made, work done.

So. Would you like to join me?

Maybe together we can do something, and end up a little less miserable in the process.

Where have you been?

Is it reading about the claims that a certain Sephora body butter attracts spiders? Amazing. Hilarious. Not actually true. Some follow up reporting notes the original reviewer apparently attracts quite a few spiders. Maybe it’s a YOU problem…

It is reading about car bloat? Many people want to have bigger cars because it makes them feel safer, more capable. But it’s a terrible safety risk to pedestrians, raises the costs of cars and their environmental footprint, and more.

Where have I been?

Very pleased to have my first Op-ed in Scientific American about my Insomniac Anatomy Academy series! I’m revealing to all of us that we are, in fact, just bags. Inside other bags inside more bags. A nesting bag situation, if you will.

Sadly, I have also recorded our very last Science for the People podcast. It was a fun, super nerdy ride. I admit at the end I teared up.

Thank you Science Friday for including me on the book pick list for 2023!

Anti-Discourse Actions

HEY LOOK it gets a new subhed!

• I have already used my urges for Discourse to contact a local government person (THREE TIMES) about an important local issue! ONE DOWN. LET’S GO.

• I used Substack’s 2024 check in to add my voice telling them to stop profiting off far-right hate machines.

• I have written three emails to representatives (look the urge for Discourse was STRONG)

• I also added a dozen rows to a hat I’m working on for charity.

*Yes, I know calls might be more effective in some cases.

**If I don’t go in on the lovely expensive yarn. Which sometimes I do.