Sep 15, 2023·edited Sep 15, 2023Liked by Librarian of Celaeno
Great compilation and summary. Happy to see you diving into the psychology of loneliness here too. Funny enough, I am working on a new piece about the lack of a third place and how to create one IRL. Perhaps the issue is that the online world has become our third place, and that many feel we must choose between the astroturfed world of centralized social media or the alienating world of decentralized media. Neither option is appealing. So, we need something better, and I’m seeking to lay out a blueprint for how to build this.
During this transition from online to offline, I’m glad to have run into you and others in this sphere who I’ve been able to connect with, many of whom you also mention in this post. It makes things less lonely for me. I’m excited for an IRL gathering. I’m excited for our community as a whole.
Thank you for the kind words and I am working on getting things off the ground for that meetup.
I don't think the internet can really ever be a third place because, in some sense, we are always somewhere else at the same time we are there. For example, as I type this, being the Librarian of Celaeno on Substack, I am also sitting in my office chair in my classroom being someone who answers to a different name. It may be possible to transcend this somewhat if one allows one self to wholly subsume the other, if I were always the Librarian everywhere, but even then, the very physical experience of human interaction creates an element of personhood that I doubt can ever really be transferred online. I think that is something of a temptation for introverts, to remove that messy and uncontrollable physical aspect of presentation, and also why so much of internet personae come across as fake. That desire to control how one is perceived runs the risk of ultimately leading to a 'self' that is wholly artificial and contingent. I think that is why meeting in person and having actual physical connections with others are so important; in a way, they make us more real.
So Richardson is neo-liberal and therefore believes market forces delivers best, but he still wants a formalistic top-down predetermined frame-work for who get what exposure?
That's not "market forces".
The contradiction at least proves he is a real neo-liberal: pro-free market as long as it guarantees him profit and progress, otherwise pro-planned economy (in this case, the economy of viewer's time and ability/desire to sponsor Stackers).
In other words, Richardson is actually a corporatist socialist democrat, if we're to use formal labels and their original meanings.
Then again, all capitalists, neo-liberals and libertarians are pro-"market forces" only as long as it profits them with a minimum of risk and responsibility; being amoral and without any set of ethics above and beyond "Does it benefit me, now?" is an inherent and intrinsical feature of said ideologies.
Actual free market, which is simply evolution but as economics instead of organisms, plays no favourites and always throws up a clique (or a species) which totally dominates and monopolises the economy (biotope/eco-system).
Right. I've got logging to get on with. "Peace out", or whatever the hip phrase is nowadays. Will be back to read the rest later.
Exactly my point. A neoliberal desires managed capitalism, the sort where winners are chosen by market forces that are harnessed to the end of standardization and systematization of profit for an elite. Free-market capitalism is for poor people.
See that every week at the church where I do volunteer work* - the people coming there for lunch and to meet and socialise with others, and get to go home with a grocery bag worth between $50 - $100 (value dep. on what we get from local businesses) happily trade among each other afterwards.
The moslems swapping pork for fish with the ukrainians, the swedes drunks and druggies swapping a bag of candy for a loaf of bread with a single mother, and so on.
To quote Tage Danielsson, a long-gone swedish actual humanist:
"If solidarity isnt voluntary, it isn't solidarity"
*Since neither secular humanists nor whatever-marxists run soup kitchens or food hand-outs or any charity at all, it's help out at a christian church or don't help out at all. Should be an easy choic, yet many old friends adnd colleagues from academia positively balk at the idea, them pitching in at the Salvation Army or whatever once a month. People earning close to $5 000 - $10 000 (net) monthly, spending their days preaching to students about theills and ailments of the evil white supremacist West...
Needed to vent, thanks for the space! Back to logging!
One might ask why a person who has a thousand followers is bitching about my ninety-four? What makes this person think he's more important than anyone else?
It should be telling that I'd never heard of him until someone else pointed it out.
