What you need to know first is, I wasn’t supposed to write this book.
I had an entirely different book on the docket: a direct sequel to Damn Fine Story which was about applying the principles of that book to a variety of genre stories while also examining genre and sub-genre and all that fiddly stuff.
But then, Writer’s Digest’s parent company went insolvent, then it got bought by PRH, then everything about that book was in limbo.
Oh, also? A global pandemic happened.
And so when WD came knocking and said, “Hey, you still wanna write that book?” — well, it turned out, I kinda didn’t. My heart really wasn’t into the idea anymore, and further, I certainly didn’t feel like I wanted to kick over any hornet nests on the subject of genre and make statements I was ultimately not smart or wise enough to support. But: I gave it a shot, just the same. Freelancer mindset and all that, I figured I’d rally and get it done.
As I was trying to write that book, a whole other book began to emerge, first as bits where I thought “well, maybe this can become a separate book somewhere down the line.” But eventually it leapt forth as a colonizing entity, swallowing the original book. At this point I had to say to myself, “I guess this is the book I’m writing right now, and hopefully the publisher is going to be okay with that.” (This is not advisable, by the way, but hey, the pandemic made us all pretty weird.) The whole other book that emerged was a book that attempts to tackle the rigors and tribulations of being a writer — both from an emotional creature trying to make a story happen and a writer who needs to sometimes pay his bills with those stories perspective. Because honestly, writing is hard. The act is hard, the business is harder, the pandemic made it even worse — it’s chaos, all the way down. Making a book is a strange experience and it only gets stranger once it gets tossed into the churning maw of the publishing industry, or out into the eyeballs of a waiting audience.
I wanted to write about that, it seems.
So, the book that emerged is all about… being a writer, and how hard it is sometimes, and how we deal with that difficulty. That’s it, at the end of the day. It’s a book about surviving, and then, thriving as a storyteller. It’s a book about writing advice as much as it is a book of writing advice. And with a lot of it, it ends up quite personal, too, because at the end of the day I can really only talk about me as a writer, and not that much about you. I’m a pretty privileged, pretty lucky writer, and at the end of the day I can only guess what’s going on with you and in your head — but I damn sure know what’s up with me. It also ends up a book of me in conversation with myself — the myself who was a freelancer once upon a time, the myself who started writing novels just over ten years ago, the myself who wrote writing advice then and now, too. That conversation is about exhuming and reexamining and challenging old ideas, too. It’s ultimately about being gentle on yourself through this mad maze of writing, storytelling, and publishing. Because the rest of the world won’t be gentle. Not ever, not really.
Some of this too comes out of my experiences writing Wayward — which were, in fact, discussed in the afterword of that book. There, I had to write this giant post-apocalyptic novel in the midst of living through an Actual Fucking Pandemic, and… I was coming up bone dry. It was like being in the dark in a cave with no echo. There was no there there. I had a book to write, but no book in my mind to write. It was eerily comforting in a way that was profoundly disturbing.
I had to find my way through that, and have had to find my way through many dark forests through the years, and I thought a book talking about that was maybe useful to someone. Not necessarily as a “whole picture” thing, where all aspects of my lived existence will be relevant — but the hope is, something in this book inspires a greater connection to yourself as a writer and an artist.
So, Gentle Writing Advice was born.
And as it turns out, the publisher was more than okay with it.
As such, it has since leapt its containment paddock and is now rampaging loose in the world. It contains footnotes. It has bad words. It tries not to take itself too seriously because I never, ever want you to take writing advice too seriously. It contains no answers — which, for some, I recognize is frustrating. I can’t give you the map. I can only show you the way I went. I can mark trails, but those trails might not even be there anymore. But maybe I can help give you the tools to blaze your own path through the shadows.
Hopefully you’ll check it out, and find something in it that sparks some part of yourself or your process. Maybe you’ll read it and take just a little better care of yourself as a writer-of-words. After all, it’s dark down there in the word mines. Take a lantern and a snack.
If you want signed, personalized copies: Doylestown Bookshop is your place. They will absolutely ship to you! Wherever you are! Except probably the moon.
