The slow eradication of online spaces

I am heaving the biggest, weariest sigh

I've been largely offline over the past month. The end of the year is always a bit like this for me, burrowing into a hole and desperately trying to finish as many things as possible so I can start the new year with a clean slate (spoiler alert: January 1st is just another day, and the work is never done).

So I'm only just learning about Substack's proud announcement that they're happy for Actual Factual Nazis to spew their filth on the site, and to get paid for doing it. And I'm only just learning about yet another seemingly mass exodus from a site where I've managed to build an audience. And I'm so, so tired.

I joined Substack because I needed a newsletter provider (because newsletters are the single best way of communicating with the people who might want to buy your things and if you're an indie creator of any stripe you should start building one yesterday) and I couldn't afford MailChimp anymore. I couldn't afford any of them anymore, frankly. And I still can't. Substack was free, and provided me with the opportunity to maybe get paid for my posts too (although it's actually cost me more than I've earned from it, because in month 1 the first person to ever support my Paid tier here issued a chargeback and for some reason it was upheld and I had to pay for it, so that was fun). And honestly? I just don't see how I can go anywhere else. I don't have the energy to find a new provider - a free provider, because I can't afford to pay to send emails - port my list over, convince the people who don't want me to give their details to another service that they should stick with it, build a audience again, learn the new platform, etc etc. It's too much.

I understand the urge to flee. When a site says "we care more about making money than about censoring Actual Factual Nazis" I understand why you wouldn't want to be there. I live my life on several axis of marginalisation (disabled, poor, queer) and I'm well aware that many of the places where I hang out on the internet would rather I leave than risk upsetting the people who, in many cases, actually want me dead. It doesn't feel great.

But I'm also aware that the way fascism is allowed to thrive is by good people ceding space and ground to them. I've been playing a lot of chess recently, learning about openings and mid-games and - importantly, the hardest part of the game - end games. I've been learning about The Rook Roller and the Box Method, where a pair of rooks or a single rook and a King gradually reduce the space the opposing King is able to operate in until checkmate happens. It may be slow and boring but once it starts, checkmate is inevitable. And it feels like that. It feels like we're slowly being squeezed off the internet, one platform at a time, until the only space that's going to be left is going to be filled with bigots. And I don't want to help that.

So I'm staying. Part of it is selfish, because I don't have the energy in my unmedicated brain to find another place to exist. But part of it is out of principle, out of a need to stop ceding space. The more we let them win, the more they'll be allowed to win. We can't keep willingly cutting off our own lines of communication. And where the fuck else are we going to go where they won't follow us? Where we won't be faced with exactly the same problem? There's nowhere.

I don't feel good about being here. I actually feel like writing a new post is Bad and Wrong and that some people are going to decide that this means I'm on the side of the fucking Nazis for typing into this text box and holding my hands up and saying, "I don't know what to do anymore". I don't know where to go that is Morally Right and also Affordable For Me.

My Patreon still exists, and is a good place to find me. But it's undeniable that my ability to pay my mortgage, my ability to Not Be Homeless, hinges on being able to communicate with people, and Patreon is a much harder sell to most people than a free website that doesn't cost you anything. People keep telling me about Buttondown, but even $30 a month is a big ask for me right now.

So I don't know. I'm here until I'm not here, I guess. I hope you'll stick around with me, but I get it if you don't. Just let me know if you manage to find somewhere that the fash definitely can't infiltrate and cause yet another exodus.