Hang on, how come I don't get sparkly rings when I close my circles? Alarmingly, I have sometimes heard myself wonder: "If I forget to wear my Oura ring and I get a good nights sleep, how will I even know if I got a good nights sleep?" ...after 3 years, I'm basically afraid to sleep without it.
It’s enough to make you crazy isn’t it? Or wasn’t it, I should say, because I honestly pay (next to) no attention to it now. My wife used to get the sparkly rings and now she doesn’t. She’s sad.
The commodification of life is exhausting. I've also had this internal rebellion against value capture/gamification and really anything related to optimization over the past few years (which is awkward when you work in tech). We forgot that I'm not sure if you're an Ezra Klein listener but he had this great podcast with C. Thi Nguyen a while back that sounds right up your alley:
Ironically I've also been noodling on this recently in regards to the travel space. I have a bunch of vaguely coherent scribbles written down in some kind of anti-gamification/social media/platforms writ large rage after a beer or two on the road haha.
Ha ha, both of those things you cited are very near to the concepts I'm writing about! I especially loved Nguyen's old Ezra Klein podcast. He's so damned engaging. If you go to his website, https://objectionable.net/, there's links to a lot of his other writing. I like everything I're read.
This is so interesting. It makes me think of the idea of "inatrumentalizing" one's time as a capitalist construct. I don't remember which book I read that in. I want to resist these external metrics, but also, I'm obsessed with my Fitbit.
I've only just recently found substack, and I'm ever grateful that I've been using it to find some similar thoughts I've been having.
One that sticks out is the idea of "value capital" - in which I'm trying to figure out myself, ie: is it possible to have "good" products that are beneficial to individuals, without the need to also sell data or advertise or rely on vanity metrics? I want to start a company on this premise - tall order, I know, but "broader shoulders" and all that.
Finding substacks and posts like yours inspire me, so thanks, and hopefully I'll have something to bring to the discussion soon :)
thanks for the comment, and good luck on keeping your focus on where you feel it matters. I think it’s quite possible, and was part of a company that did that for quite a long time. Perhaps we did it too well: our success attracted investors, and those investors wanted to bring their “wisdom,” which amounted to a focus on metrics and sales and marketing. It ruined us.
Thanks! I've thought about that exact situation; the usual run sheet is "get something, get investors, focus on scale and growth" - but that causes part of the issue. I think, for something to be sustainable, it needs to be free-standing, ie: without investors, but also profitable in some way, some how. So much we have now is fueled by a mix of investors, advertising, or data-farming; surely there has to be another way.
Wow, Tom. Ya gotta use this age and stage for what it is. Time to stop striving, proving, measuring. Q3 (age 50-75) should be about relishing, connecting, enjoying. The age where we understand 'value capture' systems and retire from them (if ever we bought into them). I've never done the watch/ fitbit schtick. But then, I've never worked for anyone else, either. I really don't like being on a leash. Even my dog Poppy isn't crazy about it.
And while I love and appreciate your debate about going paid or not on Substack, it all sounds a little black and white. I understand you're a recovering Type A corporate guy, but now you can design life on the outside to be a warm, cosy shade of grey if you choose to. I clicked through to some of the other debates on this issue and I understand that lots of people, especially if they are younger than you or me, need to earn significant income via their writing on Substack.
But another of the joys of Q3 is that, if you're lucky and ageing well, you're after meaning more than money. Does that necessitate turning off all the switches, or learning to use them without them driving you? What about alcohol? Give it up entirely (the latest recommendations from the Canadian health authorities), or drink a really good bottle on the weekend?
It's like the 5 love languages. Some readers hit a like, some share a thought, others share their wealth. Why limit their range? Just don't get addicted to the love. In the end, the secret of the 2nd half of life is doing what you care about. And not much else.
Thanks for the comment Aviviah. I’m interested that you’ve cast your comment in terms of aging, because when I look back at what I wrote, I don’t find any mention of aging at all. In truth, while I think it may become a little easier to see that a “system’s” values don’t suit you well as you get older (after all, you’ve got more experience), the core of the problem I’m trying to describe seems to me to transcend age. Aren’t there always systems (parents, schools, companies, apps, well-meaning people) suggesting to you how you should live? Wouldn’t we always, at any stage in life, want to evaluate those suggestions in light of our own interests and make the decision that’s right for us?
