I hope that honesty to self is the path to a settled mind. This was a pretty good essay in my estimation and I appreciate your comment. What I have observed is it will likely be one of the least likely to open posts I HAVE EVER written. I don't think this has anything to do with me or its quality. I have two more posts in the queue. If that trend continues, I will assume that Notes, for someone like me, has taken hold and begun to change Substack. I have begun to look for another option.
Mark, I was feeling something about Notes culture wasn't a fit for me and you articulated it correctly. Thank You. The net is it creates to much wasted unproductive time in our lives. Even if I invite or willing let the beast into my world initially, it insidiously takes over in click bait and a "likes" culture in my brain. No , 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. That is why I am not on the other social medial.
Paul -- Thanks. I happen to feel strongly about this and wonder about its impact so forgive the length. I hope people can get my message and not too heavy-handed. When I was BRAND NEW to Substack I began the journey alone and intentionally had NO SUBSCRIBERS as it was mostly a writing exercise. I had arrived at that point in my life with an electronic rolodex of at least 700 names of people who I might share my writing with. To this day I have not shared it except within small subsets of my circles. I didn't even want to say to different friend groups take a look at this. I experimented a lot and, believe it or not, wrote every single day at the direction of one of the people in my creative writing group. Wow, was I a load. The funny thing was in those first 45 days I wrote all kinds of weird stuff and was mostly getting repetitions, kinda the way anything might be at the beginning. I ended up writing a four part riff called How to tame your lizard. I will, someday, condense four different posts into either two parts or one single thread. It is about the challenges to our brains and what makes us human. Who knows if what I am saying is sensible but it rings true for me. The VERY GREATEST thing about Substack during this early period is it always seemed a carefully managed recommendation model and I loved that. It has been the weirdest of things the last two weeks to observe the Notes thing. I have some family who I followed on Twitter as that was the best way to keep up. When I experimented with it I was following 200+ entities. I actively set out on my 3X a week trek on Twitter to remove 5 follows each time I logged on. What happened surprised me and led me to leave it behind. 200 became 100 and 100 became 50 and 50 became 25 and eventually 10. What never changed was the volume of the nonsense. It no longer mattered what I followed. History had established how much to bombard my eyeballs. See the thing (I am a numbers and analytical type of guy) is a hops network will never run out of filth to fill the gaps. The goal is to keep you engaged. The Metadata post I referenced explained the simple math the NSA presents to Judges to surveil us. Almost anyone (God forbid you start with 700 in your contacts list) in a 3-hop network might end up with 1M+ people in their "network of interest". Imagine the absurdity of wondering what Paul does and then a Judge, not particularly versed in math, says sure lets examine all the calls these 2-3 million people have been making and see if anyone, anywhere, anytime ever connected to a bad guy (maybe they just ordered a pizza or a burrito). Sure, it can be claimed if I want to understand Mark and keep the Homeland safe, lets look at his direct contacts to start. Then lets look at your connects to Mark's contacts. The reality is if only a handful of those contacts are "important" like the local Chipotle, the numbers explode quickly. The simple rational act of connecting to a handful of popular Substacks makes you a bombardment site of nonsense.. It is not the author's fault, it is a feature of a hop-based network.
The example of the lunch was actually pretty useful for me in understanding the effect you’re describing!
I wish I could figure out how to stop notifications of “so and so you subscribe to posted a note.” Supposedly I’ve already done so but I’m still getting the notifications.