You can also use Bookshop.org or just go to your local store.
And — audio! Right out of the gate. It’s erm, not me reading it? Which is a good thing because I’d totally screw it up, but Adam Verner nails it. Libro.fm, Audible, plus other audio retailers here.
So, a few things upfront: first, I am a privileged author who sells well and is able to support himself and his family on writing books. Second, none of this post is to be taken as fact, but rather, as opinion — it relies, quite frankly, on “artisanal data” (aka anecdotes) and also, y’know, vibes. As such, I am, like many, looking at a room through a keyhole and will certainly not be seeing everything.
All that being said —
Being an author — aka, the fancy word for “writer of books” — vibes real weird right now. There is worry on the wind. To be fair, it’s always a little weird. Being a creative person in any realm is, I assume, a chaos reigns situation on the best of days. Nothing is certain. The ground is ever weak beneath our feet. A career as a “writer-of-books” has for me always been in part the strategy of eyeballing the peaks and valleys, and making sure that you’re building the proper ramps and bridges over the gaps before you ramp the car and crash it into a fucking ravine. In this sense, worry is always part of the bargain. Shit could go sideways one of a hundred different ways we can foretell, and another hundred we can’t. Worse, we’re kind of low-hanging fruit in a lot of ways — books are (to my mind, incorrectly) viewed as a luxury, a frippery, a whiff of the ol’ fol-de-rol.
So, what’s bringing the extra worry?
The pandemic fucked a bunch of shit up. Book events are erratic in terms of attendance, and as a result, publishers don’t seem to be using them as much, which means booksellers are asking authors, “Hey, can you tell your publishers to please send authors to us?” If booksellers are hurting, we’re hurting. (I have deeper thoughts about book events and how to make them consistent and amazing, but that’s for a different post, I think.)
Hardcovers are problematic, now? Hardcovers are maybe too expensive, probably — whether that’s inflation or greedflation, I dunno, but your average wallet paid too much for eggs and rent, and that doesn’t leave money for the Fancy Big Book Purchase. Some bookstores carry fewer hardcovers now because of this (also, space issues), and some publishers are committing to fewer hardcover releases and jumping instead to paperback. But if we lose that first step entirely, it shortens the long tail of the book, putting everything on, say, the paperback. (Sidenote, I have said and will always say, I really miss the MMPB format, and wish that format was still a thing. I know I am an OLD MAN YELLING AT CLOUDS, but boy fucking howdy I’d love to see spinner racks of paperbacks again. Put them everywhere! Pharmacies! Tire shops! Pet stores!) To be clear, a lot of books have forgone the hardcover step in the past — but the number seems to be dwindling anew, which to my mind is less than ideal.
Mainstream media is closing doors, not opening them. Once upon a time, a lot of media outlets had (said with naive reverie) coverage devoted to books. Oooh! Ahh! Except, ennh, uh-oh. Some outlets have now shut down all book coverage or have narrowed the aperture so tightly that the only coverage allowed is for the Mega Big Bestsellers. BuzzFeed News, which once upon a time covered book stuff, shut down entirely. And now there’s a surge in news coverage simply being farmed out to “artificial intelligence,” which is to say, clumsy algorithmic plagiaristic aggregators (because there is nothing intelligent about it, and a whole lot that’s artificial, though more on AI later). So, where once we could count a little bit on maybe, maybe getting some breadcrumbs of media coverage… well, the Gulls of Capitalism have gobbled up those crumbs, leaving us naught but an empty plate.
Social media is more or less collapsing. The internet in general is getting less reliable overall, in part due to misinformation, disinformation, and the waves of garbage and glurge barfed forth by various bots and algorithms. Once upon a time, Googling something was a reliable way to learn about it, but now you’ll likely find yourself on a raft floating on a sea of bad information. Social media has become the staging ground for all this shit (and also how, in part, it leeches into the groundwater of the rest of the internet), and as such, social media has started to fall apart like everything else. Twitter is shit, run by a vain maniac who keeps holding up anti-Semitic and anti-trans and anti-vaxxer and other bullshit like he just opened a bigotry blind bag and wants to show you the “cool thing” he just found, lol, lmao, laughing-crying emoji. The wheels are coming off everything and now attention is fractured across social media. And publishers — long having us and themselves lean very hard on that very same social media — are left with shattered landscape on which to walk. Where do you go to talk about your books? There are places, but attention is now diffuse, and it’s hard to know who’s even going to see it given how engagement is throttled unless you’re paying $8 a month for Twitter Blue, which doesn’t seem to do shit anyway, and also marks you as a chump helping to enrich an asshole.
