Why Am I On Substack ?

(That's a rhetorical question)

Why am I on Substack? It’s not like I’m some renowned writer who is going to earn a great living with paid subscriptions. Quite the contrary.

I am posting to Substack because I am running away from Facebook and the other brain-numbing provinces of Zuckistan.

I hope Frank Zappa was right when he said “It can’t happen here.”

I am posting this on January 20, 2025 because there are things going on in Washington, DC today that I am trying to avoid, but cannot be entirely un-conscious of. Even the act of avoidance is a conscious acknowledgement of something I desperately wish was not happening.

I started cultivating my Substack a couple of weeks ago when it became painfully obvious that I had to drag myself out of the primeval digital swamp.

I'd actually managed to stay off Facebook and its sister sites for several years before returning in the fall of 2024 – because I thought it might serve a business purpose.

I didn't get very far into the business applications – but It didn't take long to slip back in to the old habits.

Like a crunchy snack cracker that has been engineered around the perfect combination of habit-forming ingredients, Facebook is designed to keep you shoveling 'ultra-processed' morsels of nonsense into your cerebral cortex. In its diabolical mission to hold your attention, Facebook appeals to every pineal instinct an otherwise educated brain possesses.

I never did avail myself to TikTok, but the 'Reels' that Facebook now prominently features serve the same purpose.

I am an addictive personalty (still alive at age 74 thanks to 37-years of AA), so it's no surprise that I got sucked in to one Reel after another.

I found myself morbidly obsessed with colossal, A.I.-generated auto wrecks. The most pernicious aspect of Reels is the way it shows you a tease – in this case cars and trucks hurtling at each other – in a way that makes it nigh impossible not to click to see the digital carnage ensues.

Facebook's algorithm has also discerned that I am just a wild and cray guy, obsessed with 'beeg Amereecan breasts.' My Reels have offered a steady stream of magnificent mammaries, the women often doing nothing more than showing off their cleavage. Like the one who just sits there listening to an A.I. voice telling off-color jokes and then she just laughs at them or makes a face. Or that golfer who doesn't do much more than swing her club in a revealing halter top.

Hours of that shit – all very effectively engineered to hold my attention just long enough to see another Page I have little interest in, and, ultimately, to show me more advertising.

Oh. And. Let me not forget: The relentless stream of well-meaning and like-minded ‘friends’ (some real, most not-so-much) posts about how venal Trump is. I think we’ve already established that. Tell me something I don’t know. That snake left the pit years ago.

Let's just say that, so far, Substack seems to offer a much higher 'signal to noise ratio.'

The first good thing about Substack is: no advertising. I don't know how the numbers shake out, but this platform is supported by paid subscriptions. That fact alone lends itself to a lot less static.

What else I have discovered is that Substack has two ways or posting. There's the "Post" function for longer-form discourse (like this), and the 'Note' function for the 25-words-or-less, meme-of-the-day near-nonsense that I'd post on Facebook.

So let’s give this a try.

My first reaction starting the morning of November 6 was to crawl under the covers. But we cannot pretend that none of this is happening. Even as we try to distance ourselves from the looming lunacy, on some level we know that we are still part of it and it is part of us.

So we must be diligent and remote at the same time.

I suspect that I am like most people I know (and a lot of people I don't know), who are still trying to figure out how to stay engaged while somehow keeping the crazy at arm's length.

Maybe Substack can serve a useful role in that quest.

Oh, and, one of these days I’ll explain this whole ‘Incorrigble’ business. Trust me, it’s a story.

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