The evolution of the blogosphere into Substack

On the HBO show Silicon Valley, there's a pivotal moment when VC funder Monica confesses to the protagonist, Richard, that, to her enduring shame, she "passed on Slack," costing her company potential billions.

"I mean, what is it? Is it email? Is it IM? I just don't get it."

"Turns out what it is is a $3 billion dollar company, and I passed on it."

That puzzled image of Monica? That's me with Substack.

  I've mentioned substacks a few times here, but what are your thoughts on them?

What I've learned so far: A substack is an email newsletter that you subscribe to. 

It's like a blog, in that it has a website and you can comment. 

It's not like a blog in that you have to pay for it, usually $60 a year and up, mostly.  Some are supposedly free, although most that I've tried to read has the familiar "subscribe to read more" sticker about a paragraph in. 

It's free to create and write a substack, and Substack provides the platform and an app. Remember the olden days of RSS and bloglines and Google Reader? It's like that.

Remember listservs? It's sort of like those, too.  Like Monica, I'm grasping for analogies.

Substack's had its own problems with content moderation and catering to--let's call them unsavory movements, so many people apparently left the platform.

I've subscribed to one (an academic acquaintance's) and have read several others & the comments. It's a nice community, no question, but it's still a bit puzzling.

Are the posts thoughtful and interesting and well-written? Yes.

Are they more thoughtful and interesting than most blogs, especially at the height of the blogosphere (around 10 years ago)? Not really, because there was (and is, for you stalwart bloggers) always interesting and fresh content to be had in the blogosphere. 

Maybe it's just the natural progression--Cory Doctorow calls it the "enshittification"--of monetizing what was once free on the internet so that someone could make a buck. Case in point: every single link here (except to this blog) will flash you a "subscribe now!" panel after a paragraph.

It seems unduly harsh to say that about the lovely Substackers I've seen, though.

So I'm having a Monica moment here: I don't get it. Your thoughts? 

Twitter reinvents itself as early blogs

I've been reasonably active on Twitter for a while now and have noticed a few things happening in the last few months.

Bear in mind that I don't have thousands of followers and don't follow thousands of people, as seems to be the goal for a lot of people. I'm on Twitter because--as in the "Minute Men defended our Revolutionary Airports" thing by the Dear Leader last week--it can be amusing and is occasionally a place to see good resources float by in the Twitter stream.

But it has changed.

1. Famous people (well, authors) who used to tweet a lot, like Margaret Atwood and Lin-Manuel Miranda, don't seem to be as active. My guess is that it's because they are actually, you know, writing instead of wasting time on Twitter as I am, but still.
2. There's a lot less interesting, or interesting to me, actual information being circulated. 
3. There are lots of retweets, the more outrageous the better, of the same information over and over. It's as bad as the NYTimes's months-long "Editor's Picks" on the front page. 
4. There are a lot more memes, not just funny cat pictures or whatever, but stuff like this:
1. Which literary critic or school of criticism are you? Take this quiz and find out.
2. How old were you when you had your first (male/nonwhite/gender non-conforming) teacher?
3. When is the movie better than the book?
4. Who here is a fan of Stranger Things? 
5. Focus on very particular and sometimes arcane forms of political outrage, while things like the Administration's big gift to Monsanto or whoever of rolling back restrictions on pesticides that kill bees (as our friends in France well know) go completely unnoticed. 
6. Lots of furious comment threads that any academic program that doesn't have as its primary goal how to organize and destroy the neoliberal university ought to be burned to the ground. Sometimes this is paired with scorching anyone who gives advice on the job market, how to apply for graduate school, etc.
7. Lots of comments about the Olds destroying the economy--emphasis on age rather than the real culprit, class and wealth. Thank you, Russian bots, for the "let's you and him fight" nature of this divisiveness that distracts from oligarchy and kleptocracy that is the real problem. 
8. More pictures of food or daily life things than there used to be.

My theory for #5 is this: Trump says his daily racist and/or stupid thing, Twitter goes nuts for 24 hours, and he torches more environmental and civil rights and immigration safeguards unnoticed.  Lather, rinse, repeat. I'm not alone in this theory.

The rest is pure speculation and observation, based on nothing more than random ideas as research. 

But if you're a longtime blogger, doesn't this remind you of something?

Getting-to-know-your-personality memes?

Rage at the (academic) machine?

Little reports from daily life?

