Would I write if I weren't wired to be wary?

Trying to unpick my Substack ick (and welcome to Brain Club 🧠)

Image by Milad Fakurian on Unsplash.

Here are some real-life scenarios that regularly play havoc with my brain:

• I’m asked to share an interesting fact about myself to a group of strangers.

• I hear the Inspector Sands announcement in a train station.

• Someone I recognise but can’t name is waiting for me to introduce them to my partner.

• A man sits next to me on the bus, despite an array of empty rows elsewhere.

When these things happen, I inevitably feel ‘the ick’ (feel free to share your own ick-inducing moments in the comments!).

Physically, my ick feels like a tiny bubble of gentle dread that gradually spreads, silently polluting every cell with a subtle sense of potential danger until I do whatever is necessary to stop it in its tracks.

But the ick isn’t always about impending physical risk, of course. It’s often about the chances of experiencing social or psychological harm. And, for those of us whose brains work differently to the average – or more socially dominant – person, the ick has been informed by a lifetime of learning that certain situations or people might not be safe for us.

In other words, the ick is my body’s in-built way of saying:

Tread carefully, Hayley.

The ick protects me. And, from hard-earned experience, it is very often right.

The world relies on a spectrum of ick tolerance

Over the years, however, I’ve come to understand that some people are more affected by the ick than others. Some of us feel it incredibly strongly and take immediate, preventative action to avoid or minimise the physiological uneasiness it floods our bodies with.

On the flip side, some people never feel the ick at all. As a result, their attitude towards risk is much more lackadaisical. They can stomach unpredictability, tolerate toxic or awkward environments, have no problem throwing themselves out of aeroplanes, and might even become high-profile politicians without losing their minds (I may be generalising here).

Finally, on this wide spectrum of ick sensitivity, there are the vast majority of people who exist somewhere on the middle of the scale. They feel mild ickiness every so often, but not strongly enough to massively affect their actions. The consistency of these more centre-ground humans not only helps to anchor those of us who would otherwise be constantly flailing about in fear and panic, but also keeps civilisation’s biggest risk-takers in check. Ultimately, they ensure that the balance of risk humanity takes as an entity is as evenly distributed as possible, for the good of everyone.

And this brings me onto Substack 🥴

I’m sorry to say, Substack has started to give me the ick. And, evidently (👈 a must-read by ick icon Margaret Atwood), I’m not the only one who feels this way.

For those not familiar with Substack’s recent controversy, it emerged towards the end of 2023 that the platform was hosting a small amount of Nazi content, allowing white supremacists to publish and monetise hate speech while taking a cut of the profits.

A bunch of Substack writers sent an open letter to the founders of the platform, asking them to explain why this was being allowed to happen. Substack eventually responded, but let’s just say their explanation was…disappointing, with the frustratingly informal statement leaning heavily on the ‘marketplace of ideas’ argument (although, after additional pressure, they did agree to remove some specific newsletters that blatantly broke their terms of service).

Some of the platform’s most profitable publications have already taken their content elsewhere as a result of Substack’s unwillingness to overtly condemn and ban hate speech, and I suspect more will follow.

The naval-gazing and vortex-like prophecies have been swirling ever since, and (with mixed results) I’ve been working hard not to fall into the online trap of feeling like I must definitively place myself in one camp or another (although, for the record, I am certainly against Nazis being allowed to make money from their beliefs).

However, Nazis aside, I've been trying to pinpoint why I’ve been struggling with Substack’s lack of a clear stance on moderation and monetisation. Having given it a fair amount of thought over the last few weeks, I reckon it boils down to this: unlike other online platforms, Substack is teeming with anti-ick humans like me. Many of us feel compelled to write – and / or to absorb the ideas of others – to explore our discomfort about the risks and realities of the world. And I’m concerned that Substack has failed to factor in the very unique profile of a large chunk of its user-base into their long-term strategy.

Why is wariness so prevalent in writers?

Let’s be clear upfront: I’m painting some very broad brushstrokes here. And if you disagree with any of this let’s discuss it in the comments. But, speaking for myself and myself only, without my tendency to overthink, connect dots and analyse the fuck out of everything and everyone, I probably wouldn’t be a writer. I see problems coming seventy-six miles off; that’s why I used to be so good at my job in crisis comms – I had reactive statements ready to issue before hostile parties had even demanded them. Hell, in one of my unpublished rom-coms, I’ve invented an entire society that is governed by an all-powerful prophetic division. In other words, I like to head off doom before it’s even visible to most on the horizon. I require as much control as possible to feel safe, and what better way to exert control than to create fictional worlds that are beholden to my wishes?

