Undefine yourself
Against being just one thing in the subscription economy era.
Life has been busy lately.
Not in a hectic, “don’t have a minute for myself, can’t wait to die to finally rest” kind of busy but more in a “I wish I didn’t have to go to the opera this evening because I’m still tired from visiting museums and going to the cinema yesterday1” kind of busy.
Can’t complain so I won’t, but in the spirit of transparency I felt I needed to give you some context to account for my absence since the last time I published something here.
Which coming to think about it, it is perhaps quite irrelevant as you may cross paths with these lines in two months’ time, a year or maybe never, and therefore the lapse of time that has passed between my last publication and the moment you finally lay eyes on this one (which at the time of writing is new but it may be old when you read it) will have probably erased and you will experience these lines as a continuum of previous entries.
That’s the magic of the internet: things can lay dormant in the depths of the world wide web for years before an algorithm awakens them, which is a good premise for a modern fairy tale.
But let us not get lost in useless preambles and let me proceed to the reasons I’m finally back with you in this present (or future, or maybe even past) moment.
Reason number 1: I’ve finally found the time to do so.
Reason number 2: I’ve had a very interesting conversation with a client on something that I’ve been thinking about for years, and which despite experiencing it myself often, I needed to hear from someone else for it to finally click.
But before we dive in in the topic in question, you must know that the newsletter you are currently reading has had many false starts years before arriving to its present form and current hosting platform.
Many years ago, in what know is probably regarded as the online version of a papyrus, I started a blog in Wordpress with intention to write about the many and varied things that I am interested in. Since the technicalities of a wordpress blog are a bit more complex than those of Substack, where luckily one only needs to concentrate on the writing and not on understanding html code, I wasn’t particularly active as I spent more time making sure the content wasn’t all over the place (quite literally) than I did on writing, so the blog was neglected for years before I finally shut it down for good when I noticed I was still paying for a domain I was not using.
My first attempt at writing on substack on non-work related matters didn’t feel satisfying enough or reflective of all the things I wanted it to encompass. This was entirely my fault as I had decided, without anyone asking or demanding it, that I had to focus on one main topic, with maybe a couple of tangents at most, but at any rate I had to create content that could be immediately understood and guided by a common thread connecting the different pieces I aspired to write about so I could attract the right audience and had a shot at being seen online. The result was that I put it on hold for months as I felt creatively constraint.
And with that let’s come back to the present day, current newsletter and the conversation with my client.
Peter (nom de plume) is the UK Managing Director of a European creative agency that has recently set up in London and he is in charge of their business development activities. Peter suggested we had this call to explain how they company has pivoted from their original line of business in order to serve better the UK market.
In fact, Peter goes on to explain that while back home they are well known for a wide range of creative services (from design, employer brand management, advertising and the likes), he and the founder of the company -who happens to be his brother-in-law, so great news as Peter will be my contact for the foreseable future unless he gets a divorce- quickly realised that approach wouldn’t work for the UK market, where specialisation is the winning card.
I won’t bother you with work talk but when you’re a newcomer in a mature market you need to be able to define what you do, or the problem you solve, in one sentence. If you are great at multiple things, kudos to you, but don’t expect people in a new market immediatly get what you can do for them when you tell them you can do everything. That is the shortest way for your plans to backfire. People are busy and don’t have time to understand all the wonderful things you excel at and can do for them, especially when you’re a stranger, so the easier you make it for them to “get your thing”, the better.
Peter explains their new approach to the market -an AI-powered app that scans media outlets to spot trends by topic, market or business area- and I nod in agreement. “This shows a true understanding of the British business culture” I tell him.
“Well, after so many years here something sticks. I first came to London in 2009 as I’m actually an art dealer by training” he says. “I came for an interview with Sotheby’s and I just couldn’t believe my luck as in my head this was the perfect place for me. But you wouldn’t believe how very corporate they were in their management style. In fact, I remember the day of the interview I was asked what I could do, what I knew, you know, the usual questions.”
He takes a moment, as if summoning the memories of that day, before adding “The way we study back home is quite different. You have to learn about everything and are expected to have this 360 approach to things so I was very confident in my skills when I was asked what I could do. I started listing everything I had been taught. I could frame paintings, nail them on a wall, prepare catalogues, draft contracts, help with displays for auctions, etc. While I was talking, the interviewer wasn’t looking at me, but he kept writing down things on my CV so I thought I was nailing it.”
