You Really "Like" Me

The “like” button is fucked for so many reasons. You're going to quantify this shit? You’re going to measure art in approval? You’re going to turn bleeding on the page (as Hemingway put it) into a popularity contest? (Song of Myself, 87 likes.) It’s not even a popularity contest with other writers, though there is that, it’s a popularity contest with yourself.

A little red heart? Can we at least get some options-- a gender-neutral person scratching their head (The “that made me think” button). A sledge hammer over a heart (The “that broke me up” button). A guillotine (The “I liked it, but it could use some editing” button. Even better, a moyel performing a circumcision). Hey Saul Bellow, I liked your piece,  really good writing.  You too Sylvia Plath. In fact, I'm going become a paid subscriber but don't share the money with Ted. 

The Pavlovian brutality of it is fucking up my brain. Checking my “views” is not good for me, and I'm not strong enough to resist. I’m a recovering addict. I love to alter my sensation. Love to lab rat myself, pressing the bar for another jolt. Three hundred views in an hour, I am a golden child! Only nine “likes,” clearly, I am a talentless schmuck. More importantly, how many times was I restacked and can I shoot them in my arm? 

Immediate feedback is not always good for one’s art. And now that' I've been doing this a while I know the kind of pieces that get the love juices flowing.  Universally themed, vulnerable, but with a message of hope at the end. Humanist, left leaning doses of feel-good truth. Hallelujah! I’m a “like” machine.

Some writers even have a little spiel that says, “if you enjoyed this, don’t forget to press the “like” button.” I can’t go there. But if I did, I would just write, “Doesn’t matter if you like it or not, just love ME! Press press, press. Put that warm blow-dryer on my balls and make me whole.”

I have a lot of old, hip Jews who read me. People who saw Miles Davis play at the Vanguard and clapped modestly, as was the custom. I’m going to ask them to press a red heart for my 700-word piece about smoke detectors when they polite clapped for Miles? Look, I get hustling. In fact, I have a great respect for a good hustler. If you’re making your living with Substack, I get it, shill your heart out and get your shekles. But reminding grown people to press a little red heart hurts my soul. Maybe that’s why I don’t have that many readers. Because I don’t embrace the algorithmic age we live in. And who knows, I could be wrong. Maybe “likes” are wonderful. The great egalitarian dream come to fruition. The People's Choice Awards applied to literature.

I don’t know why I’m on this rant. I get that Substack needs to make their loot and this is the formula. I guess what I have to ask myself is, “Can I Substack soberly or must I treat my posts like stock-offerings and read the ticker tape all day?” (I think you know the answer.)

Numbers are how we organize so much of life. They are a measuring stick we all understand and we are a statistic crazed culture. Think of the huge deal that has been made about Shohei Ohtani becoming the first player ever to steal fifty bases and hit fifty home runs in a season (Ohtani may be Shakespeare, Tolstoy, and of course Murakami, all rolled into one). I wonder if there will be a celebration like that when someone breaks the ten thousand likes/five hundred restacks barrier? Who knows, maybe Patti Smith already did it.