On sticking around

An essay about this newsletter (that I hope is about more than this newsletter)

Oh jeez, this is such an insular topic. There are far more important issues in the world than the question of which platform I or any other writer uses to send our emails. I debated not saying anything about it at all, mostly because I doubted that I had the juice to craft an essay that wouldn’t bore you all half to death. The verdict is still out on that front, but I’m a believer in transparency. Since this space wouldn’t exist without you all, if I ever make a big decision about the operations of this newsletter, I owe it to all of you to share my thinking out loud.

Plus, even relatively small decisions can be allegories. I have a hunch that might be the case here.

The context:

This newsletter exists because of a business relationship between myself and Substack. They provide me with a quite nice (and extremely user friendly) set of tools to write, share and make a living off of my alternately silly and self righteous little essays. In return, I let them shave off 10% of my revenue. Fair enough.

Now, Substack is a big name in the “sending essays via email” space, home to a lot of fancier names than “the White guy who always capitalizes White in his essays, for some reason.” They are also an ambitious, venture capital-funded, Silicon Valley company whose founders’ values differ from some of the more left-learning writers who’ve set up shop under their banner (particularly when it comes to the “free speech” vs. content moderation question). You know, writers like me. 

As a result of this disconnect, there’ve been no shortage of Substack-related dust-ups over the past couple years. You may remember the 2022 edition, which focused on the question of whether Substack was disproportionally supporting anti-trans writers. Earlier this winter, you likely heard that a whole bunch of us said, “Hey, it seems like your lack of content moderation means that active Nazis get to do their active Nazi thing here (and even make money doing so)… can you fix that?”

If you have ever worked for a company that doesn’t share your values (and who you believe is causing harm), you’ve probably been in this situation. Initial agitation gets some results, but those tiny wins are rarely satisfactory. And then, the newly riled up masses are left with a choice: Do we stick around or do we leave?

In the case of the most recent l’affaire Substack, if you subscribe to more than one newsletter, you may have already received multiple “why I’m leaving” or "why I’m staying” emails from authors. Plenty of good folks have made both calls. Many more have thought about it. Including me! Quite a bit, actually! And I was pretty sure I had made up my mind.

On why I had one foot out the door

Well, first and foremost, I was about to leave Substack because it was a comparatively un-risky option for me to do so. That’s not to say that there wasn’t any risk involved (one of the things Substack does much better than other platforms is enabling writers to recommend and promote each other, which is how a ton of you found out about me), but (1). The other major options all offered the basic functions I needed, which isn’t true for everybody¹ and (2). I am a straight white male whose wife has a steady, full-time job with health insurance. While our family’s income is impacted by the ebbs and flows of my writing/Barnraisers income (more on that in a second), I can afford to take a calculated risk in moving to a new platform that, for instance, might not send as many new subscribers my way but offers significantly lower overhead costs. Plus, I was losing a fair number of subscribers (paid and free) because of the Nazi controversy, so for purely selfish short-term reasons, the grass was looking pretty darn green elsewhere.

I lead with this information because I have heard the sometimes implicit, sometimes explicit assumption that the writers who’ve departed Substack are braver and more principled than those who’ve stayed. Having talked to dozens of writers who’ve made both moves, I can assure you: everybody is authentically trying to weigh the morality of the situation (both the leavers and the stayers), but they’re also running cost/benefit analyses for their individual small businesses. And there’s nothing wrong with it, but it can get lost in the bluster. Everybody’s situation is different, but in my case, leaving would have been logistically annoying but not devastating.

All of that said, I did have ethical reasons for almost leaving Substack. For those of you who’ve followed my writing for a while, you’ll know that I’m actually not a big fan of individual purity politics. Our goal, as people who dream of a more just world, shouldn’t be to try to create ideologically perfect, hermetically sealed bubbles free from external contamination. For one, that’s impossible (“no ethical consumption under…” and all that), but secondly, that ethos itself is often a barrier to organizing (it’s hard to broaden the base if you’re too busy erecting fences).

So my lean towards leaving wasn’t primarily about needing to find a morally pure newsletter-sending company (side note: I’ve done the research; that company does not exist!).

I am, however, a big fan of collective action. And I believe that when you have a business relationship with a company with whom you’re morally misaligned, it’s important to organize to make it better. The problem was, when I asked myself “do I have the energy to spend more of my time organizing on the Substack Nazi issue?” I balked. The issue was time. I’m already a working dad. I’m actively trying to find the time to become more involved in my literal, physical community. Did I really care enough about the place that sends my emails to also devote significant organizing time and energy to their internal politics?