Peter makes another pause before revealing the turn his story took: “And then when I stopped talking he looked up at me and simply said: ‘So you’re good at nothing. Don’t you have any area of expertise then?’ and I was quite taken aback because in my mind I thought I was a great fit as I could adjust to anything they needed me to do. But it turned out they struggled to see how I could fit in because they couldn’t place me in anything specific. And I thought I was going to a creative place, you know?” he shrugs and producing a smile he just says “Creative my ass, they only wanted to understand which label they could put on me!” and with that we explode in laughter.
I share with Peter that as a fellow continental European it took me a while to adjust to the British undying love for specialisation and being extremely knowledgeable on one topic or very good at doing just one thing. No doubt this mindset stems from their education system, which is a lot more concise and subject-specific than the one back home where we had to study a wide range of compulsory subjects -from biology and physics to religion and plastic arts- and which accounts for the big picture mindset most European people I know operate on.
Something that extends to undergraduate studies, which back in my day were 5 compulsory years. For convenience I always tell people I have an undergraduate degree in English but it was actually a mix of foreign languages (English, French, Italian), foreign literature (in the same languages), linguistics, language acquisition, translation, morphology, syntax, grammar and phonetics. Plus the elective subjects, which had to be on something completely different (hello, History of Urbanism I and II).
But yes, I studied English because that is much more recognisable and easier to place. Like Peter I too learned that sometimes you need to put yourself in a box when people don’t know you yet and they need you to be just one thing at a time before they are ready to absorb all the other bits that made you, you.
“You need to adjust” Peter tells me as we continue our conversation. “If people can’t place you quickly, or think of you as their go-to person for one thing, whether knowledge, expertise, product or service, they just don’t know what to do with you. And then no matter how brilliant you are, you’re worthless to them if they don’t know how to define you. It’s funny how people feel lost when you try to explain to them that you can actually be more than just one thing."
He speaks now from experience, having transitioned from art dealer to business man leading the London office of a newly created AI-based app. I learn that he eventually got the job at Sotheby’s, an opportunity he didn’t waste in light of the revelation that he bought a space in South Kensington, which he used as his art gallery when he decided to quit Sotheby’s after having acquired the experience needed to set up his own business, and which now doubles up as the London office for the company he works for.
“It’s quite a paradox because back home people praise you for being adaptable to anything life throws at you. A jack of all trades, in a way, which has quite a bad reputation here. In this country people need you to be easily defined, especially if you’re foreign as they can’t apply the same benchmark they use with locals and they’re already having a hard time understanding where your accent comes from.”
He chuckles at his own joke before shifting to a more serious tone “Once you have established yourself for the one thing you do like no one else, you can start showcasing all the other things you also do and are. But until then stick to your lane or they’d freak out. This has always been quite confusing to me. As if we were ever just one thing in life!”
We chat a bit more about cultural shocks and our common ground as Europeans before we say goodbye and wish each other a good weekend.
I check the time and since I have 30 minutes before my next call, I decide to make a pause and have a coffee. As I place the moka on the stove, Peter’s words about how we are never just one thing yet we are expected to be easily defined are still echoing in my head.
For years I’ve reflected and filled diaries on my thoughts about how we transition through life changing shapes (from babies to adults), likes, dislikes, relationship status, jobs, interests, language, maybe even gender, faith, sexual orientation, or nationality and yet we are expected to carve an existential niche and define ourselves in a few words, to place ourselves into a personal or professional box that makes it convenient for others to label us and decide if we’re the right fit for whatever restrictive category it is they want to put us in.
Perhaps because I’m an anarchist at heart with a profound rejection of rules and systems that impose how we should exist in the world, especially when those systems are based on being productive and generate tangible benefits, I struggle with having to adopt one identity, figuratively or literally, that will no doubt confine me into a box, or a label, that will be used to define me for the rest of my life for a part instead of the whole that I’m made of. But I admit there is a logic in this system, which is aimed at assigning us a place in production chain -digital or physical- where we can be of use, ideally contributing to fattening the profits of the system we live in.
The conversation with Peter has also brought to mind another topic that I have been reflecting on for the past few weeks: the fallacy of the subscription economy and its need for recognisable, go-to creators that audiences can instantly place because they add “value” to them. And with that they become praised members of the online production chain as they attract paid subscribers steadily.2
While I understand many professional writers have found in a platform like this a much welcome space to escape traditional media and publishing outlets, the subscription economy (don’t be tricked into thinking you are part of the creator economy for there is no such a thing anymore, you only create for people to subscribe to whatever it is you produce) is a losing game and forces anyone wishing to create original content of any kind to be fit into a creative box, from where they are expected to churn articles on the subject their audience expects them to write about.