Hi Antonia and thanks so much for replying. Thus far, the only action I have dipped my toe into is blocking the notes of the me-too crowd. It is not personal. I just don't want to wade through it. The truth is the said person whose first five notes that reach me might genuinely have something interesting to say on this internal Twitter channel in the future quickly become noise. I just don't want to hear the five things a couple are whispering two rows back in the theatre just so I can enjoy the one funny thing they might say tomorrow. I will likely begin blocking some of my favorite authors on Notes and see if I can still preserve the connection to their writing which I enjoy so much. They might love Notes and might be using it to grow their subscriber list as a strategy or do simply, and genuinely, like a lot of seemingly unrelated things enough to broadcast it to the world. There are so many analogies I could draw to this. Many of them might not work. The one I just thought of was a crowd is served 5-course meal and dessert. A roundtable discussion ensues about what was best about the meal. I simply know, in the age of Social Media, there will be a subset of "influencers" who will have a comment about ALL 5 courses and the dessert, even if only, YEAH that pudding was amazing, best ever. This, for me, is simply noise and creates a din which makes it possible to hear voices. For me this is bad and it merely provides a space for the influencer to drown others out and block meaningful dialog by sheer volume of their voice. This is a far cry from what Substack as an author-reader dialog seems to work best at.
This all makes a lot of sense. It would still be helpful to be able to block Notes notifications entirely! That kind of ecosystem is an attractant for me and very destructive and I want to close of as many reminders of it as possible.
Since I do most of my internet activity on my 2-1 tablet, I use URL blocking in my browser to prevent those URL from cluttering my head. While I have not done it yet for Substack Notes, it would seem if I added https://substack.com/notes to my URL block list that would keep all of this in the closet. I am unsure but assume that since I use Chrome and am logged into my Google Account, this would extend the same behavior to my phone with no action required by me. That is the method by which Chrome synchs your behavior, links, shortcuts and history across securely logged in devices I think. I would assume other browsers can do this also but am not sure. I know lots of people do not want to be logged into their Google Account for fear of monitoring and advertising. I assume there are other ways of doing this also.
Hello Mark - I just started on Substack recently. I am glad I bumped into you, or was it that you bumped into me?, not sure. But I am glad we connected. I can see you are very thoughtful and have something insightful to say when you choose to make a connection. So please continue!
As for Notes, I am still trying to figure it out. I like what I see compared to Twitter, but mostly because I am really impressed by many talented writers I got to know through Notes that I would otherwise have a very hard time finding.
I have a lot of faith in Substack. I think they are going to listen to writers and adjust their strategy as needed. At least I hope so.
Anyway, I look forward to continue reading your stuff and engaging in a thoughtful dialog via comments.
The feeling is mutual Naveen. I believe we came together through the mutual wonderful writing we both seem to enjoy at Risk Musings. I enjoy Substack very much and it has been wonderful in most every way. I engage with the writing I GENUINELY enjoy. That, is enough for me, at this point. I admire those who can navigate social media. I agree what you say "in comparison to Twitter". My experience and understanding of the network effect is the rapid accumulation of noise once you decide to because I have made a connection with Naveen, this somehow means Naveen's circle of connection is helpful. Whereas I might be interested in what you might READ as it could inform me, knowing your readers, I believe is a different matter altogether. What I know further is that if I leave to an algorithm to infer who of the myriad connections Naveen's readers might have I am now in a stadium of sound when my intention and joy comes from interacting with you.
Substack has been wonderful for me also. I am so happy to have you along. I feel likewise about your writing BTW, I merely, and consciously try to choose carefully what I like or love to read (your writing) and what I am willing to be committed to read (my subscriptions). I imagine, that perhaps my method of subscribing is not 'normal'. I always try to entertain the idea that I may be wrong.
Hi Mark, is there anything writers can do to make the Notes noise more optional for our readers? I didn't click the "Tell your readers you've joined Notes" button, because I wanted only those who actively opted in to Notes on their own to see my Notes. Is it possible to turn Notes off for yourself but leave newsletter emails on (I like Notes but am fully aware that others may not)?
