Dispatch from a Text-Based Life Form

Or, why I'm leaving Substack

This is my last post on Substack; please head to Buttondown or my homepage for my future writing.

When I was maybe eight years old, my parents took me to the eye doctor. I had been complaining regularly of eyestrain, the whites of my eyes growing bloodshot. After the exam, the doctor told me: “Your vision is fine. Just take a look up from the book every now and then.”

In some ways, not a lot has changed since then. I do wear glasses now after several additional decades of, evidently, not looking up from the book often enough. The eyestrain mostly disappeared with the corrective lenses.

I am who I am because of the books. Other forms of media play a role in my life too, especially music, but in the end it’s the written word that has shaped me. Films and television, audio and video, don’t have the same significance for me. I’ll turn to YouTube to understand how to fix a faucet or turn on a podcast to catch up on my benighted Cornhuskers, but for anything that really matters—for ideas, for stories, or for deep learning—I will always seek out text. Even audiobooks don’t really work for me—my attention wanders, and I find myself needing to see the words.

St. John says that in the beginning was the Word, and this is my story as much as any bit of Creation. I am a text-based life form.

All of this makes for an uneasy existence on the Internet today. The attention economy of modern media favors modes that offer more immediate stimulation. Text can’t compete with audio and video as a source of dopamine. And short videos and long podcasts fit into the cracks for many people in a way that long pieces of writing do not.

For these and other reasons, writers who want to find an audience today seem to be encouraged to act as anything but writers. The path to an audience today is not through writing, but through creating relationships in other ways: audio, video, and online “community.” Writing should be only one part of the “content” you create; as much as a writer, you must be a manager of your brand through other forms of media.

I can see the sense in all this. On some level, a book is a product for sale like anything else, and writers don’t get to claim some special exemption from the functions of the marketplace. But, all the same, I am not going to do these things. As a writer, my desire is to spend my time writing, not “creating content” or building a brand. New media can be valuable when thoughtfully employed, for all that thoughtfulness can seem to go against the grain of the medium. I have made one appearance on a podcast, the delightfully slow and meditative Color of Dust, and I’d willingly visit another if invited. But I’m not going to start making my own audio or video; it’s not my vocation. I am a teacher and a writer, and I have quite enough to do in seeking to master those skills without having also to become an amateur audio production engineer.

More, I aspire to be a person, not a brand. I try to write because I have something to say more than just to garner attention or to cultivate a following. Writing is for friendship and for thought, not for reputation management or making a splash.
Social media of any kind is hostile to my most important values of presence and attention. I have never had an account on most of the major platforms, and none of the video- or photo-based ones. Other platforms I left long ago. Lacking a social media presence certainly hurts my ability to build an audience as a writer, but I can’t help that. I don’t know how to be the person I want to be or how to advocate for the things I care most for on these platforms. They are technologies of inattentiveness, passivity, rage, and vainglory. If some users at some times resist these tendencies of the platforms, as I know they do, I know myself well enough to recognize that I would not, and that I do best to stay away.

When I started writing on Substack in 2020, the site was a free platform for publishing text. I signed up because I wanted to pursue a specific writing project, the series of essays that became my book, and I continued writing here because it let me publish essays that wouldn’t fit in a magazine or journal. That’s still my goal with my writing here, but Substack has changed. Now, in 2025, Substack is essentially a social media platform with an algorithmic feed, a host of notifications, and short form video. Contemplating these changes, I resonated with this comment by Max Gladstone:

This is definitely me being a bit Pa Ingalls over here but: when you’re standing in the field of your long-form text-based platform and you see short form video over the horizon, it’s time to pack up the wagon.

Accordingly, I am taking this newsletter off Substack and moving over to Buttondown, a text-based platform that has pledged to stay a text-based platform. (And, since Buttondown isn’t beholden to venture capital to fund their business, I have some hope that might even be true.) This change is costing me money; it is not a business plan. Probably, given the growth that seems to still be happening at Substack, the change is a big mistake for my writing “career.” But I think it’s necessary for me to write in the way I need to write. Like Wendell Berry, part of whose poem about words adorns the head of this post, “I am an old-fashioned man” seeking “a language that can pay just thanks.” Such thanks include my gratitude to all who trouble to read my words, in whatever form they take. I know I have no right to expect the generous attention of my readers through all my quixotic resistance to convenient technological forms of communication.

If you prefer not to make this change with me, you are free to unsubscribe. But if you would like to come along, there’s nothing you need to do—your subscription will translate over and you’ll receive emails from me as usual. Furthermore, if you don’t subscribe to this newsletter but only “follow” me in Substack, can I invite you to subscribe?

Otherwise our connection is mediated by the Substack algorithm, and I would much prefer to reach you directly in email, where short-form video need not intrude. You can subscribe here in Substack, and your subscription will port over to the new service as I make that change. I am on sabbatical for this spring semester, you can expect some more frequent writing from me here in the coming months.

For those who stick with me or newly subscribe, the next message you will receive from me will come through Buttondown. It will look slightly different but will remain what I have always wanted this newsletter to be: the dispatch of a text-based life-form.

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