I started Dang Dude, What the Heck? one year ago. I started it with big plans. Struck by delusions of grandeur, a not uncommon occurrence, I told myself that within two months, four at the most, Dang Dude would have conquered the internet. Every post would go viral, discussed for days on end by the Twitter literati, heralded by the likes of The Paris Review and The New York Times as boundary-pushing works of prose. My name would shoot into the stars, emblazoned next to literary luminaries such as Shakespeare, Butler, and Yeats. I would live comfortably off the subscription fees that I could surely charge my faithful readers. That, obviously, did not happen. I have sixty-seven subscribers, the majority of whom never open my weekly missives. Most of my readers come to the newsletter via my parent’s Facebook feed. No one has ever compared me to Shakespeare. So I’ve given up on becoming the next person with a Substack newsletter to get famous. You ask, has anyone with a Substack newsletter ever reached the A-list? I say to you, shut it.
I do not want to write a self-centered pity letter, however. Please do not cry for me, whether or not you claim the name of Argentina. I love writing Dang Dude. Of my many failed long-term writing projects – four so far if I haven’t forgotten any – I count this as my favorite. If anything, it’s made me realize that I can turn out, if not good, then at least passable essays. I’ve learned that my bag of skills will never include proofreading. Other benefits have revealed themselves as well. I get to steadfastly refuse to call this a “blog”, and only refer to it as a “newsletter” as if that made any discernable difference on the material. I got to write about dumb songs, lumberjacks who got STIs, airport beers, and my favorite podcast. My ability to write about all that nonsense comes from having a small audience. It doesn’t matter what I write about. I am not beholden to a specific audience who expect certain things of me. I can, occasionally, venture into the realm of fiction and not see droves of people telling me that I deserve to drown in a river of rats. That is nice. A particularly freeing experience. This being said, I do pay attention to which pieces get the most views.
As any attention-hungry millennial analytics control my every waking moment. If I could I would let them govern my life. Despite being kept in thrall to them, I have managed to learn a few things from them as well. I’ve realized that people do not like to read stuff on the internet. I’ve discovered that when they do read, I can’t really predict what they will like. My most viewed post of the year, a look at the politics of the Chicago improv scene, had over a fifteen hundred readers. Most of them came from a podcast that I did with a couple of far more famous comedians. My other piece about leaving the improv scene, one I did about revolutionary violence, and another about cops all did fairly well. My other most popular pieces were two top ten lists about books and movies that I liked. I’ve also figured out what people don’t like to look at. Posts about individual books, and essays on history do not do well at all. People hate that stuff. A little disheartening for someone currently training as a professional historian, but also totally understandable. Books are for nerds. I get it.
So, what’s in store for the future of Dang Dude? Seeing as this newsletter primarily functions as an attempt to find the right combination of words that will summon Mephistopheles from his fiery throne and thrust him into the world above, I will continue writing it until I have completed that objective. That’s a long-term goal for this newsletter. In the short-term, I want to do more posts like this one, or this one. Perhaps a little more fiction writing, a short story or something similar. I also haven’t ever written about sports, which strikes me as weird. So hopefully I’ll do a little more of that. Maybe I’ll bring back putting links to funny videos at the end of posts. Who knows? We certainly live in a crazy world. Anything could happen. I also want to get to a hundred subscribers. After summoning Mephistopheles this counts as the biggest challenge for the newsletter. I haven’t added more than two subscribers since June 16th, but I think I can do it. Not without your help though. Sign up, if you haven’t already. A nice little Monday morning email as a treat. I also want to publish my friends. I have a little bit of a platform, and if I can use that to encourage people to write something, I’ll do it. So if you have an idea, send it over to me and we’ll talk it out. Dang Dude posts usually come in at about a thousand words. Also, I’m writing a novel. You can check out the first three chapters here.
Thanks for sticking around with Dang Dude. This is the longest I’ve continuously worked on one project. It’s been fun. I plan on keeping it going for at least a little while longer. If you’re new here, thanks for checking it out. If you’re an old hat, thanks for sticking with it. I hope you’re not here just to hate read my stuff. If you are, well that’s fine. Just like, subscribe and share.
I’ll end this with a few choice words on the state of our world – Dang Dude! What The Heck?!??!