This heightened intuition for risk is one of the things that I believe makes me a creative thinker. Because creativity is essentially problem-solving. As a ‘pantser’ rather than a plotter, I plot narratives and world-build – I problem-solve – as I write, continuously imagining how all the flyaway threads I’m throwing at the page can come together neatly by the end. It’s precisely what I’m doing now as I write this very newsletter.

I’m good at solving problems. And that means I’m good at inventing problems, too. I’m able to ensure my characters experience the shit they need to experience so they almost entirely unravel before they’re able to save themselves. In other words, I deliberately put my characters in icky situations, and it isn’t hard for me to imagine what those situations might be.

So, this is how my brain works: it sees problems that might not yet exist and it naturally wants to solve them before they have a chance to cause damage and pain.

Substack felt like we’d finally found a safe, long-term home for our writing.

So, along comes Substack. A digital space which, to me, felt so welcoming and refreshing compared to the hellholes of other online platforms; websites that had caved into the pressure of prioritising profit above everything else and had mutated into polarised and destructive channels of dis/misinformation.

I quickly gravitated towards Substack and deleted my Twitter account. I naively trusted that I was joining a platform that celebrated nuance and thoughtfulness, as opposed to burning these qualities to cinders thanks to the algorithmic preference for simple lies over complicated truths. Substack felt like I’d finally found a safe, long-term home for my writing.

But then this word starts getting thrown around: ‘growth’. Urgh.

Because, of course, the folks at Substack want to make money (disclaimer: I am a Substack shareholder, if owning a single share counts). And making money requires more of everything. And, when you open the doors to more, you also open the doors to risk.

So, right now, this is what my ick is telling me might happen:

• Capitalism is hungrier than freedom. It will always dominate. It puts growth before progress. Hate before hope. And it will always find a way to feed itself at the expense of everything else.

• Substack is part of capitalism. It will therefore continue to host hateful content and allow it to be monetised.

• Tons of writers will leave and, before long, this platform will become yet another online bin fire where all authentic, human expression has been stripped away and people (or bots) are just shouting at each other for no other reason than to maintain the flow of capital.

• AI-generated prose will become the norm.

• Democracy will become increasingly damaged as a result of the continued proliferation of mis/disinformation.

Is any or all of the above definitely going to happen? Of course not. But is there a chance it could? For sure. And, for people like me, that chance alone is enough of a risk to take action to ensure it doesn’t come to pass. We are physically repelled by uncertainty, and we simply can’t bear the feeling of it. We’ve seen this very pattern play out before, and we are trying to do everything we can to stop it, even at the very first nano-bubble of ick.

But this is Brain Club, not Ick Club. So this is what the more rational part of my mind tells me are the only things that are definitely going to come to pass:

• Unpleasant things will keep happening on Substack.

• People will keep arguing about it.

• Substack will have to make a firm decision either way about what stance they intend to take, rather than firefighting every single time this issue crops up.

Remember that scale of ick?

I suspect that many of those on the Substack leadership team exist at quite the opposite end of it than many of its creators and storytellers. They are risk-taking entrepreneurs who probably think that those of us who are getting ourselves in a tizzy about such a tiny minority of problematic newsletters are overreacting.

And, yes, we probably are! But I’d argue that they are probably underreacting. And, together, we must find some middle ground.

Because writers are regularly proven right. The problem we’ve always faced is that, often, we’re just right too soon.

We write too soon.

What I can’t stop thinking about is this: isn’t ‘too soon’ better than ‘too late’?

“The very act of trying to look ahead to discern possibilities and offer warnings is in itself an act of hope.” OCTAVIA BUTLER

What does all of this mean for me and Substack?

For now, I've decided to stick around, despite my ick. But I'm not going to be placing this platform – nor the people who run it – on some kind of untouchable moral pedestal, nor stroking their egos so they caress mine in return.

Because the home for my writing isn't within the virtual walls of whatever Big Tech platform happens to be displaying the pixels. Rather, its ideal residence will always be in the brains of whoever happens to be reading – and intellectually and/or emotionally connecting with – my words and ideas.

If you’re one of those people: thanks for providing refuge for my thoughts. And for keeping them safe. It really means a lot.

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Welcome to the first edition of Brain Club, by the way!

Just like all of my writing projects, I have no plan or strategy for this new newsletter. I’m very much in pantsing mode.

But I’m excited about the prospect of having a new space where I can share my thoughts (and, hopefully, the thoughts of others) about all manner of cultural topics that aren’t limited to writing and creativity (which you can find over on my Becoming an Author newsletter).

For now, I don’t intend to paywall any content, but you can tip me here whenever you like (👈 this is the first time I’ve ever asked for money for my writing and it’s scary!).