I understand this is just how landlordism works but I'm naive enough to still be exhausted and resentful over perpetually paying rent to individuals and entities who are already significantly more financially secure than I will ever be.

I try to dodge the embarrassment of "at some point you gotta acknowledge that people aren't buying what you're selling" by not-selling my work, by not approaching these things as businesses. But the creative tools are all rented, there's no investment, and I never get ahead.

I'm a writer and an artist who is not good at promoting or making money with my work, so sitting down to do a cost/benefit analysis of SaaS subscriptions or monthly platform fees or anything results in a lot of evidence that quitting makes a lot of sense.

Personally, I'm delighted to have 600 subscribers, but it's a challenge to face down more expenses and all this frustration over a project that already loses money. Which is the same reason I stopped making video art after dropping Adobe.

I have too many other dormant websites, blogs and domains to keep track of due to the same ignorance and confusion. This is all incredibly depressing, even before I remind myself that the advice on how super easy it is to switch is coming from tech-savvy people with 10x my subscriptions.

Writing is a grind that I ony enjoy because of the social connections that I make. Now every time I sit down to try and write something I lock up because I don't want to do anything else with substack and I'm too ignorant and confused to figure out where else to go.

There are many things I enjoy about Void Contemplation Tactics but anytime I have to think about it as something other than an art project I want to quit.

substaKKK does everything I need and their annoying network features have actually been good for new subs but they're too chicken shit to ban literal nazis so instead of writing I gotta return to looking for an affordable (i.e. not ghost) platform that doesn't monetize "nazi creatives"

“Substack was contacted for comment but did not respond.”
<—- not even worth a comment from their public affairs / policy / leaders / comms team? oh

Same with Chicago house made on 909s that nobody wanted and producers picked up cheap, then used the limitations and wild sounds to invent a genre. 😎

Most Memphis hip hop was made with the lowest of low end drum machines found at goodwill like the BOSS DR-660 which was part of Roland's low end BOSS sub brand. Restrictions and having no money MADE the sound.

it was the same thing when early adopters were going all-in with NFTs and everybody was like "this is so confusing who knows what will happen" but you could clear up the confusion real quick by looking at what Elon Musk was excited about and going the opposite direction immediately