The writer’s strike is unabashedly, unswervingly good. But, as a writer-of-books, it does mean one avenue of opportunity has narrowed, if temporarily — nobody is going to be optioning much of anything for (hopefully only) the short term. This isn’t the fault of the WGA, to be clear, but the fault of the giant companies who need to come back to the bargaining table to ensure that writers — the bedrock of all the storytelling that goes onto any screen anywhere — are part of the conversation and paid what they are worth.
The advance spiral is real. The advance spiral is this: you write a book, a publisher pays you XYZ advance for that book, but also doesn’t support the book well enough and as such, on the next go-round, you are offered a smaller advance, which actually means even less support because drum roll please, the marketing support is often tied to size of advance. And print runs are smaller and so bookstores/libraries order less which means on the next next go-round, they want to give you even fewer chits and ducats for your storywords annnnd now you’re paid in like, Chuck E. Cheese tokens. It’s not new, this spiral. It’s been a thing for a long time. But I’m hearing a lot more about it again after feeling like it was less of a phenomenon over the last several years. (Sidenote: Hana Lee, an author, most excellently crafted a “when will I earn out?” calculator here. It also helps show you that the book becomes “successful” long before you reach that actual threshold of earning out.)
Self-publishing is a narrower path. This is, again, a limited perspective, but talking to self-pub/indie friends, the gist is this: we put so many eggs into Amazon’s basket that Amazon gets to control most of of the indie narrative. Kindle Unlimited payouts are reportedly down. (As of April 2023, it seems the payout to authors was at an all-time low.) My toes do not wiggle in this pool as often, so feel free to correct my information here — maybe that indie thing is going really well. Again, looking through a keyhole here. Both here and with the above “advance spiral” problem — note that with inflation/greedflation, writers are not paid more, but rather, less, despite everything costing more.
And now we lead into the two biggest problems currently facing us writers-of-books — artificial intelligence and the nightmare bigotry that has used book banning as a cudgel across the nation.
First: AI.
I had a dream two nights ago where I was asked by a Major Intellectual Property Franchise Brand That Features Space Wizards to come in as a freelancer and “punch up” a novel in that universe that had been written by Artificial Intelligence. And for some reason, my Dipshit Dream Self took the job and then ended up, of course, rewriting the entire book from ground zero, because it was awful, and everyone knew it was awful, and I got paid half as much as I would have had I just been hired to write the thing fresh.
Now, usually, my dreams are goofy and weird. They are rarely of the “too real, this anxiety” variety, but this one? Felt pretty damn real.
How so? Well, let’s look at comments from Thomas Rabe, of Bertelsmann (aka the parent company of Penguin Random House), talking about AI: “If it’s your content, for which you own the copyright, and then you use it to train the software, you can in theory generate content like never before.”
(The phrase generate content gives me the shivering shits, tbh. And again, a lot of big franchise IPs are the ones who own big content… and they’ll start to use it soon to train the algorithms… and then hire writers at a cut-rate to fix all the shitty “content” that algorithm “generated.” Endless screams ensue.)
Further, from the article:
‘Rabe revealed that he was an enthusiastic personal user of the “impressive” ChatGPT, saying that it was already enhancing his job as a chief executive. He recently used the chatbot to help him prepare for a staff event at Penguin Random House’s office in Munich. “I asked ChatGPT what the impact of ChatGPT or generative AI is on publishing. It prepared a phenomenal text. Frankly, it was pretty detailed and to the point,” he said.’