More maturing than aging, Tom. It's not that the problem 'transcends age.' It's that one of the gifts of later life that it seems to me you are discovering (without necessarily naming) is becoming more intrinsically motivated. What matters to you is less what everyone else thinks, values or respects. And more about what you do. There lies freedom.
It's just really hard to do younger. You gotta prove to yourself (and others) that you can do it, before you say goodbye to the rings, the hoops and the KPIs.
Another hugely valuable and insightful post, Tom - thank you.
I monitor my life through numbers thanks to my nearly four decades of living with type 1 diabetes, and I find the numbers game in most other contexts deeply tiresome. I feel that so many *other* metrics just make me feel as if I *ought* to be keeping up with although they're a time suck and don't give me the life-preserving benefits that my dia-tech gadgetry does!
But heck, this Substack girl still likes her likes! 😉🤣
yeah, I like my likes too .. but what I really like are the comments, especially the ones that make me think. Your note reminds me that it’s quite possible to be totally aligned with the values of the system, you’re using (as it sounds like you are with your diabetes tracking). My friends and I have this long-standing competition in Quordle, and we love the “metrics” that we’ve used to track how we’re doing. It’s finding that alignment that I’m after.
It's strange, but these things don't appeal to me in the same way they seem to appeal to other people. I don't find it hard to avoid Notes or my stats. I find both those things to be a chore. I'd rather not think about it. The only tracking app I've ever used is Runkeeper, and I don't really pay attention to it. Every once in awhile, I look at it almost as a form of nostalgia, "Oh, I remember when I ran there."
I do track things, though. I have years and years of daily planners, but I don't use them to plan. Every day, I write down what I did the previous day. Then, I write in my journals (I have multiple), then I do a tarot reading (I write down the cards, my interpretation, and then later, an update--if/how the prediction panned out). I think I do a lot more tracking than the average person, but it's all qualitative.
I was thinking about what you said about feeling obligated to support the system. I think maybe I've always seen myself as too much of an outsider to support the system. I care about supporting people, of course, but that isn't the same thing.
I love that you have such a completely different perspective on this! Of course!! I think I’m more attuned to supporting people than supporting systems as well. Another way I think of it it, I pay more attention to the quality of how we play the game than the score ... well, on Substack anyway.
What a fantastic explanation of this prevalent concept ! Well written! Recently, I was trying to explain this concept to my kids in the context of games and keeping up with their friends. The Fitbit analogy is absolutely perfect. I had to stop being tied to mine when I would stay up for 14 extra minutes at night in order to meet my calorie goal, or my step goal! When I really could’ve been doing something better with my time. I just wanted to hear the ding!
I think if I began to qualify my writing on Substack through paid subscriptions I would turn into a machine. Maybe someday, but not yet. Yes I am a paid writer. And yes I take my work seriously. But I don’t want my competitive nature to take over something that feels so beautiful to me! I like doing things in an unconventional way.
Thanks a lot Jessica, that was a very kind note. I added a podcast interview that Ezra Klein did with the guy who wrote about games and value capture. it’s REALLY interesting, you might check it out.
Thanks, Tom. Appreciate this thoughtful piece! Nowadays, it seems, if it can't be quantified or captured in some fashion or another, it isn't important or doesn't exist. I always bristled at the way the corporate boneheads who ran the companies I worked at only seemed to care about Numbers. Their spreadsheets created a nice, safe world. That was the only reality that counted. Things like instinct, inspiration, experience -- because they couldn't be captured easily on a spreadsheet -- didn't matter or, at least, didn't matter very much. That mindset seems to have infiltrated all aspects of life. I've mentioned this before, but author, psychiatrist and neuroscientist Iain McGilchrist presents data and arguments in his book, "The Master and His Emissary (https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300245929/the-master-and-his-emissary/) for why and how we've gotten to this state and what it implies for the future. Cheers!
