: Weekend in the South
Girlfriend and I went to a wedding in a pretty town in the US South this weekend. I’d never been to a southern wedding. It was a little different than I’m used to: They still do the “speak now or forever hold your peace” part, which is pretty fun, but they didn’t play a single Michael Jackson song, which I thought was obligatory. Instead, they did “Sweet Caroline,” and everyone sang along to that one part. Overall, a gorgeous and an amazing time. I know both the bride and groom pretty well, but had never met either family and it was a trip to suddenly be surrounded by zillions of cousins who looked just like the main characters.
We explored the main street area and the kitschy shops, including one that had signs everywhere that said “Absolutely no photos!! We support Real Artists and don’t want copies of our shit to show up on Temu!!” which I found a bit ironic, because most of the stuff on sale was pretty standard souvenir fare (coffee mugs with grumpy slogans, etc.). We encountered only one (1) racist episode and two (2) sexist episodes, which was not great, but better than par, I suppose.
I met a guy at the wedding who is an aspiring writer and gave me the link to his Substack. I asked him about how he chose Substack of all the platforms and he said he likes it because it has a relatively even distribution of subscription counts. That is, some Substacks are more popular than others, but the difference isn’t as stark as other places, which makes it easy to discover writers with super niche interests. I told him a bit about the indie web and the idea of decentralizing the internet and making it a platform for creative expression instead of consumption. He seemed into the idea in principle but intimidated by the tech aspects, which, fair.
I know that indie web people like to hate on Substack, I think mainly because it’s just another proprietary platform, and something something about not banning racist blogs? I subscribed to this guy’s Substack, and it is many things, but definitely not racist; the vibe is more woo-woo and live, laugh, love.
I have to be honest: A few years ago I made a conscious decision to “opt out” of the idea that using a platform, service, or product makes you responsible for all the decisions made by the parent company. Of course, you may choose to buy products that you believe in, but (in my view) that is extra credit, more than what’s morally required. If you look far enough up and down the supply chain of any business you will find bad people. The point of living in a society to work together to set and enforce rules against bad behavior, rather than put the onus for solving racism on every individual in the society.