How To Support This Newsletter
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How to support this newsletter, in order of importance:
Read it. Literally, that’s the main thing. Just read it. If you hate it, or can’t muster any feelings toward it all, or find that it’s preventing you from reading something better or making something better (both highly probable), you can unsubscribe at any time. Good by me. “Only connect...” as E. M. Forster wrote in the epigraph to a novel I’ve never read.
Share it. Literally, share the newsletter with other people who might enjoy this sort of thing. What sort of thing? you may ask. As it goes, my day job as a copywriter is devoted to answering similar questions: what something is, who it’s for, and why they should support it. Here, however, I’ve skipped the sales pitch and moved straight to the how — because I can. Groveling is a bad look, and I’m reluctant to define (and therefore limit) what the newsletter is beyond “an arts and culture blog,” which sometimes means a deep reading of Henry James and other times means a plea against grocery-store Starbucks kiosks. I take it as a first-order truth that I’m not unique and therefore someone else must find this sort of thing interesting. Whoever that person is — your quixotic son, your secret crush, your snobby roommate, your high school English teacher — that person is my reader. Share it, and tell them to subscribe. Who knows? The life you save may be your own.
Like it. Literally, press the like button (or heart icon) if you happen to like a post.1 I’m more ambivalent about this method of support. In general, I would rather not occupy a world mediated by proprietary algorithms and digital feedback loops. However, I don’t live in a general world but a particular one, and in this particular world “likes” ostensibly increase a post’s chances of being picked up by Substack’s network and shared with a larger public audience. In other words, more likes lead to more eyeballs, and again, my goal is to be read.
Buy it. Literally, become a paid subscriber to the newsletter. This one’s also tricky because, as I’ve written before, I probably wouldn’t pay for this newsletter.
It’s free, and all things being equal, I wouldn’t pay for anything if I could afford to.
I don’t have any money.
That said, the common pitch you’ll see in favor of paid subscriptions goes something like, All this for the price of one iced macchiato a month! I understand the rhetorical move here, but is that clearly a better trade? I like coffee! I like beer, too. The world would be a worse place without either. They’re physical goods — and reliable. That beer is going to work. That beer is greater than the sum of its hops.
So I don’t know. Samuel Johnson said that “no man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.” I, being a blockhead par excellence, am going to keep writing regardless of your financial contribution, but if you’ve got the means, I’d certainly appreciate the help and vote of confidence. I may even buy you a beer sometime. (One.)
In the event you’ve subscribed to The Happy Few recently-ish, here are a few pieces from the archive that might give you a better idea of what this sort of thing is. It’s also worth noting that I used to write under several pseudonyms. I don’t do that anymore because it’s dumb, difficult, and confusing — which, nevertheless, probably still describes this newsletter.
A point of clarification for those of you who know me personally (bless): telling my wife you liked something I wrote does not count as liking something. Not according to the cold logic of The Algorithm, anyway. I don’t honestly care very much and still appreciate the feedback — but apparently she does and therefore asked me to add this note.