Choices and Dilemmas
Stay or go, stay or go...
I’m really not sure what to do. It seems like there are nazis and fascists everywhere, even here. There are posts and letters, and letters and posts flying all around Substack. The Substack PoohBahs say they are “for free speech” and are okay with extreme right wing voices having a platform here.
I left Twitter (now Xitter) because of this. Do I leave here too? I left behind a community that had been built over more than a decade. I’ve only been here for a year. This is a different kind of place, though.
I started following Heather Cox Richardson, and then Joyce Vance. Now there is a growing community of kid lit folks, sharing some great essays as well as community.
The thing is, the pandas are not entirely homeless. The Panda Chronicles remains their primary home, and it is under my control as a self hosted website. I started this Noozletter for several purposes. first, to have a separate place for pontificating, for extended encore presentations, a way to expand my audience, and for their ability to have paid subscriptions.
It was also important to me not to exclude people from my work, that don’t have the means or desire to have a paid subscription. I am very grateful for those who have chosen to support my writing and art here. Web hosting fees are not free (for The Panda Chronicles) and I go through a fair amount of ink and paper writing my ‘toons.
Some people have written posts that they are leaving, and that to stay is condoning the objectionable content that exists here. Some people have said they will not continue to follow people who stay.
I have not made any decisions about my future here, but I welcome your thoughts on the matter. I know that many of you are already followers of The Panda Chronicles. I hope that those who have discovered me here would continue reading the panda ‘toons even if I go back to just The Panda Chronicles.
Let me know your thoughts. It will help me to decide what to do.
For now I'm staying because my newsletter and those I follow are primarily nazi free. Now and then I, or the person I'm following, have to block some assholes but it's very rare (so far). I still feel I'm providing a service for people here on Substack that want a pleasant experience so I want to continue that as long as I can. I left Twitter because the nazi's were clogging up what I was trying to do there (talk about art and books) and it became not helpful to my or anyone else's mental health to spend most of the time dealing with nazi's instead of talking about art or books on Twitter. That nazi-saturated-air is not the situation here on Substack yet and hopefully it won't become that way. That's why I added my name on the Substackers against Nazi's letter - I hope this platform will remain more sensible than Twitter. 🤞🤞 So, I'm staying for now, watching to see how things go, reserving the option to leave if it gets tiresome.
It’s tricky. I don’t read anything on Substack besides this and chef author David Lebovitz, and I can read both elsewhere...which I might actually prefer.