I think I know some of those boneheads! One of them congratulated me after I had to cut six positions, as if that was the point of what we were doing. The "Mike Wenberg" allotment in my pile of books to read is filled up right now, sir!
The McGilchrist book is a monster, so no sweat. If you're interested, you can get the gist of his argument via his keynote speech at the World AI conference in 10/2022 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgbUCKWCMPA
"paid subscriptions are perfectly consistent with their goals and their values. They should go paid." This one got my back up a bit, Tom. Substack is the first and only place I've felt that I was ALLOWED to assign value to my creative work and expect people who are consuming it consistently to consider compensating me for it. You are one of the few people who did this!! And I trust the decision to pay for my writing wasn't one you made lightly. Asking people for money is NOT consistent with my goals OR my values, but at the end of the day, I'm a mother of two who hasn't had an income for 3 years because for some stupid reason I think I have a future as a fiction writer. I don't have a published library of books to stand on/sell, nor do I have one of those independently wealthy spouses you hear about. Maybe the issue with Substack isn't that it wants people to make money so they can make money, as much as it is making us believe (falsely) that avid readers with vast stores of expendable income at their disposal are willing to drop $60 to read the work of one of their favorite authors, the minute it goes to press. I'm probably getting off topic here, but yours is a stance that I think is very easy for someone in your position to take. I don't want to give all my writing away for free. Not anymore. Because it's good enough for people to buy it. And until I get an agent to sign on to sell my work for me, I'm the only one who can do it. And it sucks. My point is, I wish I could "not go paid" on Substack, too, and feel good about it. But that's a hard sell for me. After reading through the rest of your comments, I feel like a real outsider having that opinion, which is why I'm expressing it. 💛
You are only an outsider in as much as you are probably much younger than the majority of us retired old geezers that have come to find Tom in some round-about way. You deserve to be paid because you are working at it, while the rest of us are just sitting around a virtual coffee shop, shooting the breeze.
Thank you, Christopher. I am a bit younger. I think Tom's got 15 years on me. Despite our many differences, we've been successfully shooting the virtual breeze for over a year and have become skilled at butting heads without causing permanent damage. 🙂
LOL. I might have inadvertently qualified my being here as a pep-talk for our young friend. As they say, "With all due respect...." this is what I like about coming here! It speaks to me. : )
Interesting. Let me argue with you a little bit. I would suggest that you have just made a case that going paid IS aligned with your values and goals, because you believe deeply enough that this is the path for you that you’re willing to seek payment. That’s why I supported your work with a paid subscription, because I appreciate you taking the stand that, by god, I’m willing to ask for payment in order to make this work for me. Are you saying that “going paid” is a compromised position that you wish you didn’t have to take but you’re being forced into it? If so, I’ll say that that is a path I have walked, and I know how uncomfortable it is. It’s deeply compromising to adopt the values that a system imposes on you when you know they are not fully consistent with your personal values, but you justify it to yourself, telling yourself that the ends justify the means, all the while feeling the burn. I don’t think that’s quite what you mean when you characterize the position that I’m in that makes my stance so easy, but it’s certainly part of what informs my opinion. I think it’s really fucking complicated to adopt a pure, ethical position in a world where you have to put food on the table, and I fully recognize that sometimes one has to compromise their values to do that.
Thank you for your thoughts. I love the 'value capture' concept as it reminds me that I must be vigilant in living my values. It reminds me of Rene Girard's Mimetic Desire and how we live most of our lives wanting what others want and not truly examining our own true desires.
As I read this Tom I was saying to myself that I don't fall for this "value captured" stuff. No sooner had I had that thought and my phone told me I got a new notification from Instagram and I hopped on to see it. Once there I spent at least 30 minutes reading, scrolling, watching etc. The deep black hole captured me. I also saw it in a game I play on my phone. It puts me in a competition with others in the game and if you "win" the competition you get points (free lives like things). I scramble to play as much as I can to "win". Dagnabit...I fall for it all the time.