I think it's just that some people don't feel good about themselves until they can exclude someone else from a group. Whether it's getting someone fired or ostracized in a neighbourhood, it gives them a feeling of power. I think this kind of person would like to see some lady get burned for being a witch.
Love it. Our problem as a society is not that we have too much loneliness, but that we don't have enough courage.
I would add that we have too much comfort. We used to sit on the porch and complain to the neighbors next door about the heat. Now, I can't make time to get together for lunch or a beer with a neighbor or guy from church.
Really, though, the latter is Substack's fault. It isn't hard to spend an evening reading some of the interesting things that the 100+ writers that I follow have posted.
I already know my good friends Kruptos, Alexandru Constantin, and Alexander Hellene were some of the best writers you’ll find on this site, but it’s always rewarding to see someone else acknowledge them too.
Great post, Librarian, there's a lot of new writers for me to check out here. Thank you for sharing it.
One minor comment, for the tag at the top I am at https://substack.com/@neofeudalism ... I had an old account that had the same image and similar description back in the day but I had lost the login account information and Substack was unhelpful in deleting it, causing occasional confusion. Oh well...
Larger Substacks featuring ones that are of high quality but low subscriptions is a great idea. If a Substack community means anything, it means that. I am aware of Rob Henderson, Eric Hoel and Freddy De boer doing this but not of John Carter and New Right Poast.
Are you aware that Substack co-founder Hamish McKenzie posted yesterday about (unspecified) plans to radically up Substack's game on 'Discovery'?
I feel I have done quite well with building up Slouching Towards Bethlehem given the huge obstacle that I have no social media presence. (As far as I understand things, every 'big' Substack began by importing a large Twitter of Facebook list). Another thing that impedes growth on my Substack (and yours I guess) is that we do not do click-bait type posting which makes us quite niche (in a good way though.)
I had not heard about McKenzie's plans. It will be interesting to see. I write about this sort of thing in my essay "Artists and Musicians." You have to know going in if you want to write for growth or write for personal satisfaction. Everyone is somewhere on that pole, and neither is necessarily better than the other. And of course some people write everything from the heart and get famous, while others chase trends and get nowhere. For my part, I have no idea how people get big on social media, nor do I have the temperament for such a thing. So I just write what I feel like writing and hope it hits home.
Modest growth is my goal and I would be disappointed by any thing else....but not at the cost of changing the way I write. The way I have found to grow my 'Stack (to around 300) is by commenting on others (in similar ball park). I get a lot of 'likes' but paradoxically I've found that 'likes' rarely subscribe and subscribers rarely 'like'. (Haven't figured out why but maybe this kind of 'like' is just a very fleeting engagement.)
At risk of being coy, may I hope for a mention in a future Sub Mille?
For me, Substack is like a town of 100,000 people. A good college town. You aren't going to know everyone everywhere. It's too big for that sort of a community. But there are a ton of interesting things happening.
Im the guy in that town you leave the party with and wind up in a basement bedroom with Iron maiden Posters on the walls, four lava lamps and a hole punched in the door. Ill show you my home made rat maze...
"somehow the strange décor of Tony’s is more welcoming than the clean lines and shiny metal of its replacement. Perhaps it’s the knowledge that the décor is the means to a different end in the latter than the former, one being to make the patron feel welcome, the other to calm misgivings to facilitate transactions."
Brilliant work. Some of these pieces I'd read and I thank you for bringing the others to my attention. The fiction section, my domain, is much appreciated too. Thanks :)
Great compilation and summary. Happy to see you diving into the psychology of loneliness here too. Funny enough, I am working on a new piece about the lack of a third place and how to create one IRL. Perhaps the issue is that the online world has become our third place, and that many feel we must choose between the astroturfed world of centralized social media or the alienating world of decentralized media. Neither option is appealing. So, we need something better, and I’m seeking to lay out a blueprint for how to build this.