Rereading your comment I just hope none of my readers are getting a pile of inane dialog because they were kind enough to take the time to read my Newsletter. In the beginning I wrote so frequently and constantly tried to put myself in their shoes. How much is too much. Maybe I just gotta get better at it. My sense, however, is idle chatter will just occlude the writing. The things I read are so wonderful and they take time to craft. Notes for me is a high-end specialty restaurant just piling on some bad chicken nuggets on the plate cause there was room leftover with the perfectly wonderful meal you might be enjoying. I was SO HAPPY to hear the FB approach to capture thoughtful long-form writing amidst the shitstorm flamed out quickly. It is just so out of place. It reminds me of a trip to Boston. We were grabbing a quick bagel at Panera and on the menu was a $20 Lobster Roll -- it is just silly -- Notes and Newsletters just don't yet feel comfortable to me together on the same plate. I will be patient as my readers certainly have been as I figured things out. Maybe I just need to be a little more patient and trusting.
IDK and plan to reach out to Substack to get a more thorough understanding. What I noted thus far as I explored it is while the comments of a post are engaging and enjoyable for me, the Notes have quickly descended into a lot of "yeah, for sure". I respect that many want this second type of communication -- I have already begun experimenting for myself and simply blocking the 2nd and 3rd order connections. I don't do it automatically. If the comment happens to be interesting to me, I might check their Substack.
Thanks. I hope the message and opinion comes through this might be a great experience for others. I come on Substack (1) to explore writing and I'm definitely an amateur (2) find reading that makes me want to commit time to and keep coming back. I enjoy many genres so its not as if I want to come off as pompous. I read a lot of comedy also. (3) support said writers to the extent possible with comments telling how their writing impacted me, what I thought of, etc (4) be part of a virtuous cycle if that is possible -- a reinforcing loop if you will. I have distant memories of why I left FB and why I consider it pernicious for me. I did a similar experiment when I eased off of Twitter.
I won't "like" this post if it would upset you, but I will comment on it. My brain being what it is (very easily distracted!), I've long ago had to figure out ways to deal with the noise that comes along with the useful stuff. Basically, as rude as it may sound, I tend to ignore extraneous chatter on the internet. Ads in the margins (or even in the middle) of an on-line article are wasted on me: I scroll right on by them. I have an Instagram account, but pretty much just use it to keep in touch with people from the defunct FoodTribe network - I've stopped posting and reading Instagram stuff, but pop in once in a while to check on the occasional private message. I spent a few days each on Facebook and Twitter, and jumped ship because there was just to much going on at once. My brain has a lot of trouble filtering information, so if there's too much happening, I just bail before my synapses start frying. I avoid parties for the same reason. 😉
As far as Substack Notes go - I can see how some people might find them useful. I don't - it's too much information at once, and I can't deal with it. If I see in "Notifications" that someone I subscribe to has left a note, I just ignore it. I left one note when Notes first came out, something really clever like, "Hello, everyone," but that was it. I have nothing deep or important to pass along to everyone on Substack... comments on individual posts are more my speed.
So I guess I would advise you to keep any subscriptions you enjoy and just ignore the Notes - I doubt that it would bother many people, and it would allow you to keep your sanity.
I'll read Metadata later... hopefully it doesn't spook me off the internet! Have a good night, Mark!
As for the liking, I planned to send this as a link as a Note. What I didn't want people to feel some weird need to do was like my note. A like of a post is fine. Frankly whatever works for folks. I was just trying to navigate the horrible culture that pervades the need to like or retweet. If each time a teacher shared some insight, all the students shouted "yeah, i agree" just seems idiotic to me. A comment or a like upon completion is more akin to going up after class and saying I enjoyed the lecture, thanks. Thanks for taking the time to reply. This is just my opinion -- I like Substack enough that I don't want it to get ruined. My original title was more akin to "This is why we can't have nice things". Substack and the relationship between writer and reader seems a virtuous circle. It is funny but I never was too concerned when people unsubscribe as it is what I would want them to do if they didn't enjoy my writing.
But here we come to the crux of the problem for me. I have some writers I really LOVE. I give each of them the benefit of the doubt their thoughtfulness in how they use Notes might very well be a great experience. Why would I want to miss that. The thing is I get that in the comments and tell them so. My thing is there may also be other writers I also really love. I just don't want to endure pictures of half-eaten burgers in order to get to the content I am here for.
Love your honesty.
