As I was strolling through Twitter earlier, I made a momentous executive decision: instead of re-tweeting everything I like, I would restrict my re-tweeting to actual factual news items, and give a little heart action ♥ to opinions, comments, witty remarks I like.
There are too many opinions. I know this because I read a ton of them. And I appreciate a lot of them, especially ones which take news facts I’ve already absorbed and offer me more depth. Or those that slice ‘n’ dice the facts and make me laugh (LOL).
Thoughts from experts are most appreciated in my home. I am an expert in pretty much nothing. I know about some stuff, I know some things about other stuff, I know how to Google, but my in-depth expertise is fairly nil…and widespread in its nility. So I want opinions from people who have demonstrated expertise in areas of knowledge, areas in which I have an abiding interest.
But there has been an explosion of opinion offerings lately and I’m not buying it. Literally: a number of journalists and experts in one thing or another have set up their wares in several internet shops that sell those wares via subscriptions. I’ve read about SubStack and know there are more such…well, I don’t know what to call them.
“Publishers of newsletters from a wide variety of well-known or other people.” I guess that’s what I can call them. But what do they produce which I want to read and pay for?
Along with writing, what I read and pay for now keeps me almost fully occupied. Two daily newspapers (and a sports section from another “newspaper” I will not name and will never pay for) and several national magazines offer me both facts and opinions. What will a subscription or ten to SubStack newsletters give me? Deeper wisdom?
One of these SubStack guys says, “I’m finally writing the things I want to write.”
Whatever was preventing him from doing that before SubStack? And why does he imagine I’d want to pay for reading what he wants to write? Whoever he is?
I have been writing the things I want to write here, on this blog, since 2010. I have accumulated a readership: last month, I had 207,000 hits; 58,000 page visits; and I have 91,000 subscribers.
But I don’t charge a penny for writing the things I want to write. It would cease being fun and, I suspect, I’d lose a lot of readers.
And I don’t want to pay a penny for the thoughts and feelings of writers who have left or otherwise departed from, say, the Times or WaPo for what they consider more fertile lands.
As I’ve said numerous times, I get my facts and opinions from my newspapers and select magazines. I don’t have the time and I don’t have the money to get opinions elsewhere.