Critical Spectator is moving to Substack
With ten different streams of content it's going to be much easier to follow what I publish across different topics. Welcome on board!
Since you subscribed to my original email list on Mailchimp I have taken the liberty of moving your email to my new publications on Substack. This is the new home for all of my content.
What is Substack?
If you haven’t seen it yet, Substack is currently all the rage among journalists in America, who embrace the freedom of the platform and the ability to be directly supported by their readers or sell premium pieces of content for a small subscription fee.
This promotes journalistic freedom - particularly in the age of cancel culture and mass censorship everywhere. Since Substack is fairly independent and committed to upholding the spirit of free expression, it’s a good place to escape the ever watchful moderators on other platforms.
Why did I move here?
It’s a result of many months of consideration about the next step for my blog and publishing activities. As you know I have recently focused on publishing Facebook posts instead of regular articles on my blog. This was in part due to slightly more time consuming operation of a Wordpress site and partly a result of bias of Facebook’s distribution mechanisms which seem to favor posts published on the platform rather than links to external locations.
In addition, despite my skills in design and web management, I want to focus on producing content rather than deal with technical issues, plugins, emails etc. and a number of subscriptions to services that add functions to the existing site.
Substack offers a complete package - hosting and email distribution, with useful built-in features that make running a site much easier.
Admittedly, the design functions are still limited (although I hope this is going to change with time) but I have decided to trade the visual bells and whistles for the ease of use and distribution of content to all my subscribers - you :)
Second factor was - no denying here - the ability to offer premium content pieces to generate additional revenue streams which could support my writing efforts.
As I said in the past, I don’t think writers should hide their opinions behind paywalls because this stems discussion and, ultimately, every author wants as many people as possible to see what they publish. That’s why my opinion pieces are going to remain free and accessible to everybody.
But I also had to make a decision whether to dedicate more time and effort to writing and treat the whole venture less as a hobby and more as a job.
This is why I am going to be launching several different Substacks dedicated to different topics - and offering premium analytical pieces and summaries to paying subscribers at a basic fee of US$5 per month per stack.
If you’d like to support my writing this is how you now can :)
Any person who subscribes to two substacks - at $10 per month - is going to get premium access to ALL publications. There is currently no built-in feature for it, so I will be enabling access to paying subscribers manually. More announcements coming soon :)
What you can expect
As you have already seen I have separated a new publication - Critical Singapore - out of Critical Spectator. My coverage of Singaporean affairs is now going to take place there, while Critical Spectator is going to be reserved for global affairs.
In addition, I will be launching separate publications dedicated to:
Asian / Chinese affairs
Culture Wars and the ideological challenges of wokeness
Extreme geopolitical scenarios - a corner evaluating extreme end-points of our geopolitical crises and decisions that could be made, that nobody wants to make (or even consider)
Science, with the most critical developments made today and the direction they are setting
Remote work, travel & future of labor - largely based on my personal experiences
Common sense take on climate issues and our responses to them
There are a few more ideas I have in mind, but I wouldn’t want to get ahead of myself just yet.
Due to the nature of Substack you are now able to subscribe/unsubscribe to content streams that are of the greatest interest to you. For my current subscribers - all of you are going to be added to all streams that you can leave if they don’t fit your tastes.
This is another of the features of this platform that was so appealing to me, as I have readers from different corners of the world - and with different interests - so it makes sense to give you the ability to pick what you like best.
The substack you’re receiving this message from is going to be my personal corner - for communications with you and perhaps some personal musings on other topics, not related to any of the other publications.
I hope you’re excited to see what’s around the corner! Welcome on board! :)
Critical Spectator is moving to Substack
Good luck on this new 'venture'
Glad to see this.