2 years. 83 posts. 583 subscribers. Now what?
What I've learned, how I've changed and what that means for Neal Moore | Pro-Human.
Right now I have the great privilege of being on day nine of a self-styled, ten day writer's retreat in the Cameron Highlands of Malaysia. Why the Cameron Highlands? Because it is the nearest place to Singapore that drops below 25 degrees centigrade whilst home is averaging around 35 degrees every day (and night) at this time of year 🥵
I am staying at The Bala's Holiday Chalet, a 3-star former British colonial school built in the mock-Tudor style in 1934 and run for the last 47 years by Bala and his wife. To justify this rather indulgent trip I had to provide my own wife with KPIs (Key Performance Indicators for those lucky enough to escape the corporate world), and they were:
Walk at least 50,000 steps (Cameron Highlands is known for its hiking trails)
Come back with detailed character bios and chapter outlines for my novel ‘User Unknown’
Review Pro-Human and come back with a plan for its future
I am pleased to report that I have already smashed through my target step-count and outlined my novel so that brings us to point number three...
3. Review Pro-Human and come back with a plan for its future
Pro-Human began on 12th September 2023 following several prior experiments with Substack including Mooreish, which tried to help busy middle-aged people engage with culture again, and The Lore, which is a dormant but ongoing concern for my main business Moore's Lore Media.
In that time I have written 83 posts and, having auto-enrolled just ten of my friends to start with, gained an additional 573 subscribers for a total audience of 583. How did that happen? Despite all advice to the contrary I engineered two viral moments, the first by copy-pasting someone else's successful 'Note' that, as you can see, sent my subscribers soaring in October 2024.
The second viral moment, which maintained the momentum of the first, was when I complained about how icky the first moment made me feel (below), but the moral of the story is, yes, you DO want to go viral, which is a problem I'll come back to.
Reading back through my posts I can't help but notice that Pro-Human has become a bit of a soapbox upon which I rant about the grudges I have collected through the week whilst reading the news, other Substacks, and scrolling through Instagram and LinkedIn. These rants do quite well, particularly when they concern the threat of technology to creativity, but I don't think they're helping. I think everyone knows what the problems are because there are real journalists out there covering them every day; I am just reacting to them, which is neither original nor healthy.
My tagline states that Pro-Human is an 'advocate for human creativity and culture in an increasingly inhuman world'. It also states that 'I am not anti-tech I am just Pro-Human', but I'm not sure this is reflected in my writing. There's too much anti and not enough pro and I want to change that.
The origin story of this Substack was that, as an habitual LinkedIn user, I was getting sick of the anti-human rhetoric spouted by tech-bros who seem almost giddy to talk down the value of people and replace us with robots. But I have been drawn into their trap by doing exactly the same to them. Talking them down and taking them apart and though it may make me feel better, it doesn't do a damn thing to solve the situation. In fact, it makes feel like Grandpa Simpson shouting at the clouds.
The tough-to-admit fact is, the only ways to affect real change are to either a) run for office or b) challenge those in office. I am not a politician and I am not a journalist, I don't speak truth to power and even if I did there is no compelling reason for them to listen to me as an individual (which is why collective action is so powerful). I have my lines in the sand that I will not cross and I have my causes that I support and charities that I donate to but I am not here to tear the system down. So, what am I here for? To focus on the Pro in Pro-Human.
My great revelation whilst walking the tea trails of Tanah Rata is that I need to stop complaining and start advocating. It's easy to find something to moan about every week, it's much harder to find things to be positive about, but that's why it's so important. There are many far more intelligent, talented and dedicated people than me writing about what’s going wrong with policy, technology and economics, in fact here's a list of the Substackers I think do it best:
So, what can I do and, maybe more importantly, why do I even want to do it?
Why do I write?
On a three-and-a-half hour hike that was, frankly, way above my fitness level my mind began to wander and I thought about why I write at all. First and foremost is that I think I have some uncommon perspectives that I am only able to express and explore through longer form writing including fiction, which provides a boundless canvas for stretching and testing those perspectives.
