"I’ve worked to see that the emotional response of others to something they read is not an objectivity they find inside the writing but an addendum they staple onto it."
This articulates how I feel about working in a particular bit of the public sector. I need to engage people with the service I run to persuade them that it's of value to them and to get them through the door. It's an archive and local studies service and, you'd think, entirely devoid of controversy. Until you meet with people on social media who are angry and take everything personally. Sometimes in person, too. While I am a person and take a personal approach to my job, I have to work to remember that often, in the eyes of the furious, I am not a person but a representative part of a larger, faceless organisation that has the ability to frustrate. I try to remember this, too, when I am feeling furious at a faceless organisation and need to interact with a person who represents it. It's hard. Anger makes us simultaneously not ourselves and a very very concentrated version of ourselves.
I was also interested by what you say about your relationship with your readers here and with the comments we leave. Interested because it never occurs to me that you or anyone else would do anything more than read what I write. Which now has me pondering why I sometimes feel like I want to comment (often I don't, I'm happy to enjoy my thoughts in my own head). Anywhere, not just here. I think it's that I want whoever I'm responding to to know that what they have said has struck a chord. I'm not expecting a conversation. It's a bit like being on a bus/tram/tube/train and making a momentary connection with a fellow passenger about something seen or heard. It's a passing thing with no expectation of depth, a thing to delight in.
And I'm fully with you on moving on from things that aren't for you without feeling the need to say so.
I'm rambling now. Thank you as always for your writing and the clarity with which you express ideas. I'm so pleased to have made my way to your Substack.
I hold my breath waiting for the invasion of the meatheads who infest every other form of social media. I hope it never comes because Substack so often feels like the beautiful little lake I used to go to with an old girlfriend and her dog. It was covered in water lillies and marsh marigolds and nobody else seemed to know about it and, both spookily and happily, I could never find it when I wasn't with her.
This was somehow a very soothing post, in contrast to the seething online ill content it partly describes. I particularly enjoyed this graceful sentence: "How lovely to have a cultural space where people read what they’re interested in and avoid what they’re not, and where readers go into a piece of writing with curiosity, good will and no inclination to punch the iced coffee."
I love the sentence about magpies (they must be really big in Australia. The ones in Europe are already bigger than ours in the U.S.)
While I missed out on the culture wars on Twitter because I instinctively shied away from its abrupt format and have studiously avoided anything having to do with "notifications" all my online life, I was involved in the culture wars in the 1990s. In those days it was local e-mail forums (preceded even earlier by bulletin boards, which I missed.) Thus I had the opportunity to be involved with political polarization and trolling with people I knew in person and socialized with. A few things I learned were: 1) wacky thinking cannot be tied to lack of intelligence; 2) you can never, ever argue some people out of their opinions; 3) some people are different online than they are in person; and 4) extremists can still contribute to community.
One of our most extreme right-wingers not only hosted (still hosts, actually) the best parties at his house, but he also made sure our group camp-out happened every summer. At the parties, everyone knew how to keep our ears open and avoid political discussions. At the camp-outs, we pretty much avoided politics altogether.
Those were difficult times because participation in the forum often left me seething in anger for days. I'm still not sufficiently inoculated from nasty attacks on Reddit, for instance, but at least I kind of know the territory. And yes, Substack is much more civil.
As wonderful as always. I know that sounds a bit trite (and of course I am a commenter, so I AM HERE FOR A FIGHT) but I always enjoy how your writing makes me feel, with its general level-headedness and refusal to see a difference of opinion as a personal affront.
So much to comment on here, and I'll restrain myself because I have something of my own to write. [NOTE: I am fully aware this comment will be massive nonetheless.] But that 'burnt coffee'? That's exactly how I have described that chain (yes, I think I know the one) to friends for the last 20 years, because I used to work in one in York, and as a perk you get to drink as much as you like, and I burnt the inside of my throat with the stuff after the first 2 weeks and had to stop, and then it took months to get that charcoal-like taste off my tongue.)
I just read your Irish Times piece, and I simultaneously couldn't see anything outrageous in it and yet can understand why some folk leapt into the comments with fire and thunder, because - I imagine that's why many folk read newspaper columns these days? I imagine (somewhat autobiographically) someone on the Tube or at their local (burnt-)coffee-shop desperately trying to wake themselves up enough to be able to turn up for work with both eyes genuinely open. What would do it? Aha! Some righteous fury! So they flick through the 'paper to find something to get mad about, thereby to reanimate themselves. In England, these are folk you can hear muttering "Good GRIEF, the world's gone mad - quite, quite *mad*", their face all wrinkled up and their faces beetroot-adjacent and their eyes bloodshot and bulging. One of the reasons I want my newsletter to succeed is that I don't ever want to be that person again.
