People pass around your pieces like contraband - as they do with anyone else who is brave enough to speak out and to do so fearlessly. They (we) feel angry and unable to really do anything about it without getting attacked. It's hard to be a thoughtful person as you are and try to find a place in a climate that wants you to only be one thing. Be one thing and sell that thing. We are all buzzing around like lost bees looking for our hive, and perhaps our queen. Like it or not you are one of the queens (bees-wise).
It was fascinating to read about how you think through these questions about readership and incentives. I'm glad you mentioned the Gawker strategy; I'm one of the people who doesn't really enjoy the media and woke criticism so much (not that I disagree), but because you've mentioned in the past that they bring in the subs, I was happy to just skim through them and wait for the content I enjoy more. (Like the Nation of Islam piece!)
As someone who mainly started reading you however many years ago because you offer leftist analysis from a genuinely left perspective (as opposed to "progressive liberal"), I am especially happy to hear that you've considered the warped incentives when it comes to conservatives cheering on left-on-left critique.
I wish you luck navigating all these challenges! You're a publication now, Freddie! :)
I've repeatedly tried (and repeatedly failed) to avoid the outrage cycles (which is not the same as avoiding negative or infuriating news -- there is plenty of that in the world and it can't be ignored -- but avoiding the predictable and repetitive fights online media thrives on), and focus my media consumption on interesting voices who are either articulating a positive vision I agree with or who I think have a unique and worthwhile perspective on things. Greenwald is the best example of why that is the better approach -- I believe he has correctly identified a number of systemic biases within mainstream media. Because mainstream media is so recalcitrant and defensive about those biases, Greenwald can (and pretty much does) respond to every single news cycle pointing out how those biases are at play in the coverage. I'm glad he's out there, but from the perspective of someone who is already convinced by his critique, the answer is not to read Greenwald but to try to ignore the people he is critiquing (which means ignoring Greenwald as well since that's basically all he writes about at this point). Reading too much Greenwald would be like if there was someone who I thought wrote devastating takedowns of Marvel movies, so I spent my time watching Marvel movies and reading the takedowns instead of watching movies I actually like.
But that's easier said then done. We live in an age of information pollution. There's only so many new and thoughtful opinions a person can form in a day; if you're trying to process 10 different national controversies a day, it's much easier to use tribes and shibboleths. You either have to withdraw from the news cycle or pick a team and ride with it.
As for your dilemma, I don't know how representative I am, but I probably read more of Greenwald's posts than yours but would not pay to subscribe to his Substack as I do with yours. Greenwald's posts are something I can plug into in any frame of mind because I already essentially know how I feel about the players involved and where I'm going to come down, whereas yours demand a level of focus and attention that I don't always have when I have 10 minutes to kill before a conference call or when I decide to spend half an hour online after putting the kids to bed. But, writing that I know will challenge and interest me and push me to think about the world in different ways is something I'm willing to pay to keep in the world, even if I don't get a chance to read all of it.
Maybe you can start doing an annual Week of Rage fundraiser, rattling off posts maximally calculated to snowball through Twitter and entice idiots to subscribe to display their loyalties in another dumb culture war skirmish. As readers, we'll do our part to play along and pick all the right fights and share the right hashtags to juice the ratings. Subscriptions roll in. Then when it's over, cool as a cucumber, go back to business as usual with Toni Morrison Appreciation Week.
I don't have anything to say about the quixotic appeal to positivity, but as an early year-long subscriber who reads almost everything you post and has for years and who has no plans to renew next year, maybe you'll appreciate this feedback which I have resisted the urge to email to you.