I love this term value capture you shared here. It’s such a relief almost when there is suddenly a simple way of referencing a complex situation of experiences and feelings that have felt hard to describe. Helps me see so clearly that what I’m busy with is recapturing my own values. I came to Substack, tired of Instagram. I arrived with stars in my eyes, haha. But two weeks in I have recognized that the scenery might different, but some things prevail. So it’s been necessary to consciously take stock of what I enjoy here (the writing, the reading and the community) and what I don’t (the numbers, the notes, the blurry line between marketing and writing). And of course regularly putting it all down because the word will still be there later.
It's a cool term, isn't it? I really do recommend the Ian Leslie piece I linked to, and the bigger academic article as well ... though that's a much harder slog, there are some real gems in there. I think Substack is as nice a balance as you can find these days.
Thank you, Tom! Another thoughtful, well-penned post I'm sure all of us can appreciate. I know I do. Isn't "value capture" one of the many mechanisms used to grease the wheels of the "engagement economy?" Such a funny coincidence: Right after I finished reading your post, I looked down at my iPhone and noticed an unfamiliar app icon on the home screen (apparently loaded during last night's software update). "Journal" - 1. Write about your day and add photos, places, and more. 2. Lock your journal to keep it private. 3. Schedule time for writing and make it a habit. Argh! The beast is never sated.
Your note reminds me, Mark, that a system that attempts to direct you towards its ends doesn’t have to do it with metrics and numbers, it can do it with statements about how you should be living or writing. I think it’s the implied should that I resent and try to slip free of most of all.
Hang on, how come I don't get sparkly rings when I close my circles? Alarmingly, I have sometimes heard myself wonder: "If I forget to wear my Oura ring and I get a good nights sleep, how will I even know if I got a good nights sleep?" ...after 3 years, I'm basically afraid to sleep without it.
It’s enough to make you crazy isn’t it? Or wasn’t it, I should say, because I honestly pay (next to) no attention to it now. My wife used to get the sparkly rings and now she doesn’t. She’s sad.
The commodification of life is exhausting. I've also had this internal rebellion against value capture/gamification and really anything related to optimization over the past few years (which is awkward when you work in tech). We forgot that I'm not sure if you're an Ezra Klein listener but he had this great podcast with C. Thi Nguyen a while back that sounds right up your alley:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/25/podcasts/transcript-ezra-klein-interviews-c-thi-nguyen.html
Ironically I've also been noodling on this recently in regards to the travel space. I have a bunch of vaguely coherent scribbles written down in some kind of anti-gamification/social media/platforms writ large rage after a beer or two on the road haha.
Ha ha, both of those things you cited are very near to the concepts I'm writing about! I especially loved Nguyen's old Ezra Klein podcast. He's so damned engaging. If you go to his website, https://objectionable.net/, there's links to a lot of his other writing. I like everything I're read.
oh also Kyle Chayka has some good related thoughts on this too https://kylechayka.substack.com/
This is so interesting. It makes me think of the idea of "inatrumentalizing" one's time as a capitalist construct. I don't remember which book I read that in. I want to resist these external metrics, but also, I'm obsessed with my Fitbit.
I know, some of these quantifying tools are so much fun. It's just finding the balance, right?
I've only just recently found substack, and I'm ever grateful that I've been using it to find some similar thoughts I've been having.
One that sticks out is the idea of "value capital" - in which I'm trying to figure out myself, ie: is it possible to have "good" products that are beneficial to individuals, without the need to also sell data or advertise or rely on vanity metrics? I want to start a company on this premise - tall order, I know, but "broader shoulders" and all that.
Finding substacks and posts like yours inspire me, so thanks, and hopefully I'll have something to bring to the discussion soon :)
thanks for the comment, and good luck on keeping your focus on where you feel it matters. I think it’s quite possible, and was part of a company that did that for quite a long time. Perhaps we did it too well: our success attracted investors, and those investors wanted to bring their “wisdom,” which amounted to a focus on metrics and sales and marketing. It ruined us.
