Click That Subscribe Button
Click That Subscribe Button
Hat in hand, I ask once again that you click that special button.
Hello, everyone. It’s me, Jack. You might know me from the podcast Struggle Session, or from my years of Twitter bullshit, or from my defunct morning show on Twitch. If so, thanks for listening, thanks for the cartoon hearts, or thanks for being a part of my decentralized digital schizophrenia (I used to wake up every day to voices in my head—only those voices were real people). That’s just a joke, thank you for all the wonderful purple gems over the years, and for bearing witness to my steady descent into Streamer’s Madness.
Anyway, here I am, on another online platform, asking that you once again consider a subscription to me. I guess this is just part of life as a creative person in the 2020s, we each have to forge ourselves into a little mini-NPR (or, as we call it in LA where the public radio station was recently purchased by a website, LAist), threatening to withhold precious content in exchange for subscription fees. I know you’re probably already paying a lot of these things—between the myriad streaming services holding their byzantine cinematic universes behind paywalls, or bonus episodes of your favorite podcasters talking about those streaming shows, or perhaps the monthly fees for meditation apps to help you wind down from all the phone notifications about streaming shows and podcasts you’re behind on, we are all being nickel-and-dimed nonstop by our online lives.
My motivation with starting this Substack is to get better at writing, which has been my focus as I’ve largely stepped away from online life over the last few years. I co-authored a novel, Kill The Rich, with my friend Kate Shapiro, which releases on September 12. If you haven’t, please preorder your copy today!
I’ve been working consistently on more long-form writing, and I think Substack will be a good way to start sharing some of it. Like many Twitter addicts, I’d really like to never use that platform again, but I do feel like I need a way to share/promote my long-form writing as I do more of it. Hopefully, this platform will satisfy my need to exist in some kind of online space.
What you can expect: I’m hoping to share a few pieces of writing every week, and a longer subscriber-only piece around once a month (the first of which will go live pretty soon). In the interest of transparency, I may miss these goals sometimes, especially as I’m getting into the swing of things. Posts may also periodically disappear, or go “Private,” as I revise or submit to get them published elsewhere. Most publications have a requirement that submitted work can’t have been previously published. I’m not quite sure that posting on Substack should count as “publication,” but since most publication amounts to work being copy-pasted onto a Wordpress, I guess they have a point.
I’m planning to post short fiction, excerpts of longer fiction, writing about Los Angeles, poetry (yes, I will be posting poetry, don’t make fun of me), occasional cultural analysis, and some art criticism (your typical What I’m Watching/Reading type of thing).
I may also dip my toe into the gold rush for Substack’s Twitter alternative, Notes.
If any or all of that sounds interesting to you, I ask you, hat in hand, to once again consider clicking a subscribe button for me. Here it is, below. Please click.