I mean, I like your writing, obviously, but a subscription is essentially a transaction, and as time goes in I've had an increasing amount of buyer's remorse in that I just don't feel like the subscription has been worth it. I'm not a Taibbi subscriber, but I am seemingly constantly getting emails from him that just as they are getting interesting hit me with "this is an excerpt from today's subscriber-only post," but the frequency and more importantly nature of the subscriber-only posts here has been such that I would have gotten 99% of the value from being a free rider. I don't like feeling this way or really mentioning it to you, but I feel like I owe you the feedback since you really seem interested in it. Perhaps this is just a personal idiosyncrasy, but that's where I'm at with your substack (the only one I have ever paid for, which is unlikely to change). I've never been a "support the devs" kind of person, so for me a subscription has to get me something I wouldn't get otherwise, and a general, "well if everyone stops subscribing the content will cease" argument is far too nebulous to motivate me. Anyway, I'm glad you're doing well from all this.
I think the American left and liberalism are looking more and more crazy, and, I am looking forward to reading Mark Levine's book: American Marxism. I think you tackle the tough questions Freddie.
I subscribe because you will tell what I and you believe is ‘evidence based’ truth. Start writing make believe and my subscription ends. If you were to write the truth and my beliefs were to take one in the chops, I would not cancel, but reevaluate. I’m a big boy and want the real ugly, unvarnished, and can be proven truth.
Speaking of Things You Could Do, Matt Taibbi's book about Eric Garner's murder, "I Can't Breathe," is terrific. It's a field study of the guy's life, the patch of Staten Island on which he sold loosies, the political context of what got him stopped and harassed for it -- basically everything that went into this incident, and took years to research and write, and then he got his book tour cancelled because he simultaneously got cancelled over that Exile nonsense (so canceling might not work for sending someone to the poorhouse, but it can do some damage, and not just to its target). Anyway, there's a thing to encourage from that guy, plus it's a good book anyway.
Good post. I can really see how frustrating it must be, and it has dispelled any remaining myths I had about how easy it must be to be a substack writer.
I also imagine it must be frustrating to see the confidence and assuredness of posts that say "if only you wrote the better posts that i think are good, you'd have a better writing career" knowing, from experience, that those insistent people either aren't actually reading your other posts, read them but don't comment with positive reinforcment, or are just insincere altogether.
Anyway, I want to thank Freddie for sharing as always and say that I'm satisfied, as a $5 patron, with the mix of stuff here.
You've mentioned this issue several times now. To what extent would simply responding "revealed preferences" to those who criticize your subject choices be enough?
As with so many other things in life, many people *say* they want one thing but when it comes to their actual behaviour they *do* something else entirely. And I think a lot of that is "wanting to want" something. Everyone *wants* to be a good person, but just because they say that doesn't mean much.
I think damn near everyone would agree that substantial, critical engagement along with highlighting more things they like as opposed to that which they hate would be a great thing. But that's hard and in a perverse way not as satisfying. And so we get what we have here, rather than the thing everyone claims they want. It's a tough hole to dig out of.
I think you've done a fantastic job balancing media criticism and criticism of the Wokes with the education pieces and reviews that you really want to write. Jesse Singal said something similar in an interview with Sam Harris...if he (Jesse) wanted to maximize his Substack revenue, he'd just write culture war stuff nonstop. But he has other passions and ideas, and he doesn't want to get sucked into that black hole where your audience captures you and drags you into Far Right Wackjob Land along with them. I can't tell you how many "independent" folks have fallen into that trap.
The way you've balanced your topics is spot-on from my perspective. Keep it up.
"I loved writing this post on the thinking behind changes to math pedagogy. And as is so often the case here, the comments were so sharp and engaging and substantive. That kind of mature, sensible, diverse, and informative conversation is truly rare on today’s internet. And some people corrected me on a few things, constructively, so now we both know more. It’s exactly what I want my blog to be. But the post only got 13,000 views, in large part because it got no pickup on Twitter...
"Perhaps you can make the internet a little better (I stress, a little) by doing good by your enemies. I ask you to recognize that hating your foes helps them, and while giving them certain kinds of attention won’t hurt them, it could help change the bad incentives that have us stuck in this hellhole.