Thanks! I've thought about that exact situation; the usual run sheet is "get something, get investors, focus on scale and growth" - but that causes part of the issue. I think, for something to be sustainable, it needs to be free-standing, ie: without investors, but also profitable in some way, some how. So much we have now is fueled by a mix of investors, advertising, or data-farming; surely there has to be another way.
Wow, Tom. Ya gotta use this age and stage for what it is. Time to stop striving, proving, measuring. Q3 (age 50-75) should be about relishing, connecting, enjoying. The age where we understand 'value capture' systems and retire from them (if ever we bought into them). I've never done the watch/ fitbit schtick. But then, I've never worked for anyone else, either. I really don't like being on a leash. Even my dog Poppy isn't crazy about it.
And while I love and appreciate your debate about going paid or not on Substack, it all sounds a little black and white. I understand you're a recovering Type A corporate guy, but now you can design life on the outside to be a warm, cosy shade of grey if you choose to. I clicked through to some of the other debates on this issue and I understand that lots of people, especially if they are younger than you or me, need to earn significant income via their writing on Substack.
But another of the joys of Q3 is that, if you're lucky and ageing well, you're after meaning more than money. Does that necessitate turning off all the switches, or learning to use them without them driving you? What about alcohol? Give it up entirely (the latest recommendations from the Canadian health authorities), or drink a really good bottle on the weekend?
It's like the 5 love languages. Some readers hit a like, some share a thought, others share their wealth. Why limit their range? Just don't get addicted to the love. In the end, the secret of the 2nd half of life is doing what you care about. And not much else.
Thanks for the comment Aviviah. I’m interested that you’ve cast your comment in terms of aging, because when I look back at what I wrote, I don’t find any mention of aging at all. In truth, while I think it may become a little easier to see that a “system’s” values don’t suit you well as you get older (after all, you’ve got more experience), the core of the problem I’m trying to describe seems to me to transcend age. Aren’t there always systems (parents, schools, companies, apps, well-meaning people) suggesting to you how you should live? Wouldn’t we always, at any stage in life, want to evaluate those suggestions in light of our own interests and make the decision that’s right for us?
More maturing than aging, Tom. It's not that the problem 'transcends age.' It's that one of the gifts of later life that it seems to me you are discovering (without necessarily naming) is becoming more intrinsically motivated. What matters to you is less what everyone else thinks, values or respects. And more about what you do. There lies freedom.
It's just really hard to do younger. You gotta prove to yourself (and others) that you can do it, before you say goodbye to the rings, the hoops and the KPIs.
Another hugely valuable and insightful post, Tom - thank you.
I monitor my life through numbers thanks to my nearly four decades of living with type 1 diabetes, and I find the numbers game in most other contexts deeply tiresome. I feel that so many *other* metrics just make me feel as if I *ought* to be keeping up with although they're a time suck and don't give me the life-preserving benefits that my dia-tech gadgetry does!
But heck, this Substack girl still likes her likes! 😉🤣
yeah, I like my likes too .. but what I really like are the comments, especially the ones that make me think. Your note reminds me that it’s quite possible to be totally aligned with the values of the system, you’re using (as it sounds like you are with your diabetes tracking). My friends and I have this long-standing competition in Quordle, and we love the “metrics” that we’ve used to track how we’re doing. It’s finding that alignment that I’m after.
Tom, I love that you've used the word 'alignment' here - that's exactly it! Thank you.
It's strange, but these things don't appeal to me in the same way they seem to appeal to other people. I don't find it hard to avoid Notes or my stats. I find both those things to be a chore. I'd rather not think about it. The only tracking app I've ever used is Runkeeper, and I don't really pay attention to it. Every once in awhile, I look at it almost as a form of nostalgia, "Oh, I remember when I ran there."
I do track things, though. I have years and years of daily planners, but I don't use them to plan. Every day, I write down what I did the previous day. Then, I write in my journals (I have multiple), then I do a tarot reading (I write down the cards, my interpretation, and then later, an update--if/how the prediction panned out). I think I do a lot more tracking than the average person, but it's all qualitative.
I was thinking about what you said about feeling obligated to support the system. I think maybe I've always seen myself as too much of an outsider to support the system. I care about supporting people, of course, but that isn't the same thing.
