It's Getting Loud In Here

I am not a fatalist. I try to remain optimistic but the past informs the future.

Not So Good — Substack Notes means the death or at least severe wounding of a settled mind for me.

From Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. I am feeling a bit like I received some bad news from the doctor. Humans are resilient and maybe this challenge will pass. Time will tell.

Regular Readers Might Want to Skip

This bit of sharing with all of you is about a new feature of Substack called Notes. For casual readers who carve out a bit of time to read my post, feel free to close this now and await my regular Monday post. This post is about coming to terms with some big changes at Substack for writers and prolific subscribers. For many, this is not that interesting or of consequence.

Something Has Died & I Am Sad

A tremendous insight into the power of association was born in 1973 at the Xerox Palo Alto research facility called Ethernet. Ethernet, in the beginning, was just a cable so about as far from interesting as it gets. While many contributed, the lions-share of the credit is given to Bob Metcalfe. The network effect that resulted has guided our world for the last fifty years. Recently it came for Substack, a place I have come to enjoy for the last 18 months or so.

The network effect is best explained with a couple of examples:

• When Edward Snowden blew the whistle on secret US clandestine spying on our communication of all sorts, our government never really came clean. About as close as we ever got to an explanation was the NSA justification aptly referred to as three hops which they hoped might assuage our fears of privacy loss. Early in my Substack journey (Dec 2021) I wrote a post about surveillance and the concept of three hops. This is an IMPORTANT thing to understand and is at the root of the impact of Substack Notes in my eyes. The post was written in anonymity (one like). There are few things I have ever posted which speak closer to surveillance, internet structures, and ultimately to how a peer-to-peer connection between a writer and a reader can be undermined.

Metadata

• Friendships & Relationships — I limit my subscriptions on Substack to ten or so. I read a LOT more than that but am comfortable with the main ten to be ALLOWED to interrupt my notifications. I imagine those Newsletters in the ‘read as I can class’ don’t feel the difference but I do. Other hobbies and affectations make ten about right for now. There is a small handful who paywall/block for Non-Subscribers and that is up to them I guess. The emergence of Substack Notes changes things. I do not wish to have any say in how my Subscription authors manage their Substack world. It is their affair. I GENUINELY enjoy their writing and best show my appreciation with thoughtful comments about what I read. Engagement is the currency in Substack I enjoy the most. This defines my relationship with their writing I wouldn’t dream of disrupting. If I choose to terminate it, I will do it for cause and my own settled mind. If, for some reason, I wanted to share a photo of my burger, it would be a direct message only.

• The disruptor — I would not expect my Subscriptions to need or want my opinion on what they might do. Rather, because of my relationship with their writing, I needed to ask for their opinion which I value. I asked a small handful of Newsletter authors I really enjoy for their opinion. To expect they all feel the same is foolish and narrow. I aim to not be such things. Substack, doing what many who have come before to the world of network building could not resist a Twitter-like product they named Substack Notes. They made it clear it was opt-in only. In my opinion, what they have created is a “2 1/2 hop network”. Alas, this definition will only make sense to those who carefully followed the Edward Snowden story or perhaps read the “Metadata” post I shared previously. A preview to that post effectively explains how an innocent 3-hop connection subsumes millions of people at times in a web of connection. I do not care to be exposed to some random person’s Christmas letter describing what the poached salmon they ate in Norway was like. This is not a clickbait trick. For me, the number of hops between any two of us defines everything in my eyes. My subscriptions are now the only short-term lever I have to filter the cognitive noise a place like Twitter and Facebook used to wield in my life to my severe detriment. Consistent with network definitions, the Newsletters I subscribe to and those that subscribe to mine have a one-hop relationship. Our connection is direct. This defines the place and interaction I enjoy on Substack. My limited subscriptions appear to be the ONLY LEVER Substack has left to me to make an informed decision about the volume and level I wish to tolerate. It seems to be a similar relationship (which seems weird) that somehow because someone stumbled upon my writing, I am now entitled, in some weird way to my subscriber’s preferences by just checking my feed. This SEEMS WEIRD to me.

• An example might help. Imagine two of my favorite subscriptions, let us call them A and B. The two authors get together and have lunch. Let’s make it clear that not reading their Newsletters would be a loss for me. One decides (A) to post a photo and a quip about their interaction. Do I really want to, need to, or just interlope on this personal interaction simply because I enjoy their Newsletters? Imagine further the other one of them (B) chose a boundary that differs. They may have enjoyed the interaction but (B) did not fill the need to post it in their Substack timeline. What has changed in my little selfish world is if I have an occasional, and genuine interest in my favored author’s voice (why else would I subscribe), I now am left with a conundrum. If I wish to hear what both of them have to say, staying subscribed is my option. If this enjoyment comes along with a photo of their lunches, the strength and reinforcement are lost. I wonder whether I can remain subscribed to (B), and unsubscribe from (A) but continue to visit their homepage as time avails? Will this make any difference? I fear the algorithm we now contend with will recognize this loophole and continue to inundate me with photos of a half-eaten burger. I can still consume their content but have no easy way to coexist without the ruinous Twitter-like contrails of likes, restacks, and “yeah I agree” comments.