"If you get annoyed at Matt Taibbi for being mean to liberal journalists, you could yell about him on Twitter... Or you could try sharing his interview with Dennis Kucinich or his review of Kucinich’s book..."
I'm subscribed here because you're supposed to be my "enemy" and you're interesting. I do love the posts about math pedagogy and whether YIMBYism (which I support) would work as intended, enough to be quite a pest in the comments sometimes (sorry!). I'm an escapee from a "THIS factory" myself, one where I didn't earn much money or attention, but where those who stayed — and (most importantly) conformed by performing the kind of outrage expected, especially of the women who write for it — did.
I don't know if I represent a type, but if I do, it's the type that stays the &^#$% away from Twitter and Facebook. This loses me opportunities to advertise and monetize my own talents, but since I can get by without, I do. I'd like to think, if I *could* stand these places, I'd use them to share content like yours. But I can't so I don't.
I don't know how many of your subscribers fit this type. Maybe there aren't many of us. But I'm assuming I'm not special (because, why would I be?). I can give you subscription money for as long as I can afford it, but not virality. And now I feel bad about that. But not bad enough to open a Twitter account.
I'm someone who (for a time) paid money for _The Fifth Column_ and _Blocked and Reported_. I stopped, because I found learning about the culture war stuff a lot like any vice: it's irresistible, but it makes me feel worse when I'm done. In the case of the culture war, I'm a conservative, so I *feel* like my side is losing and that all those around me (I'm a professor, so "those around me" are academics) are incredibly extreme and hate me. Intellectually, I know that my feelings overstate: (a) I'm sure the wokeies feel like their side is losing too; doesn't everyone feel like their side is losing? (b) even if it's true that America is getting woker and woker, it doesn't follow that this will stay the case forever -- our ignorance about the future is deep; and (c) even though my fellow academics are mostly on the woke left, it doesn't follow that they're the most extreme members of the woke left.
When you write about the woke left, this dynamic plays itself out as usual. I find your culture war stuff to be very alluring, but I feel pessimistic after I'm done. Weirdly, even though the situation is probably much worse for my views in education than in culture (I agree with both you and Bryan Caplan's views, to a large extent), I feel more optimistic after reading what you write on education. Maybe because there's a clearer agenda for what I want? Maybe because I'm *in* education, and so have more of a chance to make a positive difference? I don't know.
Finally, if I may make a trio of pitches: (a) I'm agnostic on the race science and IQ stuff--I just don't know enough, but from what I've seen when experts on one side debate experts on the other, it appears to be above my pay-grade; I'm very curious why you're so confident that people on the "there is some good evidence that racial disparities in IQ scores stem partly from genetic reasons" are not just wrong, but also racist? (b) Like I said, I have conservative politics--largely anti-gun control, generally pro-deregulation, on the fence (no pun intended) about immigration for cultural reasons, etc. Would you dislike me as a person because of my views? If not, why not? Would you just assume that my views are the result of false consciousness or something? (c) Do you have any interest in reviewing Caplan's _The Case Against Education_?
Anyway, thanks for writing whatever you want to write about. I love reading clear argumentation for interesting positions from someone whom I disagree with.
I like these "inside baseball" articles, and don't think your readers can begrudge you throwing out the occasional red meat column to boost readership. We can treat it as your version of advertising, and it's our own decision to read/skim/ignore.
My two cents on topic selection - Freddie, I think you're as well positioned as anyone to engage with ideas on the populist right - what actually has legs and what should be viewed with suspicion. Specifically, economic and inequality issues more than the culture war. This definitely reflects my biases, but I strongly believe we're not going to see a real challenge to the corporatist elite unless it appeals to both the cultural left and right - and importantly, the elite is working very hard to prevent any kind of populist red/blue unity.
I'd also assume this is the kind of project that could check both boxes of making the internet suck a little less and providing plenty of opportunities to generate controversy, clicks, and subscribers.