I love that you have such a completely different perspective on this! Of course!! I think I’m more attuned to supporting people than supporting systems as well. Another way I think of it it, I pay more attention to the quality of how we play the game than the score ... well, on Substack anyway.
What a fantastic explanation of this prevalent concept ! Well written! Recently, I was trying to explain this concept to my kids in the context of games and keeping up with their friends. The Fitbit analogy is absolutely perfect. I had to stop being tied to mine when I would stay up for 14 extra minutes at night in order to meet my calorie goal, or my step goal! When I really could’ve been doing something better with my time. I just wanted to hear the ding!
I think if I began to qualify my writing on Substack through paid subscriptions I would turn into a machine. Maybe someday, but not yet. Yes I am a paid writer. And yes I take my work seriously. But I don’t want my competitive nature to take over something that feels so beautiful to me! I like doing things in an unconventional way.
Love your writing, and thank you!
Thanks a lot Jessica, that was a very kind note. I added a podcast interview that Ezra Klein did with the guy who wrote about games and value capture. it’s REALLY interesting, you might check it out.
Yes, I will check it out. It’s top of our listening list as soon as sixth grade geometry is finished up.
Thanks, Tom. Appreciate this thoughtful piece! Nowadays, it seems, if it can't be quantified or captured in some fashion or another, it isn't important or doesn't exist. I always bristled at the way the corporate boneheads who ran the companies I worked at only seemed to care about Numbers. Their spreadsheets created a nice, safe world. That was the only reality that counted. Things like instinct, inspiration, experience -- because they couldn't be captured easily on a spreadsheet -- didn't matter or, at least, didn't matter very much. That mindset seems to have infiltrated all aspects of life. I've mentioned this before, but author, psychiatrist and neuroscientist Iain McGilchrist presents data and arguments in his book, "The Master and His Emissary (https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300245929/the-master-and-his-emissary/) for why and how we've gotten to this state and what it implies for the future. Cheers!
I think I know some of those boneheads! One of them congratulated me after I had to cut six positions, as if that was the point of what we were doing. The "Mike Wenberg" allotment in my pile of books to read is filled up right now, sir!
The McGilchrist book is a monster, so no sweat. If you're interested, you can get the gist of his argument via his keynote speech at the World AI conference in 10/2022 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgbUCKWCMPA
"paid subscriptions are perfectly consistent with their goals and their values. They should go paid." This one got my back up a bit, Tom. Substack is the first and only place I've felt that I was ALLOWED to assign value to my creative work and expect people who are consuming it consistently to consider compensating me for it. You are one of the few people who did this!! And I trust the decision to pay for my writing wasn't one you made lightly. Asking people for money is NOT consistent with my goals OR my values, but at the end of the day, I'm a mother of two who hasn't had an income for 3 years because for some stupid reason I think I have a future as a fiction writer. I don't have a published library of books to stand on/sell, nor do I have one of those independently wealthy spouses you hear about. Maybe the issue with Substack isn't that it wants people to make money so they can make money, as much as it is making us believe (falsely) that avid readers with vast stores of expendable income at their disposal are willing to drop $60 to read the work of one of their favorite authors, the minute it goes to press. I'm probably getting off topic here, but yours is a stance that I think is very easy for someone in your position to take. I don't want to give all my writing away for free. Not anymore. Because it's good enough for people to buy it. And until I get an agent to sign on to sell my work for me, I'm the only one who can do it. And it sucks. My point is, I wish I could "not go paid" on Substack, too, and feel good about it. But that's a hard sell for me. After reading through the rest of your comments, I feel like a real outsider having that opinion, which is why I'm expressing it. 💛
You are only an outsider in as much as you are probably much younger than the majority of us retired old geezers that have come to find Tom in some round-about way. You deserve to be paid because you are working at it, while the rest of us are just sitting around a virtual coffee shop, shooting the breeze.
