Manuel on not liking Substack.
The first reason is that it’s incredibly easy to get started on Substack and also very easy to get going but most non-tech savvy people don’t realise that by not owning their domain name they don’t really own anything. If you run your publication on Substack using a subdomain, Substack owns those URLs, not you. If tomorrow they have a change of hearts and they decide to pivot from being a blog platform to selling human organs and you’re like “Well, fuck that” all the content you posted is stuck there
And his later statements on creativity tie in with a book I finished this morning called Against Creativity.
I’m fucking tired of living in a society where everything is monetised, where nothing is safe from speculation, where every passion has to be turned into a business. “But why shouldn’t you turn your passion into a business?” you might ask. Because this endless pursuit of money is fucking up society. The incentives you set up, when you run a platform like Substack, matter a lot.
The creativity allowed on these platforms serve the platform. If you are creative in a way that your platform doesn’t like and don’t serve it’s monetary interests you’re off the platform or the algorithm doesn’t serve your content.
Against Creativity introduced me to a new word algocracy and it feels apt. So much of our lives is not ruled by the governments we live under, but by the algorithms that govern the places we choose to interact.