I hope that honesty to self is the path to a settled mind. This was a pretty good essay in my estimation and I appreciate your comment. What I have observed is it will likely be one of the least likely to open posts I HAVE EVER written. I don't think this has anything to do with me or its quality. I have two more posts in the queue. If that trend continues, I will assume that Notes, for someone like me, has taken hold and begun to change Substack. I have begun to look for another option.
Mark, I was feeling something about Notes culture wasn't a fit for me and you articulated it correctly. Thank You. The net is it creates to much wasted unproductive time in our lives. Even if I invite or willing let the beast into my world initially, it insidiously takes over in click bait and a "likes" culture in my brain. No , 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. That is why I am not on the other social medial.
Paul -- Thanks. I happen to feel strongly about this and wonder about its impact so forgive the length. I hope people can get my message and not too heavy-handed. When I was BRAND NEW to Substack I began the journey alone and intentionally had NO SUBSCRIBERS as it was mostly a writing exercise. I had arrived at that point in my life with an electronic rolodex of at least 700 names of people who I might share my writing with. To this day I have not shared it except within small subsets of my circles. I didn't even want to say to different friend groups take a look at this. I experimented a lot and, believe it or not, wrote every single day at the direction of one of the people in my creative writing group. Wow, was I a load. The funny thing was in those first 45 days I wrote all kinds of weird stuff and was mostly getting repetitions, kinda the way anything might be at the beginning. I ended up writing a four part riff called How to tame your lizard. I will, someday, condense four different posts into either two parts or one single thread. It is about the challenges to our brains and what makes us human. Who knows if what I am saying is sensible but it rings true for me. The VERY GREATEST thing about Substack during this early period is it always seemed a carefully managed recommendation model and I loved that. It has been the weirdest of things the last two weeks to observe the Notes thing. I have some family who I followed on Twitter as that was the best way to keep up. When I experimented with it I was following 200+ entities. I actively set out on my 3X a week trek on Twitter to remove 5 follows each time I logged on. What happened surprised me and led me to leave it behind. 200 became 100 and 100 became 50 and 50 became 25 and eventually 10. What never changed was the volume of the nonsense. It no longer mattered what I followed. History had established how much to bombard my eyeballs. See the thing (I am a numbers and analytical type of guy) is a hops network will never run out of filth to fill the gaps. The goal is to keep you engaged. The Metadata post I referenced explained the simple math the NSA presents to Judges to surveil us. Almost anyone (God forbid you start with 700 in your contacts list) in a 3-hop network might end up with 1M+ people in their "network of interest". Imagine the absurdity of wondering what Paul does and then a Judge, not particularly versed in math, says sure lets examine all the calls these 2-3 million people have been making and see if anyone, anywhere, anytime ever connected to a bad guy (maybe they just ordered a pizza or a burrito). Sure, it can be claimed if I want to understand Mark and keep the Homeland safe, lets look at his direct contacts to start. Then lets look at your connects to Mark's contacts. The reality is if only a handful of those contacts are "important" like the local Chipotle, the numbers explode quickly. The simple rational act of connecting to a handful of popular Substacks makes you a bombardment site of nonsense.. It is not the author's fault, it is a feature of a hop-based network.
The example of the lunch was actually pretty useful for me in understanding the effect you’re describing!
I wish I could figure out how to stop notifications of “so and so you subscribe to posted a note.” Supposedly I’ve already done so but I’m still getting the notifications.