What this should tell you is that publishers are starting to go “hmm” about artificial intelligence, under the auspices of how it could somehow enrich the authorial experience when, in reality, they and we all know that the only enrichment will be in the pockets of the already-rich. (Spoiler: I don’t mean the authors.) Some executive somewhere is trying to figure out how they pay authors less (and maybe their own staff) by “augmenting” the “content” with “artificial intelligence.” This is fundamentally one of the same issues the WGA is grappling with: the higher-ups are definitely dreaming of a day they can just tap a key and have a Magical Content Machine puke up a thousand loglines that they can then have the Magical Content Machine turn into scripts that they can then have some half-starved penmonkey “edit” (meaning: rewrite entirely) the mess into something resembling a film or TV show.
Let’s be clear about a few things: first, artificial intelligence is not what it says on the label. It is not intelligent. It is a content scraper, an aggregator, a copy-pasta information thief, and all it does is stick a bunch of pre-existing shit in a can, shake it up, and pour it out. It’s basically Link wandering around Hyrule, cooking up weird fish and bokoblin guts and hoping it turns into an edible stew.
Second, it also sucks. Really bad.
It cannot create something truly new because all it knows is what’s already been done. It can only remix, and remix poorly, pre-existing material. It lives no life. It has no inspiration or ideas of its own. AI is not equivalent to an artist or a storyteller — it has no perspective, no viewpoint, no opinion but what you tell it to have. The damn thing has no soul. And anybody who makes the argument “hur hur well don’t artists also basically get inspiration from pre-existing material so basically they’re the same basically” should be forcibly kicked out of the airlock into the cold void of space.
As has been pointed out by many others, we’d much rather have a world where artificial intelligence does basic, fundamental tasks like governing the best path a Roomba takes through our house. “Oh good, the AI in our vacuum has learned not to happily bobble its way through a pile of dogshit — no more smearing it across the entirety of our carpets.” Yes, that is the role for AI, to help our stupid appliances be better appliances. The human experience is one where we hope to be free to make art and tell stories and sing songs, so if artificial intelligence is doing that part, too, then what’s the fucking point of it all? When the robots make the music and the humans are cleaning up the dog shit — WTF?
Thus we must hold the line. Demand publishers not use AI covers. Demand they do not use AI editors. No AI in the writing, editing, production, or marketing of our books. Because somewhere that’s going to cut somebody out of a job, and that somebody is a clever person with ideas, and an artificial intelligence is not clever, it has no ideas, it has only stolen information from those who came before and then deploys it in order to make its Tech Bro Masters richer.
Now, book banning.
There exists a vibe among some authors, and I’ll note that this vibe is precariously privilege-flavored, whereupon they say, “Oh, being banned is good, actually,” as if it is a mark of honor and will lead to more sales. A few problems with this, though:
First, because book banning has focused primarily on schools and libraries, that means those places cannot purchase your book, and more importantly, means that audiences cannot access those books — which, yes, are for free, because schools and libraries provide a public service by offering free and unfettered access to entertainment and information. It is a Net Good, and any attacks on the books in these places is bad, and further, the attacks go well-beyond just the books, to the institutions themselves. School funding gets cut. Library funding, slashed, sometimes to the fucking ground, sometimes to the point the library has to close its doors. This is bad for everybody. There is no good here.
Third, by saying book bans are Good, Actually, you’re definitely signaling that you are a person of privilege and power whose books and life really won’t be affected. But these bans focus predominantly on LGBT books, Black books, Jewish books, and books by other marginalized authors — the goal of erasing these books is the goal of erasing those people. Book bans are authoritarian anti-freedom efforts designed quite literally as the first wave of assault on the literal existence of these people. That’s the long-term. In the short-term, denying access to these types of books ensures that some folks simply do not get to see themselves, their problems, their histories, their futures, represented in fiction. It’s bad all around, and it will lead to self-censorship, suicide, and eventually, if left unchecked, genocide. I know that feels like a big leap. But book bans are where it starts.
To go back to the “publishing environment” angle, it’s chilling, too, in that booksellers, libraries, and publishers might get cagey about what they publish. Publishers already have a spotty track record on engaging with marginalized communities through the work they put out and the people they hire internally — this is not designed to make it better. It will rewind any progress that has been made, no matter how robust or meager that progress was. And be advised, it’s designed to go beyond the communities it currently targets. It’ll wash up on your beach eventually, so start caring now, not later.
