everyone looks stupid over text
plus links on the (minor?) writer's life
Every few years, a content platform or publisher decides that, after vomming up however many bajillion pieces of travel content into our lives, it should get a piece of the travel industry pie itself. BuzzFeed tried this, Lonely Planet and NatGeo make it work, hell there’s even an Atlantic cruise; now TikTok wants their slice. Sure! Why not! All the world’s a set now, anyway. Might as well charge your finder’s fee while it’s still here.
I don’t know why I’m still so cringed out when reading whichever rich/famous people’s digital communications are circulating in the public sphere at the moment, but my real takeaway from Reeves Wiedeman’s (hopefully) definitive explainer on the Justin Baldoni/Blake Lively mess re: It Ends With Us is how moronic everyone comes across in their text messages. You would think that like, on a literary level, written communications such as texts or emails would fold nicely into the flow of prose when you’re reading what is essentially more written communication (a magazine article). After all, a central problem with writing dialogue or conveying quotes is that you can’t actually write the way people speak; everyone understands implicitly that it looks crazy.
Arguably the whole premise of literature (see: Victorian novels, Paul’s epistles in the Bible) is letter-based, but it seems these digital micro-dispatches we dash off with our fingies on our phones are just so horrific for the reading eye to behold outside of their specific original context. (For example, on most occasions, I actually really despise it when someone, especially if I don’t know them well, sends me a screenshot of one of their text convos — just show me a nude while you’re at it if you’re already revealing all your emoji-based intimacies??). (<-I mean that’s a really extreme grumpy take and probably not in the majority opinion. Also if you are a friend I am not talking about you! Probably!!!)
But yeah back to Baldoni/Blake. I think we can all agree by now that here were two people who couldn’t have handled an afternoon shopping together, much less making a $300 million movie about domestic abuse, so the real journalistic coup here lies in showcasing just what kind of delusional texting was occurring on all sides. By the time I got to the financial backer texting “Right now I am in the mindset of my name is Onigo Montoya” [sic] I felt in my bones not only affirmation that Hollywood elites are dumb as rocks, but also that they never seem to have any references to anything besides the same three movies and Game of Thrones?
A few recent links regarding the conundrum of the writer’s life…
First, Scratch interviewed a few of the writers on Substack who aren’t the same 7 you’ve been hearing about (Deez Links of course being the exception as both indie darling and commercial success); I thought it was quite illuminating when they talked about how hard it was to actually move off Substack as a platform if you want to go to Ghost, Beehiiv, etc.:
How easy or difficult was the process of leaving? This includes migrating existing subscribers, moving their financial information over, any new backend tech issues you encountered, etc.
FC: Full disclosure, it was a nightmare. But the reason it was a nightmare was fully because of Substack. Their data export is terrible, and they give you almost no data aside from subscribers and the words you’ve written. I lost every single paywall, every lede image. Formatting was a mess. Subscriptions duplicated. There were payment issues. It took about six months for me to stop fielding regular questions or issues from subscribers. Most of the issues I had could have been avoided if Substack’s data export was better, but that’s just another way they keep you dependent on their platform — by withholding your own data and IP from you.
I wrote something a few years ago along the lines of how a good newsletter exit strategy is hard to find, which was merely based on the premise of “but what happens when you want to quit and everyone’s already paid for those annual subscriptions.” So it seems the whole monetized direct relationship thing is hairy in many ways. For now, the best option for getting off one’s current newsletter platform at least seems to be 1) Be Max Read, or someone of that caliber, and 2) Get courted by Patreon to switch over. (I support getting of the bag but I’m not sure I want all those emails about every subsequent creator that Read Max now “recommends” on Patreon; wow suddenly Substack Notes doesn’t seem that annoying anymore?) Anyway some Patreon bucks doesn’t really solve the problem of how to fully but easily own your relationship with your audience, but hey it’s hard to build your own hamster wheel!
Secondly: Matthew Donovan wrote an interesting response from his reading group to that Josh Kline essay on the ruin of American art (the main link that took you to the PDF has since been taken down, it appears!) where he articulated “the minor-artist position” in a way that feels refreshing in a time where the image of the ultra-sponsored creative life seems to be the only mode worth aspiring to:
The minor-artist position is not a post-collapse hypothetical. Some of us are already there. Some of us have been there since before the word for it existed. Where we came from, becoming a writer wasn’t an option. Some of us did it anyway, and I still don’t know how. I don’t know how long it lasts. I don’t know what I go back to if it stops. I have a friend I have coffee with who tells me we are lifers, that we have always lived on nothing, that this is fine. We laugh. It’s not fine, life is “grotesquely expensive.” We laugh anyway.
And author Geoffrey Mak nicely added to Matthew’s post on Notes, noting (heh), “This might be a call to cultivating a life as a minor writer.” Both things extremely invigorating to read if the sound of your own (hamster) wheels is making you crazy.
Third: Julia Carpenter showed me this newsletter post, A Year in the Life of a Novel, from author Laura Van Den Berg, after she (Julia) and I got lunch this week in FiDi. We were talking about big projects and the value of putting them on “simmer” in the back of our heads from time to time, and this ‘letter from LVDB is a fantastic endorsement of that strategy. Also there’s just a lot of great process-y detail in there — more than enough to remind us all that the Work is It.
Finally… 👀
Pregnant? Trying? Screaming, crying, throwing up? Read Amanda Hess’s memoir SECOND LIFE: HAVING A CHILD IN THE DIGITAL AGE, a story about technology’s dark influence over reproduction that Vulture called “an unexpected page-turner” and “as vulnerable as it is sharp.” Now in paperback.
New Yorkers! The WNBA is back, and so is Defector Media’s WNBA-themed comedy show, Ten Minute Quarters, at Littlefield in Gowanus on Monday May 18. There’ll be games, predictions, giveaways, and a lineup of hilarious comics from Comedy Central, HBO, and the Late Late Show. Go to defector.com/wnbashow for tickets, and use code LETSGOLIBS for 10% off.
Cuttino Mobley, Brandon Bass, Leon Powe, Al Harrington, Monta Ellis, cmon…those guys were awesome. I love guys like that. Listen to the Nothing But Respect podcast hosted by Harry Krinsky and Patrick Redford. Part of Defector Media.