So that’s why I was about to leave. It felt hypocritical to stay if I didn’t have a clear plan (or motivation) to organize other writers to make Substack better.

What I did before I left

There’s another wrinkle here, though. There was something really grinding my gears, and it wasn’t just Substack’s hamfisted handling of the whole ordeal. It was individualism. Remember all of those “why I’m staying” or “why I’m going” essays? They all made really good points, but they were always about the individual newsletter author themselves— why they’re so brave for standing against the Nazis, why their personal circumstances made it so hard to leave, how they personally analyzed the various options available to them.

Listen, I’m a late bloomer when it comes to writing as a profession. I’m a mid-life career changer. I haven’t spent an entire lifetime drowning in a sea of rejection letters and media conglomerate pink slips. I am only beginning to learn how intensely lonely and isolated this profession feels for so many. It may very well be naive for me to wish that none of that was true, that every professional writer felt enveloped in communities of both collective support and collective power.

Naive or not, it’s honest. That really is my aspiration. And I want to work with other writers to make it a reality.

To be honest, the primary reason I signed on with the whole “Substackers vs. Nazi’s” effort in the first place was that I was fired up about the fact that, in this small case, writers were asked to think of ourselves as a collective “we.” I care about the fascists, yes. But I care so much more about an organized, loving, powerful collective of anti-fascists. And to be honest, my heart sank a bit when I saw that many of the writers who led the initial effort successfully mobilized hundreds of their peers and… chose to leave, on their own, right as momentum was building. Now, I don’t know any of those writers personally and have no reason to judge the ethics of their decision. They, not me, were the ones who stuck their necks out in the first place. And I respect that. But there was a line in one of the primary organizers’ departure messages that I just couldn’t get past (I’m not hyperlinking it, because I don’t want to pick on this one person specifically; I truly believe that it’s indicative of a broader mindset).

“Despite organizing being collective, this is a “to each their own” situation in the truest sense.”

Wait, really?

Why?

Again, I don’t begrudge anybody’s individual decision. But like I said, my heart sank.

And so, before I left, I told myself that I should at least take a stab at collective care. Not knowing what else to do, I sent an email to roughly twenty people who fit within a very rigorous Venn diagram of individuals on Substack (a). whom I respected and admired a great deal and (b). whose email addresses I could find without too much trouble. My intention was simple. I wanted to hear how my choice to leave might impact them, as well as if there was anything they wanted me to keep top of mind as I made my decision.

So, what did they say?

Well, not surprisingly, none of them replied, “oh my God, Garrett, your leaving will have a clear, cataclysmic impact on my newsletter hobby and/or business.” As it turns out, I am not that important! What I did hear, however, were a lot of wise thoughts about what it looks like to think about writing relationships collectively rather than individually. Many wrote back saying, essentially, “Garrett, I am not in a position to move, for very real, material reasons, and you (and others) sticking around and giving a damn about our collective needs/safety/happiness/impact on the world would make my life a little bit easier.”

The more I thought about that refrain, the more it resonated with me. Right now, “leaving Substack” largely means leaving a network where (a). for better or worse, writers are more connected to each other than they are elsewhere (largely because of the nature of its technology) and (b). there has already been some sunshine shone on the ways it needs to change to avoid becoming a racist, transphobic sewer. By contrast, all of the major alternatives are significantly more isolated, atomized and black box-y in terms of their ownership’s values. They are very much “to each their own” places. If I were to leave, I could (and would) say “I’m still going to support all of you who can’t leave Substack” all I want, but there’s a meaningful difference in doing so here, in the muck, next to people I love.

Well that’s that then…

I’m sticking around, for now. Not as an endorsement of Substack, but because it feels like the more collectivist rather than individualist move. I’m sticking around to support other writers. Better put, I’m sticking around because I’m still learning how to support other writers, and I don’t think my leaving will help that learning curve. I’m excited to do whatever that entails, including agitating and organizing, though truth be told I’m still going to spend less time doing so than I plan to spend on issues in my physical community. And that may mean that I have to revisit this move in the future. I may look up a year from now and realize that not only has this company not budged, but that I didn’t really do anything concrete to build community between writers. Or I may discover that my dream has come true, that a few folks who are much better at coding than I have birthed an incredible anti-fascist newsletter-sending-collective and they could use somebody with my expertise (which is, um… I’m not sure! but I’m very enthusiastic!) to be a part of the crew.