During this transition from online to offline, I’m glad to have run into you and others in this sphere who I’ve been able to connect with, many of whom you also mention in this post. It makes things less lonely for me. I’m excited for an IRL gathering. I’m excited for our community as a whole.
Thank you for the kind words and I am working on getting things off the ground for that meetup.
I don't think the internet can really ever be a third place because, in some sense, we are always somewhere else at the same time we are there. For example, as I type this, being the Librarian of Celaeno on Substack, I am also sitting in my office chair in my classroom being someone who answers to a different name. It may be possible to transcend this somewhat if one allows one self to wholly subsume the other, if I were always the Librarian everywhere, but even then, the very physical experience of human interaction creates an element of personhood that I doubt can ever really be transferred online. I think that is something of a temptation for introverts, to remove that messy and uncontrollable physical aspect of presentation, and also why so much of internet personae come across as fake. That desire to control how one is perceived runs the risk of ultimately leading to a 'self' that is wholly artificial and contingent. I think that is why meeting in person and having actual physical connections with others are so important; in a way, they make us more real.
If there’s a meetup, I want to go!
I’ll be posting updates. It would be on or around November 17th.
Got hung up on this Richardson/Morgthorak-thing.
So Richardson is neo-liberal and therefore believes market forces delivers best, but he still wants a formalistic top-down predetermined frame-work for who get what exposure?
That's not "market forces".
The contradiction at least proves he is a real neo-liberal: pro-free market as long as it guarantees him profit and progress, otherwise pro-planned economy (in this case, the economy of viewer's time and ability/desire to sponsor Stackers).
In other words, Richardson is actually a corporatist socialist democrat, if we're to use formal labels and their original meanings.
Then again, all capitalists, neo-liberals and libertarians are pro-"market forces" only as long as it profits them with a minimum of risk and responsibility; being amoral and without any set of ethics above and beyond "Does it benefit me, now?" is an inherent and intrinsical feature of said ideologies.
Actual free market, which is simply evolution but as economics instead of organisms, plays no favourites and always throws up a clique (or a species) which totally dominates and monopolises the economy (biotope/eco-system).
Right. I've got logging to get on with. "Peace out", or whatever the hip phrase is nowadays. Will be back to read the rest later.
Exactly my point. A neoliberal desires managed capitalism, the sort where winners are chosen by market forces that are harnessed to the end of standardization and systematization of profit for an elite. Free-market capitalism is for poor people.
"Free-market capitalism is for poor people."
Oh yes, ain't it always thus?
See that every week at the church where I do volunteer work* - the people coming there for lunch and to meet and socialise with others, and get to go home with a grocery bag worth between $50 - $100 (value dep. on what we get from local businesses) happily trade among each other afterwards.
The moslems swapping pork for fish with the ukrainians, the swedes drunks and druggies swapping a bag of candy for a loaf of bread with a single mother, and so on.
To quote Tage Danielsson, a long-gone swedish actual humanist:
"If solidarity isnt voluntary, it isn't solidarity"
*Since neither secular humanists nor whatever-marxists run soup kitchens or food hand-outs or any charity at all, it's help out at a christian church or don't help out at all. Should be an easy choic, yet many old friends adnd colleagues from academia positively balk at the idea, them pitching in at the Salvation Army or whatever once a month. People earning close to $5 000 - $10 000 (net) monthly, spending their days preaching to students about theills and ailments of the evil white supremacist West...
Needed to vent, thanks for the space! Back to logging!
One might ask why a person who has a thousand followers is bitching about my ninety-four? What makes this person think he's more important than anyone else?
It should be telling that I'd never heard of him until someone else pointed it out.
I think it's just that some people don't feel good about themselves until they can exclude someone else from a group. Whether it's getting someone fired or ostracized in a neighbourhood, it gives them a feeling of power. I think this kind of person would like to see some lady get burned for being a witch.
This is an excellent idea, and I appreciate the mention. Now I have more people to follow. Thank you sir.
Love it. Our problem as a society is not that we have too much loneliness, but that we don't have enough courage.