Twitter, or my tiny corner of it, seems to be reinventing the early days of blogs, when the blogroll was long and active. Memes? We had 'em, but less so nowadays. Rage? Check. Daily life reports? Check.

If you are on Twitter, have you seen this? Better still, if you're an Instagram user, how is this different on that platform, if it is?

Where have all the bloggers gone?

Gone to the Chronicle, every one--well, two of them anyway: Tenured Radical and now Lesboprof. The Chronicle is not what you'd call enthusiastic about casual pseudonymous passers-by leaving comments (you need a Chronicle identity), so I won't be able to wish Lesboprof well in her new digs as I'd wanted to.

Inktopia? Gone to Scientopia (at least for a guest post).

Dr. Isis? Gone to her own domain: http://isisthescientist.com/.

Comradde PhysioProffe? Gone to a group blog: http://freethoughtblogs.com/physioprof/.

I know there've always been group blogs, and this is only a few instances, but I'm wondering if we're seeing some kind of consolidation wave taking place. This is good in one way because the Chronicle and other sites are recognizing the power of blogs, but on the other hand, the integration of blogs/Twitter/Facebook that sites are aiming for makes that cloak of pseudonymity even thinner than before.

Maybe the "thin pseudonym" people like Historiann and the moms at Roxie's Place have the right idea. Yet when I tried blogging a little bit under my own name, I hedged so much about everything that the posts were worthless (and I took the blog down almost immediately).

For better or worse, this feels like a real voice in ways that my real voice did not. How's that for a conundrum?

Historiann and Benjamin Franklin

Historiann has a terrific article about blogging and especially pseudonymous blogging up at Common-place. If you go to read it, as you should, you'll find out find out why we are like Benjamin Franklin's Silence Dogood and other good ideas.

I was especially struck by this:

Pseudonymity can work in the service of community-building in the blogosphere. . . . Although I'm not fully pseudonymous, my commenters are overwhelmingly pseudonymous. Nevertheless, regular readers and commenters probably recognize the commenters who appear most frequently because most of them have individual personality traits or interests that remain fairly stable. That is, they fully inhabit the names or roles they've chosen to play on my blog, and their pseudonymity, as well as the role I play as Historiann, is key to the kind of supportive community I wanted to build.

Supportive. Community-building. Can you see why I like this idea? Even though Historiann, like Roxie's World, is a "lightly pseudonymous blog," Historiann herself gets why some of us are, or are trying to be, pseudonymous.

That's important, because every so often, "real" bloggers who publish under their own names will write something like "why don't you man up and write under your real name?" (And yes, I used "man up" deliberately.)

I've thought about this a lot lately, because after listening to Moose at MLA, I was ready to stand up and say, "I'm a blogger, too"--sort of like an "I am Spartacus" moment. That feeling dissipated as I listened to the other speakers talk about the disadvantages, and I went back into my pseudonymous cave.

There was a lot more to this post about why I'm staying pseudonymous as long as I can, but really, Historiann explained it all. How about you?

Update: See also posts by ADM, Dr. Crazy, Comrade PhysioProf, and Prone to Laughter and their links.

Blogs of ages past

The decision of the BitchPhD bloggers and BitchPhD herself to close up shop has a number of current bloggers like Roxie's World and Dr. Crazy and AnnieEm thinking about blogs that have shut down and the nature of blogging. (AnnieEm says that Berube's quitting, too, but he quit before for a year or two and then came back, so here's hoping.)

Like the moms at Roxie's World, I used to read BitchPhD in the early days when it seemed like one earnest, passionate voice, and I sort of trailed off when it became a group blog, not because the group bloggers were less earnest but because I missed that original voice. If I think about what draws me into reading blogs, it's the voice of the blogger.

Now, at BitchPhD, I found a lot of good stuff, although sometimes I felt as though I were being told the One Best Way to be a feminist. Sometimes I agreed, and sometimes I didn't. But that's the point, with a blog: if a blogger doesn't care about what he or she is writing, what's the point of blogging? I'm not talking about writers' blogs that are really press releases (here's my itinerary for the latest press junket, and here's a picture of my book with a convenient link), but blogs written primarily not for commercial purposes. You can disagree, but you don't doubt that the person cares.