• It’s Okay — Substack wasn’t built for me alone. A place for writers and readers that served the investors and the shareholders. Substack emerged as a different way to engage writers with readers. It is a wonderful community and its values, witnessed by the continuing enhancement of the tools are great. I would have never taken the first step toward exploring my voice and polishing a wonderful new pastime. The friendships and connections I have made have been life-affirming. It is on me to figure out how to remain engaged and keep my writing dreams alive.

• What’s Next — I backed up my writing a couple of times along the way on Substack. I will make a conscious effort to keep up the habit. My aim all along was to build out a couple of thematic topics to write about. I have done that. So many of the individual stories lend themselves to 10K to 20K word expansions — short stories and essays. Who knows what the venue for those could be? I have always, at the back of my mind, wanted to expand on my outline of a historical fiction book set on the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Maybe building out on that is next.

Substack & Me

Everyone’s journey on Substack is different. I do not imagine mine is of any importance or consequence. I have enjoyed exploring writing here. The proposition they offered was unique. The early promise was a place where writers could meet readers. It was cloistered. It offered a way for there to be an intimate and personal relationship between writers and readers. For someone like me, with a modest outlook about why I came here, it just seemed right.

• I had never formally explored writing before

• Social Media was a place I saw as destructive to my mental health and often stripped me of the one commodity of life I could not manufacture more of — precious time. The tradeoff of a follower or a rant to like never was worth the trade in time and serenity.

• I had no allusions to my writing. I was a work-in-progress. What happened quickly was the relationships I opted into brought joy. I even went so far as to limit my subscriptions to those I wanted to nurture. The analogy of (1) field of view » (2) acquaintance » (3) familiar » (4) friend is the approximation of the world of Substack for me. For me (3) and (4) constituted subscribable.

• Substack provided a mechanism to explore each of the four classes. It never ambushed and overwhelmed me with a flood of something completely different — until now.

Substack Notes

Substack Notes feels a lot like Twitter, a destination I fled a while ago. It also feels a lot like Facebook/Instagram/WhatsApp a space I abandoned well over a decade ago as I thought it a particularly pernicious threat to my health and civility. I had found a comfortable place on Substack and could be intentional in what I was opening myself up to. After only a week or two as a bystander of Notes the transformation, in my opinion, has begun.

I commend Substack for creating a dotted line between Substack and Notes. However, the “one convenient login” approach ala Meta shares everything behind the wall and changes forever their Network impression of you. Joining Facebook means the machine places you in a reservoir of potential Instagrammers, FB Messengers, and WhatsAppers regardless of your preferences. The goal becomes to wear you down and transform the relationship slowly and methodically. This portends bad things in my opinion. Substack did not invent the network effect. It is an electronic data hierarchy envisioned by the early trailblazers of the Internet. Like all technology, it can be used for good and evil.

The Island of Data

Established spaces on the Internet did what has worked before. Meta quickly offered “a new and innovative product” Bulletin to overwhelm and absorb what Substack seemed to offer. A larger firm will always have a way to loss-lead and destroy a new product that might threaten the monster over time. In a nascent feud over the launch of Substack Notes, Afrikaaner ex-pat Elon Musk quickly pivoted to allow some Substack-like functionality to be a featured capability in the swamp known as Twitter. He retains the same mendacious ability to ruin things for everyone and just buy Substack. Let the rumors begin!

The Peak of Irony

The irony of this “special post” is not lost on me. Is it constructive for me to pontificate at the bar to random strangers about why I disagree with prevailing politics? It seems to me if I want to be heard, my Representatives are the better choice of audience. For that reason, from my very small megaphone, I am posting this as a Substack Note. It seems otherwise, I am preaching to the choir. This germ of thought began with an email to my most favored Newsletters. I sent it to them BCC. I didn’t want a group conversation and signaled to them in this way I would treat their thoughts privately. I am so appreciative of those that managed to respond. I am grateful.

Do I Matter?

I have already pivoted to weigh the plusses and minuses of Substack in this new light. While the landscape might be refined, I can already see if I wish to remain, I must aggressively hit the three dots ALMOST continuously if I peek at Notes and block the random noise emerging quickly. I suppose the next step will be to block things I read on Substack in the Notes portion. It seems inevitable if I wish to peacefully coexist with the greater Substack platform I love so much I may just have to Unsubscribe from even my most favored authors. I respect that some of them will embrace Notes and that is hopefully a worthwhile thing for them. It may bring engagement, a dopamine burst of new subscribers, and maybe even commercial success. For them, the choice is sensible and I respect it. The network effect and 3-hops mean cognitive noise which undermines my enjoyment. It is a fun mind game to play 6 Degrees of Kevin Bacon. The six steps that separate any two people on earth (estimate) can be fun in the abstract. My mind can never be settled with all of the chaff in between.

This post is unlike almost anything I would write normally. For that reason, if you “like” it, that is not a reason to subscribe to my Newsletter so I discourage the thought. My outlook remains one of optimism and seeing better angels on a path to a better world.

Thanks for listening.