This substack has ended up being the thing I look the most forward to in my RSS feed inbox. I found you from comments you made on Astral Codex Ten (which I had just found coming from Tanner Greer's blog) because I really enjoyed your written voice. You strike a good balance between confident and conciliatory in your opinions. I'm not here for any particular topic, but for your personal style and genuine-feeling write ups. I think as long as you keep writing about subjects you actually care about, regardless of focus or frequency, you'll have an audience. Nobody is a single-issue person - a broad set of topics to me is a feature, not a bug!
To your audience commentary: I'm a Christian, a software developer, I read hackernews, and even follow Sullivan. I'd be considered vaguely center-right, but that's in the context of my more left-leaning country. I've shared your blog with a few center-left Christian software developer friends via word of mouth who have liked you for similar reasons as I. I'll admit you being Christian is a small factor in my enjoyment. It feels like much of my corner of the internet has either hostile or low-effort feelings towards faith, and so you're sort of a breath of fresh air in that respect.
Hey, I really appreciate that. I've subscribed to yours - this is a bad weekend to take a look at it (family stuff) but what should I get started on as far as articles of yours you like?
Ah, I wish I had a more comprehensive catalogue for you to read! I've only just started out this autumn (with a simple post about a seemingly unknown video game), before crunch-time at work took all my time leading up to our big December release. I'm now in the clear to pursue my writing again as of last week, so I hope you'll enjoy my upcoming instalments - it means a great deal to have you as a reader.
I have officially read the entirety of your substack output to-date. I (and another dude who I sent it to) both really like it. Despite having watched and enormous amount of drama, this isn't the kind of video game I'd normally even consider playing, but by the end of the article I was thinking about it, which says something good about your descriptive skills here.
Are you thinking about doing this as a cultural analysis/review blog for the most part? Because I don't think you have to get any better to do that - you sort of have those kind of chops RN.
Thanks, that's very encouraging feedback - I'm glad you both liked it! I'm not completely settled on where I want the blog to go. A pattern amongst my drafts and planned topics is highlighting beauty, virtue & merit that may have been missed or misunderstood by others in something that I have strong feelings about, so that may end up being what it coalesces into.
I’m a definite gray-tribe type and I don’t need more quant stuff! I really liked the joke-telling post and the one on being poor. I often read substack on my lunch break, or after I get home from work, and my work is quantitative, so it’s a nice break to have stuff that isn’t quanty. (I mean, I read quant stuff too, but it’s not, like, a general preference I have)
Coupling this with your comment below, my impressions of my traffic stats, and the general lack of complaints I get about my use of profane language makes me suspicious this isn't the normal route - I.E. I'm not reaching people through "Christian routes" at all, but reaching people who happen to be Christian classic liberals, Christian gray tribe, Christian rationalists, etc.
I'm fine with that, FWIW. It would have been interesting to learn "oh, this very normal Christian writer guy prints your stuff" but it would be weird to be pissed that that's not how it happens.
One tactic I've seen work for others is to post at a predictable time--even if it's "first Monday of every month," it avoids the "oh, I haven't checked on that blog in months" challenge.
Fair. One thing that makes it hard is my writing times shift a lot, and I'm an emotional child so I tend to push them out really quickly after that. I should really get a buffer going.
Best of luck to you, too! Thanks for being such a dedicated part of this - I see some engagement from you on basically everything I write, and it's appreciated more than you'd think.
(On videos/podcasts: I've thought about it. But in terms of how much time I have to dedicate to a thing, I get sort of catch-22'd; until this is "my work", it's hard to find the moments to trawl and find those opportunities, much less do them).
If you had a podcast, would you be in the "distinguished voice" category (e.g., Glenn Loury, Bari Weiss, Andrew Sullivan) or the "nerdy voice" category (e.g., Tyler Cowen, Russ Roberts, Megan McArdle)?
Well, I'm never going to be particular distinguished. And I broadly agree with Loury that to be distinguished you need to have achieved an elevation from which you are justified in surveying; I don't think I've done that.
If we were to break it down into "conversational" and "data driven, information gathering driven, serious", I'd probably go with conversational over, for instance, what Tyler does. I'm more interested in the people than what they do, if that makes sense, and I don't have what I feel is the kind of background that lets you ask the really interesting substantive questions about issues that some of the others do.
It's actually a funny thing with Substack views - AFAIK, an article getting 2000 hits is often as few as like 500-800 uniques. I think they count newsletter opens (as emails) and page opens from clicking through as individual hits. My assumption is that basically nobody ends up reading it in "email form" and everyone just clicks through, so I might have as few as half as many hits as I think on a 2k article.
It's actually comforting in light of that to know there's some undisclosed number of "stealth readers" out there, somewhere, not showing up and making my hit counter closer to the truth than it would otherwise be.
FWIW, I have all of my substack newsletter emails set up to be automatically deleted before they get to my inbox, and I subscribe to the substacks via RSS feed. I usually click through from the RSS feed to get to the comments.
This substack has ended up being the thing I look the most forward to in my RSS feed inbox. I found you from comments you made on Astral Codex Ten (which I had just found coming from Tanner Greer's blog) because I really enjoyed your written voice. You strike a good balance between confident and conciliatory in your opinions. I'm not here for any particular topic, but for your personal style and genuine-feeling write ups. I think as long as you keep writing about subjects you actually care about, regardless of focus or frequency, you'll have an audience. Nobody is a single-issue person - a broad set of topics to me is a feature, not a bug!