I would add that we have too much comfort. We used to sit on the porch and complain to the neighbors next door about the heat. Now, I can't make time to get together for lunch or a beer with a neighbor or guy from church.
Really, though, the latter is Substack's fault. It isn't hard to spend an evening reading some of the interesting things that the 100+ writers that I follow have posted.
I already know my good friends Kruptos, Alexandru Constantin, and Alexander Hellene were some of the best writers you’ll find on this site, but it’s always rewarding to see someone else acknowledge them too.
Great post, Librarian, there's a lot of new writers for me to check out here. Thank you for sharing it.
One minor comment, for the tag at the top I am at https://substack.com/@neofeudalism ... I had an old account that had the same image and similar description back in the day but I had lost the login account information and Substack was unhelpful in deleting it, causing occasional confusion. Oh well...
I will correct it shortly.
Thank you for the kind words, and the thoughtful commentary. With care, Adam
Well done for this initiative. My thoughts:
Larger Substacks featuring ones that are of high quality but low subscriptions is a great idea. If a Substack community means anything, it means that. I am aware of Rob Henderson, Eric Hoel and Freddy De boer doing this but not of John Carter and New Right Poast.
Are you aware that Substack co-founder Hamish McKenzie posted yesterday about (unspecified) plans to radically up Substack's game on 'Discovery'?
I feel I have done quite well with building up Slouching Towards Bethlehem given the huge obstacle that I have no social media presence. (As far as I understand things, every 'big' Substack began by importing a large Twitter of Facebook list). Another thing that impedes growth on my Substack (and yours I guess) is that we do not do click-bait type posting which makes us quite niche (in a good way though.)
I had not heard about McKenzie's plans. It will be interesting to see. I write about this sort of thing in my essay "Artists and Musicians." You have to know going in if you want to write for growth or write for personal satisfaction. Everyone is somewhere on that pole, and neither is necessarily better than the other. And of course some people write everything from the heart and get famous, while others chase trends and get nowhere. For my part, I have no idea how people get big on social media, nor do I have the temperament for such a thing. So I just write what I feel like writing and hope it hits home.
Here is the link: https://on.substack.com/p/internet-for-writers?
Modest growth is my goal and I would be disappointed by any thing else....but not at the cost of changing the way I write. The way I have found to grow my 'Stack (to around 300) is by commenting on others (in similar ball park). I get a lot of 'likes' but paradoxically I've found that 'likes' rarely subscribe and subscribers rarely 'like'. (Haven't figured out why but maybe this kind of 'like' is just a very fleeting engagement.)
At risk of being coy, may I hope for a mention in a future Sub Mille?
I will certainly check out your work.
Thank you for the great roundup and mention. I look forward to reading everyone on here.
For me, Substack is like a town of 100,000 people. A good college town. You aren't going to know everyone everywhere. It's too big for that sort of a community. But there are a ton of interesting things happening.
Im the guy in that town you leave the party with and wind up in a basement bedroom with Iron maiden Posters on the walls, four lava lamps and a hole punched in the door. Ill show you my home made rat maze...
Commendable work. Well done.
"somehow the strange décor of Tony’s is more welcoming than the clean lines and shiny metal of its replacement. Perhaps it’s the knowledge that the décor is the means to a different end in the latter than the former, one being to make the patron feel welcome, the other to calm misgivings to facilitate transactions."
https://www.hilobrow.com/2010/06/01/fake-authenticity/
Thank you for the kind mention and write up! I’m glad you enjoyed the first of that short story “It Ain’t a Coyote.” It was very fun to write!
Brilliant work. Some of these pieces I'd read and I thank you for bringing the others to my attention. The fiction section, my domain, is much appreciated too. Thanks :)
This is a great idea. A good way for you to refine your thinking, and a good way for us to encounter more great work.
And thanks so much for sharing my poem! "it brought to mind Robert Browning and Tolkien’s Beren and Luthien" is high praise, I really appreciate it.