Em Dashes has moved off of Substack.

Why, you ask?

Besides the obvious (they make money from Nazis and are the preferred hangout for boring right-wing hacks like Bari Weiss, Matt Yglesias, Nate Silver, et al.¹), I honestly just found the place to be kind of a drag. Being there made me feel the same way being on LinkedIn makes me feel (the noxious focus on “networking,” “personal branding,” “efficiency hacks,” etc.). Also, I do not need another social media feed in my life.

There are plenty of other reasons, both those are the main ones.

I think being off “on my own” will make this endeavor much more fun for me. I want to use this space to experiment, be silly, try new things, create and be myself.

I am paying to leave Substack. Running a newsletter here (Buttondown, they seem cool) costs $9/month for 100-1000 subscribers. So all I need to break-even is two people to upgrade to a $5 paid monthly subscription, which gets you, as of now…absolutely nothing special. But maybe it will one day!²

At the very least, you will feel good about making my dreams come true.

Was anyone else out there radicalized by this photo? I sure was!

[Just out of frame: Sam Altman, the guy currently arguing with the other AI billionaire asshole about who gets to bomb schools full of innocent kids for the Department of “War”; also Tim Cook, who spent the evening that Alex Pretti was murdered hanging out with accused rapist Brett Ratner at the Melania premiere (not to mention all the other creeps in the room).]

I’ve spent the last year emancipating myself from as many of these companies and products as possible. It was a giant undertaking, but I managed to move off of Gmail (updating login info for every app/service took forever). Replaced Chrome as my default web browser. I deleted Facebook a few years ago, but shuttered my Instagram. Deleted my Twitter/X account entirely. I haven't used Amazon in a decade, but when there is a Prime exclusive movie/TV show I want to watch… let’s just say, I find a way around that. I’ve never used ChatGPT before because, to quote Vince Gilligan on the subject, no one has “held a shotgun to my head and made me.”

Everything—literally every single thing—wrong with our society today is being made exponentially worse by these people. Not only that, but all of these things (social media, especially) are actively—deliberately! on purpose!—rotting our brains and corroding our souls.

I’m not saying it’s easy, or that you’re a bad person if you use any of these things (except for X: if you are still on there after Grok dubbed itself “MechaHitler” and gleefully became a nonconsensual deepfake and CSAM (child sexual abuse material) generator, you need to seriously look yourself in the mirror and admit you’re addicted to clout and/or the site has eroded your brain and you need help). I still have my iPhone. I still use Google Maps (none of the alternatives even come close, unfortunately). If Instagram allowed for a non-algorithmic feed, I’d be tempted to return. I’m in the process of switching my phone plan away from ICE’s preferred telecommunications company AT&T. The reason it took me so long to get off of Substack was that I knew it would take a “sub”stantial effort, and I’m generally pretty lazy.

“There is no ethical consumption under capitalism” blah blah blah. I know. You know. We all know. But I would encourage you to free yourself from as many of these technologies as you can. You will feel better. Your mind won’t be as poisoned. You will save money. You will have free time you can spend reading a book, or having coffee with a friend, or going for a nice walk. I am a firm believer that, if we ever want to get out of this cultural death spiral, a big part of it will be uncoupling ourselves from addictive feeds and algorithmic slop, and remembering what real life—the wind in the trees, breath passing through our lungs—actually feels like. It feels good.

Writing a book is hard. I’m three or four years into the madness of trying to write a big ol’ fantasy novel, and the end is nowhere in sight. My writing goal is 4k words per week. In January and February, I wrote close to 30k words total.

Wish me luck this weekend. I have no idea where things are going.

Lately, when I sit down to write, I put on my pair of AKG K240 studio headphones and let the music drown out the critical voice(s) in my head so I can fully immerse myself in the world and let the words flow unencumbered and free.

One of my favorite discoveries so far this year has been “Formations” by Julia Gjertsen. Lovely piano music that’s just cinematic enough to be evocative and interesting, but ambient enough to not get too distracting.

Formations by Julia Gjertsen on TIDAL

Listen to Formations on TIDAL