For now, though, I feel at peace with this decision, but that doesn’t mean the same is true for you. If my call here feels misaligned with your values— either as a free or paid subscriber— I understand. I will miss you, sincerely, but I’ll respect that you’re trying to match your actions to your morals. And of course, for those who still value this space but want a non-Substack means of supporting me, I offer comped subscriptions both to donors to the Barnraisers Project and (for a limited time) folks who pre-order The Right Kind of White and fill out this survey.

More broadly, you all, we’re all figuring out how to live justice-oriented lives in an unjust world. I’m always eager to hear how you’re thinking about questions like this, including those of you who disagree with me. What a gift to be surrounded and supported by big-hearted, deep-thinking readers. For real.

One last thought

I may write a bit more about this in the future, but this past weekend I had a conversation with one of my closest friends, a long-time teacher who left the profession shortly after the peak years of the pandemic. We were talking about hope, and more specifically about his eroded ability to believe that the U.S. can ever become a true beloved community. At one point in the conversation, he used the phrase, “the pandemic broke me.”

It wasn’t the first time that I’d heard those exact words. My wife, a family doctor who works with patients impacted by every form of societal oppression, has said the same on numerous occasions. And I know many of you feel that same brokenness. Maybe it was the pandemic. Maybe it was the cravenness of our institutions or our politicians. Maybe it’s war and genocide or a lifetime spent living under capitalism, White supremacy, patriarchy and heterosexism.

I didn’t argue back with my friend. His pessimism is entirely warranted. On a daily basis, there is no shortage of evidence of our cruelty and selfishness.

I also understand, when we talk about “staying or going” or making “individual vs. collective" choices, there’s a lot of privilege in choosing to take one for the team. For example, I have a lot of friends— queer folks, women, Black, Brown and Indigenous friends— who don’t live in the small towns and cities where they were born. A lot of those places could no doubt benefit from my friends’ brilliance, passion, and community-mindedness. They had to leave, though, because staying wasn’t safe. One could argue that they made individual choice, but I would never begrudge it in a million years.

This is all to say: There’s no bravery in my decision to keep sending emails on this particular platform. It’s a tiny, easy move, likely to have a negligible impact.

But here’s the thing. So many of us are craving assurance that we’re not alone right now. We desperately want reminders that somebody else is looking out for us, that we can build a better world together. And that’s the real reason why I risked sending a naval-gazey, inside baseball newsletter today. That’s how we strengthen atrophied muscles. By narrating. By sharing our stories. By learning out loud.

While my choice doesn’t matter so much in a vacuum, so many of you will be faced with individual vs. collective decisions that do matter: the choice to organize a union, to get to know your neighbors, to examine how the fork in the road you’re about to encounter (where you move, where your kids go to school, what job you take) will impact people beyond yourself. And I hope you challenge yourself to think beyond yourself as you do so. Because we need more and more examples of us, as human beings, especially in individualistic countries like the United States, choosing each other. That’s how we rebuild hope.

I’m here, writing these newsletters on this deeply flawed platform, because I desperately wish that writers thought about each other as a collective. But that’s not the whole of it. I’m also here because I value you all— strangers and old friends alike. I know so many of you are trying to stitch together frayed or isolated communities. And the best thing about sending these emails is imagining them arriving in your inboxes, across the world, on good and bad days alike. It’s an honor to know you, to learn from you, and to offer— if it’s ever useful— an imperfect but earnest helping hand.

Song of the week:

Listen, the internet and I disagree as to the first line in “Strange Insistence,” a hazy track by Gun Outfit. I think it goes “I tried to quit/before I quit again/But I guess I’m really best at giving in.” I could be wrong though! Regardless, I’m not sure if that fully applies to my situation here, but the vibe of this song— druggy and desert inspired, but somehow incredibly resonant for a decidedly non-druggy dad in a wet, thawing Milwaukee— matches how I felt writing this. Kind of a “man, we’re all just trying our best…” mood. Good song!

As always, the song of the week playlist is on both Apple Music and Spotify.

1. I can’t speak to all the reasons why writers who would like to leave Substack can’t currently do so, but some of the major ones include: They utilize a set of tools (podcasts, videos, community facilitation) that other platforms don’t offer; their livelihood and growth is intensely reliant on the way Substack sends new subscribers their way; the costs of moving (particularly up front) are prohibitive for them and finally, they don’t have the tech background, time or networks to integrate the tools they need on another site.