AI and book bans are pretty existential in terms of the threat they represent to authors. And add in the rest, oof, it definitely feels real weird out there, if not apocalyptic. What can you do? I don’t have great answers here. If you’re an author, get a damn good agent who cares about this stuff. Push back on the invasiveness of artificial intelligence wherever you see it. Support your fellow authors, particularly those without your privilege — always try to leave a ladder out and a light on. (Plus some snacks.) Support bookstores. Support schools and libraries in buying books and standing up against oppression. And try to remember that it’s on you to keep writing your own weird, messy, Very-Much-You stories. As for readers, some of it is the same: support writers, bookstores, libraries wherever you can. Signal boost trans and Black and Jewish books — any book that isn’t by, well, a cis white guy like me. (I mean, selfishly, I want you to yell about my books, too! Obviously! Because I am a monster and I need to eat! But I’m probably going to be okay. My identity is not in the crosshairs.)
Is there any good news? Well, I guess there always is some, sure. I know some new bookstores are opening (check out The End in Allentown!). B&N has had its ups and downs but I’ve found them to be far more supportive of authors these days than they used to be. The horror genre is bouncing back in a big way, I think, and, I dunno, I’ve read some really good books lately. And we at least know the word-of-mouth phenomenon online can still do wonders, which we know because of someone named *checks notes* Bigolas Dickolas. While that’s all well and good, it’s a wad of Band-Aids patched over a sucking chest wound, so we must all remain vigilant and try to demand better for ourselves and readers.
And my next writing book, about the writing life and self-care, is out next month — Gentle Writing Advice. Also available signed/personalized at Doylestown Bookshop, if you’re so inclined.
You, me, Kevin Hearne, and the Northshire Books bookstore in Saratoga Springs, NY. May 17th, 6pm. Come by! Buy books! Sing the ancient songs! Dance the heretical dance! Perform the rites! Uhh I mean, talk to us about tacos and birds. It’ll be great. Deets here.
I went to a small liberal arts college that was around 70% women — it was one fraternity and, if I recall, four or five sororities. It was a nice school, emphasis on nice. Parties were never huge. It was pleasant, if not always entirely exciting.
Then, one day, I was invited to a party at a Big University. This one, at PITT. So, I went to this party, and my first image of that party was that, outside on the sidewalk, there was a couch. And that couch was on fire. Not a raging fire, I think just the arm? But it was on fire.
The party would escalate from there. There was a dog fight on the front porch (not the kind you bet on, but the kind where two people brought dogs and they got into a fight). A meth dealer wandered in at one point. (He was, if I recall, quite friendly.) There was a lot of drinking and throwing up. Hallucinogens were at play. It was a blast. It was also the kind of party where you think, pretty constantly, “This could get fucked up kinda fast.” Like, it was already on an edge, teetering like a car on a rock at the lip of a cliff. One person gets in or out of the car and the whole thing is going over.
Related: yesterday I joined the Newest Social Media Network, Bluesky.
(No, I don’t have an invite code for you. I’ve no idea how to get one.)
Bluesky — which should really be BlueSky, because otherwise it reads like “blooski” — is almost exactly Twitter. Which makes sense, because it was ushered into existence by Jack Dorsey who, y’know, ran Twitter. It looks like Twitter. It acts like Twitter. It vibes like Twitter. More specifically, it vibes like Twitter from the early days of 2008. It has a wild, feral-cat aura about it. It’s shitposter central, right now: memelords rule the wasteland, and honestly, it’s a lot of fun. It has an energy that the other social media replacements haven’t really manifested yet.
And yet, it’s a lot like that party. Or put differently, it’s like a Philly sports game. We’re all having fun and the team is winning and woooooo. But the energy in the air is weird, and at any point people might start flipping cars or throwing batteries at Santa Claus. The hunger for people to dunk on is tightening everyone’s jaws. (Heidi Moore posted a good thread about the vibe here. As one user said: “too many predators in the ecosystem. where are the deer.” And yes, ironically, that thread is on Twitter. Sue me.) It doesn’t take much to turn shitposts into something else, something worse.
