I really like what Robin Sloan writes here about being on platforms like substack– it’s the stupid choices that are the important ones:
“I’m conscious of the fact that it is, in some sense, stupid of me not to be on Substack. At the very least, I could be sending my newsletter for free, instead of paying a hundred bucks a month! Yet I suppose I think it’s the stupid choices that are the important ones. And I suppose I think a standard for art is that it doesn’t just play a game, but invents one. On an internet crowded with creators eager to obey each platform’s demands, follow their Best Practices (which harden into mandatory genres: quick-setting concrete), there is, I believe, an incandescence to stubborn specificity.”
At the very last paragraph he mentions an example of “ventilated prose” – wow I didn’t even know something like this exists. Clicking into the newsletter, everything is two lines of text, three max. Sloan laments if this is the end of the paragraph? I struggled to read that newsletter. It felt extremely choppy. I love writing long winding chunks of text here, and I love reading them too. I still remember reading Ocean Vuong’s “On earth we are briefly gorgeous” and having to take many deep breaths because of his beautiful prose. I can’t imagine a future when everything is just two lines.
Co-incidentally I watched a local youtuber talk about online dating yesterday, and she mentioned what drew her to her current partner was that “she could text in full paragraphs”. I was like what does she mean??
This also reminds me of someone writing that their much-younger colleagues are unable to sit through a full-length movie without doing something else. I guess I have reached the point in my life where there is truly a generation gap.
I wonder if things I love and consider as abundant – such as books, music, films – would go extinct one day because nobody can manage enough attention to make them anymore.
I too wish everyone can have their own website, but it remains still technically challenging for non-technical people in my opinion. Something that is friendlier like wordpress is still a pain to maintain, not to mention to negativity surrounding it these days. Most people don’t want to pay for a blog. We are conditioned to believe it should be free even though we now know it is never truly free. There is still no viable option at the moment.
In my opinion, people also don’t treat their own content seriously: they are happy to delete their stuff or they don’t mind when platforms die. They don’t see a website as a home where they can truly be themselves, and not be subject to the platform’s whims like what Sloan was writing about.
I think it is precious to be able to express our own thoughts, post our own art and have some sovereignty, especially at a time like this.