I hope this move goes well for you. I have had readers of my substack say, similar to Jonathan Kamens, that they can't support me on this platform. My feeling has been any platform you're on is going to have its bad elements, although I did leave Twitter in November, earlier than many. Definitely a loss. Shout out for Mastodon. My blog is young. I need the tools here for a while to get a larger base to make such a move. I'll be watching for your posts on your new, independent site. Have to say I love email alerts, being perpetually buried in reading. You know the feeling. Best of luck.
So, just to be clear, I think you're saying if I subscribe to your RSS feed on okdoomer.io I'll get all the same content that you're posting here and more, and I can pay you through okdoomer.io without any of that money going to Substack. Is that correct? Because if so, I'm all over that. I want to support your work but I can't give money to Substack.
Jessica, as you move to the new website, please consider not using AI generated art to illustrate your posts. There's a certain dark irony to illustrating all the research and thought that goes into your wonderful pieces about the climate and society, with technology that requires obscene amounts of water and electricity, not all of which is sourced renewably. The other issues with AI art are that a.) image data sets are hand-labeled by low-wage workers in Kenya, Venezuela and other countries (the jobs are mind-numbing, stressful and often traumatizing bc of the content) and b.) the models have been trained on billions of images scraped online without consent, credit, or compensation to the artists. I'm part of the artist community—my 12-year-old, who is an emerging artist, has also had her work scraped. Greg Rutkowski, a well-known digital artist whose name was used 400,000 times in prompts, is already seeing his brand drowning in search results flooded with AI-generated iterations of his artistic style. These are the real impacts on real people and their livelihoods, despite the naysayers who are calling us artists and other creators luddites.
I realize these issues are not always covered in the media and not everyone is aware of them, so this isn't a judgment of you or anyone else using AI art to illustrate their articles—and not trying to pass it off as your own creation as some people are doing. But I do feel the points need to be raised. There's a lot more in the rabbit hole for anyone who cares to learn more:
Also gave up on Medium. I have my own site, but no one goes there. All my action is on Substack. Your email doesn't clutter my inbox and neither does anyone elses, as I've turned off email and get notifications from the app.
I love having you drop into my inbox, but I might be odd in that preference. With that said, I will also subscribe to the new site...I appreciate the time you put into your posts.
I applaud your decision to leave Medium in your dust. I did too when it became financially idiotic for me to continue. I had hoped Substack would turn the corner for me, and it is...slowly. But even here I struggle to find readers and backers/supporters. I hope Doomer one day allows you to rely less on teaching, because I understand what a thankless job that is most of the time.
Aug 7, 2023·edited Aug 7, 2023Liked by Jessica Wildfire
I just paid to subscribe for a year a couple days ago so this is kind of a bummer. I’ve been reading your stuff for free for a while, so I got my money’s worth I’m not mad about it, just a little bummed.
Will you please fix the SSL on okdoomer.io so it redirects without interim browser panic ("Site is not secure")? tl;dr: you can set the website to always redirect to https:// (and use letsencrypt to add free SSL certs) before it redirects to Ghost. Maybe this is affecting your RSS?
I’ll follow you wherever you choose write. It’s a great idea to create your own space. It seems we’re experiencing the enshitification of formerly useful platforms — thanks to Cory Doctorow for the terminology.
(Shout out to Mastodon and the decentralization of social media!)
OK Doomer is the only email / posts I actually look forward to. Jessica, I love your writing, humor and POV. I started with substack, but will happily follow you anywhere. Thanks all your good work. — David Vogler
I hope this move goes well for you. I have had readers of my substack say, similar to Jonathan Kamens, that they can't support me on this platform. My feeling has been any platform you're on is going to have its bad elements, although I did leave Twitter in November, earlier than many. Definitely a loss. Shout out for Mastodon. My blog is young. I need the tools here for a while to get a larger base to make such a move. I'll be watching for your posts on your new, independent site. Have to say I love email alerts, being perpetually buried in reading. You know the feeling. Best of luck.
