On not selling out
Or, We've lost touch with traditional Gen X values
I was born in 1980, which puts me right at the cusp between Gen X and Millenials. While I do share certain Millenial traits, like workaholism and having had my life chances blighted by the Global Financial Crisis, on balance I have to confess that I identify more with Gen X—above all in my reluctance to embrace these fake labels. Today I want to talk about one Gen X value in particular that alienates me from the broader culture: a reluctance to “sell out.” There is little about the younger generations that so repels me than their open embrace of market values. I get why they are more utilitarian and career-oriented in their approach to education, and I don’t blame them for that because it’s basically forced upon them. But the fact that a young person would aspire to “be an influencer” strikes me as a sign of profound failure of moral formation, as does the tendency in fan communities to be invested in the brand, the box-office take, etc.
There was of course something false and self-serving in the Gen X rejection of “selling out.” It was often unattractively snobbish in its assumption that mass appeal actually required artistic inferiority. In many cases, the critic of the sell-out seemed more concerned with maintaining their own reputation as a curator of obscure gems than with their favorite band’s need to, for example, make a living. And it was arguably ironic that this attitude was so prevelant in the 90s, which were a time when commercial and critical success proved to be almost uniquely compatible, in film, music, and many other genres. There were many years when the best-selling albums or top-grossing films genuinely were among the most memorable and enduring as well.
Yet our culture’s unmitigated embrace of market values in all areas of life helps to highlight the moment of truth in Gen X’s disdain: namely, the sense that living according to market values is degrading. The Gen X snob was primarily concerned with the way market values tended to degrade aesthetic excellence and experimentation, from a consumer perspective. But as we all know now, selling out—or even attempting to—is also degrading from a producer perspective. Constantly engaging on social media to keep your name out there is degrading. Constantly pitching yourself is degrading. Constantly sucking up to people who might be able to open up opportunities for you is degrading. Constantly exposing yourself to unsympathetic and even potentially hostile audiences—an inevitable byproduct of becoming better-known, regardless of the quality of your work—is degrading. It makes your life suck. It steals time from you that you could be doing the work you want to do—and it also restructures that time, forcing you onto a particular schedule set from the outside and often into a particular marketing niche.
The rewards can be considerable, and sometimes worth it, but there’s no denying that there’s a difference between producing work on one’s own terms for a self-selecting audience and producing work on behalf of the culture industry for a mass audience. That’s what a band that “sold out” did to their own lives. And now that’s what every single artist or writer or thinker in every genre is solicited to do from day one. And it’s degrading. I think here, naturally, of Substack. When I started my Late Star Trek blog here, it was avowedly a marketing tool for my book of the same title, and I entertained the possibility of adding a premium tier for things that “felt like work” (such as committing to systematic commentaries on rewatches or deep dives into obscure comic runs). By the time I started this blog, though, I realized that was not a path I could take with any integrity, at least not as long as I had a stable job. To me, it would feel like I was taking advantage of my long-time readers, at least some of whom might want to show their support by subscribing. And it would turn blogging into a job, because my guilt over accepting people’s money would inevitably create greater pressure to produce. (Surely this, even more than the lack of an editor, is why every Substacker is so appallingly long-winded—the guilt!) Inevitably, my writing would be skewed by my sense of what would gain the most attention. Given my disposition, I would almost inevitably go down the contrarian route and essentially make a living by making people angry (a potentially lucrative field, as Matt Yglesias has demonstrated). I would become a parody of myself.
Maybe someday I’ll lose my job and be forced to try that! If so, I will certainly delete this post! In other words — I know that I speak from a position of privilege here. At least for now, I can afford to do my blogging as a hobby, for my own satisfaction, and to stay in dialogue with the self-selecting audience that my writing has attracted over the years. The fact that the Substack lifestyle is degrading is not a critique of any individual (other than Matt Yglesias, because come on). It is a critique of a society that has systematically destroyed almost every safe haven where we can operate by non-market values. The reason that working for an established publication is better than hanging out your shingle on Substack is not just that you have more resources and support, though that is hugely important. It’s that you don’t have to calibrate your every word for what’s going to sell, because you are accountable to an institution that is pursuing a certain value of journalistic excellence and integrity first and foremost, and only pursuing commercial values to the extent it supports that mission.