Hi Antonia and thanks so much for replying. Thus far, the only action I have dipped my toe into is blocking the notes of the me-too crowd. It is not personal. I just don't want to wade through it. The truth is the said person whose first five notes that reach me might genuinely have something interesting to say on this internal Twitter channel in the future quickly become noise. I just don't want to hear the five things a couple are whispering two rows back in the theatre just so I can enjoy the one funny thing they might say tomorrow. I will likely begin blocking some of my favorite authors on Notes and see if I can still preserve the connection to their writing which I enjoy so much. They might love Notes and might be using it to grow their subscriber list as a strategy or do simply, and genuinely, like a lot of seemingly unrelated things enough to broadcast it to the world. There are so many analogies I could draw to this. Many of them might not work. The one I just thought of was a crowd is served 5-course meal and dessert. A roundtable discussion ensues about what was best about the meal. I simply know, in the age of Social Media, there will be a subset of "influencers" who will have a comment about ALL 5 courses and the dessert, even if only, YEAH that pudding was amazing, best ever. This, for me, is simply noise and creates a din which makes it possible to hear voices. For me this is bad and it merely provides a space for the influencer to drown others out and block meaningful dialog by sheer volume of their voice. This is a far cry from what Substack as an author-reader dialog seems to work best at.
This all makes a lot of sense. It would still be helpful to be able to block Notes notifications entirely! That kind of ecosystem is an attractant for me and very destructive and I want to close of as many reminders of it as possible.
Since I do most of my internet activity on my 2-1 tablet, I use URL blocking in my browser to prevent those URL from cluttering my head. While I have not done it yet for Substack Notes, it would seem if I added https://substack.com/notes to my URL block list that would keep all of this in the closet. I am unsure but assume that since I use Chrome and am logged into my Google Account, this would extend the same behavior to my phone with no action required by me. That is the method by which Chrome synchs your behavior, links, shortcuts and history across securely logged in devices I think. I would assume other browsers can do this also but am not sure. I know lots of people do not want to be logged into their Google Account for fear of monitoring and advertising. I assume there are other ways of doing this also.
Hello Mark - I just started on Substack recently. I am glad I bumped into you, or was it that you bumped into me?, not sure. But I am glad we connected. I can see you are very thoughtful and have something insightful to say when you choose to make a connection. So please continue!
As for Notes, I am still trying to figure it out. I like what I see compared to Twitter, but mostly because I am really impressed by many talented writers I got to know through Notes that I would otherwise have a very hard time finding.
I have a lot of faith in Substack. I think they are going to listen to writers and adjust their strategy as needed. At least I hope so.
Anyway, I look forward to continue reading your stuff and engaging in a thoughtful dialog via comments.
Best
The feeling is mutual Naveen. I believe we came together through the mutual wonderful writing we both seem to enjoy at Risk Musings. I enjoy Substack very much and it has been wonderful in most every way. I engage with the writing I GENUINELY enjoy. That, is enough for me, at this point. I admire those who can navigate social media. I agree what you say "in comparison to Twitter". My experience and understanding of the network effect is the rapid accumulation of noise once you decide to because I have made a connection with Naveen, this somehow means Naveen's circle of connection is helpful. Whereas I might be interested in what you might READ as it could inform me, knowing your readers, I believe is a different matter altogether. What I know further is that if I leave to an algorithm to infer who of the myriad connections Naveen's readers might have I am now in a stadium of sound when my intention and joy comes from interacting with you.
Substack has been wonderful for me also. I am so happy to have you along. I feel likewise about your writing BTW, I merely, and consciously try to choose carefully what I like or love to read (your writing) and what I am willing to be committed to read (my subscriptions). I imagine, that perhaps my method of subscribing is not 'normal'. I always try to entertain the idea that I may be wrong.
Hi Mark, is there anything writers can do to make the Notes noise more optional for our readers? I didn't click the "Tell your readers you've joined Notes" button, because I wanted only those who actively opted in to Notes on their own to see my Notes. Is it possible to turn Notes off for yourself but leave newsletter emails on (I like Notes but am fully aware that others may not)?
