I was happy to subscribe, and I'm also looking forward to ordering and reading your early modern drug trade history soon! I just finished Debus's classic The Chemical Philosophy and I'm still not tired of the broader subject.
Ben, I appreciate your work here but I'm not sending any money to Substack.
I support writers on Beehiiv, Buttondown, Ghost, Patreon, and elsewhere, because it's important to support the voices you want to hear more of, but right now it's even more important to support the people and organizations pushing back against hate instead of those encouraging and profiting from it.
I look forward to supporting your writing when you move to a different platform.
I hope you understand that this flat assertion that this platform is encouraging and profiting from hate doesn't ring true to many of us. Substack profits from verbal contention, no doubt, and some of the contention is hate-driven no doubt. I'd assume that's true of the other platforms you mention also. But Substack's profit comes from creating an apparently more just, more fair arena for the contention over what is and is not mere hate, not from the hate itself, very analogously to how Fanon argued the success of decolonial left wing parties does not come from the hatred of colonized for colonizers but rather from being a just vehicle for turning that hatred into more important, more lasting and positive consciousness-raising political change and work. Though I have my reservations about Substack, I'm willing to give it some time and money for now for the sake of supporting it in competition with other platforms also competing to seem fair and just.
Whether or not something "is true" is an objective determination. Whether or not something "rings true" is entirely subjective. There's enough public information available to make something beyond a subjective determination about Substack's de facto policies in connection to transphobia, Holocaust denial, and hateful right-wing rhetoric on the platform. Whether or not we as individuals seek it out, and whether and how we allow it to inform our actions, is up to us.
We disagree and you do not respect the disagreement. I can respect that. But invoking "objectivity" here is just a form of typical domineering bad manners.
And I don't support and didn't say I support all of Substack's official or de facto policies, so what you're claiming is "objective" here is not even objectively the same thing as what I had been talking about much less an objective refutation of what I'd been talking about. It's a non sequitur and ad hominem pretending to be an intellectual argument.
I was happy to subscribe, and I'm also looking forward to ordering and reading your early modern drug trade history soon! I just finished Debus's classic The Chemical Philosophy and I'm still not tired of the broader subject.
Ben, I appreciate your work here but I'm not sending any money to Substack.
I support writers on Beehiiv, Buttondown, Ghost, Patreon, and elsewhere, because it's important to support the voices you want to hear more of, but right now it's even more important to support the people and organizations pushing back against hate instead of those encouraging and profiting from it.
I look forward to supporting your writing when you move to a different platform.
I hope you understand that this flat assertion that this platform is encouraging and profiting from hate doesn't ring true to many of us. Substack profits from verbal contention, no doubt, and some of the contention is hate-driven no doubt. I'd assume that's true of the other platforms you mention also. But Substack's profit comes from creating an apparently more just, more fair arena for the contention over what is and is not mere hate, not from the hate itself, very analogously to how Fanon argued the success of decolonial left wing parties does not come from the hatred of colonized for colonizers but rather from being a just vehicle for turning that hatred into more important, more lasting and positive consciousness-raising political change and work. Though I have my reservations about Substack, I'm willing to give it some time and money for now for the sake of supporting it in competition with other platforms also competing to seem fair and just.
Whether or not something "is true" is an objective determination. Whether or not something "rings true" is entirely subjective. There's enough public information available to make something beyond a subjective determination about Substack's de facto policies in connection to transphobia, Holocaust denial, and hateful right-wing rhetoric on the platform. Whether or not we as individuals seek it out, and whether and how we allow it to inform our actions, is up to us.
We disagree and you do not respect the disagreement. I can respect that. But invoking "objectivity" here is just a form of typical domineering bad manners.
And I don't support and didn't say I support all of Substack's official or de facto policies, so what you're claiming is "objective" here is not even objectively the same thing as what I had been talking about much less an objective refutation of what I'd been talking about. It's a non sequitur and ad hominem pretending to be an intellectual argument.