The Party’s Over
I did Nazi that coming…
Today I decide whether to revive my MailChimp newsletter, See You Next Tues! (SYNT) and end my Substack newsletter, NIHILISTIC. If you haven’t heard, Substack has a Nazi problem , continuing to platform white supremacists while offering an inadequate response to those who point out the fallacy of “debating” Fascists: continually having to justify one’s right to simply exist. There are, apparently, Substack alternatives, like Ghost and Beehiiv, but I’m not willing to alot the time necessary (one Substack writer mentions spending 60 hours moving their newsletter) to migrate NIHILISTIC while SYNT sits idle, only needing me to fill the tank and crank the engine.
This past June, making the difficult choice to mothball SYNT eight months shy of its tenth anniversary to launch NIHILISTIC seemed a decent trade-off. Exchange SYNT’s subject latitude in the silo of MailChimp for the narrower confines of NIHILISTIC on Substack’s more open platform. Utilizing networking aspects of social media, Substack would allow more readers to find me. Giving NIHILISTIC a web presence with a custom URL also appealed (monetizing NIHILISTIC via paid subscriptions was an afterthought, though I’m grateful for the handful who ponied up). Walking away from SYNT also quenched the blazes too often flaring with those who felt burned by guest appearances. No longer would I routinely abase myself in service of extinguishment, justifying why my version of events–the only one to which I have access–prevailed. Some SYNT fires still smolder, the underlying relationships moribund, but NIHILISTIC would avoid such pitfalls by limiting itself to unearthing my journey through the distant punk rock and hardcore music past. While recollections differ and facts subsequently corrected, the writing wasn’t immediate enough to rankle any but the most unhinged. But sitting down each week to bang out a NIHILISTIC installment meant struggling to find a focus. There are only so many stories to extract from memories prone to fade. To provide options, a NIHILISTIC podcast was added... but it just created more work apart from the main thrust: a book.
About that: over breakfast this morning with Sweet T., I transmogrified the format of NIHILISTIC. To revive my talents as interviewer, I’ll approach it as oral history. But unlike the groundbreaking Please Kill Me (Gillian McCain/Legs McNeil) or the excellent NYHC (Tony Rettman), NIHILISTIC will zoom in on one particular band in one special moment. This solves several problems. Foremost, I’m no longer writing from my memory alone, running the risk of descending into solipsism. Other versions can compete with mine and the reader can be final arbiter. Second, any audio I gather–and I already have hours–can continue to be repurposed into a podcast. Finally, this new approach may make NIHILISTIC an easier pitch to any publishers primed for the subject matter. There are drawbacks: too many fucking fartknockers with podcasts mine the same vein, sitting down with punk rock and hardcore luminaries to flesh out the history of this music. My advantages are manifold: A) I was there, a founding member of the NYHC scene; B) over four decades I’ve honed my interviewing skills; C) I can write, and, D) I can record, edit and mix a kick-ass podcast.
So it seems it’s decided: See You Next Tue! will be revived starting this coming Tuesday and the Substack version of NIHILISTIC (I’m keeping the URLs and will figure something out for them) gets a stake driven through its heart. If you’re not already on the SYNT mailing list, sign up here. And thanks for supporting this version of NIHILISTIC. It was fun while it lasted but the party’s over.