Rereading your comment I just hope none of my readers are getting a pile of inane dialog because they were kind enough to take the time to read my Newsletter. In the beginning I wrote so frequently and constantly tried to put myself in their shoes. How much is too much. Maybe I just gotta get better at it. My sense, however, is idle chatter will just occlude the writing. The things I read are so wonderful and they take time to craft. Notes for me is a high-end specialty restaurant just piling on some bad chicken nuggets on the plate cause there was room leftover with the perfectly wonderful meal you might be enjoying. I was SO HAPPY to hear the FB approach to capture thoughtful long-form writing amidst the shitstorm flamed out quickly. It is just so out of place. It reminds me of a trip to Boston. We were grabbing a quick bagel at Panera and on the menu was a $20 Lobster Roll -- it is just silly -- Notes and Newsletters just don't yet feel comfortable to me together on the same plate. I will be patient as my readers certainly have been as I figured things out. Maybe I just need to be a little more patient and trusting.
IDK and plan to reach out to Substack to get a more thorough understanding. What I noted thus far as I explored it is while the comments of a post are engaging and enjoyable for me, the Notes have quickly descended into a lot of "yeah, for sure". I respect that many want this second type of communication -- I have already begun experimenting for myself and simply blocking the 2nd and 3rd order connections. I don't do it automatically. If the comment happens to be interesting to me, I might check their Substack.
witnessed and understood!
Thanks. I hope the message and opinion comes through this might be a great experience for others. I come on Substack (1) to explore writing and I'm definitely an amateur (2) find reading that makes me want to commit time to and keep coming back. I enjoy many genres so its not as if I want to come off as pompous. I read a lot of comedy also. (3) support said writers to the extent possible with comments telling how their writing impacted me, what I thought of, etc (4) be part of a virtuous cycle if that is possible -- a reinforcing loop if you will. I have distant memories of why I left FB and why I consider it pernicious for me. I did a similar experiment when I eased off of Twitter.
I won't "like" this post if it would upset you, but I will comment on it. My brain being what it is (very easily distracted!), I've long ago had to figure out ways to deal with the noise that comes along with the useful stuff. Basically, as rude as it may sound, I tend to ignore extraneous chatter on the internet. Ads in the margins (or even in the middle) of an on-line article are wasted on me: I scroll right on by them. I have an Instagram account, but pretty much just use it to keep in touch with people from the defunct FoodTribe network - I've stopped posting and reading Instagram stuff, but pop in once in a while to check on the occasional private message. I spent a few days each on Facebook and Twitter, and jumped ship because there was just to much going on at once. My brain has a lot of trouble filtering information, so if there's too much happening, I just bail before my synapses start frying. I avoid parties for the same reason. 😉
As far as Substack Notes go - I can see how some people might find them useful. I don't - it's too much information at once, and I can't deal with it. If I see in "Notifications" that someone I subscribe to has left a note, I just ignore it. I left one note when Notes first came out, something really clever like, "Hello, everyone," but that was it. I have nothing deep or important to pass along to everyone on Substack... comments on individual posts are more my speed.
So I guess I would advise you to keep any subscriptions you enjoy and just ignore the Notes - I doubt that it would bother many people, and it would allow you to keep your sanity.
I'll read Metadata later... hopefully it doesn't spook me off the internet! Have a good night, Mark!
As for the liking, I planned to send this as a link as a Note. What I didn't want people to feel some weird need to do was like my note. A like of a post is fine. Frankly whatever works for folks. I was just trying to navigate the horrible culture that pervades the need to like or retweet. If each time a teacher shared some insight, all the students shouted "yeah, i agree" just seems idiotic to me. A comment or a like upon completion is more akin to going up after class and saying I enjoyed the lecture, thanks. Thanks for taking the time to reply. This is just my opinion -- I like Substack enough that I don't want it to get ruined. My original title was more akin to "This is why we can't have nice things". Substack and the relationship between writer and reader seems a virtuous circle. It is funny but I never was too concerned when people unsubscribe as it is what I would want them to do if they didn't enjoy my writing.
But here we come to the crux of the problem for me. I have some writers I really LOVE. I give each of them the benefit of the doubt their thoughtfulness in how they use Notes might very well be a great experience. Why would I want to miss that. The thing is I get that in the comments and tell them so. My thing is there may also be other writers I also really love. I just don't want to endure pictures of half-eaten burgers in order to get to the content I am here for.