People pass around your pieces like contraband - as they do with anyone else who is brave enough to speak out and to do so fearlessly. They (we) feel angry and unable to really do anything about it without getting attacked. It's hard to be a thoughtful person as you are and try to find a place in a climate that wants you to only be one thing. Be one thing and sell that thing. We are all buzzing around like lost bees looking for our hive, and perhaps our queen. Like it or not you are one of the queens (bees-wise).
It was fascinating to read about how you think through these questions about readership and incentives. I'm glad you mentioned the Gawker strategy; I'm one of the people who doesn't really enjoy the media and woke criticism so much (not that I disagree), but because you've mentioned in the past that they bring in the subs, I was happy to just skim through them and wait for the content I enjoy more. (Like the Nation of Islam piece!)
As someone who mainly started reading you however many years ago because you offer leftist analysis from a genuinely left perspective (as opposed to "progressive liberal"), I am especially happy to hear that you've considered the warped incentives when it comes to conservatives cheering on left-on-left critique.
I wish you luck navigating all these challenges! You're a publication now, Freddie! :)
I've repeatedly tried (and repeatedly failed) to avoid the outrage cycles (which is not the same as avoiding negative or infuriating news -- there is plenty of that in the world and it can't be ignored -- but avoiding the predictable and repetitive fights online media thrives on), and focus my media consumption on interesting voices who are either articulating a positive vision I agree with or who I think have a unique and worthwhile perspective on things. Greenwald is the best example of why that is the better approach -- I believe he has correctly identified a number of systemic biases within mainstream media. Because mainstream media is so recalcitrant and defensive about those biases, Greenwald can (and pretty much does) respond to every single news cycle pointing out how those biases are at play in the coverage. I'm glad he's out there, but from the perspective of someone who is already convinced by his critique, the answer is not to read Greenwald but to try to ignore the people he is critiquing (which means ignoring Greenwald as well since that's basically all he writes about at this point). Reading too much Greenwald would be like if there was someone who I thought wrote devastating takedowns of Marvel movies, so I spent my time watching Marvel movies and reading the takedowns instead of watching movies I actually like.
But that's easier said then done. We live in an age of information pollution. There's only so many new and thoughtful opinions a person can form in a day; if you're trying to process 10 different national controversies a day, it's much easier to use tribes and shibboleths. You either have to withdraw from the news cycle or pick a team and ride with it.
As for your dilemma, I don't know how representative I am, but I probably read more of Greenwald's posts than yours but would not pay to subscribe to his Substack as I do with yours. Greenwald's posts are something I can plug into in any frame of mind because I already essentially know how I feel about the players involved and where I'm going to come down, whereas yours demand a level of focus and attention that I don't always have when I have 10 minutes to kill before a conference call or when I decide to spend half an hour online after putting the kids to bed. But, writing that I know will challenge and interest me and push me to think about the world in different ways is something I'm willing to pay to keep in the world, even if I don't get a chance to read all of it.
Maybe you can start doing an annual Week of Rage fundraiser, rattling off posts maximally calculated to snowball through Twitter and entice idiots to subscribe to display their loyalties in another dumb culture war skirmish. As readers, we'll do our part to play along and pick all the right fights and share the right hashtags to juice the ratings. Subscriptions roll in. Then when it's over, cool as a cucumber, go back to business as usual with Toni Morrison Appreciation Week.
This is mostly a joke. I think.
I don't have anything to say about the quixotic appeal to positivity, but as an early year-long subscriber who reads almost everything you post and has for years and who has no plans to renew next year, maybe you'll appreciate this feedback which I have resisted the urge to email to you.
