Um I loved this ep!!!! I loved the clarity and conviction in your thoughts. Really inspired me to think about changes I could make to my life to align my beliefs with my actions. Both to “improve the world” or whatever but also to allow myself the peace of full confidence in my decisions
I thought this podcast topic wouldn’t be that interesting/relevant to me since I’m not an influencer lol, but this was so good and generally relevant to choices we all make. I really loved especially at the end what you were saying about guilt and morality. I think as a culture we’ve gotten really intensely anti-guilt in a way that is actually quite problematic and it’s really interesting to hear you talk about it!
Fahrenheit 451 anyone?? Everything is so bland and censored and consistent to get our attention- same message over and over!
Feel like we are all drowning in “branding” and are even being pushed to have our own “brand” through Instagram and that we’re failing if we don’t know what our personal brand is.. yuck!!!
The only thing left out of this conversation is the radical shift of having to pay for something we once got for free. I was raised on Xanga, live journal, blog spot and teen magazines. Substack feels like a return to a better part of the internet, except now it’s costing me a lot more per month. Obviously nothing is truly free, the advertisement and attention economy are a huge bummer, but at the end of the day I’m on a public school teacher’s salary and I can’t afford to support all the writers & thinkers I’d like to. I personally don’t mind aff links and banner ads if it means I still retain access to the conversation.
I do think this is covered in this conversation, if not literally. There are costs to things we get "for free"! We always pay for what we get, even if we aren't aware of what that payment is. But also, plenty of the internet is still free! Even the majority of my newsletter is free. So I'm not sure I'm fully aligned that the shift is radical. Magazines used to cost subscribers money every month. Still, I get what you're saying. It's an adjustment for sure
It is covered a bit, but I don’t think people are talking actual numbers.
If I supported all the people I’d like to, it would cost be $70 / month. That’s a lot more than “just a coffee!” Obviously the answer is to set a budget and just miss out on the rest or set up a forwarding system and share subs with friends, but it is just a really big shift from old internet.
To your point about magazines, when I was a teenager, I used to share magazines with friends when I was done and spend a lot of time at the library reading subscriptions I could not afford or wasn’t allowed access to. The closest I see to that parallel is forwarding emails along, but at what point is that unfair to the writer?
I have more thoughts about paying for writing versus paying for access, but it’s a little half baked.
Haley, this was such a great episode! Thank you for your thoughts as always.
Leena Norms is a YouTuber who looks at topics like ethical consumption, living sustainably and social justice, and a little while ago she did an video people might find interesting, on how she decides whether to work for a brand (also explaining why she doesn't work with certain brands) https://youtu.be/qwuZQ3FiMps
Haley, this is so unrelated to the topic but I was just thinking I'd love if a paid subscriber thread one of these days was a place for everyone to shout out their own projects. I so enjoy seeing everyone's thoughtful comments and I feel like your readers must be working on some really cool stuff that I'd love to know about/follow along! But no pressure, just some food for thought :) :)
Love listening to this and captures so much of what I have been feeling the last few years. I hate constantly being advertised to and everything being sponsored. I know it’s not totally new, but I went to the beach in LA with my boyfriend for his birthday and they had small planes flying ads. At the beach!! I joked that I dread the day we go to X National Park brought to you by Coca Cola.
I have an IG but i follow my mom, siblings, boyfriend and a few friends and it’s a private account. I don’t like following celebrities because I feel like they’re nearly all trying to sell something (beyond encouraging listening to something, going to the theatre, etc).
It’s so exhausting.
I always like your 15 things list every week but it never feels like you’re just trying to sell something, just a genuine reflection of what you engaged in over the week.
Or being in West Texas at the McDonald Observatory to enjoy constellation viewing in a dark sky, only to see what looked like a train of stars slowing moving across the sky and discovering it was freaking Elon Musk's satellite internet provider. Not technically advertising, but acts as advertising for many. vomit.
The ads at the beach are so rude! I don’t want to be sitting in awe of a beautiful sky then have the Gieco Gecko fly past. I went to a minor league baseball game last week and 70% of the commentary was some type of promotion and the entire field just has ads. They change the names of historic landmarks to things like Guaranteed Rate Fields. It’s infuriating sometime but luckily I live in a state where billboards are illegal.