To your audience commentary: I'm a Christian, a software developer, I read hackernews, and even follow Sullivan. I'd be considered vaguely center-right, but that's in the context of my more left-leaning country. I've shared your blog with a few center-left Christian software developer friends via word of mouth who have liked you for similar reasons as I. I'll admit you being Christian is a small factor in my enjoyment. It feels like much of my corner of the internet has either hostile or low-effort feelings towards faith, and so you're sort of a breath of fresh air in that respect.
Hey, I really appreciate that. I've subscribed to yours - this is a bad weekend to take a look at it (family stuff) but what should I get started on as far as articles of yours you like?
Ah, I wish I had a more comprehensive catalogue for you to read! I've only just started out this autumn (with a simple post about a seemingly unknown video game), before crunch-time at work took all my time leading up to our big December release. I'm now in the clear to pursue my writing again as of last week, so I hope you'll enjoy my upcoming instalments - it means a great deal to have you as a reader.
I have officially read the entirety of your substack output to-date. I (and another dude who I sent it to) both really like it. Despite having watched and enormous amount of drama, this isn't the kind of video game I'd normally even consider playing, but by the end of the article I was thinking about it, which says something good about your descriptive skills here.
Are you thinking about doing this as a cultural analysis/review blog for the most part? Because I don't think you have to get any better to do that - you sort of have those kind of chops RN.
Thanks, that's very encouraging feedback - I'm glad you both liked it! I'm not completely settled on where I want the blog to go. A pattern amongst my drafts and planned topics is highlighting beauty, virtue & merit that may have been missed or misunderstood by others in something that I have strong feelings about, so that may end up being what it coalesces into.
I’m a definite gray-tribe type and I don’t need more quant stuff! I really liked the joke-telling post and the one on being poor. I often read substack on my lunch break, or after I get home from work, and my work is quantitative, so it’s a nice break to have stuff that isn’t quanty. (I mean, I read quant stuff too, but it’s not, like, a general preference I have)
"Where y’all coming from, traffic-source wise?"
I am Christian, but I got here through a gray-tribe route, I think--either Slate Star or Marginal Revolution.
Coupling this with your comment below, my impressions of my traffic stats, and the general lack of complaints I get about my use of profane language makes me suspicious this isn't the normal route - I.E. I'm not reaching people through "Christian routes" at all, but reaching people who happen to be Christian classic liberals, Christian gray tribe, Christian rationalists, etc.
I'm fine with that, FWIW. It would have been interesting to learn "oh, this very normal Christian writer guy prints your stuff" but it would be weird to be pissed that that's not how it happens.
Same here: came from DSL.
One tactic I've seen work for others is to post at a predictable time--even if it's "first Monday of every month," it avoids the "oh, I haven't checked on that blog in months" challenge.
Fair. One thing that makes it hard is my writing times shift a lot, and I'm an emotional child so I tend to push them out really quickly after that. I should really get a buffer going.
Best of luck to you, too! Thanks for being such a dedicated part of this - I see some engagement from you on basically everything I write, and it's appreciated more than you'd think.
(On videos/podcasts: I've thought about it. But in terms of how much time I have to dedicate to a thing, I get sort of catch-22'd; until this is "my work", it's hard to find the moments to trawl and find those opportunities, much less do them).
If you had a podcast, would you be in the "distinguished voice" category (e.g., Glenn Loury, Bari Weiss, Andrew Sullivan) or the "nerdy voice" category (e.g., Tyler Cowen, Russ Roberts, Megan McArdle)?
Well, I'm never going to be particular distinguished. And I broadly agree with Loury that to be distinguished you need to have achieved an elevation from which you are justified in surveying; I don't think I've done that.
If we were to break it down into "conversational" and "data driven, information gathering driven, serious", I'd probably go with conversational over, for instance, what Tyler does. I'm more interested in the people than what they do, if that makes sense, and I don't have what I feel is the kind of background that lets you ask the really interesting substantive questions about issues that some of the others do.
This is a great answer, but I was mostly asking about the sound of your voice (which in hindsight looks creepy--sorry!)
Oh! I gotcha. My voice sounds like I'm trying to talk entirely through my nose as a joke while being strangled by a starving assassin who lacks the physical strength to finish the job. See here: https://residentcontrarian.substack.com/p/on-tiger-moms-scissor-statements
It's actually a funny thing with Substack views - AFAIK, an article getting 2000 hits is often as few as like 500-800 uniques. I think they count newsletter opens (as emails) and page opens from clicking through as individual hits. My assumption is that basically nobody ends up reading it in "email form" and everyone just clicks through, so I might have as few as half as many hits as I think on a 2k article.
It's actually comforting in light of that to know there's some undisclosed number of "stealth readers" out there, somewhere, not showing up and making my hit counter closer to the truth than it would otherwise be.
FWIW, I have all of my substack newsletter emails set up to be automatically deleted before they get to my inbox, and I subscribe to the substacks via RSS feed. I usually click through from the RSS feed to get to the comments.