I mean, I like your writing, obviously, but a subscription is essentially a transaction, and as time goes in I've had an increasing amount of buyer's remorse in that I just don't feel like the subscription has been worth it. I'm not a Taibbi subscriber, but I am seemingly constantly getting emails from him that just as they are getting interesting hit me with "this is an excerpt from today's subscriber-only post," but the frequency and more importantly nature of the subscriber-only posts here has been such that I would have gotten 99% of the value from being a free rider. I don't like feeling this way or really mentioning it to you, but I feel like I owe you the feedback since you really seem interested in it. Perhaps this is just a personal idiosyncrasy, but that's where I'm at with your substack (the only one I have ever paid for, which is unlikely to change). I've never been a "support the devs" kind of person, so for me a subscription has to get me something I wouldn't get otherwise, and a general, "well if everyone stops subscribing the content will cease" argument is far too nebulous to motivate me. Anyway, I'm glad you're doing well from all this.
I think the American left and liberalism are looking more and more crazy, and, I am looking forward to reading Mark Levine's book: American Marxism. I think you tackle the tough questions Freddie.
I subscribe because you will tell what I and you believe is ‘evidence based’ truth. Start writing make believe and my subscription ends. If you were to write the truth and my beliefs were to take one in the chops, I would not cancel, but reevaluate. I’m a big boy and want the real ugly, unvarnished, and can be proven truth.
Speaking of Things You Could Do, Matt Taibbi's book about Eric Garner's murder, "I Can't Breathe," is terrific. It's a field study of the guy's life, the patch of Staten Island on which he sold loosies, the political context of what got him stopped and harassed for it -- basically everything that went into this incident, and took years to research and write, and then he got his book tour cancelled because he simultaneously got cancelled over that Exile nonsense (so canceling might not work for sending someone to the poorhouse, but it can do some damage, and not just to its target). Anyway, there's a thing to encourage from that guy, plus it's a good book anyway.
Good post. I can really see how frustrating it must be, and it has dispelled any remaining myths I had about how easy it must be to be a substack writer.
I also imagine it must be frustrating to see the confidence and assuredness of posts that say "if only you wrote the better posts that i think are good, you'd have a better writing career" knowing, from experience, that those insistent people either aren't actually reading your other posts, read them but don't comment with positive reinforcment, or are just insincere altogether.
Anyway, I want to thank Freddie for sharing as always and say that I'm satisfied, as a $5 patron, with the mix of stuff here.
You've mentioned this issue several times now. To what extent would simply responding "revealed preferences" to those who criticize your subject choices be enough?
As with so many other things in life, many people *say* they want one thing but when it comes to their actual behaviour they *do* something else entirely. And I think a lot of that is "wanting to want" something. Everyone *wants* to be a good person, but just because they say that doesn't mean much.
I think damn near everyone would agree that substantial, critical engagement along with highlighting more things they like as opposed to that which they hate would be a great thing. But that's hard and in a perverse way not as satisfying. And so we get what we have here, rather than the thing everyone claims they want. It's a tough hole to dig out of.
I think you've done a fantastic job balancing media criticism and criticism of the Wokes with the education pieces and reviews that you really want to write. Jesse Singal said something similar in an interview with Sam Harris...if he (Jesse) wanted to maximize his Substack revenue, he'd just write culture war stuff nonstop. But he has other passions and ideas, and he doesn't want to get sucked into that black hole where your audience captures you and drags you into Far Right Wackjob Land along with them. I can't tell you how many "independent" folks have fallen into that trap.
The way you've balanced your topics is spot-on from my perspective. Keep it up.
I love your posts flaming the media. They are so fun to read.
"I loved writing this post on the thinking behind changes to math pedagogy. And as is so often the case here, the comments were so sharp and engaging and substantive. That kind of mature, sensible, diverse, and informative conversation is truly rare on today’s internet. And some people corrected me on a few things, constructively, so now we both know more. It’s exactly what I want my blog to be. But the post only got 13,000 views, in large part because it got no pickup on Twitter...
"Perhaps you can make the internet a little better (I stress, a little) by doing good by your enemies. I ask you to recognize that hating your foes helps them, and while giving them certain kinds of attention won’t hurt them, it could help change the bad incentives that have us stuck in this hellhole.