There are a lot of great new blogs now (see blogroll!), but I'm thinking of blogs that have shut down over the past few years whose voices I miss. Mel at In Favor of Thinking would be one, especially her post on grading championships. MaggieMay (and her stories) would be one, and JustTenured would be another. Dr. Brazen Hussy just shut down recently, which leaves entirely open the Angry Bird Banding section of the blogosphere, among other things. There are others, too, whose blog titles I can't remember but whose voices I can.

I guess if this were a banquet, I'd raise a virtual glass to those bloggers.

The shadow knows

Just a quick post to say that lately, if I'm in conversation with a group of people or at a conference, and we're talking about etexts or libraries or academic blogging or the future of the book, I find myself wanting to say, "You're so right! I wrote a blog post about that just last week and said --"

But since it's Professional Self and not Shadow Blog Self having those conversations, I just say, "You're so right!" and beam a smile back at the person. Sometimes I'll go ahead and reiterate the arguments I've made here, but I am always a little worried about it--as though this minuscule portion of the blogosphere is read by multitudes.

I guess Professional Self wants to claim credit for everything good but is too cowardly to own up to all the rants and everything else that comprises a blog. Shadow Blog Self is a little more forgiving about the imperfections of blog utterances, so for now, SBF owns it, and PS doesn't.

Blogworld creativity

All right, it was a dream (hence the OT qualifier), but I think it says something about the relationship between blogging and "real writing," so I'm posting it. I think it was inspired by a message I received recently from an acquisitions editor at a press where I've reviewed several manuscripts, asking me to have coffee at an upcoming conference.

In the dream, a colleague and I were part of some focus group about academic blogging, and he began to pontificate at great length about it. In real life I like and respect this colleague, but you know that Mark Twain saying "it is better to be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt"? It became clear that he knew nothing about blogging, although that didn't stop him from expressing a lot of opinions dressed as theories, and that I had a whole lot of ideas about it just from reading blogs and from writing this one for three years.

The editor and I walked to a nearby coffeeshop through a thicket of blogs, which were posted on beautiful wooden signposts (all of your blogs on the blogroll were there) on gentle green slopes, and the comments pages were paper pages left beneath them where people could write things with the attached pencils. Once at the shop, I outlined something like a theory of blogology--if not like Mr. Casaubon's Key to All Mythologies--and the editor thought this should be a book.

Now, I'm not writing a book about blogs. Instead, I think it signifies a lot of things that blogs seem to mean to us all:

The ability to try out ideas and be heard by a supportive (but honest) community, even if it's largely a pseudonymous one.

The ability to be playful in writing.

The liberating quality of writing about what you know, and what you know you know even if it doesn't square with someone else's theories (as Professor Z often discusses).

The beauty of a writing space--for it was very much a space--in which writing does not need to respond to deadlines, is never stressful, and makes the writer feel as though the expression of ideas and emotions is a good thing.

In short, I think it was about the ways in which blogs foster creativity, and who could say that that's a bad thing?
[Title changed to be less confusing]

When worlds collide

I was looking over the list of contributors to an essay collection in which I have a piece coming out and started musing "X . . X . . . where have I heard that name?" Then it hit me: X is someone who blogs under his or her own name. There will thus be two bloggers in that collection, at the very least, but only one of us will know that.

It gave me pause, for a minute, although I don't know why it should; I've seen other bloggers on panels at MLA and elsewhere, even though I've never been to a meetup or tried to learn the IRL identities of any pseudonymous bloggers.

But since meatspace and blogworld do ultimately intersect, wouldn't it be great if there were some way, some secret handshake or something, by which we could say to each other "I'm a blogger, too"? Maybe a Masonic handshake or something?

Quick thoughts on pseudonymity

At the Chronicle, Peter Plagens has a column opposing anonymity for "First Person" columnists, and the three people he calls out for it respond by saying why they'd prefer to be anonymous. Plagens's points are more or less these:

Don't be such a chicken about getting tenure. Heck, if you're denied tenure, you can always sue the university. [Yeah, that's a great option.] You didn't want that job anyway; just go find yourself a new one. That shouldn't be too hard, not in the job market these days.

Don't hide behind academic freedom. You were worthless toadies before getting tenure, and getting tenure isn't going to improve your Uriah Heep-like qualities.

And your personas are boring, too!

What you're writing is pretty dull and general stuff anyway, not like the column of a certain P. P.

Dr. Crazy and Profgrrrl have responded beautifully and at length (and with much less snark) on their blogs, Dr. Crazy addressing the pseudonymity versus anonymity issue and Profgrrrl explaining patiently why someone might not want to have blog posts be the first thing you see when you Google someone's name.