And all this because in the realm of content creation people need to quickly assert if you’re worth their scrolling time in the loo , sorry I meant if you can add value.
Since the start of the year I’ve witness what I’ve called the big social media exodus, creators that have announced they are finally got ridden of their tyrannic social media accounts and are now in search for more organic, slow-paced ways of interacting with others in order to build a community3. In Substack, they say, they have finally found that.
Not sure if there might be a VIP version of the app, but the one I’m using pushes my way an alarming growing rate of content on how to attract your first 100 subscribers, tips on how to play the substack growth game, understand online marketing to get your content be seen, or whether with so much long form content being created (wasn’t that what people expected from this platform in first place?) having a pull quote could be a good strategy to attract readers without them having to commit to reading 5000 words4.
People have been writing about fleeing Instagram, finally freeing themselves of its attention-grabbing engagement tyranny, pestering about how they craved more in-depth content, how the algorithm had ruined everything and now they were being targeted by endless ads only to start building the foundations of another soulless online pit here. It’s as if everyone who is praising Substack for being the opposite of what they were escaping from had suddenly realise that it could actually do with being more like Instagram.
What in the fucking name of baby Jesus?
Humanity both fascinates me and scares me.
As part of my job I’ve been observing closely from the outside the subscribtion economy phenomenon before being somewhat inside it. I can confidently tell you that it is a total scam.
And if you don’t agree think twice before furiously typing in the comments all the reasons I’m wrong and you’re right. This is not The Guardian’s comment section.
Models such as Substack are the most visible face of the subscription economy -which currently is strong in entertainment and media, think Spotify or any streaming service you pay for- but it is expected to expand towards other sectors, including real estate.
Paying for services on a regular basis instead of being able to own a product and enjoy it for free after a one-off payment doesn’t look such a good deal to me, no matter how you flip it or how much you use the word “sustainability” to sell it to me. The subscription economy, in case it needed to be spelled out, will not impact the asset-owning ruling classes. If anything it may even benefit them further and put them in yet another pedestal.
For all I know we may be about to go back to the days when only people who owned land could vote. For the rest of us, especially the assetless many, it may mean we may never be able to own anything ever again. That shit is getting closer to the fan by the hour.
When you translate that to the creator (but in reality subscriptor) economy things aren't much better.
How many writers you follow here justify themselves often for not having posted in say a few days, two weeks, or a month (all very insignificant amounts of time in the great scheme of things) because they are actually focused on doing their main job, writing a book, which requires to take time away from potential distractions, or are simply busy living life?5
Or how many writers plan content in advance when they need to take time off so you, me, us, have something to read while we’re in the toilet, enjoying yet another carefully crafted piece on French structuralism while we wait for the big splash?
One of the underlying problems in the subscriptor economy is that it has led creators towards the trap of having to offer their audience -that mythological creature many claim to have tamed but which is eternally feral- what they want as often as possible in order to be rewarded with having an audience in first place that they now have to work even harder to maintain because it is a faceless digital Caesar that can decide if your content lives or dies by pressing a subscribe/unsubscribe button at their whim.
I couldn’t disagree more with such a model.
First because a creative outlet -digital or physical- is a space to be selfish, to do what we like, not what others expect us to do. Social conventions already take care of that. If the impressionists had decided to stick to what the members of the French Academy considered respectable art, because that’s what the public liked, the stop oil protesters wouldn’t have had anything to throw soup at today.
Art for art’s sake as the aesthetic movement has taught us. It doesn’t have to serve a purpose or be useful or inspire or enlighten. It simply has to be something we, the creators, want to create. Which is not the same as saying that, in the process, we can also achieve more than we initially set out to do and someone may find it useful. But the original intention of any creative endeavour should simply be animated by the creator’s vision, not the need to cater to the public’s taste.
Which brings me back to Peter and the app his company is working on, which scans trends globally and offer insights to media outlets for them to produce what the public already wants. Something that is very much the modus operandi of content creation today and the reason why everyone is in chase of an audience, a following, a growing number of subscribers. Only then traditional media and publishing houses may notice them and approach them because they are a safe bet with an already consolidated public that will, no doubt, jump at the opportunity of buying/consuming/watching anything coming from their adored online creator.
