I don’t know that Substack subverts the attention economy, so much as has created a platform which benefits from the personas who have won that game. The relationship is one of accretion, not subversion. Take for example, Haley Nahman, whom you raised as an example of a “non-mainstream” voice. If you’re talking about subverting the atten…
I don’t know that Substack subverts the attention economy, so much as has created a platform which benefits from the personas who have won that game. The relationship is one of accretion, not subversion. Take for example, Haley Nahman, whom you raised as an example of a “non-mainstream” voice. If you’re talking about subverting the attention economy, the example doesn’t follow. Nahman was a writer and editor with Man Repeller, and grew her social media following via her visibility with that company (which had 2.5 mil followers before shutting down). That’s not to deny that Nahman is a critical voice worthy of attention, but I don’t think that’s the point here. She had a following via social media, and that following directly translated to her support and following on Substack. I’ve also listened to interviews with a couple of writers on Substack and the advice they gave was to leverage social media and any following they have there to channel readers to their newsletter. If we’re talking about elitism of traditional media, the voices that tend to succeed on Substack are an elitism of a different order: social media popularity.
What about the writers that reject the raison d’être of social media (to steal attention at any social, mental, physical cost to users and society, to deliver shareholders growing financial returns) and don’t want to play by its rules? They stand to lose across the board, even on a platform like Substack.
Unless you determine a way to help readers discover writers beyond the opaque caprice of social media algorithms, or traditional media which continues to be a central means in which writers find readers (and vice versa), Substack hasn’t subverted the attention economy (and isn’t on its way to), and it hasn’t given writers a platform to build a readership outside these models. I appreciate the sentiment expressed here, and the effort, but for now, this remains a nice idea.
This is very perceptive. I agree that we can't fully accomplish this mission if we are too reliant on discovery happening on social media, and that means we need to build more Substack-y ways for readers to discover writers they love. Stay tuned...
Beautifully articulated, Mariyam. Thanks so much for writing this! I'm one of the writers who minimizes social media use, partly for the reasons you mention. I'm a music journalist who specializes in long-form deep-dive interviews in a marginalized genre (dark ambient). I quickly realized that being visible on social media isn't a valuable use of my time.
I've been nudging Hamish and Chris for a couple of years now about the need for discovery features like keyword searches that don't rely on social media, and they have indicated again and again that this is in their plans. In the comments on the "Why we have a leaderboard" post (April 5, 2019) on the Substack blog, there's an exchange between me and Hamish in which he writes: "These leaderboards are just a first step. There will be many more ways to find publishers — big, small, new, old, popular, esoteric — in the future." I think the discovery tab in the Substack Reader is a nice step in the right direction, for one thing.
I continue to be impressed with their trajectory, and that's no small thing, especially now that they're getting a lot of coverage in the mainstream media and attracting so many big-name writers. I think they'll deliver on their promises eventually. I look forward to more Substack discovery tools.
I don’t know that Substack subverts the attention economy, so much as has created a platform which benefits from the personas who have won that game. The relationship is one of accretion, not subversion. Take for example, Haley Nahman, whom you raised as an example of a “non-mainstream” voice. If you’re talking about subverting the attention economy, the example doesn’t follow. Nahman was a writer and editor with Man Repeller, and grew her social media following via her visibility with that company (which had 2.5 mil followers before shutting down). That’s not to deny that Nahman is a critical voice worthy of attention, but I don’t think that’s the point here. She had a following via social media, and that following directly translated to her support and following on Substack. I’ve also listened to interviews with a couple of writers on Substack and the advice they gave was to leverage social media and any following they have there to channel readers to their newsletter. If we’re talking about elitism of traditional media, the voices that tend to succeed on Substack are an elitism of a different order: social media popularity.
What about the writers that reject the raison d’être of social media (to steal attention at any social, mental, physical cost to users and society, to deliver shareholders growing financial returns) and don’t want to play by its rules? They stand to lose across the board, even on a platform like Substack.
Unless you determine a way to help readers discover writers beyond the opaque caprice of social media algorithms, or traditional media which continues to be a central means in which writers find readers (and vice versa), Substack hasn’t subverted the attention economy (and isn’t on its way to), and it hasn’t given writers a platform to build a readership outside these models. I appreciate the sentiment expressed here, and the effort, but for now, this remains a nice idea.
This is very perceptive. I agree that we can't fully accomplish this mission if we are too reliant on discovery happening on social media, and that means we need to build more Substack-y ways for readers to discover writers they love. Stay tuned...
Great, I look forward to learning more.
Beautifully articulated, Mariyam. Thanks so much for writing this! I'm one of the writers who minimizes social media use, partly for the reasons you mention. I'm a music journalist who specializes in long-form deep-dive interviews in a marginalized genre (dark ambient). I quickly realized that being visible on social media isn't a valuable use of my time.
I've been nudging Hamish and Chris for a couple of years now about the need for discovery features like keyword searches that don't rely on social media, and they have indicated again and again that this is in their plans. In the comments on the "Why we have a leaderboard" post (April 5, 2019) on the Substack blog, there's an exchange between me and Hamish in which he writes: "These leaderboards are just a first step. There will be many more ways to find publishers — big, small, new, old, popular, esoteric — in the future." I think the discovery tab in the Substack Reader is a nice step in the right direction, for one thing.
I continue to be impressed with their trajectory, and that's no small thing, especially now that they're getting a lot of coverage in the mainstream media and attracting so many big-name writers. I think they'll deliver on their promises eventually. I look forward to more Substack discovery tools.
Thanks for the background info, Danica!
Exactly. Thank you.