Just Keep Swimming, Just Keep Swimming...
A Monday afternoon hello.
Earlier today I started a draft of this post, then deleted it. Started a new one, read it a few hours later, deleted it. Both of them just seemed so bitter and pissed off, and no one needs that showing up in their In Box.
So, I’m trying again. Hi. How are you? Did you have a nice weekend? Do anything fun? Make anything? Watch anything interesting?
I hung out with the fam, had lunch with my mom, went to a comedy show with some friends, did some reading, painted. It was a nice weekend.
But then last night, I got the notification from Facebook that I’d been dreading.
Have you received this yet?
It’s essentially saying that if you run a business or creator page on Facebook (like mine), you can no longer post more than two links a month unless you subscribe to Meta One—which has a monthly cost of anywhere from $14.99 to $499.99.
FOUR HUNDRED AND NINETY NINE DOLLARS WTF
And I get it…Meta is a vile company that has done so much damage over the years, so this Meta One bullshit should not be a surprise. But it comes at a time when every platform that creators rely upon to do their work is nickel and diming every little thing and getting all grabby and becoming drenched in AI grossness.
Canva is no longer just a graphic design site, but is now “Canva AI: Your All-in-One AI Assistant.” And the irony is that Meta (which pushes its own AI on users) has begun flagging things created in Canva as AI on its platforms, so even if all you use Canva for is basic background removal on an image, it’s potentially going to be labeled as AI on Instagram or Facebook and then everyone is going to unfollow you and think you’re evil for creating AI slop.
In the meantime, Squarespace hiked up its fee by an insane amount because the company knows full well that it’s not easy to just up and move to a new website provider, especially if you’re a one-woman shop and know almost nothing about technology. (Ahem…hi.) And now Facebook wants to charge for something that has been free for decades and I’m just going to put my face in my pillow and scream for a few days.
Anyway, as I said, I went on a rant about this in an earlier draft of this email and promised myself that I’d rewrite it to be less bleak. If you’re feeling tired by it all, just know I’m in the same boat.
Let’s crank up some Madonna, shall we?
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Okay. I feel better.
Something cool did happen recently. Remember a couple of weeks ago when I talked about how I was learning to use Google Search Console? I stumbled upon a section that showed me where Creative Reverberations had shown up on the interwebs and it turns out that Parade Magazine quoted my interview with Tracy Bonham!
It was a fun discovery! And it was this time last year that The Week quoted my interview with Hannah Pittard. Neither situation has brought a significant influx of subscribers, but it’s a nice ego boost. It feels good to know my work is being seen.
I hope you had a chance to read last week’s interview with Jill Cunniff of Luscious Jackson. (They also have a Substack, which you can find here.) I loooooved Luscious Jackson back in the day and still listen to them quite a bit, so it was a treat to talk to Jill about her memories of the band as well as her gorgeous abstract paintings.
On Friday, you’ll get my recent interview with Joe Berlinger, whose seminal crime documentary, Paradise Lost, turns 30 this year. He’s also the producer of The Idaho Murders and producer-director of Conversations with a Killer: The Charles Manson Tapes, both of which are in the top 5 shows on Netflix at the moment. We had a great chat about his background, the making of Paradise Lost, and his interesting trick for avoiding work-related burnout. I look forward to sharing it with you later this week.
With that, I hope you have a great week ahead full of creativity and art! Til next time…
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