The other reason I have an issue with the need of the subscriber economy to place both creators and audiences into well-defined boxes that can snuggly fit into each other is because if someone freely engages with our content they should also be free to stop doing so when it’s no longer relevant and we should all be fine with that and carry on writing about whatever the fuck we want because -as already stated- this is our place to be selfish and we shouldn’t have any expectation to attract or keep anyone. Whether they pay or not. It’s the only way we can avoid creativity to become transactional.
For in fact, the subscription economy is a rigged game from the start for anyone with true creative aspirations for they can’t help but become a hamster in the online wheel of productivity -the basis of which the system that is meant to free them is built- which is the stepping stone to building that sought-after audience, but productivity is the antithesis of creativity, so while you’re busy posting to build your audience, your creative spark is shining a little less brightly every day.
The subscription economy is especially damaging for long-form writing, whose natural habitat is the physical form and whose quality depends on spending time away from any productive task so we can think, pause, reflect, live, experience the world, engage in as many non-writing activities as possible, feel what we are going through while taking part in said activities, do a bit more of thinking and reflecting, and eventually processing everything before we are in the right mindset to pour all this whirlwind of diverse input into words.
The opposite of what online audiences demand and what the system expects from you. Yes, substack may give you freedom to create on your own terms, but not at your own pace. Don’t fall for that.
But they aren’t the villain in this story nor the ones to have initiated this urge for constant engagement with people we have never met and we shouldn’t, and I can’t stress this enough, really care that much about anyway. I miss when we were able to simply admire people from a distance, without any means to connect with them in any way. I found that a much healthier way of showing respect for any creator as we allowed them time to create without imposing on them any demands.
Before the arrival of social media and its potential for audience/fan engagement who expected any writer, actor, musician, or artist to be so easily accessible or that they created content for us on a weekly basis? No one. Not you, not me and definitely not Arturo Pérez-Reverte, who promised us two other Capitán Alatriste novels more than 10 years ago and still hasn’t found the time to write them but he is on twitter every single day. Sorry I’ve kept that inside for far too long and needed to let it out.
Revenons à nos mutons.
As I was saying, think of a writer that you love, or a film director or a musician.
I am sure you don’t punish them (or shouldn’t) for writing a book you are not interested in or making a movie that doesn’t resonate with you or for releasing an album whose sound is a departure from previous works you loved. You may not read that book or watch that movie or listen to those songs, but you don’t write them off altogether for creating a piece that doesn’t cater to your specific taste. At least at that moment in time.
I even venture to claim that you may still like them even though they are not on any social media or online platform where you can stalk them and demand they post more regularly or you’ll unfollow them6.
So say you don’t unsubscribe to your creative idols because 1) you just can’t and 2) there is somehow a tacit agreement that those producing content offline are exempt from the rules we apply to those producing content online. We seem to grant offline authors wider creative freedom. Perhaps because being unable to subscribe to them we feel less entitled to demand they adhere to regular publishing schedules and content consistency. But beware as an online creator about stepping outside of the two-line bio you have used to help people understand what to expect from you. One off-topic post on anything not listed in the words, or category, that define you and it’s unsubscription galore7.
The medium is the message after all.
And yet we should want and encourage creative people, regardless of the medium, to take their time so they can surprise us and don’t be formulaic, and can explore new territories, depart from what they have done before and dive into new creative waters from where they will emerged filled with ideas. We should expect randomness from everyone because that is the only way we can make serendipitous findings. The opposite of well-defined, easily marketable, rather profitable content, but also of what we are willing to expect from anyone inside the box we have put them into.
At the beginning of the week I finished reading Erasure by Percival Everett and I went to see again its recent screen adaptation, American Fiction, so I can’t help to draw comparisons with the topics these works explore and what I am discussing here.
To be unique one has to be undefinable in some way. Otherwise we are just walking down a well trodden creative path.
That’s what Thelonious “Monk” Ellison, the protagonist of Erasure/American Fiction realises early on and lives by. He is uncompromising in his art, even if that means his books remain largely unsold and very much unread as he’s failing to pen a work that conforms to the black writer narrative that white people demand from him.
One day Monk, tired of how novels of scarce literary value but compliant with the expectations about what a black book should be about and therefore commercially successful, decides to make fun on the system he’s part of and writes a spoof novel about life in the ghetto. But it backfires quickly as what was meant as a joke on the state of the literary scene and a farce has now everyone talking about the writer of the moment.
I can’t recommend highly enough that you read the novel or watch the film (the adaptation is very good and I dare say adds a few extra touches that work a treat) if you have ever felt at the crossroads of creating what you want or creating what the public wants, and perhaps even expects of you based on the box they have put you in.