My second reason is more pragmatic; I don't want to play the social media game. If our tech overlords aren't going to tell us how the rules, a.k.a the algorithms, work - then I refuse to play. My publishing on their platforms serves them far more than it serves me and any time spent creating short form content to pander for attention is time not spent creating in the medium that I actually care about and want to continuously improve at. I also don't want to be distracted or contribute to the infinite scroll of distractions. That's not to say I want my writing to be deliberately overwrought, impenetrable or obtuse but social media only has room for statements whereas I am more interested in stories.
My third reason, I guess, is vanity? When I die, I don't want my creative legacy to be a disparate collection of posts produced to please the algorithms of a plethora of platforms (try saying that ten times fast!), that may or may not even be around in years to come. I want to invest my time and talent and creative efforts in a medium that I really value. If that medium is not imagery, or short form video or snarky commentary then why waste time with it? You wouldn't start oil painting if you hated it just because you though it might get you attention!
Not posting on social media also means I have a greater chance of escaping it. On this trip I have tried to remain largely off-grid and it's been wonderful. I know this is the least original revelation a middle class white liberal can have but it's just so bloody true and I don't want to forget it when I get on the plane back home. I want to continue to choose where I direct my focus, as I have for the last nine days, rather than react to what's being fired at me through notifications.
I dumbed down my smartphone for this trip but I am curious to dumb it down further. I take too many thoughtless photos with my phone that I will never look at again and that only really serve to increase my monthly payments to Google One for extra cloud storage. I subscribe to too many news apps; I am not a politician or a stockbroker, I don't need to know what's happening, as it happens, every single day, particularly in Europe and America. To paraphrase the immortal words of Derek Trotter, I DON'T LIVE THERE NO MORE! The Sunday papers (and I mean papers), or a news weekly are more than enough to keep me abreast of what I need to know. I am reminded here of a quote by one of my greatest inspirations, Brian Eno:
“There has never been more demand on human attention than there is now. you've got these huge huge machines... the biggest one of all being capitalism. consumer capitalism, wants you to keep consuming things. It wants you to keep paying attention to the things that it is selling. Google, Facebook, Meta, all of these things, Amazon, they're all kind of machines for keeping the consumer wheel running, and they want your attention. Your attention is the most valuable thing about you. they're not interested in your creations. they're interested in your attention, so that you will become obedient shoppers.”
Brian Eno, Musician, Producer, Artist, Activist
I don't want to be an obedient shopper, or an obedient creator.
Pro-Human, huh, what is it good for?
Where were we? Ah yes, a plan for Pro-Human's future. Well, based on everything I have shared above; my desire to be more positive, write long form and avoid news that doesn’t apply to me and social media generally here’s my very simple plan:
I will reduce the cadence of Pro-Human from weekly to fortnightly focusing on two types of post:
Reports and, occasionally, opinions on Pro-Human happenings in Southeast Asia, where I actually live. That could be news, events or personal experiences but in every case should provide a positive example of Pro-Human values in practice.
This Is Not A Podcast, a new series of profiles with people who exemplify Pro-Human values and allow me to revive the art of the long form written interview because, honestly, I don’t like producing podcasts for myself or being on camera at my own behest.
And that’s it. Although I may occasionally post something ad-hoc to Notes, Instagram or YouTube it will not be a focus for me. I don’t want to be ‘Internet famous’, I want to be true to myself. I am a writer, I love to write, and I want to use the time previously dedicated to Instagram, YouTube and even LinkedIn to become a more prolific and proficient writer of articles, essays, screenplays and fiction that I hope you might also come to appreciate.
Thanks for joining me on this journey so far and I hope you will get even more value from it in the future. Nx
Funny how writers for thousands of years have found truth while un-plugging. Great assessment and looking forward to the Pro-se we love most from you!