We're All Whores Here

can i be mean for a second

There are a lot of things I read on Substack that send me into a familiar kind of agitation — I get a little sweaty, my forehead crinkles up, and I start thinking of what I could respond to this person to make them understand that they are so impossibly, irrevocably… wrong

I hate this feeling, which is why I got off Twitter. I don’t think it’s healthy to expose oneself to idiots all day long, especially when such exposure usually creates this irritated, self-righteous version of me that I don’t like to hang out with. I moved mostly to Substack, where I have felt relatively calmer (with all these smart people!). But I am very talented at finding irritation everywhere, and I am occasionally finding it here, too.

Of course I hate that rape-y post about teenage girls (and also that we’re all inadvertently sharing it, talking about it, boosting it more). I am irritated at people who write about the gender war when they could have Googled “Judith Butler” and found an explanation for why and how we are all feeling confused and upset with nonsensical, shifting requirements for our gendered categories (no, it’s not the phones). But beyond this, I am realizing that Substack as a form is partial to a certain kind of unfortunate trap.

To be completely honest with you, I have somewhere to be at 10, and I am writing this at 9. Most of my posts on here do not go through more than one round of edits (if that). Most of my posts are written in just one or two sittings, published as soon as I’m finished writing the last line. It makes sense to do this on a platform that is increasingly marketing itself as a kind of social media, because most people are not making their livings off of it, and because publishing on Substack alone grants no kind of prestige. Save those edits for The Paris Review.

So, I understand why a lot of what I see on here tends to be a personal essay under the guise of heady theory. It’s happened to me! I’m upset, I want to connect it to some bigger, smarter, more defendable idea, so I do. Send to all subscribers! There it goes.

I’m really here because I saw a post that made me groan and roll my eyes, and a bunch of other people commenting “SOOO TRUE!” This is the kind of thing that is crack to a self-righteous person like me. I’ll cut to the chase so I can exorcise this from my system: the post argued (weakly) that girls on Substack are marketing themselves as sexual objects in order to attract readers, something that is just so sad, so sad for those poor whores. Don’t they know they built themselves this trap? Don’t they know they could be a real writer, just like me, without all this mess? :)

To which I say: hello, welcome to the internet, we are all whores.

Every creative has to sell themselves: market, brand, re-brand, market again to new audiences, brand HARDER, brand AGAIN. If you want to sell yourself as a Pollyanna who only cares for Real Writers, congratulations, you’re whoring out your literature degree. I am under no delusion that a lot of my following comes, in no small part, because I share A LOT about my personal life, and I share a lot in general. I’m whoring out my tragic backstory and quick wit. If you want to be a full-time classic artist, up in a tower creating all day under mysterious circumstances and eschew this whoring tendency to BRAND, then congratulations on the trust fund that allows you to do so. Truly.

It’s not an amazing system. I am irritated by this. It’s actually, on most levels, profoundly sad to me. But I’m not going to pretend that a girl posting a photo of her knee-high socks on Substack notes is somehow more sad than any other kind of whoring that we are all partial to on the internet. That, in my view, runs you all the way around the circle — female sexuality as this pure, prized object. You’re eating your own ass.

I don’t like contributing to the Discourse, but here I am. You know why? Because it gets me more reads, more subscriptions, more comments (and because it’s sometimes profoundly enjoyable to shit talk a little on the fly). Thats The Brand, Bitch!

And while you’re here, please feel so very sad for me that I have to sell my Takes to the Take machine so I can afford to live. It’s very sad. So sad