no more “i luv u’s” — 2024 year in review
The last newsletter of the year is going to be a bit different. I would like to look back at 2024, like many are doing right now, but I’d also like to look at the newsletter from the beginning to today and into 2025. I also have a fun round-up of 2024 things that I’m calling Super Cool Stuff. I enjoyed putting it together and will plan to do even more with it next year. I hope you enjoy it and you may see your name in some of these images, it’s not just about newsletter stats — though some of the authors will see their names there, too. 😉
Super Cool Stuff
Click images to view.
How Weaver’s Deep Thoughts began.
Technically, Weaver’s Deep Thoughts started out as a fun hashtag that I created on Google+ years ago. Sometimes I’d share actual deep thoughts, other times I’d share silly things. My first deep thought was simply, “What if we’re the aliens?” After Google+ shuttered its doors in 2019, I stopped doing it. In November 2022, Elon Musk officially bought Twitter, and I immediately made plans to delete my accounts and move on from Twitter. As someone who had worked in social media content moderation, I knew exactly what his views on moderation would result in — a completely toxic site for the depraved and worst of society to utilize to bully, troll, and harass others especially minorities and the marginalized. And Twitter became X, and X became the writing on the wall. But in the immediate aftermath of Musk buying Twitter, I decided to take that time to reevaluate my presence on the holy web of our precious Internet and savior — praise be. I had used Google+ as an author platform and after it shuttered, I felt like I was floating and never really had a place that felt like home. I decided I’d boot up a newsletter and focus my efforts on my Facebook more, as well as try some other things like Bluesky and Mastodon and eventually Threads. The key though was that I wanted a newsletter, a home of my own.
I found that LinkedIn had a newsletter feature and I thought that was neat, since it would instantly be connecting my newsletter with my connections there. So I thought about it and decided to revive my old hashtag as a newsletter and Weaver’s Deep Thoughts was reborn.
— You can read that first edition here: First! Moderating social networks and other deep thoughts.
Technically, what you’re reading right now is Weaver’s Deep Thoughts Version 2.0. After a few editions were published, and I had a mild following there, I knew it wasn’t for me, because LinkedIn newsletters did not give you access to the email addresses of your subscribers. Admittedly, I can kind of understand that, but it meant I was beholden to LinkedIn as a platform as opposed to having full control over my newsletter content and subscribers. I played around cross-posting on LinkedIn, Medium, and a few other places. I finally made the decision to pick Substack in 2023. Cue manic laughter, I know. At the time I was aware Substack had some problematic issues, but thought some of it had changed. Cue more manic laughter, I know. I spent that first year on Substack. And then, I joined a group of Substack writers in December of 2023 in co-signing an open letter to Substack leadership asking them to address issues of far-right content on their platform — especially actual nazi, white nationalist merde (pardon my actual French). The response did not go well. In short, Substack leadership immediately turned on us, before even seeing the open letter one of their co-founders requested a writer craft a rebuttal — she published her prebuttal the day before our open letter was released. It was a puff peace intended to look like a rebuttal and discussion of the issues that was secretly commissioned by one of the co-founders. He then pathetically shared it to news outlets as some sort of alternative third-party viewpoint. And then he and the rest of Substack leadership responded to the open letter by saying, “I just want to make it clear that we don’t like Nazis either—we wish no-one held those views. But some people do hold those and other extreme views. Given that, we don't think that censorship (including through demonetizing publications) makes the problem go away—in fact, it makes it worse.”
Any rate, instead of continuing that discussion, I just want to add that their views haven’t changed and move on. Substack is still monetizing from far-right and nazis, and just in time to celebrate the one-year anniversary of Substackers Against Nazis’ open letter, they announced they were partnering with The Free Press publication which is anti-trans. So, no, they are still perfectly fine with the company they keep and making money from them.
— Here’s a timeline from the Substackers Against Nazis shenanigans.
One thing that did happen to me personally was that I received a lot of hate and trolling after Substack leadership announced they were fine with hosting and monetizing nazis. Because when a social platform says stuff like that or refuses to moderate bad actors, those bad actors see that as a bat signal and come flocking. They feel vindicated and become energized, because they know leadership has their backs. This sadly happens all the time as tech leaders refuse to learn from other networks and platforms’ mistakes. Bluesky is doing the same right now, by bending their moderation policies to accommodate anti-trans and pedophilia defender Jesse Singal.
So, knowing that Substack didn’t have my back and were actually proactively against me and others that signed the open letter, I made plans to leave. I wasn’t the only one and I was fortunate to sit in on two video calls with other Substack writers to learn about Buttondown and Beehiiv — two newsletter plaforms. I tried Beehiiv, and WordPress, and Ghost, and several others, and eventually found myself really liking Squarespace. I moved to Squarespace from December 2023 to January 2024.
The newsletter in 2024.
And now, it’s been one year of Squarespace, and I am happy to say that I continue to enjoy my home. It has allowed me creative freedom to design more with the look and layout of the newsletters and the site. It’s allowed me to monetize without sharing my revenue with nazis, which is always a plus. It’s allowed me to pursue things I hadn’t even considered when using Substack’s platform — such as creating the Short Stories store where folks can download free short stories.
