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Hmm... yeah, the difference between bloggers and newsletterers (I think we'll default to this out of convenience despite the awkwardness) is drawing a boundary around the discourse. It's like a small city state where a blog is more like a storefront for free stuff in a metro.
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In a strange way, bloggers seem more commercial despite making less money. Newsletterers are ideologues for pay.
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There's enough competition in the space that that's not accurate, plus normatively I don't like validating monopolistic brand-capture of a medium. Especially email which is at least still a cosmetic commons despite capture by gmail etc.
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Replying to @vgr
eh, substacker is probably right it's a proprietary eponym, like how people user Kleenex instead of "tissue"
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Not concerned about the actual term so much as the worrisome state of a thing I'm invested in not having a True Name. One must not trust things that lack a True Name.
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"Blog" was a really true name for what it was, even though literal "web log" aspect disappeared in about 5 minutes.
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There is also a definite relationship between newslettering (now the verb works fine) and culture warring. It is escalated and paywalled culture warring in many ways. Newsletter content tends to be more polarized and ingroupish than blog content.
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As a blogger I basically write for whoever cares to read, and don't care to find out who they are for the most part unless they choose to tell me. As a newsetterer I do write for a "side" of some sort even though I don't know what it is
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There is no such thing as a medium-independent message. If it's medium-independent it's data at best, and even that's a shaky claim. Blogs and newsletters are definitely *very* different for me.
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Replying to @vgr
Definitely just "blogger", there's no functional difference for most of us and it's basically replacing the existing space
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Replying to
Money seems like a key difference for a small subset, granted That aside, is it the perceived greater reach? Or what? (e.g. people sign up for newsletter won't read every post whereas people who frequent your blog are perceived as already being fans)
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Replying to
Not to pull years on you, but I have about 15y as a blogger, and about 6 years as a newsletterer, including a couple of years in 2010-12 in pre-substack era... possibly it is an effect that takes time to accumulate, and/or is more topic dependent
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