Short Take: Navigating Controversy as a Writer
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A lot of people on this platform writer for popularity, but what exactly does that mean?
If your only goal is to maximize the number of people who follow you, then oftentimes the best strategy is to post the most controversial things you can. That’s because the people who like your take will follow you, while the people who don’t like your take will either complain in the comments (thereby boosting engagement) or leave you alone. It’s a win-win for you.
If your goal is to leverage Substack popularity into some kind of real-world outcome, then you have to be more careful. A single high-value follower (who might become a friend, a professional reference, or even a future employer) could be worth more to you than 1,000 random anons. The converse is also true: If you post something controversial that makes you lose the respect of somebody you care about, then that could nullify the good of having an additional 1,000 followers.
The same is true of writing for a particular community. Let’s say I really want to be popular in Community A. In that case, it’s worth my time writing content that Community A members will respect, even if that content gets no attention (or perhaps even negative attention) from people outside the community. And conversely, if I can post something which would be popular among a general audience but which would lose me respect among Community A, then it might not be worth posting.
I am writing under my real name and face, and I am writing (not exclusively, but largely) for the AI policy community. That definitely impacts the calculus of what I post and what I don’t post!
I think that many people like me who write for “professional” reasons over-index on avoiding controversy or writing in an overly formal manner. You can stay professional without being a boring block of wood. And in some cases, it can even help you to be known as somebody who’s so principled that you’re willing to take flak for your unpopular beliefs.
But it is also true that courting controversy can hurt you in the professional world, and anybody writing under their real identity should remember that. There are definitely times when I’ve written out full-length blog posts, only to scrap them at the last minute because, in my estimation, the costs would have been too high.
On the margins, I think that more people would benefit from writing under their real name. (I have one or two friends in particular who I’m thinking of when I write that sentence. You know who you are.) It’s a good way to network, and people will take your ideas more seriously if they’re affixed to a real identity. Just be cognizant of the tradeoffs if you choose to do so.