Thank you, Christopher. I am a bit younger. I think Tom's got 15 years on me. Despite our many differences, we've been successfully shooting the virtual breeze for over a year and have become skilled at butting heads without causing permanent damage. 🙂
From what I can gather through the comments, there are a bunch of us retired folk coming here for the camaraderie of common sense chat. : )
Oh my god, the horror: am I leading a chat room for retirees? I better stir things up a bit!
LOL. I might have inadvertently qualified my being here as a pep-talk for our young friend. As they say, "With all due respect...." this is what I like about coming here! It speaks to me. : )
Interesting. Let me argue with you a little bit. I would suggest that you have just made a case that going paid IS aligned with your values and goals, because you believe deeply enough that this is the path for you that you’re willing to seek payment. That’s why I supported your work with a paid subscription, because I appreciate you taking the stand that, by god, I’m willing to ask for payment in order to make this work for me. Are you saying that “going paid” is a compromised position that you wish you didn’t have to take but you’re being forced into it? If so, I’ll say that that is a path I have walked, and I know how uncomfortable it is. It’s deeply compromising to adopt the values that a system imposes on you when you know they are not fully consistent with your personal values, but you justify it to yourself, telling yourself that the ends justify the means, all the while feeling the burn. I don’t think that’s quite what you mean when you characterize the position that I’m in that makes my stance so easy, but it’s certainly part of what informs my opinion. I think it’s really fucking complicated to adopt a pure, ethical position in a world where you have to put food on the table, and I fully recognize that sometimes one has to compromise their values to do that.
Thank you for your thoughts. I love the 'value capture' concept as it reminds me that I must be vigilant in living my values. It reminds me of Rene Girard's Mimetic Desire and how we live most of our lives wanting what others want and not truly examining our own true desires.
“Vigilant in living my values”--that’s the nub of it, isn’t it?
💯 also please do write more about the bullshit machine and your escape from corporate value/soul capture. I relate; makes me giggle
Oh yeah, it's coming! It's the most complicated one of all to write, and you'll appreciate some of the gruesome stories.
As I read this Tom I was saying to myself that I don't fall for this "value captured" stuff. No sooner had I had that thought and my phone told me I got a new notification from Instagram and I hopped on to see it. Once there I spent at least 30 minutes reading, scrolling, watching etc. The deep black hole captured me. I also saw it in a game I play on my phone. It puts me in a competition with others in the game and if you "win" the competition you get points (free lives like things). I scramble to play as much as I can to "win". Dagnabit...I fall for it all the time.
Oh yeah, we're all captured at some level.
I love this term value capture you shared here. It’s such a relief almost when there is suddenly a simple way of referencing a complex situation of experiences and feelings that have felt hard to describe. Helps me see so clearly that what I’m busy with is recapturing my own values. I came to Substack, tired of Instagram. I arrived with stars in my eyes, haha. But two weeks in I have recognized that the scenery might different, but some things prevail. So it’s been necessary to consciously take stock of what I enjoy here (the writing, the reading and the community) and what I don’t (the numbers, the notes, the blurry line between marketing and writing). And of course regularly putting it all down because the word will still be there later.
It's a cool term, isn't it? I really do recommend the Ian Leslie piece I linked to, and the bigger academic article as well ... though that's a much harder slog, there are some real gems in there. I think Substack is as nice a balance as you can find these days.
Thank you, Tom! Another thoughtful, well-penned post I'm sure all of us can appreciate. I know I do. Isn't "value capture" one of the many mechanisms used to grease the wheels of the "engagement economy?" Such a funny coincidence: Right after I finished reading your post, I looked down at my iPhone and noticed an unfamiliar app icon on the home screen (apparently loaded during last night's software update). "Journal" - 1. Write about your day and add photos, places, and more. 2. Lock your journal to keep it private. 3. Schedule time for writing and make it a habit. Argh! The beast is never sated.
Your note reminds me, Mark, that a system that attempts to direct you towards its ends doesn’t have to do it with metrics and numbers, it can do it with statements about how you should be living or writing. I think it’s the implied should that I resent and try to slip free of most of all.
Scroll down to view a photo of Sarah and Tom walking our Riverfront Trail many years before the Apple circles took over: https://warnerb.substack.com/p/riverview-looking-west