I'm so glad you took the time to fully unpack this question as far as you did. Really resonated with me a lot just on the scale of being a conscious "consumer" (aka A Member Of A Community??) and hobbyist artist with some aspiration to grow it, and all the siren songs promising "growth."
Also as far as financial incentives go... really appreciate stuff like this and it keeps me on the paid tier fwiw!! Thanks for taking the time to really unpack this.
A great episode, thanks for sharing. As you said, I think staying true to your values is so easy to lose in this consumerist society. We are not encouraged to think how much is really enough. It's all just more more more, which leave us empty. Resistance to capitalism is a form of activism in my opinion. The more people resist the more likely we are to change. Our culture is built on a lot of mindless consumption and it is so hard to stop yourself buying things for the sake of it. I think this would also make a great essay.
Great episode and I think gets to the core of one reason why I love your work so much! I think one reason your writing is excellent is because you are freed from obligations to brands which allows you to critique the powers that be.
I think that this ideal of moral or ethically neutral or even good influencing that the questioner refers to is a product of the messaging driven by capitalism and green washing to placate our desires to feel like good people but actually just serves to perpetuate capitalism and hyper consumerism. Be that either as the influencer claiming to only choose brands they believe in or as the consumers aiming to consume from only brands that are “good” (green washed). But as you said sometimes we should let ourselves feel the guilt / feel the bad thing - because maybe it’s telling us something about the world we live in! (Within reason of course, we all just have to survive )
Very similar to the crux of the argument re “distigmatisting cosmetic procedures” vs actually critiquing the structures driving beauty culture that do no actually serve us.
Sorry for the ramble. This is an ongoing theme of your work and I love it !
Um I loved this ep!!!! I loved the clarity and conviction in your thoughts. Really inspired me to think about changes I could make to my life to align my beliefs with my actions. Both to “improve the world” or whatever but also to allow myself the peace of full confidence in my decisions
So Much respect for your position and your commitment to it!
I thought this podcast topic wouldn’t be that interesting/relevant to me since I’m not an influencer lol, but this was so good and generally relevant to choices we all make. I really loved especially at the end what you were saying about guilt and morality. I think as a culture we’ve gotten really intensely anti-guilt in a way that is actually quite problematic and it’s really interesting to hear you talk about it!
Amazing ep
Fahrenheit 451 anyone?? Everything is so bland and censored and consistent to get our attention- same message over and over!
Feel like we are all drowning in “branding” and are even being pushed to have our own “brand” through Instagram and that we’re failing if we don’t know what our personal brand is.. yuck!!!
Thank you for posting this.
I love when you let us into the background and depth of thought behind your opinions! Thank you for the great episode
Loved loved this episode. Deep and thoughtful; called out existential elephants in the room that is the internet.
The only thing left out of this conversation is the radical shift of having to pay for something we once got for free. I was raised on Xanga, live journal, blog spot and teen magazines. Substack feels like a return to a better part of the internet, except now it’s costing me a lot more per month. Obviously nothing is truly free, the advertisement and attention economy are a huge bummer, but at the end of the day I’m on a public school teacher’s salary and I can’t afford to support all the writers & thinkers I’d like to. I personally don’t mind aff links and banner ads if it means I still retain access to the conversation.
I do think this is covered in this conversation, if not literally. There are costs to things we get "for free"! We always pay for what we get, even if we aren't aware of what that payment is. But also, plenty of the internet is still free! Even the majority of my newsletter is free. So I'm not sure I'm fully aligned that the shift is radical. Magazines used to cost subscribers money every month. Still, I get what you're saying. It's an adjustment for sure
It is covered a bit, but I don’t think people are talking actual numbers.
If I supported all the people I’d like to, it would cost be $70 / month. That’s a lot more than “just a coffee!” Obviously the answer is to set a budget and just miss out on the rest or set up a forwarding system and share subs with friends, but it is just a really big shift from old internet.
To your point about magazines, when I was a teenager, I used to share magazines with friends when I was done and spend a lot of time at the library reading subscriptions I could not afford or wasn’t allowed access to. The closest I see to that parallel is forwarding emails along, but at what point is that unfair to the writer?