I subscribed to both the Substack and the .io site because I appreciate your hard work and value it. I hope this new arrangement works out for you.
I'm someone who likes being notified of new posts by email, though, so if you're no longer doing that, how would I know when you post content?
Best wishes for success. I believe in time, you will be rocking a large group of followers and subscribers!
So, just to be clear, I think you're saying if I subscribe to your RSS feed on okdoomer.io I'll get all the same content that you're posting here and more, and I can pay you through okdoomer.io without any of that money going to Substack. Is that correct? Because if so, I'm all over that. I want to support your work but I can't give money to Substack.
Jessica, as you move to the new website, please consider not using AI generated art to illustrate your posts. There's a certain dark irony to illustrating all the research and thought that goes into your wonderful pieces about the climate and society, with technology that requires obscene amounts of water and electricity, not all of which is sourced renewably. The other issues with AI art are that a.) image data sets are hand-labeled by low-wage workers in Kenya, Venezuela and other countries (the jobs are mind-numbing, stressful and often traumatizing bc of the content) and b.) the models have been trained on billions of images scraped online without consent, credit, or compensation to the artists. I'm part of the artist community—my 12-year-old, who is an emerging artist, has also had her work scraped. Greg Rutkowski, a well-known digital artist whose name was used 400,000 times in prompts, is already seeing his brand drowning in search results flooded with AI-generated iterations of his artistic style. These are the real impacts on real people and their livelihoods, despite the naysayers who are calling us artists and other creators luddites.
I realize these issues are not always covered in the media and not everyone is aware of them, so this isn't a judgment of you or anyone else using AI art to illustrate their articles—and not trying to pass it off as your own creation as some people are doing. But I do feel the points need to be raised. There's a lot more in the rabbit hole for anyone who cares to learn more:
https://themuse.substack.com/p/ai-at-work-bubbles-in-the-sand-part-3a7
Jessica Unchained!
I'll follow you anywhere.
Also gave up on Medium. I have my own site, but no one goes there. All my action is on Substack. Your email doesn't clutter my inbox and neither does anyone elses, as I've turned off email and get notifications from the app.
I love having you drop into my inbox, but I might be odd in that preference. With that said, I will also subscribe to the new site...I appreciate the time you put into your posts.
I applaud your decision to leave Medium in your dust. I did too when it became financially idiotic for me to continue. I had hoped Substack would turn the corner for me, and it is...slowly. But even here I struggle to find readers and backers/supporters. I hope Doomer one day allows you to rely less on teaching, because I understand what a thankless job that is most of the time.
Keep on being wisely awesome.
I subscribe, so I’m glad you’re staying here on Substack you’re my voice of sanity. Thank you.
I just paid to subscribe for a year a couple days ago so this is kind of a bummer. I’ve been reading your stuff for free for a while, so I got my money’s worth I’m not mad about it, just a little bummed.
Will you please fix the SSL on okdoomer.io so it redirects without interim browser panic ("Site is not secure")? tl;dr: you can set the website to always redirect to https:// (and use letsencrypt to add free SSL certs) before it redirects to Ghost. Maybe this is affecting your RSS?
I'll miss the dark mode in Substack and the ability to have the article read aloud. But I'll follow you wherever you go.
I’ll follow you wherever you choose write. It’s a great idea to create your own space. It seems we’re experiencing the enshitification of formerly useful platforms — thanks to Cory Doctorow for the terminology.
(Shout out to Mastodon and the decentralization of social media!)
Hell yes on no medium 🙌
OK Doomer is the only email / posts I actually look forward to. Jessica, I love your writing, humor and POV. I started with substack, but will happily follow you anywhere. Thanks all your good work. — David Vogler
I recently had a creepy encounter with Substack’s “anti-woke” circle of hell and I started to fear that the days of relative peace here were numbered.
Then I read this and thought, are all tech CEOs fascist-adjacent?
America is fun.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/richard-hanania-white-supremacist-pseudonym-richard-hoste_n_64c93928e4b021e2f295e817