Pretty fast you can see that the biggest downside to the place is that there is…
No way to block people.
I just want to say that again:
You cannot block other users.
You can mute them.
But they can see you.
You cannot block other users.
This, to me, is a bedrock basic-ass social media necessity. There is no safety in a place where you cannot block other users. You can be harassed, stalked, threatened, and so forth, because there is no block and, far as I can tell, minimal moderation. I understand there are reasons for this, I guess, in terms of how the coding happened (the service will be diffuse and decentralized, more like Mastodon)? And it’s reportedly coming, the ability to block other users. But for me, blocking as a functionality should be a day one priority. It’s like designing a sports car without any windshield. Without it, you’re eating bugs and dust.
Also, the current name for posts over there is “skeets.”
As in, I skeeted on the blooski? Eeennh. Hmm. Okay. Skeets is funny. It’s hilarious. And no serious platform will ever survive calling them that. I may be wrong (and part of me very much hopes I am wrong) but I just don’t see a celebrity saying seriously about how you can find them skeeting on the blooski. A newscaster, “The shooting suspect skeeted violent images on his blooski…”
Then again, stranger things have happened.
So for me part of the question is always, how valuable is this for writers? As yet, not very — there’s not much Writer Community happening there, nor do I see a lot of promotion. Or news or serious talk of any kind. It’s honestly mostly shitposters. (A fascinating choice to have opened the platform up to that before, say, more serious journalists or celebrities. Probably smart? Also weird?) But I also figure it could become something. If they open the gates wide on this there’s very little stopping it from becoming The New Twitter, in the sense that it is mostly The Old Twitter, just without Elon Musk. (This is not an endorsement of Jack, to be clear, only that he, unlike Musk, is not likely sitting there at his computer with his pants unbuttoned, fondling himself as he talks to someone named Cat Turd on His Big Boy Platform.) It feels like, once they start… you know, making Bluesky a safer place, it could go big.
Then again, it will just as likely belly flop into pig shit, as most of the other platforms have. I mean, on the one hand, we’re all just looking for Next Twitter. On the other hand, Twitter wasn’t that fucking great before, so to replace it with… itself? Well, that’s also not ideal. (And there’s a thread about Bluesky’s terms of service being pretty problematic for content creators, but I also find that panic about terms of service is often quite easy, and further, the creators have said they’re going to work on it. Even still, keep your eyes open and remain generally wary. No social media platform is your friend.)
How are those other platforms doing, by the way? A quick rundown from me, from my POV, anyway —
Twitter is a front row seat to the apocalypse. It is the Champagne of Doomscrollers. But the fun is nearly dead. Musk fucked it all up, and it wasn’t even that great before. Engagement is also extra-fucked. Tweets are erratic in if they’re even seen at all. It’s not awesome. It is the walking dead.
Facebook is, well, who fucking cares. It is only a walled garden for me.
Tumblr, I dunno, I don’t yet use it much, but I know Chuck Tingle was just saying he still digs it over there, and for writers, seems like there’s meaningful value.
Post is boring. Are people even on Post still? Did I dream Post? Was it real?
Hive is — well, I dunno. I haven’t checked, which probably tells you how Hive is doing. I really liked it before the wheels came off. Not sure it can come back. I wouldn’t hate if it did. I liked it, in theory. It had just enough to feel like it was different from Twitter while still vibing like Twitter.
Mastodon — honestly, I still like it. It’s like an oaty bran cereal. I think I want something more exciting but inevitably I return to it. No algorithm, and despite that, still good engagement, lots of chatter and conversation.
Spoutible is real quiet. Maybe just down to the communities I follow bailed on it. But they did. And now it’s quiet. Most of my timeline comprises retweets, er, reskeets, er, respouts from like, one or two people.
Instagram is part of Facebook and so it is by its nature, awful, but I can’t lie, I still like it, and use it, and have a generally good time there.
