Can Substack Save Our Attention Span?
On becoming local and known in our online spaces instead of the abyss of virtual anomie
When I was 11, there was a bookmarked page on the browser I checked every day. At one point, this had been Webkinz and Club Penguin, but as I suffered through the hell that is the preteen experience of 7th grade, another website became my joy—The Girls in The Beauty Department, a blog of Glamour Magazine.
We can discuss some other time why this blog and the idea of beauty in junior high might matter so much to a pimply, anxious girl like myself, but that is not the point of today’s article. The point is the experience of content on the internet, and what it was like to read online when the expanse was not an endless treadmill of content, but just a couple places one frequents.
It is not an unusual thing for people to romanticize the experience of small town life, here in the physical world. The idea of knowing who lives around these parts, who owns the downtown diner, and the best person to ask about a good mechanic are the fodder of romantic Hallmark movies at this time of year. I’m not the first, nor the best, to talk about the positive parts of being local, being a regular. We long to be known, in our cities or towns, at work, in community. I think, on the internet, I feel that same longing some times.
I used to get home from school, change out of my very much plaid and cotton school uniform, grab a snack (likely cheese whiz nachos…I know…), and go to the computer room. Yes, I am a 30 year old woman, and we had a computer room, my children. I would check AIM (one of social media’s grandfathers), but mostly I would look forward to reading the musings and tips, experiments and trials of a few women in NYC, living the dream to me at the time of writing for a magazine, a la Andrea Sachs or Sarah Jessica Parker.
In that time, and maybe due to my age and where I could go on the internet, I knew this blog, and was familiar with the commenters, the writers, the rhythm of what to expect. It was, in hindsight, a local place I knew and was known, in an internet way, online. There was not endless content, and there was not endless options. It was, by today’s standards, small and knowable. It is that that I want back, and what I feel in beginning to explore Substack is asking how it might save the locality of the internet, or at least create a place for me to feel it again.
I notice the difference in my ability to be local online as diminished, from years of living in the fast-paced, big city life of the modern internet. Endless scrolls, 24 hour open content factories, “everything, everywhere, all of the time.” I remember being a girl and being excited on Monday afternoon to see new posts to read, after a weekend without them. I don’t have a chance to get excited with the modern internet. Choice is suffocating in that I never choose at all, and therefore I never become local.
There is something deeply boring about the nourishment of being local. It has its own drawbacks, certainly. What I hope to explore as I write and read on this platform, though, is to ask what real connection means in 2025 in this virtual community. How do I build connection when I don’t have to? How do I consume and feel full, rather than endless overconsumption of both information and people? How do I choose the same, dull but decent cup of coffee each day, and stay with the thread of thought of certain individuals, the comment section of specific communities?
As always, I think this is experiment and process, but I feel hopeful for it. I think in 2025 I want more of a “computer room” experience again, ie a containment and a joy in consumption and creating online that has a specific time and place in my life. I want to go back to my small town roots and know and be known again, as all busy city women find they must in our Hallmark movie vision.
It’s time we ask how we can know and connect with each other online, even if it is virtual. I think it’s possible that Substack may be a place that our virtual lives make us even more real to one another.
Take care and stay warm this weekend, friends, and thanks for letting me LARP as the bloggers I once so admired,
xoxo,
Margaret of Bad Art Every Day
My thought processes the last few days as I have been waiting to see if I will be consistent in following and reading your writing has been that as you have posted more, I wanted to partner with you in this endeavor. Instead of waiting to subscribe, I’ve decided to join in, subscribe now and take stock on a regular basis on all my subscriptions (HBO MAX, Apple TV for example) and see where I’m meaningfully engaged at those checkpoints. Instead of consuming, I want to be investing. You’re writing more, I’m making a point to engage with consistency. In this, there’s partnership. You’re my only Substack subscription and the one I’m committed to engaging with for however long the journey serves us. Thank you for taking the time to explore all of this as we step into 2025, I’m hopeful this will be a good change for us all.
I, too, had my list of websites I would check while on the computer in the computer room. My fixation included blogs from authors whose work I adored (The Clique series and Twilight series). I excitedly checked my mailbox for seventeen magazine, and loved engaging with the content by marking up the pages with my likes and opinions. There has definitely been some upsides to overconsuming content in the years of social media, but I am excited to filter my content to help inspire my own life I am living. It's the ecological balance of consuming and creating. I guess my small part in that is to create by commenting and engaging. Here's to commitment and putting down "roots."