The Substack intelligentsia swells with Highly Concerned media emerituses by the day. I won't belabor the point, because if you subscribe to this newsletter you're likely already aware of the latest refugees. But by my count, we now have wonk-gone-wrong Matthew Yglesias, name-search connoisseur Glenn Greenwald, the Punished Snake version of Matt Taibbi, and the blithe, fully radicalized Andrew Sullivan in our midst. This isn't a referendum on any platforming issues; these men are entitled to whatever nouveau pivot they wish to entertain — though, if you are the uncommon psycho who subscribes to each of their newly launched serials, please get in touch, I'd love to interview you for a future On Posting. Instead, I just want to make it clear that the unifying ideological thread between these dudes — highlighted in a charitable Atlantic polemic, no less! — is a united front against censorship. Not a censorship enforced by an overreaching puritanical government, or a craven corporate crackdown, or a rogue populist movement. No, this is a censorship that germinated from far more insidious origins. Namely, the bowels of Slack, and a few concerned emails from a managing editor.
This is the strongest possible case for the abolition of all colleges. As long as Harvard exists, you run the risk of highly educated bloggers, who've already been afforded countless lucrative opportunities and privileges throughout their careers, drawing a bewildering moral equivalency between mean tweets and, like, Ray Bradbury-style book burning. Both Greenwald and Yglesias are foundational voices of some of the most influential digital news organizations on American soil, and yet, they still nurture a conviction that their vital perspective is being actively hamstrung by interloping forces. The culprit? Subordinates, far below them on the masthead, capable of making $60, even $70,000 a year.
“There was an inherent tension between my status as a co-founder of the site and my desire to be a fiercely independent and at times contentious voice,” says Yglesias, in that Atlantic article, with an intoxicating satisfaction. “I’m looking forward to really telling everyone what’s on my mind to an even greater extent than I do now.”
The first Yglesias newsletter makes the argument that Biden might be a popular president, but he also might be an unpopular president. He reasons this by saying that progressives may be unimpressed with the Biden doctrine, and that the Democrats need to get outside of their insulated coastal environment to better relate with the many voters who are alienated by those dictums. This is a thesis I've read roughly two zillion times over the last four years. In fact, I'd argue that it is one of the most frequently reheated political takes of all time. If this is to be the overarching tone of Yglesias' further Substack editions — broadstroke concern-trolling about identity politics, the patronizing rebranding of flyover randos as the key to the American soul, some shit about "electibility" — then I am not sure what he, and the rest of the cadre, are complaining about. This conclusion is not being persecuted. You can find it in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and even Vox, from Matthew himself!
That is the paradox that gives me pause; is the sullen Substack migration truly a rebuke of the status quo as we are meant to believe? Are they going to start wearing Fawkes masks and flash-mobbing that one part of Crown Heights where me and all the media people live? Or is it instead a deeply emotional doubling down on some unremarkable ideas, as a closing insult to their many colleagues who've begged them, on their hands and knees, to stop posting cringe? That is a question that all of us should ask ourselves at every moment: Am I being a "fiercely independent and at times contentious voice?" Or am I simply being annoying?
I have never owned a media empire, and therefore I am unfamiliar with the manifold pressures of being the star employee of a major voice in the American Conversation. I only kinda mean that as a burn. There is likely a unique, beleaguering stress that accompanies all the entitlements of a Very Famous Blogger; one that no number of CNN guest spots can remedy. Still, I'm not sure if this is the healthiest way to process those anxieties. Anyone with over 100,000 Twitter followers quitting their job to start a newsletter is clearly in the midst of a horrifying identity crisis, (no offense Casey.) It telegraphs a profound, agonizing need to be heard, which is weird, because these people have long held the loudest voices in the room. Greenwald, Taibbi, Sullivan, and Yglesias have already won — we all know that, which is what makes the newsletter emigration so confusing — but like most people who've fought long and hard to dominate the competition, they've found nothing but grievance and paranoia at the summit. Substack has essentially created a business model that mines the mid-life crises of a newly pickled press generation. They spent their dying years in the mainstream media doomsaying about the bubble that they believed their co-workers were living in. The solution? Build an alternative bubble. The saddest, most exasperating bubble the world has ever known.
Here's my theory. Everyone who experiences life-altering impact of fame eventually thirsts for a pastoral civilian life. Barack Obama spent like three years paragliding with Richard Branson after leaving the White House, John Boehner is probably smoking a pack of Camel Blues a day somewhere in Cincinnati, and Jack Nicholson will eat hoagies on yachts for the rest of his natural life. Obviously, a journalist like Andrew Sullivan never mustered the celebrity of those individuals, but after quitting New York Magazine in July, he’s spent his golden years peacefully blogging from his property on Cape Cod, entirely divested from the moral responsibility of not posting cringe. At last, Sully has everything he's learned to envy; liberation from those college leftist agitators, and a much larger paycheck. (According to the man himself, he's making north of $500,000 a year from his newly launched Substack.) Now, Sullivan can fly off the handle with impunity like it's the '90s all over again. At the end of a recent New York Times profile, he courted the merits of a long-debunked race science study as a valuable component of his epistemological makeup. "Let’s say Jews. I mean, just look at the Nobel Prize. I’m just saying — there’s something there, I think." That's the money quote.
No longer is an editor present to plug the holes in the dam; that’s a terrifying premise for most writers, but for Sullivan, it’s a boon. He cashed in all the chips and purchased a sanctum where he is free to be as reactionary as he wishes, whenever he wants. There is no chance of any interlopers harshing the vibe; they aren't willing to pay the $5 a month.
That's the irony here. To reiterate, the chief motivation cited by the Substack exiles for their expatriation is censorship. A censorship enforced by the apparently all-powerful woke youth; their illiberal discomfort with divisive political rhetoric, divergent perspectives, the pension of their superiors, whatever. Taibbi, Greenwald, Yglesias, and Sullivan tend to ritualize the idea of intellectual pluralism — horny for that buzz at debate club after landing a zinger — as if meritocratic wanking will finally reveal the esoteric secrets of utopian society. And now, each of them have decided that they do their best work completely alone and incommunicado; cherry-picking an audience of stans and sequestering themselves from contrasting voices because they've secured a big enough bag to freeze them out. That's capitalism baby! Yglesias announced his emancipation with a deep retreat into his tender wonky interior; Greenwald determined that his Intercept associates were actually the police. I am not here to lambast those who wish to write for a cultivated audience — I mean, god, just look at On Posting — but I am here to say that we should never believe them when they say that we're responsible for pushing them out.
MattY’s exit to Substack feels a bit less like a reactionary escape from editors than the others mentioned here, to me. The others were all pretty openly reactionary on a lot of topics before their moves and it’s hard for me to find a parallel in MattY’s work. So far it seems like pretty standard “more immigrants, more trains, more housing” fare.
will be interesting to see how they calibrate free vs paid posts. if they do it right they can getting keep their massive free audience fix every few days and rake in the subscription fees from their still large paying audience.