As stated before I’m aware that many have found a lifeline in being in control of their own creative production and engagement with their audience through online platforms. And if that’s you -unlikely you’re reading this, but you never know- I’m very happy for you and I’m glad this is working in your favour.
But those are the chosen few. I understand and consider fair that one is economically retributed for their work, the problem is that we are transitioning towards a model where more and more online content is accessible on a subscriber-basis only. And even though subscriptions have been around for a while, we usually pay to have access to legacy media outlets, or services, not individuals.
Today the subscription economy for creators resembles a global talent show where many are incredibly good but only a few will be able to be successfully absorbed by an already saturated market, and even fewer will be able to make a career out of it.
One of my arguments against paid subscriptions for creators -which are the raison d’être of the rise of this new economic model, and I repeat I am fully aware of the work that goes into producing quality content and I think it should be rewarded- is that by making people pay by default to access our individual content -not that of an established media outlet or a service- we may inadvertently be contributing towards the birth of a dystopian future where we eventually become our own means of production and have to target any living being and convert him into a subscriber, for whom we need to create yet another piece of content in an eternal cycle of excruciating online production that will stop only with our death.
Or that of all our subscribers, whatever happens first. And here it’s where one should be glad to have a discrete number of them. The odds may be in your favour.
I’m actually terrified of this scenario as the future of work seems to point towards that direction and it’d be a terrible step backwards in terms of rights if that eventually materialises. In the subscriber economy you depend on you working 24/7 to cater to your audience, who are anywhere in the world, active anytime of the day.
As much as I love finally being able to ramble about anything I like, I am not sure I would thrive in a system where I am expected to generate my own money instead of receiving a salary, and a number of extra benefits including pension contributions and paid holidays during which I am not expected to work at all. Not to speak of not having to do any admin for tax returns for subscription money from all over the world (although if you are that successful you probably don’t mind a bit of paperwork, maybe you even have someone who does it for you)
Plus the pressure of having an audience would eventually made me hate my life.
As I said to a colleague this week I’ve never been afraid of failure, that’s something I’m quite comfortable with. However, I’m terrified of being successful because then I’ll have lots of expectations placed on me to carry on being successful -which often means extremely productive- when my only ambition in life is to be like Prince Nikolay Bolkonsky in War and Peace and spend my days inside my immense and well-stocked library in my cosy country house.
And which audience are we talking about anyway? And why is that of any relevance? Don’t they too change taste and interests just like any of us do? The audiences of today are more fickle than your tinder matches. At most any given audience is ephemeral and transient, and specific to the point in time they cross paths with whatever we happen to have written, or created, that has attracted them to us. Which is no guarantee that they’d be interested in previous, or future, outputs.
We live in a time where we’re spoilt for choice when it comes to content and entertainment and have come to expect it anywhere, anytime, from anyone to the point we are somewhat desensitised towards the effort that it takes to produce it. Just think about how you feel after you’ve spent hours slow cooking your homemade ragù only for people to be done with it in 15 minutes. Yes, they tell you it’s excellent, but all it takes for them to be done with it is a few mouthfuls while it’s taken you the best part of a day to make it.
Creating something good, anything, takes and requires time. Not so much an audience8.
Gone too are the days where we had to wait for another episode of our favourite show that was broadcast on a specific day and time. There was anticipation but also communality as many others were also in front of the tv on the same day and time enjoying that same show. I’ve been able to relate to people in different countries and across age groups thanks to having been exposed to The Simpsons or Friends.
Today there’s far more fragmentation and the endless content available and accessible from anywhere in the world means that two people of similar age and living in the same place are exposed to completely different content based on their individual taste, which makes it more challenging to find common ground and feel connected to others as we have stopped sharing the same cultural references.
Did any of you boycott the film industry in support of the Hollywood strikes against AI? If we still lived in the pre-streaming service days, perhaps the impact of the strikes would have been more deeply felt for the individual public. Imagine the strikes putting on hold Friends, a series watched by millions over the world, for a few months. But in the era of social media and Netflix it only takes one episode of Bridgerton 2 to carry on with our lives and forget AI is the bane of our existence.9
Netflix and chill is the XXI century version of panem et circenses.
In the era of global content creation and fragmented attention spans, the urge to be easily defined as a writer or creator so that a formless audience can find you and your content quickly and help you build a living (for that’s the goal, let’s be quite honest here) when our taste and likes change by the minute in response to the buckets of online content thrown at us is something that escapes my understanding.
