A Few New Coming Changes

An Update to this Substack

I hope you all are having a great weekend! The weather’s been a bit too sporadic on the east coast. It’s like one day it’s in the 70s, humid and muggy, and the next there are calls for freezing rain overnight. What are you gonna do?

I want to take this time to write a few of the changes that will be coming to this Substack.

1. In Regards to Friday’s Post

I want to start off by thanking all of you who took the time to read, respond to my post, and decided to become a paid member!

I kept debating whether to make that post, but now I’m glad I did. The responses really helped give me some perspective and examine this Substack in a different light.

I have tried to comment on nearly all of the comments. I appreciate that you all took the time to give me some pointers moving forward.

One of the biggest things I need to take into account is that, for most people, this Substack comes to them as an email. I tend to examine this Substack as a blogging website, and so I have not taken into account that most people don’t want to read through a 10-page email while at work or busy with other activities. This doesn’t mean that my Anthology Series will end, but that I will try to add more small, individual posts that are more accessible through emails.

I also received a remark about the way that this Substack is set up. I didn’t not mention it clearly in the post Friday but this Substack was mostly free and open with the idea that paid members would help to continue to keep most things behind a paywall. Therefore, members who may not be able to afford a subscription would still be able to access the information.

Moving forward I may want to find ways to remind people about this idea, but I also want to find ways to make it more worth it to become a paid member as well. Once again any feedback would be great!

And again I want to thank everyone who responded! I have really fallen into a bit of a funk within the past month or two, and so hearing from so many people did help boost my spirits a bit!

2. A New Perk for Paid Members

As I stated on Friday I have not lived up to my promise of at least 2 paid posts a month. I’ve been trying to find a way to have a middle ground between paid and free posts, as well as a way to encourage more engagement.

The response to my post about what people would like to see aside from COVID topics was met with very good reception. Because of that, I have decided to come up with the idea of having one monthly post that will be decided on by paid members. Essentially, paid members will be able to post a topic they would like to see written about at the beginning of each month, and other paid members will be able to vote on the topic. The topic that receives the most upvotes, likes, or hearts? Whatever Substack uses, but whichever one has the most engagement will be a paid-only post released at the end of the month.

Here’s how I imagine the setup will be like:

1. At the beginning of the month I will make a paid-members only post alluding to the “voting”.

2. Paid members will have a week (maybe shorter) to comment and like whichever topics they think are interesting. At the end of the week (or shorter, depending on what people think is an appropriate time frame) I will make another post about the topic I will write about.

3. The post will be released at the end of the month for paid-members only.

However, I do have to provide some caveats for these posts:

1. Please no COVID topics. It’s not necessarily because I’m tired of COVID, but because any COVID topics may be more important to release free for people to access. Therefore, any comments made about COVID may end up just becoming a public post somewhere down the line instead.

2. Nothing too political. This one’s a bit of a stretch. I’m posting this to mean more of things along the lines of The Great Reset or the World Economic Forum type of topics. It’s not because I don’t believe these things are real- I believe a lot of what’s going on there are partially driven by many of the events outlined by the WEF and The Great Reset. It’s more that I would be concerned a lot of the information would be mostly speculative. Also, many people are already writing so much about these topics on Substack already, so I’d encourage people to look for other Substack writers for those types of posts instead. If you are unsure what would fall under this category, feel free to post the topic and the community and I could discuss it.

3. Nothing time-sensitive. This essentially means any topics about things such as news articles or topics that may lose relevancy by the end of the month. For example, if it’s about someone Joe Rogan has interviewed, it may lose relevancy a few weeks down the line and may not be considered important to discuss.

4. Come up with fun ideas. Don’t limit your thinking to just COVID what’s happening now. Think about things such as food science, seasonal topics, or even cultural topics. Spring is coming, were you ever curious how poison ivy actually causes blisters, or what makes a bee sting venomous? Or even allergies, and why plant gametes cause our bodies so much distress. Anything about supplements, food additives, or over the counter drugs. Use some imagination!

5. The final choice will be up to the available literature. I want to limit how much discretion I have in the end, but my main focus will be on how much literature I will be able to access to provide for a decent post. I will look for information as topics come in and will use that to make my decision.

Even with all this being said, please continue to provide topics to discuss! I want everyone, including free members, to provide topics that may be worth looking into as free topics to post.

I will admit that the entire Fluvoxamine post has left me burned out, so for this month I am thinking I will use it to write about the topics you all provided in the “things are ‘finally’ over” post. I won’t be able to get to all of the topics, but I will do my best to address what I can. Also, because these posts were asked about in a free post I will make sure that those posts are open to the public.

Please let me know what you think of this idea or if there are any questions about this type of model!

3. Welcoming the Anthology Series Archive

When I started writing posts that were several series long, I decided to start collecting all of the information in what I called an “Anthology Series”, mostly because the information is made up of bits of other topics that revolved around a specific idea or drug. I’ll also be honest in that I think I used the word anthology because I was binging on those awful anthology horror films in October. With the way Substack is organized it makes it difficult to find older posts including these Anthology Series.

Because of this I have decided to create a separate section called “The Anthology Series Archives” where I will also post my Anthology Series. The tab is located right underneath the “Modern Discontent” banner on the front page. Hopefully this makes it easier to find and share for other people.

A few heads up: know that there is a separate free “Subscribe” option for the Archives section. I opted to not transfer emails from this Substack over there because I did not want to include people who may not want to Subscribe over there. Also, know that you only need to become a paid member under this Substack (Modern Discontent) in order to access any paid content that makes its way into that section.

If you check over there right now you’ll notice I have not transferred anything over yet.

I’m figuring out if I would rather include just a link to the Anthology Series here, or if I would copy and paste the “Anthology Series” posts from here over there. This is a minor gripe though. Also when I do come up with other series, I will make sure to post the finalized “Anthology Series” on both this Substack as well as the Archives section.

One thing I will need to figure out is if paid-only posts should be added over there as well. That way, when people decide to become a paid member they can have an area where they can access all of that information as well. Otherwise, I may create another section for that as well. I will figure this out in due time.

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I have taken to heart a lot of the things people have said on Friday. Because of that I want to make this Substack more accessible and improve engagement whether through free or paid content. Please let me know if there are any questions or concerns with respect to the topics above.

I will post the paid-only “voting post” within an hour.

Otherwise, enjoy the rest of your Sunday! At least for those within the western hemisphere!