Against all sound advice, I do not have an elevator pitch for you.
If you’re familiar with my work at all, it’s probably because I’ve spent the past dozen years or so writing about national security surveillance, privacy, technology policy, and digital civil liberties. You will certainly find some of that here. In fact, it’s one reason I’ve chosen to call this newsletter Non-Content.
In the world of intelligence, the “non-content” information is everything about a message that’s not the message proper: the metadata. Because it’s assumed to be less intrinsically sensitive, it is less strictly protected by law and easier to obtain—yet when analyzed properly often more informative and revealing than the content of the message itself. So “non-content” is a gesture toward both a set of topics I’ll frequently cover, as well as an analytic strategy that looks for meaningful, non-obvious patterns.
Slide the emphasis to that last syllable and “non-content” also works as a synonym for discontent. Which is, in general, a prerequisite for writing about politics and, more particularly, why I’ve irresponsibly decamped from a comfortable Senior Fellow’s office at a think tank to launch a Substack newsletter. For all that I still care deeply about privacy and digital civil liberties, I found that rehearsing variations on the same arguments in the voice of a Very Serious Policy analyst increasingly felt less like a calling and more like a chore. I missed the halcyon days of blogging in the early aughts—in part, no doubt, because I was 23 and less prone to waking up with lower back pain—but mostly because I relished the idea of writing in different modes and on different topics from day to day. All of which is to say, while I won’t be abandoning the subjects I’ve spent the past decade studying, this won’t be a newsletter about those topics either: It will also be cultural commentary and personal essays and short stories. If you’re particularly unlucky, I may even attempt poetry eventually. Had I been a financier I’d have had the more expedient option of buying a Ferrari and having an affair, but Substack is how writers do mid-life crisis.
Above all, however (because why settle for a double entendre when you can have a triple?) “Non-Content” is a rejection of that damnably ubiquitous phrase for someone who does what I’m choosing to do: “content creator.” I have despised the label “content” for creative work since I first heard it, and never quite managed to reconcile myself to it. (Imagine Mozart, ink still drying on Don Giovanni crying out: “Stanzi, I’ve just created some great content!”) It’s a term that came to currency, in its modern sense, with the rise of digital platforms, and it takes the perspective of the platform: It’s whatever fills up the pipes and the vacant minutes of the user’s day: text or video, trenchant political jeremiad or “Ten Sneaky Video Game Boss Tricks That Make Players Tear Their Hair Out.” And, of course, we all know what “content” exists for: To be consumed, like a Dorito, by an audience defined as consumers rather than, say, citizens or interlocutors in a conversation. It’s a fine way for a tech entrepreneur to think about the bits they peddle, I suppose, in the same way it’s fine for an investor to think of an original narrative as “new IP.” But it’s a toxic and debasing way for a writer, or creator of any stripe, to think about their own work.
So, this is Non-Content. Let’s go.