Writing For The Web

Some Reflections

Like everyone else born in the mid 1990s, I grew up with the web. First, we had a dial-up modem that plugged into the phone, but then came broadband which allowed us to get online without the exhausting ritual of untangling noodle-like cables and praying to the hallowed gods of the electronic realm for access to the secret knowledge of the internet.

Video games and YouTube did exist, but I probably spent most of my time on various forums. Although technically strangers, those I talked to could have been my friends: we had the same interests and ways of expressing ourselves. Just by reading posts and asking questions, I learned a lot about the subjects I was interested in (mainly music) but it never felt like going to school or reading a textbook. It never felt like work. It was fun.

(photo source)

Years later, as an undergraduate, I left the forums behind and spent most of my free time reading book reviews found in publications such as The Atlantic, Australian Book Review, London Review of Books, New York Review of Books, and the Times Literary Supplement. Coupled with the academic literature I was reading for my degree, these periodicals gave me a pretty good baseline knowledge in literature and culture, but after a while I became dissatisfied with them.

Even dons tire of the demoralising, stilted prose style of academic journals. Although more accessible, the articles on literature and culture in the popular press are often tiringly prolix, taking many pages to make simple points: one London-based publication is famous for letting its writers gassily ramble about a topic without addressing the arguments in the book under review – it’s as if these scribes and editors haven’t noticed how the internet, TV, and talkback radio have made communications faster, punchier, and spicier. Online articles must engage the reader beyond the first paragraph. The most entertaining text on the web incorporates elements of electronic media – speed, verve, fluency – but also fits in the long tradition of expository prose represented by Richard Steele, Joseph Addison, Samuel Johnson, and Michel de Montaigne, the last of whom should be the patron saint of Substack because of his extensive knowledge and monumental personality.

And that is the main reason why people are drawn to the web. Unlike the interchangeable extras who inhabit the press, the internet is full of strong and distinct voices. More often than not, the result is like a group of mastodon bellowing over a primordial swamp, but sometimes above this din rises an attractive character, a surprising perspective, an intensity of expression in which every word is meaningful and captivating.

I was slow to realise the opportunity. I was one of the people who thought that internet writing would be ephemeral, like the sitcom, but the opposite is true. Since the advent of streaming – and even before it – repeats (or “re-runs”) of old comedies are entertaining a whole new generation; so it is online, where almost everything written is preserved in some ethereal amber.

I also thought that the web was decidedly unserious, that no one respectable would dedicate their working time to it; it was a place for mindless entertainment. It still is that, but it’s other things, too. Like Walt Whitman, the internet contains multitudes. When I found out that an article of mine for the Cambridge student newspaper Varsity was being read in European universities, I realised that there might be something valuable in a medium that can allow serious reflections to spread around the world like seeds from an exploding pod. On Substack, I can write directly to my readers. I might have had a bigger audience when I was writing for newspapers and magazines, but I prefer the freedom and independence that comes with writing Cosy Moments. Besides, the only people with allegiances to newspapers are wine mums and musty dads – everyone else knows that the internet creates the weather for political and cultural debates.

Most people probably still prefer physical media, especially books, but the internet has given those of us interested in the humanities a place to discuss what we love. Whatever the fate of Substack, it has already been hugely influential, and has allowed me to publish articles that were excluded from everywhere else because they were too long or too complicated or because the editor just wasn’t interested. If online writers can maintain high intellectual standards while employing the boldness, wit, and energy of the web, then cultural journalism might have a future after all.