A Triptych of Thoughts About Substack

Or a tribute to my 6 Months on this site

INCLUDED IN THIS PACKAGE:

• A Triptych of Thoughts About Substack (an essay)

• Media Review

• Anisa’s Writing Corner

• Conclusion

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A Triptych of Thoughts About Substack

I saw this first in a note by ghalizha z. izzaty (@chairhandles)

PANEL ONE: In which a medieval woman bends her knees, eyes lifted.

I.

If you’re like me, you’ve seen this meme float around on Substack, maybe even laughed about it. It’s true: likes mean different things on different platforms, we make statements to the effect often. Getting TikTok likes is easy, if you’re pretty, getting Instagram likes is harder but still workable, still done. Numbers mean more on both platforms, and somehow also less; we talk in base-100s and 1000s instead of base-10s. Instagram, TikTok, and Youtube are the only places outside of finance where billions and millions are discussed with perceived tangibility, implied weight. They are a sort of cryptocurrency of their own.

I would preface with this: I’m on Instagram and TikTok, and have experienced very little success on either. But you don’t need to ride a wave to know the markings of the tide, and I am very good at sea-watching and always have been. Shadow-bans aside, I know the (seeming) ease with which likes and views rank up. I am one degree of separation away from people who have gone viral and have managed to do so more than once. It’s fascinating, and importantly, it’s achievable. It’s done, maybe to the point of being almost démodé.

Post often, keep the altar wet, and the algorithm rewards. If you have not experienced its beneficence? Quelle malchance, but have you tried posting thrice a day, at 6. P.M., on Sundays?

II.
But this is not an essay about a beast unsated, or a tiny, mulish goat-god hard to appease. At least, not absolutely, not in full. Because the key thing about the algorithm’s mercy is that when it is dispensed, it is dispensed in plenty, in loud apologetic lucre. Plenitude, profusion, copiousness, cornucopia. I ignored you for months; take this in thousands. 

III.
But then we have Substack. I won’t preach; I am still learning it as you would a lover (or a scab): slowly and not pulling back too much skin at once. But I have learned this: likes mean something very different here. They are fewer and harder to be won. I don’t court them, but I still count them, cradle them like pearls. One, thank you, two, really! Three. Stars above. They are like votive candles left at the altar of something unknown, meaning we barely know your name but still we witness. They are small and they are golden and they are dear.

IV. 

My last post got 4 likes and that’s a lot.

“I find her obscure, exasperating, delightful.”
W.B. YEATS, writing of EDITH SITWELL

PANEL TWO: In which a deity has shy eyes.

I.

As far as I can tell, the Substack algorithm works differently when compared to Instagram’s and TikTok’s. There is no reward for posting often, although it agrees about posting consistently. There are fewer comments but they have more meat in them. I am trying to learn everything I can and coming up breathless like a sperm whale, but I think I have figured this out: there is something it likes about community.

The advice I’ve often received to the question of growth on Substack could be summed up by: “post more notes and find your people.” In this respect, Notes are more like Threads than Tweets—the quiet cacophony and chorus of “me too!”s. I’ve met some lovely people from the Substack Notes arena and I love the way it blinks but still shows welcome. Notes often get more likes than full-blown essays do (that’s true).

II.

Those that can pull hundreds and thousands of likes here turn into a kind of royalty, à la Eliza McLamb, Rayne Fisher-Quann. They become giants but giants are still human. In this respect “Substack influencers” if you could call them such a thing, are different from those from other shores. There is no pantheon, no council of gods you are shamed for not following. There are only people who write, whose words enter a common lexicon, who coin phrases like “getting woman’d”¹ and change the way the water flows. They are remarkable easy to love, remarkably down to earth. They owe it to no one and still they give.

III.

I first considered this site to be an extension of Tumblr, a skip and a hop away from The Place That Things Began. I was wrong and close-to-right: they are still siblings, but not twins.

IV.

I have never wanted so desperately to belong.

“Grief is an amputation, but hope is incurable haemophilia: you bleed and bleed and bleed.” DAVID MITCHELL

PANEL THREE: In which a girl nearby turns to catch the light.

I.

I am not sure I have ever gotten up to 100 eyes on one of my newsletters. Does saying it that way sound lurid, grisly, witchy? I didn’t mean it that way but I think it does. I’ve stared at it for a bit and have not been able to erase the image of plucked out eyes on paper, perhaps running the ink. (A hundred things incapable of blinking.) At any rate I would not have so many.

II. 

I think the reason Substack appeals to me is because somewhere along the way, I gave up on Instagram and TikTok. That is to say, they require a language I make errors in. That is to say, there was an amputation. That is to say, there is now bleeding hope.

III.

I used to count views in two thousands and count likes in cents but here I will be content with three (3) of each. I have heard it is much the same for everybody.

IV.

Vulnerability is a bloody mess isn’t it? Red up to the elbows and something sticky on your skin? I started this essay intending to wax lyrical, something about self-concept, something about cultural critique, and then tripped and landed face-down on forced honesty. 

That’s the thing about Substack. The thing that turns me/you/us honest and appreciative. Maybe it’s the fact that someone reading to the very end requires sticking with you. Maybe it feels intimate, maybe you can remember that behind each number is a name, behind each heart there is a real one that pumps. Maybe it’s the fact that you can look at a map and see where you have subscribers and imagine visiting every one of them for tea. Maybe it’s the fact that it’s as easy here as anywhere to walk on by and people still stay anyway. Maybe it’s the fact that if 68 people walked into a bar (ha) to hear a 17 year old girl tell stories she would burst straight into tears and she’d be right. Maybe, just maybe, this is thank you. Really, thank you. Six months and all I have to say is thank you.

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Media Review

BOOKS: (Spitfire Favorites)

I read 4 books in June and they were all favorites:

The Color of Magic by Terry Pratchett is my return to Discworld after many years, from the beginning this time. As always I am reminded he is part of why I write.

Piglet by Lottie Hazell was unique and made me hungry.

Vita Nostra by Marina and Sergey Dyachenko, was weird in all the best ways. I will think of it forever, I think.

The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell blew me right out of the water with how beautiful it was, with quicksilver turns and a graceful twist that left me silent and stunned.

MUSIC:

I feel like the only thing that should be here this month is Hozier’s cover of The Arctic Monkeys’ “Do I Wanna Know,” which I had on repeat for a significant portion of the writing of this newsletter.

ANISA’S WRITING CORNER

Project V by Anisa Daniel-Oniko, Chapter 30

News! Big and Little all at once: June saw me finish the first draft of the present timeline of my novel. My book has two timelines—present, past—but the present is 97% of it and the book feels almost done. It is always very humbling to watch a story become book-shaped; it is like looking at an infant, the shut eyes, the tiny toes, and wondering how it came into the world.

CONCLUSION

Project V by Anisa Daniel-Oniko, Chapter 9

June marked six months on Substack and I am retroactively thoughtful in July. And grateful, as I said before; so incredibly grateful for everyone who has wandered here since January. You are all my family, and I count you as my blessings. Thank you (all of you) for being.
I will end as awfully abruptly as always and give you all my
love,
Anisa

1. From a now archived essay by Rayne Fisher-Quann.