a(n) (un)certain romance

an essay about anti-rationalism, the proxies for counterculture, and the paradox of the true romantic

Well, oh, they might wear classic Reeboks

Or knackered Converse, or tracky bottoms tucked in socks

But all of that’s what the point is not

The point’s that there in’t no romance around there

A vicarious embarrassment arises in me when reading about the so-called ‘New Romantic’ movement or the return of Romanticism as a whole on Substack, that feeling you get seeing naivete suddenly crushed by the weight of a theretofore unrealized discovery, like a group of kids way too old to not know Santa Claus isn’t real holding a meeting to try and determine where, if possible, the presents might actually come from.

Presented as a reversion, or a correction of the last twenty or so years, I think: Were we really optimistic when it came to the Internet circa the mid 2000s? High schooler Clancy Steadwell was not. He wore a Rolling Stone t-shirt with a performative copy of Emerson in his back pocket, harbored a strong hatred for the YouTube comments sections, and had a girlfriend begging them to please, please create a Facebook. ‘You’re all heading for ruin,’ said this unlikely prophet, shadow of hair on lip, shaking his head of free-flowing, shaggy hair.

And so, apparently, this ‘wisdom’ of mine—an indolent, naive teenager in 2006—is now the providence of the intellectuals of our time. Wow, social media is bad! Being online is bad! Big tech is bad! Do stuff in real life! Who would have thought!

Insolence aside, I’ve tried understanding the tenets of this supposed New Romanticism movement, especially as espoused in the vast spectrum of Substack posts they elicit, from listicle to erudite, florid prose. While I agree with nearly all of them, they seem to stop short of reaching their natural conclusion, and indeed, much of the New Romantic discourse seems to be centered upon: well, what do we do about it? In my view, the distillation of any online Romantic movement, if taken to its natural conclusion, would be the singular, simple action:

GET OFFLINE!!!

I’ve long wrestled with how such a counterculture rejecting tech modernity might spread and become a ‘movement’ as such without the powerful and ubiquitous Internet itself. This paradox of dissemination inspired my first edition Midnight Vault entry, a short story called The Halcyonium—in which a mysterious author places a book called The Halcyonium in a small town bookstore, triggering a mass exodus from the digital world by all who read it.

The real reason movements like this don’t yet manifest is because the final and complete commandment of ‘GET OFFLINE!!!’ is never truly uttered by its main prognosticators nor their followers, because being online and being read online are their primary modes of living. To actually espouse this would be hypocritical. And so this cognitive contradiction leads to a disharmonious enaction of the romantic counterculture in practice, kinetically passed through the same algorithmic feedback loops claimed to be so restrictive and degenerative, totemic signaling of romantic intent rather than enaction of its principals.

The Romanticism found on Substack (especially the social media aspect of Notes) has too often—but not always!—become not so much a movement, but the mining of an analog aesthetic so ubiquitously contrarian it now runs the risk of being a mere shibboleth.

A true Romantic movement would not entertain these shallow signifiers, so often simple recollections of the past in a yearning and wistful fashion, a nudging wink and rib to the reader like, ‘Hey, remember when? Aren’t we the smart ones for smelling the bullshit?’ It wouldn’t be such a reductive fetishization of the analog.

While I may also enjoy such invocations of feeling (and many of the people who post about them), any romance they have is lost when you convey them within the prism of the very modernity we should be fighting against.

I.e., true romance arises from the banal mundanity of everyday life—from immateriality eminently unfit for the internet, things which cannot be compressed to Likes or Views or Restacks. Because the material of life is not romantic, and it never has been.

People live, then they die. In between, the crux of life: moments—countless—in which you must do things you do not want to do. It is, to be reductive—forgive me, Buddha—about suffering, in which the only solace we find is in the momentary flow-state granted to us by divine collective experience, the plying of our individual crafts, or the love of other people and art.

These things are un-post-able. And since they are un-post-able, they don’t ‘exist’ to us so much as other things. They are the romantic notions we are missing, what we need to guard and withhold against the vapidity of modern life.

They are not on the Internet.

“Dost not thou find thyself on the Internet, Mr. Steadwell?” The New Romantics then ask. Indeed.

Herein lies the aforementioned contradiction. The question is, really—how do we live with ourselves?