One of the things I’d wanted to do since the beginning, way back on LinkedIn, was collaborate with other writers on the newsletter. The second newsletter I published originally on LinkedIn was a collaboration with my former boss as we discussed social media content moderation and how we did it, and things we learned. This year, I collaborated with author Anya K. Jordan on the topic of the importance of friendship. I ended up not having near as many collaborators on newsletter editions this year as I’d planned, but by September, I had found a new way to collaborate — short fiction. In September, I published the first short story to Weaver’s Deep Thoughts. It’s called “Missed” and written by author and journalist Vincent Marshall. The fiction addition is helping me fine-tune my skills as an editor, which I am pursuing as a career when I finish my bachelor’s degree in about one year. I did an internship this past summer which allowed me to be an editor for several months, which I enjoyed.
Newsletter growth this year was interesting. In the one year at Substack, I went from zero to 41 subscribers. After I moved off Substack, growth stalled, but by the latter half of the year I began adding more subscribers again. This year I added 18 new subscribers and 3 paid subscribers. Having a paid membership has always been something I’ve danced on the fence about. I don’t like the way the internet is becoming a difficult place to navigate because of paywalls, an overuse of ads, or both. I don’t like cutting people off with paywalls, especially as someone who has been poor in the past. Poor people deserve good information, entertainment, and more. These are not luxuries only afforded people with money. So for a long time I felt uncomfortable about having paid tiers. I spent most of the year not pushing a paid tier, but eventually came up with a system I feel pretty comfortable with. You can access everything for $1/month or $10/year. The second tier is $10/month and is for people who want to support funding the newsletter in a more official way — I call this the Producer tier.
The paid tiers have brought about the creation of Nat’s Letters, which is a once-per-month, brief letter style piece. The first one is free here. I do not want to have those all cut off from the public and I am trying to come up with a good way to share some of these. What I’m currently thinking is that paid users can gift one or two of Nat’s Letters per year for everyone. That would be permanent, too, not just a temporary gift link like some websites do. I like this as it sort of gives paid subscribers the power to decide which posts should be readily available to all in a democratic way. I would love to hear your feedback on this idea in the comments, especially if you are a paid subscriber. Is this something you’d love to have the ability to do as a paid subscriber?
Plans for 2025.
A few things come to my mind for goals in 2025. Some of these goals involve you, dear readers, as much as they involve myself.
I would love to see more discussion in the comments on every newsletter. Some of us are more chatty than others, but I would like for us all to engage when we can. If you know me, you know I’m an extrovert, I love hearing from ya’ll and talking. For this goal, I would like for all of us to be more open to diving into the comments. Even if it’s just to say “hey” or “cool story bro.”
More fiction and some poetry too. I plan to add more short stories to the newsletter and I’d like to bring in some poets as well. I started late in 2024 with fiction, but hopefully by the end of 2025, there will be a nice and diverse little library of short stories to choose from across genres.
Add at least one more free newsletter per month. One thing that helped us stay more connected in the latter half of the year was posting more frequently. I want to add at least one more free newsletter per month as opposed to just the one. If you’re counting, that would make 3 total (2 freebies and 1 Nat’s Letter) plus some months will have a short story or poem. This involves more consistent work on my part which is hard as I’m a busy bee with school and such, but I’m often inconsistent when it’s just the one per month and cram it at the last minute, so maybe this will make me more efficient and organized, too.
Subscription goals. I’ve never set subscriber goals and it sounds really annoying and fakey just saying that out loud. Like YouTubers begging for you to “ring that bell,” “click subscribe,” and “hit that like button.” I’m usually pretty hands off at trying to get people to sing up to the newsletter. I’m always afraid of appearing spammy or annoying. But this year, I want to get up to 100 free subscribers and 10 paid subscribers. I hope setting this goal will help me be better about advocating for my newsletter — in a non-spammy way of course.
Do more cool things with the Messenger Community chat. Towards the end of 2024, I got early access to a new feature in Facebook Messenger called Communities. It’s akin to creating a Discord server, but not as robust yet. I’ve been fortunate to be in contact with some folks from Meta’s Messenger team that is working on it. They’ve been super supportive and helped me get started. Communities still haven’t rolled out to all users yet and they have some cool features they plan to launch in early 2025. I want to continue to grow that little space. It’s been nice having the space and I’m often at a loss of how to keep it fresh and talkative. I want to use it more to stay connected to subscribers and collaborate. If you haven’t joined yet, you can do so here (if you have early access to communities). You can also invite people, if you want to help spread the word for me.
Wrapping up 2024, looking to 2025.
It’s time to wrap up this year. It’s been a wild ride in some respects, fun in some, miserable in others. I hope 2025 brings good to anyone reading this. Humanity is going through some things these days, but I hope this newsletter remains a positive and helpful piece of the internet pie. Short stories to distract and entertain, or make us think. Deep thoughts to make us think. Warm thoughts to help uplift the downtrodden. And more dance videos!
What about you? Are you looking at 2025 from a particular perspective? Do you have some goals? Share in the comments, I’d love to hear it. If not, why not?
One more gift from 2024.
After this newsletter you will be getting one more short story just in time for Christmas. It’s a Christmas horror story by author Lana Casiello called “The Night Movers.” I hope you enjoy it and that it brings some terror to your holidays.
“No More ‘I Love You’s’” by Annie Lennox.
At some point this year, my wife and I watched an incredible mini-series on Hulu called “Murder at the End of the World.” In one episode, two main characters sing along to Annie Lennox’s “No More ‘I Love You’s’” while riding in a car. It was such a great scene. The whole series is really good, I highly recommend it. Because of this episode, I’ve had this Annie Lennox ear worm come and go throughout the year. It seems fitting to set it as the last song of 2024.
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