There's a Crack Dealer in the ... Library?
in search of public spaces in an age of plutocracy
Welcome to Slow Folk - a community for gentle hearts and rebellious creatives, thirsty for a slower life in a world obsessed with speed.
Welcome to the Unbusy Revolution.
I’ve been out of the loop for a while, tending to tender hearts and home as our family moves through some big changes. This week I dipped my toe back into Substack for the first time in ages and - Wait, what?- Reels in my feed??
As is, I personally already found the Substack app overwhelming and a distraction from the task at hand; writing and reading - slowly, mindfully, intentionally. I’ve written about my fraught relationship with social media as a business owner many times over the years.
(Spoiler alert - I think it sucks.)
It seems I’m not the only one less-than thrilled about the arrival of reels in the Substack ecosphere :
Not wrong. But you know, my first thought when I read this?
Substack ISN’T a library.
And I wonder, if maybe this points to the crux of where we’re going wrong as creatives.
Ironically, the reel that I first saw pop onto my screen featured a guy making prints by hand while wearing this t-shirt :
In a world of widespread privatization, massive monopolies, censorship, surveillance and corporate control - public libraries ARE freaking punk rock - to their core.
They are one of the last bastions of the public square left standing. Where else can you spend an entire day - without having to buy a single thing? Without being sold to, or worse - turned into a commodity yourself?
Public libraries are spaces for true community - not the bullshit ‘connection’ hawked by Mark Zuckerberg and his lot.
The community built in public libraries is unmediated by algos. There is no gatekeeping. This singular space might simultaneously host story time for toddlers and a refuge for new parents, loan out a musical instrument or telescope or tool, provide internet for kids doing homework, job search help for the unemployed and lifesaving warmth or cooling for the unhoused or vulnerable.
All. For. Free.
THIS is NOT that.
We complain about the polluting noise that creeps into spaces like Substack, but I wonder - Why are we surprised?
These platforms - no matter if they claim to be a town square like twitter or whatever it’s calling itself now or Substack which delights in it’s own ivory-tower purity in a world of smarmy hucksters - it’s all the same bullshit story.
These are not public spaces.
These are private spaces, created for the profit of a chosen few.
That’s it. Nothing more, nothing less.
Substack promotes this idea of a pure space for creators because it suits its bottom line. Or, who knows. Maybe we can be generous and offer the possibility that they believe their own marketing. There ARE lots of lovely things about the platform, or I wouldn’t be here. Maybe they DO think they’re changing the world.
( Maybe that’s also what Zuckerberg has been telling himself as he sells out his own country to China. Who knows. )
The moment Substack wants to maximize profits, or chain our eyeballs to their app - all that creative purity goes out the window. Whether that shows up in the form of annoying reels or straight up censorship - it’s only a matter of time. Because that is the nature of the space.
So what do we do?
Maybe, we need to stop trying to build community on private land.
We reclaim our actual libraries. Our community centres. Our co-ops. Our church basements. Our kitchen tables. We stop seeking out ‘alignment’ and start looking for humanity. We learn to return to the idea that communities are most resilient when they are built on interdependence and tolerance of the truth that we don’t all think alike.
We need to learn to get comfortable in our discomfort - discomfort with vulnerability, with being seen, with conversing with folks who don’t think like us, vote like us, read like us.
We need to surrender our learned helplessness.
I so often have customers or readers express dismay that, as parents, they don’t have a village. They talk about it like it’s some mythical beast that should have just descended from the mists of heaven when their child was born.
Lemme tell, ya. I’ve got a village and that thing takes WORK. It takes setting aside differences and fear of letting others in. It takes putting yourself out there, over and over and over again.
It is not easy, but it is possible - the rewards for your efforts will be beautiful and worthwhile.
True community within our age of plutocracy IS possible.
In fact, I actually think that the state of affairs makes it easier, in some ways.
As small-scale, regenerative farmer, I’ve benefited from the massive monopolies of industrial agriculture. Counter-intuitive, but true. As all these behemoths and billionaires sweep in and gobble up both farmland and our collective food sovereignty, they leave a massive vacuum in their wake.
In this small, quiet space - one which they largely ignore - millions of families like ours are quietly going about the good work of doing what ‘they’ say can’t be done. We are feeding our communities without killing ourselves or our planet, building community and restoring the vitality of our places as we go.
The same can be true of our work as creative beings in a world gone mad.
The act of being human in an inhumane world is valuable, worthwhile, brave work. What is making art, if not a record of the experience of being human?
If we’re smart, we’ll approach spaces like Substack as true subversives. The opportunity to find like-minded folks here is undeniable. The secret is to use these private, for-profit spaces with a gorilla mindset. To get in, connect and then get out - taking our connections into the hills where the giant machines of industry fear to tread.
Into real life, into the deliciously temporary, fragile world of flesh and bone. Where we might shake hands and look one another in the eye, tell stories round a fire and hold fast to the essential, immutable humanity within us all.
Stacey Langford is a writer, renegade farmer and slow business mentor living and working in Canada’s Fraser Valley. In 2010 Stacey ditched her cubicle in the city to turn her attention homeward, farm and help others craft a simple life, from scratch.
The one SubStack that I actually read. Thanks for sharing this perspective, Stacey.