First networking post
Make new friends and connections!
I love not being on Instagram. I have so much more free time and so much more free mental space. I’ve been reading two books a week and looking up interviews with the authors and I just feel like I have so much more space. I am still working away at making substack a sustainable place for my practice, both in the size of my audience and financially. I have 114 thousand followers on instagram and the majority of my income has traditionally come from zine sales resulting from me posting on instagram. Currently I have less than 10 thousand subscribers on substack, and I don’t make as much on either zines sales or paid substack subscriptions as I did when I was posting regularly, but I’m on my way to making this financially sustainable and I have all of you to thank for that.
One of the cool things about instagram was all the connections with people, and I do believe there is the potential for connection building on substack — a place that prioritizes long form writing over bite sized information, and a place that does not predatorily mine your attention to sell it to advertisers. I would love to see a shift away from social media to platforms like substack that encourage us to think deeper and longer, and do not promote addictive, compulsive use. I want to be a part of this shift, and so I thought it would be cool to offer the networking opportunities here that I used to offer on instagram.
People have joked to me that they bring up my name in conversation to sus out where people in supposedly lefty scenes stand on questions like cancel culture and identitarianism. Is your new date critical of cancel culture and social justice orthodoxy or does my name fill them with contempt, rage, and suspicion? It’s a quick and easy test that often gets results in the most chronically online “social justice” scenes. A lot of people on the left, and in queer world, and in artistic or academic or therapy adjacent spaces, are looking for connections with people who are not caught in fundamentalist cult-like thinking. We want connections with people we have things in common with, but we don’t want to live in fear of being cancelled, constantly hypervigilantly monitor the way we think, or chronically self-censor because we are afraid of being brought into line.
On instagram I would make these networking posts where I would open up my comments and give people the opportunity to basically make a personals ad, where they share about who they are and what type of connections they’re looking for, and then people would go through the comments and contact each other and make connections that way. It’s been very successful. This is my very first networking post on substack and if it goes well, I’ll make it a semi-regular thing. This way, we can keep the community and connection building aspect alive, without succumbing to the parasitical instagram gods. Thanks for being here for this experiment.
How it works: Leave a comment below. Anyone can comment regardless of if you have a free or paid subscription. Tell us a bit about yourself: what are your interests? your values? where are you located? what kinds of connections are you looking for (friends, dating, organizing, collaborating, professional, whatever…)? are you looking for local connections or online or both? It can be as long or as short as you want. Be sure to include contact info: an email address, or, if you must, your ig or other social media handle, so that people can contact you. Then, go through the existing comments and contact anyone who seems interesting to you.
Precautions and boundaries: If someone reaches out and you’re not interested, you are under no obligation to reply. Don’t take it personally if someone doesn’t reply. We all get to choose which connections we feel like pursuing. Also, just because you meet someone here does not immediately make them trust worthy. Trust must be developed over time, so use your discretion and get to know people. Cancelled4cancelled trauma bonding can sometimes lead to too much trust too soon, so take your time. If you choose to meet in person, it’s always a good idea to meet in public the first time.
Comments are open! Enjoy and have fun!
Announcements and new things
Reclaiming Our Power: A special workshop for women by Clementine Morrigan at Breitenbush Hot Springs in Oregon, USA, in March 2024 — Limited spots available.
Contemporary Spirituality: Meaning and Mysticism in the Modern Age (Upcoming course I’m teaching in) — Use the code TEACH-CS-MORRIGAN for a discount.
Controversy & the Art of Unfiltered Expression with Clementine Morrigan on the Curiocity Podcast
Things I’m reading, listening to, watching or thinking about lately
Dirtbag by Amber A'Lee Frost
The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel
The Works Presents: Doireann Ní Ghríofa
Featured from the shop
Available in hard copy or digital.
I was sober and in AA for 11 years. I'm not sober anymore. This collection of essays looks at addiction, drug use, and recovery from an unorthodox lens.
"AA taught me the unflinching gaze and the primacy of honesty. And I need to tell this story: not a story of relapse or failure, but a story of transformation and change. The stories of people who leave AA are not told. I would hear whispers, notice people weren’t at meetings anymore, or see on social media that someone who had been sober no longer was. Usually this story was framed as relapse, and people in the program would express concern and worry for the person who had ‘gone out.’ Sometimes these people would return and tell the tale of their relapse and find their way back to sobriety.
But other times I would infer a different story. Sometimes I was following someone on social media, and I could tell they weren’t sober anymore, but it did not look like a chaotic relapse. They seemed happy and okay. And they didn’t come back to the rooms, and they didn’t talk about why they left, or how they understood their process, at least not publicly. Unfortunately, many in the program would subtly but explicitly judge these people, casting their experience as a relapse even if the person themselves didn’t understand it that way. They were counted among those who had ‘gone out’ and it was never considered possible that they had actually gone somewhere else entirely."
Clementine Morrigan is a writer and public intellectual based in Montréal, Canada. She writes popular and controversial essays about culture, politics, ethics, relationships, sexuality, and trauma. A passionate believer in independent media, she’s been making zines since the year 2000 and is the author of several books. She’s known for her iconic white-text-on-a-black-background mini-essays on Instagram. One of the leading voices on the Canadian Left and one half of the Fucking Cancelled podcast, Clementine is an outspoken critic of cancel culture and a proponent of building solidarity across difference. She is a socialist, a feminist, and a vegan for the animals and the earth.
Browse her shop, listen to her podcast, book a one on one session with her, or peruse her list of resources and further reading.
My name is Sascha and I'm a therapist and I super love Clemetine's work and definitely have used her name to suss out how people think about social justice and cancel culture! For many years my friends and I ran a radical mental health network of peer support groups called The Icarus Project which ended up in a crisis because a lot of the leftist identitarian issues Clementine writes about. I think a lot about shame and social ostracization and ways we can do it better. You can find me on substack at https://undergroundtransmissions.substack.com/ and here's my personal website: https://www.saschadubrul.com/
Hi, I’m Maya! I’m a 25 year old woman born and raised in western Washington state in the USA. I am a bisexual, feminist, musician, union kid, cancelled x2, friend, and lover. I work as a care aide for adults with developmental disabilities, and in my free time I like reading gross books, writing queer girl country music, playing outside, and spending time with my loved ones. I’m a total religion nerd and love learning about different spiritual practices. In the warmer months I love to garden and fish.
I’m looking for friends, other musicians to collaborate with, and community where I don’t have to walk on eggshells. I consider myself a proud radical feminist (NOT a terf- yes, that is a thing) and would love to find more friends who are interested in talking/learning more about radical/4th wave feminism, WITHOUT the transphobia that can be so prevalent in the movement.
I hope to offer others a safe shoulder to lean on, someone to celebrate and cry with, a friend to drink mead and listen to outlaw country with. Mostly, I want to meet people who also don’t want to hurt other people.
Feel free to DM me on instagram @newyearsmay