"If you get annoyed at Matt Taibbi for being mean to liberal journalists, you could yell about him on Twitter... Or you could try sharing his interview with Dennis Kucinich or his review of Kucinich’s book..."
I'm subscribed here because you're supposed to be my "enemy" and you're interesting. I do love the posts about math pedagogy and whether YIMBYism (which I support) would work as intended, enough to be quite a pest in the comments sometimes (sorry!). I'm an escapee from a "THIS factory" myself, one where I didn't earn much money or attention, but where those who stayed — and (most importantly) conformed by performing the kind of outrage expected, especially of the women who write for it — did.
https://holapapi.substack.com/p/lessons-from-the-this-factory
I don't know if I represent a type, but if I do, it's the type that stays the &^#$% away from Twitter and Facebook. This loses me opportunities to advertise and monetize my own talents, but since I can get by without, I do. I'd like to think, if I *could* stand these places, I'd use them to share content like yours. But I can't so I don't.
I don't know how many of your subscribers fit this type. Maybe there aren't many of us. But I'm assuming I'm not special (because, why would I be?). I can give you subscription money for as long as I can afford it, but not virality. And now I feel bad about that. But not bad enough to open a Twitter account.
I'm someone who (for a time) paid money for _The Fifth Column_ and _Blocked and Reported_. I stopped, because I found learning about the culture war stuff a lot like any vice: it's irresistible, but it makes me feel worse when I'm done. In the case of the culture war, I'm a conservative, so I *feel* like my side is losing and that all those around me (I'm a professor, so "those around me" are academics) are incredibly extreme and hate me. Intellectually, I know that my feelings overstate: (a) I'm sure the wokeies feel like their side is losing too; doesn't everyone feel like their side is losing? (b) even if it's true that America is getting woker and woker, it doesn't follow that this will stay the case forever -- our ignorance about the future is deep; and (c) even though my fellow academics are mostly on the woke left, it doesn't follow that they're the most extreme members of the woke left.
When you write about the woke left, this dynamic plays itself out as usual. I find your culture war stuff to be very alluring, but I feel pessimistic after I'm done. Weirdly, even though the situation is probably much worse for my views in education than in culture (I agree with both you and Bryan Caplan's views, to a large extent), I feel more optimistic after reading what you write on education. Maybe because there's a clearer agenda for what I want? Maybe because I'm *in* education, and so have more of a chance to make a positive difference? I don't know.
Finally, if I may make a trio of pitches: (a) I'm agnostic on the race science and IQ stuff--I just don't know enough, but from what I've seen when experts on one side debate experts on the other, it appears to be above my pay-grade; I'm very curious why you're so confident that people on the "there is some good evidence that racial disparities in IQ scores stem partly from genetic reasons" are not just wrong, but also racist? (b) Like I said, I have conservative politics--largely anti-gun control, generally pro-deregulation, on the fence (no pun intended) about immigration for cultural reasons, etc. Would you dislike me as a person because of my views? If not, why not? Would you just assume that my views are the result of false consciousness or something? (c) Do you have any interest in reviewing Caplan's _The Case Against Education_?
Anyway, thanks for writing whatever you want to write about. I love reading clear argumentation for interesting positions from someone whom I disagree with.
I like these "inside baseball" articles, and don't think your readers can begrudge you throwing out the occasional red meat column to boost readership. We can treat it as your version of advertising, and it's our own decision to read/skim/ignore.
My two cents on topic selection - Freddie, I think you're as well positioned as anyone to engage with ideas on the populist right - what actually has legs and what should be viewed with suspicion. Specifically, economic and inequality issues more than the culture war. This definitely reflects my biases, but I strongly believe we're not going to see a real challenge to the corporatist elite unless it appeals to both the cultural left and right - and importantly, the elite is working very hard to prevent any kind of populist red/blue unity.
I'd also assume this is the kind of project that could check both boxes of making the internet suck a little less and providing plenty of opportunities to generate controversy, clicks, and subscribers.