I admire the people who post under their own names, like Kathleen Fitzpatrick and Miriam Burstein, Claire Potter, Amardeep Singh, and Michael Berube, but I don't want to do it--and, to judge from the far more articulate blogposts about this, others don't, either. Why?

Blogspace is really more like the old Lingua Franca; remember that magazine? It went under in the early 1990s, I think. It was irreverent, and although it published good pieces, it didn't have to be deadly serious about everything all the time. It wasn't obliged to be the Newspaper of Record for academia, so it could take some chances. IHE and CHE are very nice, but blogs also have a part to play in talking about academics.

In his discussion about tenure deliberations the other day, Dean Dad said something interesting: he said you could either have transparency or tell the truth, but you couldn't do both. Some of his commenters disputed the idea that this applies to tenure deliberations, but it does apply to blogs. I'm not saying that those courageous people with named blogs aren't telling the truth, but I do think that the kinds of things they can say might be different.

The biggest difference might be this: if everyone posted under a real name, would bloggers feel equally free to be, well, silly? funny? tired? stuck in the process of writing something? Some might say that these aren't feelings that ought to be shared, that the people who write this would be mere "bloggers" and not true "academic bloggers."

In short, your blogging identity, as opposed to your scholarly identity, is more or less in your control. In real life, whether something is published or not, what people think of your scholarship, and so on are all outside your control. In blogworld, your identity depends on how you present yourself: honest, irreverent, angry (like the Angry Professor), or whatever else you choose to be. Plagens might say that this is inherently dishonest, because you're not using your real name, but then, does blogworld have to answer to the demands of the real world, or just to report its absurdities? I'd say the latter.

Blogging the "Meet the Bloggers" session

My meeting got out a little early, so I was able to catch the last two papers of the "Meet the Bloggers" session. Since others who were there for the whole thing will surely write about it (as will the bloggers themselves), I'll keep this to a few impressions.

Very Famous Female Blogger (I don't want to out her even by giving her blog pseudonym, but you can figure it out).

Connected blogging with her work in 18th-century publishing and the essay, especially The Female Tatler, possibly by a pseudonymous "Mrs. Crackenthorpe," which successfully competed for audience with the mainstream Tatler for a while and was published on alternating days with it.

Mentioned Habermas's "enabling fiction of the public sphere" and that we don't realize just how imperfect the public sphere is.

Her impressions (based on her blog survey) were that "most pseudonymous bloggers are who they say they are; if they say they are women, they are," etc.

Pseudonymity invites risk, but those who choose to publish pseudonymously are willing to take those risks in order to gain something greater (for early women writers, money).

Blogging is "a way for people who are marginal to be in the public sphere."

Mentioned in the Q & A about threats of "outing" a blogger: it's important to maintain the distinction between persona and writer.

Michael Berube

Praised The Valve's book events: "they rock."

"The state of book reviewing in our discipline is terrible" because of the delays in print publication, etc.

Discussed two "blogspats," one that occurred when he was accused of leaving a damaging remark on a grad student's blog. Noted that he didn't know it was a grad student & thought the person was "just a guy."

Second "blogspat" was "Burqagate," the flap over Ann Althouse's criticism of a blogger "because she had breasts" and Amanda Marcotte's photoshopping of a burqa-clad woman. (Look it up if you want more information.)

Discussed the ways in which leftists sometimes denounce even those on their side for not being severe enough in their denunciations (example: denouncing the people who denounced the Democrats who were too lukewarm in their denunciations of torture).

Blogspats: "junior high with hyperlinks." Gives us "important lessons about how to go about choosing sides."

My notes on the rest are too scattered to be of use (which isn't to say that these are of use at all, mind you; the good stuff is in their talks, not here.)

The room was packed--standing room only, and this at 8:30 a.m. on the last day of the conference, which is not, shall we say, a coveted time slot. (On my way to the session, I saw several rooms with 4-5 brave souls listening to speakers.) And why wouldn't it be packed? The panelists were smart, funny, and interesting, as you'd expect. There were non-pseudonymous bloggers in the audience who talked during the Q & A and, I'm sure, other chickenhearted pseudonymous bloggers like myself, who were there to hear thoughtful talk about blogging--and, probably not incidentally, to see the stars of the blogworld.