I have more thoughts about paying for writing versus paying for access, but it’s a little half baked.
I appreciate you opening the conversation!
Haley, this was such a great episode! Thank you for your thoughts as always.
Leena Norms is a YouTuber who looks at topics like ethical consumption, living sustainably and social justice, and a little while ago she did an video people might find interesting, on how she decides whether to work for a brand (also explaining why she doesn't work with certain brands) https://youtu.be/qwuZQ3FiMps
Haley, this is so unrelated to the topic but I was just thinking I'd love if a paid subscriber thread one of these days was a place for everyone to shout out their own projects. I so enjoy seeing everyone's thoughtful comments and I feel like your readers must be working on some really cool stuff that I'd love to know about/follow along! But no pressure, just some food for thought :) :)
This is a great idea! Noting it down
Love listening to this and captures so much of what I have been feeling the last few years. I hate constantly being advertised to and everything being sponsored. I know it’s not totally new, but I went to the beach in LA with my boyfriend for his birthday and they had small planes flying ads. At the beach!! I joked that I dread the day we go to X National Park brought to you by Coca Cola.
I have an IG but i follow my mom, siblings, boyfriend and a few friends and it’s a private account. I don’t like following celebrities because I feel like they’re nearly all trying to sell something (beyond encouraging listening to something, going to the theatre, etc).
It’s so exhausting.
I always like your 15 things list every week but it never feels like you’re just trying to sell something, just a genuine reflection of what you engaged in over the week.
ads in the fucking SKY at the beach, the perfect metaphor!!!
Went for a hike a few weeks ago under the sound of a plane flying circles in the sky towing a banner ad for alcoholic seltzer
Or being in West Texas at the McDonald Observatory to enjoy constellation viewing in a dark sky, only to see what looked like a train of stars slowing moving across the sky and discovering it was freaking Elon Musk's satellite internet provider. Not technically advertising, but acts as advertising for many. vomit.
Lol an Elon rocket fooled me for a comet when I went camping last year
The ads at the beach are so rude! I don’t want to be sitting in awe of a beautiful sky then have the Gieco Gecko fly past. I went to a minor league baseball game last week and 70% of the commentary was some type of promotion and the entire field just has ads. They change the names of historic landmarks to things like Guaranteed Rate Fields. It’s infuriating sometime but luckily I live in a state where billboards are illegal.
I'm so glad you took the time to fully unpack this question as far as you did. Really resonated with me a lot just on the scale of being a conscious "consumer" (aka A Member Of A Community??) and hobbyist artist with some aspiration to grow it, and all the siren songs promising "growth."
Also as far as financial incentives go... really appreciate stuff like this and it keeps me on the paid tier fwiw!! Thanks for taking the time to really unpack this.
thank you john!!
Loved this episode, thank you for sharing
10/10
A great episode, thanks for sharing. As you said, I think staying true to your values is so easy to lose in this consumerist society. We are not encouraged to think how much is really enough. It's all just more more more, which leave us empty. Resistance to capitalism is a form of activism in my opinion. The more people resist the more likely we are to change. Our culture is built on a lot of mindless consumption and it is so hard to stop yourself buying things for the sake of it. I think this would also make a great essay.
Great episode and I think gets to the core of one reason why I love your work so much! I think one reason your writing is excellent is because you are freed from obligations to brands which allows you to critique the powers that be.
I think that this ideal of moral or ethically neutral or even good influencing that the questioner refers to is a product of the messaging driven by capitalism and green washing to placate our desires to feel like good people but actually just serves to perpetuate capitalism and hyper consumerism. Be that either as the influencer claiming to only choose brands they believe in or as the consumers aiming to consume from only brands that are “good” (green washed). But as you said sometimes we should let ourselves feel the guilt / feel the bad thing - because maybe it’s telling us something about the world we live in! (Within reason of course, we all just have to survive )
Very similar to the crux of the argument re “distigmatisting cosmetic procedures” vs actually critiquing the structures driving beauty culture that do no actually serve us.
Sorry for the ramble. This is an ongoing theme of your work and I love it !
totally! this makes me want a new term for green-washing that includes general moral laundering. good-washing? lol