And that’s probably why the conversation with Peter has stirred all these thoughts about why anyone ever would want to be just one thing for a specific public.
I’ve always tried to avoid being defined by others -and because my mind thrives on variety and change- I am particularly resistant to consistency of any kind, especially in relation to creative endeavours. When it comes to writing, and in order to give a potential reader -note I don’t say audience- the opportunity to decide if they want to read more of what I write about, I believe it is a mistake to have any expectations or to put too much emphasis on making sure they understand what we are about from the start so we can quickly convert them into regular readers and hopeful loyal future audience members.
If building good content takes time, building a real community (not an audience) takes patience and understanding.
Desire is the cause of all suffering, as yoga teaches us, and we shouldn’t aspire to build an audience or even attract readers, and definitely it should not be on readers to make a commitment to our writing, whether consistent and on topic or plagued by unconnected pieces on anything under the sun. Readers, like writers, are free to choose what they read about, how much, for how long, how often or if anything at all.
I truly cannot comprehend why anyone is losing any sleep over building an online audience. Yes, there’s of course satisfaction and pride in knowing others appreciate and enjoy anything we have put out there in the world, and it’s no doubt an encouragement to keep on writing, or creating in whatever discipline, but at the same time it is a burden. And a shortcut to reduce one’s freedom overnight.
Personally, after years suppressing my creative impulses because I convinced myself that writing was only worthy if you had a clear idea of what you wanted to write about instead of simply writing about anything you enjoyed for the sake of it, my only aspiration now is to make up for lost time. I am my only audience and yet I still manage to disappoint myself quite often. Don’t need to extend that to more people.
I’m of the opinion that one should, first and foremost, write for oneself and only about whatever one is interested in. Anything else is irrelevant and would likely produce mediocre pieces that aim to satisfy as many people as possible by avoiding being too personal, polemic, opinionated or offensive. No one dreams of waking up one day and find out they’re a bland PG-rated writer loved by everyone.
That’s why I approach this writing venture (however long or short lived it’ll prove to be) with a total lack of desire for success or recognition or interest in being easily defined or placed under any category because that would immediately put me in a position where I’d be attracting an audience against my will, and then they would expect me to be their go-to person for X topic, and once I would have established my reputation I would be expected to actually write instead of merely thinking about writing and I would live in a perpetual anxious state, feeling creatively crippled but also fearing to disappoint my audience by drifting away from what they expect me to forever and solely write about as long as I live and they pay.
As if we ever were, or liked, just one thing in life.
What a fucking nightmare that would be.
Abroad is an independent publication about identity and belonging, living in between cultures and languages, the love of books, music, films, creativity, life in London, and being human in the age of artificial intelligence.
Based on true events. I won’t elaborate as I don’t want to give you the wrong impression and make you think my rants about the cost of living crisis and my frustration at being able to independently own a property in London despite having a good job are just a façade and that in reality I lead a life of privilege and cultural abundance. I fucking wish.
Here I’m taking a moment to roll my eyes in a mix of tedium, disbelief and what I believe is jaded cynicism for I have both no reasons to trust the system I’m part of but also reasons why I don’t trust it.
More eye rolling. Community is code for audience, which is code for paid subscribers, which stands for “I think I can capitalise this platform better than Instagram.”
By all means, if that’s your jam and you do also do that for a living beyond Substack, just crack on with it. And even if you only do it for the sake of building an audience, your substack your content. I am a polite person and believe in respecting other people’s choices while silently judging them for every mistake they’re making along the way.
Have I or haven’t I started this same entry justifying my absence even if, let’s be real, no one has noticed?
Whatever you do, please don’t be a sore loser. It’s pathetic.
When I created my instagram account about books, I removed a picture that I felt didn’t fit anymore with the content I wanted to share. I received a message from a follower saying they would now be unfollowing because I had removed that post, which contained a book by an author they loved and was the reason they had followed me, as they expected me to keep on writing about them. I feel people forget that they join freely and they can leave freely but also that they too can create whatever they like instead of demanding it from others.
Cristina, but you are writing here! I hear you say. Yes, yes, but you forget we live in a capitalist system and sometimes to change the rules you have to play the game first and fight the status quo from the inside. How am I expected to overthrow the subscription economy otherwise if I’m not a part of it?
During a roundtable on film that I hosted last year with representatives from the industry, it was shared that the actors’ strikes were actually benefitting streaming platforms as audiences were turning to them to satisfy their demands for content. And to prove it, Netflix 2023 profits exceeded all expectations. Even after the password gate.