TikTok is probably great, readers love it, writers seem to like it, I remain off it lest I destroy it with my cringe. I have thought about migrating Heirloom Apple Reviews there, but not sure the juice would be worth the squeeze.
And finally, why am I even talking about this at all? Why does it matter? It may not. But social media for a long time has been one of the ways writers and artists connect in part with their audience and doubly so with their communities. And publishers have shoved a lot of our collective eggs into those baskets, so when Twitter really shits the bed, we need to find alternatives. We were kicked out of the plane without a parachute, and we either need to figure out how to build one while falling, or somehow dive into another fucking plane.
Otherwise, we’re gonna pancake into viscera when we hit the ground.
So. Those are my thoughts. Very personal, YMMV, you likely have very different views of this stuff, and that’s entirely fine.
Shit no? Hell no? Oh god no, and why the absolute crap would you bother?
Okay, that’s not helpful.
In case you’ve been hiding under a social media rock (which would actually be very wise)… Twitter finally, after what felt like decades of threats, removed the old-school Verified Blue Checks (which were actually white, btw) from us Fancy Verified Blue Check People. They did so on what seemed to be the basis that those with such checkmarks were corrupt corps d’élite who had — I guess? — bullied their way into the limitless power that the Blue Check afforded. This was of course nonsense; verification was literally what it said it was, a badge verifying that the person you were talking to was the person they said they were. That’s not to say Twitter didn’t fuck that all up before Musk Melon came along. They did, in that they were erratic about who got them, how you got one, and so forth. It wasn’t a corrupt system, but it was certainly an inept one.
Orlon Husk then instituted some kind of pay-for-play verification badge that… provided dubious benefits? It gave you algorithmic value, supposedly, though some people have suggested it didn’t really do anything. It was supposed to give you priority too in what might’ve been the FYP, but again, not sure that actually happened. Is there an edit button? And “long” book-length tweets? I guess. Whatever. Point was, it’s eight bucks a month, which is to say, the cost of some streaming services. On the one hand, you could pay that amount to consume content from NBC. On the other hand, you could pay that amount to be content. Which is what Musk seems to gravely misunderstand about the platform: it is made of people. It is not of value by itself. It is only of value when people are on it, and if people have to pay to be on it, then its value shifts — the value becomes access to all the people, but that only works if all the people pay for it.
It’s a huge gamble based on a very bad understanding of social media. In part because it is the contributions to that social platform in the form of content that provide value — it’s not the dollars, it’s the sense.
The other irony is, the blue check was valuable because it (ostensibly, falsely) marked you as the aforementioned elite — but if anybody can pay for it, and the people who got it before are now getting them taken away, elite isn’t elite anymore. You’re not the band, you’re just wearing the t-shirt.
Twitter was able to for free attract huge celebrities to its platform and for free have those people provide for free content to that platform. That cannot be understated — authors, actors, politicians, journalists, all part of the feed, heaving up free content on behalf of the feed.
And now, Musk wants to charge them for the privilege.
Well, obviously, that’s up to you, but why would you?
Let’s unpack the reasons you shouldn’t.
First, Twitter fucking sucks right now. It wasn’t amazing before? For real, it’s been getting wonky for years. But now, the wheels are rattling off the thing, and it’s turned into a Nazi Bar. It’s not great. Nobody’s having much fun. It’s mostly just doom and weird ads running on an infomercial scroll. It’s buggy and inconsistent. Musk gets priority. Weirdos show in your feed. It’s ass. It’s a boat that may not be sinking, exactly, but it’s taking on water and there’s norovirus in every corner, so being on that boat for free is already a dubious proposition. Paying for it feels like hitting yourself in the nuts with a wrench.
Second, I’m not sure Twitter Blue is even helping anybody. Knowing a few folks who experimented with it, it didn’t seem to provide much value. Engagement is still throttled, and even if it’s boosted, it’s boosted into the existing dumpster fire that is Twitter. It’s like buying billboard advertising space in the middle of the apocalypse. You’re not getting a deal.