Ah, Twitter. I had a terrible and ugly experience of it for a decade, then it became fun for me as I worked out how to drown out the cynicism and cruelty with my own myopic enthusiasm, then it fell apart in a whole new way. But what truly filled me with bucketloads of ugh, and still does, is seeing the enduring popularity of unfocused, zero-nuanced, unsubstantiated rage-opinion. I think I get it - I've laughed at Charlie Brooker pieces even while thinking "you're just being a performative arse about this, mate" - but it's junk food for the brain. Nutritionally, there's nothing there. Maybe perfect for that early-morning jolt of LOL/outrage to get you through to lunch, but there's little beyond it, and, worse still, it seems a terrible thing for long-term mental health. Our internal furnaces run dirty when we shovel hopelessness into them all day long. And what I saw on Twitter was so many folk being taught to build loud, spiteful identities out of their negative opinions as a way to become, amongst other things, writers. As you've noted in this newsletter, that's come straight from journalism, from negative-engagement clickbait and outrage-farming and the rest of it.
>>"Of course feedback is how you improve but regardless it is impossible to make a living as a writer without inviting, and to some extent heeding, feedback on your work."
Yes, absolutely - and I feel very grateful to have stumbled over a new relationship to feedback (which I've been vaguely terrified about for a decade, as a freelance writer and blogger). Thanks to starting over on Substack, I now get to present myself as an enthusiastic student - and everyone knows students get things wrong all the time. So I encourage my readers to correct me, on the grounds that they probably know a lot more about what I'm writing about than I do (frequently true). There have also been a few times I've royally ballsed up the facts of something or other - and (now here's a huge advantage of newslettering over traditional media!) I've immediately followed up with a send-to-everyone mea culpa update, spelling out what I got wrong and giving full credit to the person or people who corrected me. Not only does it always feel like the right thing to do, it's even triggered paid subscriber signups. I'm really lucky and privileged to have found a way to use feedback on my many, many failings as a science writer in this manner, and I never want to forget it.
What a lovely article Laura about the warmth of Substack.
I wrote a post last week on American attitudes about immigration and noted that immigrants as a % of the American population are back at the peak reached in the late 19th century of about one in seven people. One of my readers in Australia commented that the same number is 30% in Australia.
I'm in London currently and my cousin here was telling me that pending tax changes might cause many expats to leave the UK. Some no doubt will go to Australia.
I have an impression that you have experienced a generally welcoming attitude in Australia. And if so, perhaps it's due to the great number of immigrants.
Australia has been very welcoming indeed! That may in part be because I live in Canberra, which is a political city and arguably not reflective of more general viewpoints in other parts of the country, or it may just be the good will and open-mindedness of Australian people. After all, when there is a lot of immigration anywhere - as there certainly is here - attitudes toward immigrants can also sour. I'm conscious that I'm very lucky and that my immigrant experience has been far easier than many people's.
"I’ve worked to see that the emotional response of others to something they read is not an objectivity they find inside the writing but an addendum they staple onto it."
This articulates how I feel about working in a particular bit of the public sector. I need to engage people with the service I run to persuade them that it's of value to them and to get them through the door. It's an archive and local studies service and, you'd think, entirely devoid of controversy. Until you meet with people on social media who are angry and take everything personally. Sometimes in person, too. While I am a person and take a personal approach to my job, I have to work to remember that often, in the eyes of the furious, I am not a person but a representative part of a larger, faceless organisation that has the ability to frustrate. I try to remember this, too, when I am feeling furious at a faceless organisation and need to interact with a person who represents it. It's hard. Anger makes us simultaneously not ourselves and a very very concentrated version of ourselves.
I was also interested by what you say about your relationship with your readers here and with the comments we leave. Interested because it never occurs to me that you or anyone else would do anything more than read what I write. Which now has me pondering why I sometimes feel like I want to comment (often I don't, I'm happy to enjoy my thoughts in my own head). Anywhere, not just here. I think it's that I want whoever I'm responding to to know that what they have said has struck a chord. I'm not expecting a conversation. It's a bit like being on a bus/tram/tube/train and making a momentary connection with a fellow passenger about something seen or heard. It's a passing thing with no expectation of depth, a thing to delight in.
And I'm fully with you on moving on from things that aren't for you without feeling the need to say so.
I'm rambling now. Thank you as always for your writing and the clarity with which you express ideas. I'm so pleased to have made my way to your Substack.
I hold my breath waiting for the invasion of the meatheads who infest every other form of social media. I hope it never comes because Substack so often feels like the beautiful little lake I used to go to with an old girlfriend and her dog. It was covered in water lillies and marsh marigolds and nobody else seemed to know about it and, both spookily and happily, I could never find it when I wasn't with her.
This was somehow a very soothing post, in contrast to the seething online ill content it partly describes. I particularly enjoyed this graceful sentence: "How lovely to have a cultural space where people read what they’re interested in and avoid what they’re not, and where readers go into a piece of writing with curiosity, good will and no inclination to punch the iced coffee."
Thanks Jeffrey.
I love the sentence about magpies (they must be really big in Australia. The ones in Europe are already bigger than ours in the U.S.)
