The Celebrities Invaded The Starving Writers' Club

She doesn't even go here!

I know I said I wouldn’t write about writing that often, and I just did it yesterday. But….bear with me! I can’t help what inspires me on any given day. More delicious genderslop coming after Thanksgiving.

Photo by Lance Reis on Unsplash

Writing is a weird creative medium, because it’s so rare to get successful doing it that it has become synonymous with poverty and struggle. As someone who is a successful writer (and I don’t say this to brag—okay, yes, I do! I didn’t waste thirteen years getting fired in tech sales not to brag when I finally achieved my dream of full-time writing!) I’ve come up against this paradox many times. I write because I love it, but also because it’s my job and I like to make money. I do not believe there is a particular salary cap that I should be beholden to, wherein I have to stop paywalling my content lest I appear greedy. Yes, writing (on Substack, but also anywhere) is a bit of a winner-take-all thing, the same way 99.9999% of people who want to be famous rappers wind up with nothing but a Soundcloud account to their name. But that’s life, isn’t it? If lawyers, executives and surgeons shouldn’t be expected to stop making money after a certain degree of success, neither should writers.

You see it all the time with the way some writers talk about the Substack business model—for example, the fact that it’s “unfair” that people like Matt Yglesias and Heather Cox Richardson make so much money here, even though they are probably more talented, more driven and more hardworking than anyone else. Moreover, there’s no secret industry propping them up—tens of thousands of real humans have chosen to give them money. But there’s this pervasive attitude that it’s unseemly to write for profit, and we should all have virtual tip jars instead—basically, art cannot be capitalist. Except: it very much is!

And now, as someone who favors the free markets (and of course, I’m biased because those free markets have favored me) I have to contend with something a bit weird: multi-millionaire celebrities, who make Heather Cox Richardson and Matt Yglesias look like everyday Americans being interviewed by The Daily at an Ohio diner about the cost of eggs, are entering Substack with viral personal essays, hoping to add, perhaps, an additional $10,000 to their existing vat of cash. Most notably, we now have Charli XCX and Lizzo. Some other celebrities got onto Substack a while ago, but it felt less absurd because they were writers or comedians already (for example, Kathy Griffin). When I see celebrity-written content, even though I’m all for the may-the-best-writer-win capitalist system, I have to admit, I’m like, Dude, don’t you have enough money already? Go away!

But that would be hypocritical of me, wouldn’t it?

Heyyy, it’s Thanksgiving time, which means 30% off sale on annual subscriptions! Only applies to new annual subscriptions, not monthly upgraded to annual.