Increasingly, being given space to do valuable work in a dignified way sounds like an impossible utopia—and not just in journalism. The market did that. Unfettered capitalism did that. It took away our dignity and purpose. It degraded us and continues to degrade us. We should not have to live like this. And, in their undoubtedly flawed and unattractive way, at least some segment of Gen X, the first generation to live in a fully commercialized world, the first generation to be raised by the TV, sensed what was happening and rejected it.
I sometimes feel like selling out is another name for a perennial problem; like whatever it is that happens in order to become more proximate to power. Gen X called it selling out, but there’s something about human dignity across time that has to refuse to eat shit, maybe. Related perhaps: do you think that part of your interest in Faust that he’s such a sell out?
Great essay.* I have a few passing thoughts and one substantial comment, which, in the style of our age, I will frame by giving my identity position, which is to say: I am a handful of years older than you: I am pure Gen-X with no millennial contamination whatsoever.
And my first thought is that, perhaps because of that, I would never, ever think of writing an essay using these terms at all. You write that you "identify more with Gen X—above all in my reluctance to embrace these fake labels." It had never occurred to me to think of that reluctance as a generational marker rather than as a personality trait or intellectual stance, which is perhaps an example of it, but (perhaps as a pure Xer) I avoid them enough that I wouldn't use them, save, as in this comment, in response to someone who does. Whether the *reason* for that is my generation is an.... uninteresting question I'll drop here. But I wouldn't do it.
My more substantial comment is to build on something that you, I think, imply, but don't quite say (and I'm not sure even about the intentionality of the implication, although I think it's latent in what you wrote). And that is that the old "don't sell out" position was, in fact, a linguistic conflation of two very different stances. The worse version was *anti* popularity: and as such was just as formed and directed and constrained by the market as those who were selling out was, since after all to say that something is bad simply by virtue of the fact that it is popular is to give the market aesthetic control precisely as much as those who sell out do, just in the opposite direction. This is the group you are gesturing at when you say that "often unattractively snobbish in its assumption that mass appeal actually required artistic inferiority"; I am just going farther: they are not simply *unattractively* snobbish, they are precisely as much slaves of the market as those who sell out, arguably in a more risible fashion since they often don't even know it. The better version, however (what you call "the moment of truth in Gen X’s disdain", which I am claiming is in fact a subset of anti-sell outers, who rather than having a moment of truth were more or less right) is not *anti* market but indifferent to it, recognizing that the market is sometimes right, sometimes wrong, but that either way to pay attention to it is (as you correctly not) degrading—of work as well as of life. So rather than say that the anti-sell out position was partly right and partly wrong, I would say it was divided, half just right, half just wrong. I agree, however, that it was a privileged position: one I, too, am fortunate enough to be in, but recognizing it as such I can't share the disdain that many have for those who lack that privilege. So perhaps I will say that the better anti-sell outs *are* only half right (although the worse ones are in fact all wrong), since their disdain is, in a capitalist economy, simply an inadequate reflection on their own privilege. They are entirely correct in their sense that selling out is degrading; but they are insufficiently mindful that escaping degradation under unfettered capitalism is always a matter of privilege and luck, and is rarely permanent.
Two more passing thoughts:
First in regards to the parenthetical "Surely this, even more than the lack of an editor, is why every Substacker is so appallingly long-winded—the guilt!": on the contrary! I am long-winded because I have a lot to say, and/or as an aesthetic choice: but whatever it is, it has absolutely nothing to do with guilt and absolutely nothing with being market-driven (my substack is free, and the length is almost certainly a negative if anything). So surely not! (And don't call me Shirley.)
And finally I just want to give a specific amen and bravo to this passage:
"It is a critique of a society that has systematically destroyed almost every safe haven where we can operate by non-market values… Increasingly, being given space to do valuable work in a dignified way sounds like an impossible utopia—and not just in journalism. The market did that. Unfettered capitalism did that. It took away our dignity and purpose. It degraded us and continues to degrade us. We should not have to live like this."
So say we all.**
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* One of my tiny rebellions against selling out is thinking of what I (and writers I admire) write on Subtack not as "posts" but as "essays".
** Yes, I know, not your franchise but I don't think there is Star Trek lingo for "amen"—or if there is my Trek Fu is too weak to know it.