Which is to say —
Ennnh I really don’t want to judge the Twitter Blue folks but I’m gonna judge you a little bit. And so is everyone else. There’s a stink on it. Some people will think you’re a Musk Fanboy or a Nazi, which, hey, I understand probably isn’t the case. But in the probably best case scenario, they’re going to think you’re a bit of a chump for kicking in to help fund Musk’s Ongoing Embarrassment Parade. It seems like a bad idea and so, paying in feels like a chump move.
Further, and arguably more important than the optics, are the ethics. Is it… good to fund this? Musk is currently shepherding a platform that is becoming even more hostile to trans people and to other marginalized communities. He’s taking personal requests from the worst people, some of whom apparently are named after pet feces. He’s inviting Literal Actual Nazis back in, letting them have blue checks, letting them advertise right into your feed. Hate speech is up — way, way up, in fact. I’m not suggesting this means you should abandon the platform — more on that in a moment — but it certainly feels a little weird to give them money to continue doing this.
Listen, there’s definitely no ethical consumption under capitalism. You are inevitably giving money to awful people and helping to make the world worse when you spend money. You put gas in your car, you buy plastic bottles, whatever. Anybody who watched The Good Place (which you should do, if you have not) gets the sentiment: the point system is rigged and our actions have endless unseen consequences. We buy a Nestle Crunch on Tuesday, and a megadrought ravages California on Thursday.
That said —
There are also foreseen consequences, the kind where you just give money to an awful person to allow them to promote more awfulness. It’s the JKR problem — sure, you may really love Harry Potter, you’re Team Hufflenuts or whatever, but the money you give to her is going into her pocket, then out of her pocket, and potentially into helping boost or even fund anti-trans voices and efforts.
No, we cannot With Individual Actions save the world, but one might argue we also can at least withhold those Individual Actions from making things worse.
Is this that? Does contributing to Twitter Blue make the world worse? I don’t know. I certainly think it elevates Musk and his profile and helps him make a little hay off a platform he’s actively shitting up. I think it rewards that behavior. I’d personally not feel comfortable giving him that money, just as I’d suggest you should not give money to JKR. But your mileage may of course vary, and maybe for you Twitter Blue is a survivability factor. Maybe you think you need it to stay relevant and be seen. I’d argue it won’t help as much as you think it will, and I’d also suggest that the vibe around the blue check now is that it’s going to create visible stink vapors around those who use it — but maybe it won’t.
For my mileage, I’m not paying for it.
I’d say I won’t judge you for paying for it, but let’s be real, it doesn’t matter. Someone is going to judge you for it, for better or for worse.
Also, eight bucks a month could buy you ice cream, or you could give it to a charity, or whatever. Better spent, I suspect.
(The other question then is: should you leave Twitter? I’m not, but I’m also not really using it to provide content. Mostly, it’s an apocalyptic stock-ticker, and an effective one. I see news there and advocacy/activism that I don’t really see anywhere else, as yet. But it’s also not fun. I do not enjoy it. For enjoyment, I go to Instagram or Mastodon currently, and am at the other platforms too, less so. For doomscrolling, though, you still can’t beat Twitter. Midnight inches ever closer, and Twitter offers us the best seats in the house.)
Anyway, hey! I’m writing more middle grade! And it’s coming out next fall! Exclamation points ahoy! Thanks to my agent, Stacia Decker for brokering the deal with Deirdre Jones at LBYR, I’m excited to have this out in front of readers young and old. It’s the story of a boy who is frightened to go see what he’s heard is “the scariest movie ever made,” even though his whole class is sneaking out to watch it — and it turns out, he has good reason to worry, because the movie is the monster.
No pre-order link available, and cover won’t be out for a while — er, honestly, I still have to finish up the book.
I’m also currently finishing page proofs for Black River Orchard, but the ARCs of that have started to go out and I think are appearing digitally on NetGalley, so that’s nice. It’s a big scary book about evil apples taking over a small town, and hopefully people dig that, too.
Also out (even sooner!) is Gentle Writing Advice, also available through Doylestown if you want me to SCANDALIZE your book with my HERETICAL YET ENTICING SCRAWL. I mean, I can also be encouraging, I guess. Pssh.
ANYWAY, them’s the news. Gotta get back to the word mines. Bye.