Because posting curated pictures of your cocktail named after a 19th author is not a practice of a productive counterculture. Nor is simply living a life in which you are wholly removed from the main proxy of ideas. Maturing from the Luddite teenager I was meant finding a way into the world as it is; the bildungsroman we all live is the story of acceptance of ourselves into the wider culture.

I tried for a long time to understand the appeal of the Internet and what my place was within it. I failed until I came to Substack and began posting as ‘Clancy Steadwell’, my personal remedy to the Romantic problem:

Siphon your real self off from the Internet. Starve the algorithms of your personhood. Be online in a way that renders the negative, soul-sapping powers of the algorithms inert.

Because I finally found a way to reconcile the loss of vitality I felt with the good things the Internet can bring. ‘Clancy Steadwell’ enables me to be online without really being online. And Substack is—as the most ardent romanticists here have quite correctly espoused—a great place to enact these principals. It doesn’t have ads, promotes long form content (mostly), attempts—to varying degrees of success—to be an Internet of the commons.

If you want to be a Romantic and still be online, in my opinion you should be someplace like Substack—and you should be an insurgent. An iconoclast. Use an anonymous profile. Avoid clickbait. Avoid rage. Read fiction (inherently unpopular!). Promote unknown artists. Withhold your data. Be weird; exceedingly so.

Eschew every guiding principal of the Internet and social media as you know it.

It’s no coincidence some (not all!) of the people I enjoy most on here don’t post under their own names, or post as an entity rather than an identity.

The pseudonym—and at large, the reluctance to reveal myself as living, human being—is at the heart of this. I live, me myself, separate from the screens. I (the identity) reside outside its bounds, safe(r) from its murderous effects upon the romanticism of my life.

I don’t live these espousals so totally. My own crimes of naivete—feeding trolls, posting/falling prey to rage-bait—are mostly borne from inexperience, a forgetfulness from my time off the Internet, an unawareness of its trappings. Occasionally I post an idea so unpopular, so rage-inducing, it gets ‘ratioed’ and I have to admit to myself that it wasn’t actually calculated—I am just an idiot. My most popular ever Note was directly from my life, a picture of my dishwasher. When I first got here, I tried to stay engaged with the platform by posting a ‘A Note Every Day Until I Reached A Million Subscribers’. I didn’t realize it was uncouth (and certainly anti-Romantic) to post so often about how many subscribers you have.

My own writings, in the form of posts and short stories, have become more and more catered to Internet reader, even subconsciously so, through the feedback loops of the algorithm.

I am ashamed of these things. Perhaps this shame is key. Perhaps this is what we need more of. Perhaps only shame is the antidote to hypocrisy.

Which is why whenever I find myself caught up in it all, I try to take a week off. Shut it down. TOTAL offline.

Then return with the same mindset: be a part of it, but at a distance. Segregate the parts of ‘you’ that the Internet wants to see. Embrace the good parts. Embrace the good-er parts in your real life even more.

Make an effort to know what’s good about being online and connected, and reject the rest. Realize Romanticism is not lost in modern times, it only takes new forms. Modern Internet distribution channels and social media allow more subversive art, more voices, interesting folks from the margin you won’t get anywhere else. I met my wife on Tinder. Some of the best relationships I’ve ever had were exclusively online. The building of support networks, communities, and mutual aid online is important. The growth of online political movements can hopefully be real catalysts for change.

I realize and understand this thinking is not in vogue, and by the nature of the Internet, cannot be and never will be, it is anathema. This is not an attack on the New Romantic movement on Substack—I am behind everything it entails, in spirit; I only lament its false applications. And even in its false applications, I find great joy in both its purveyors and fellow appreciators.

If you feel like romance has been drained from the real world, specifically by the Internet, then maybe withdraw from it in the same way I have. It’s certainly the only way I have found anything resembling peace and happiness in my own life. I don’t mean to eviscerate anyone or prescribe for anyone; I understand people make their living online. If you feel like you can do so while un-sacrificing the romance in your life, please continue to.

Although, you might not be a true Romantic.

Clancy, if you want to make it online, you have to play by the rules! Play the game!

Perhaps so, but countercultures have never been about playing by the rules.

And I am a Romantic.