While I missed out on the culture wars on Twitter because I instinctively shied away from its abrupt format and have studiously avoided anything having to do with "notifications" all my online life, I was involved in the culture wars in the 1990s. In those days it was local e-mail forums (preceded even earlier by bulletin boards, which I missed.) Thus I had the opportunity to be involved with political polarization and trolling with people I knew in person and socialized with. A few things I learned were: 1) wacky thinking cannot be tied to lack of intelligence; 2) you can never, ever argue some people out of their opinions; 3) some people are different online than they are in person; and 4) extremists can still contribute to community.
One of our most extreme right-wingers not only hosted (still hosts, actually) the best parties at his house, but he also made sure our group camp-out happened every summer. At the parties, everyone knew how to keep our ears open and avoid political discussions. At the camp-outs, we pretty much avoided politics altogether.
Those were difficult times because participation in the forum often left me seething in anger for days. I'm still not sufficiently inoculated from nasty attacks on Reddit, for instance, but at least I kind of know the territory. And yes, Substack is much more civil.
As wonderful as always. I know that sounds a bit trite (and of course I am a commenter, so I AM HERE FOR A FIGHT) but I always enjoy how your writing makes me feel, with its general level-headedness and refusal to see a difference of opinion as a personal affront.
So much to comment on here, and I'll restrain myself because I have something of my own to write. [NOTE: I am fully aware this comment will be massive nonetheless.] But that 'burnt coffee'? That's exactly how I have described that chain (yes, I think I know the one) to friends for the last 20 years, because I used to work in one in York, and as a perk you get to drink as much as you like, and I burnt the inside of my throat with the stuff after the first 2 weeks and had to stop, and then it took months to get that charcoal-like taste off my tongue.)
I just read your Irish Times piece, and I simultaneously couldn't see anything outrageous in it and yet can understand why some folk leapt into the comments with fire and thunder, because - I imagine that's why many folk read newspaper columns these days? I imagine (somewhat autobiographically) someone on the Tube or at their local (burnt-)coffee-shop desperately trying to wake themselves up enough to be able to turn up for work with both eyes genuinely open. What would do it? Aha! Some righteous fury! So they flick through the 'paper to find something to get mad about, thereby to reanimate themselves. In England, these are folk you can hear muttering "Good GRIEF, the world's gone mad - quite, quite *mad*", their face all wrinkled up and their faces beetroot-adjacent and their eyes bloodshot and bulging. One of the reasons I want my newsletter to succeed is that I don't ever want to be that person again.
Ah, Twitter. I had a terrible and ugly experience of it for a decade, then it became fun for me as I worked out how to drown out the cynicism and cruelty with my own myopic enthusiasm, then it fell apart in a whole new way. But what truly filled me with bucketloads of ugh, and still does, is seeing the enduring popularity of unfocused, zero-nuanced, unsubstantiated rage-opinion. I think I get it - I've laughed at Charlie Brooker pieces even while thinking "you're just being a performative arse about this, mate" - but it's junk food for the brain. Nutritionally, there's nothing there. Maybe perfect for that early-morning jolt of LOL/outrage to get you through to lunch, but there's little beyond it, and, worse still, it seems a terrible thing for long-term mental health. Our internal furnaces run dirty when we shovel hopelessness into them all day long. And what I saw on Twitter was so many folk being taught to build loud, spiteful identities out of their negative opinions as a way to become, amongst other things, writers. As you've noted in this newsletter, that's come straight from journalism, from negative-engagement clickbait and outrage-farming and the rest of it.
>>"Of course feedback is how you improve but regardless it is impossible to make a living as a writer without inviting, and to some extent heeding, feedback on your work."
Yes, absolutely - and I feel very grateful to have stumbled over a new relationship to feedback (which I've been vaguely terrified about for a decade, as a freelance writer and blogger). Thanks to starting over on Substack, I now get to present myself as an enthusiastic student - and everyone knows students get things wrong all the time. So I encourage my readers to correct me, on the grounds that they probably know a lot more about what I'm writing about than I do (frequently true). There have also been a few times I've royally ballsed up the facts of something or other - and (now here's a huge advantage of newslettering over traditional media!) I've immediately followed up with a send-to-everyone mea culpa update, spelling out what I got wrong and giving full credit to the person or people who corrected me. Not only does it always feel like the right thing to do, it's even triggered paid subscriber signups. I'm really lucky and privileged to have found a way to use feedback on my many, many failings as a science writer in this manner, and I never want to forget it.
What a lovely article Laura about the warmth of Substack.
I wrote a post last week on American attitudes about immigration and noted that immigrants as a % of the American population are back at the peak reached in the late 19th century of about one in seven people. One of my readers in Australia commented that the same number is 30% in Australia.
I'm in London currently and my cousin here was telling me that pending tax changes might cause many expats to leave the UK. Some no doubt will go to Australia.
I have an impression that you have experienced a generally welcoming attitude in Australia. And if so, perhaps it's due to the great number of immigrants.
Australia has been very welcoming indeed! That may in part be because I live in Canberra, which is a political city and arguably not reflective of more general viewpoints in other parts of the country, or it may just be the good will and open-mindedness of Australian people. After all, when there is a lot of immigration anywhere - as there certainly is here - attitudes toward immigrants can also sour. I'm conscious that I'm very lucky and that my immigrant experience has been far easier than many people's.