Death to the collab
I want to build things, not just promote them
Really Good Tomatoes is a newsletter about culture, behaviour, food, art, relationships, pleasure, politics, work, environment, identity, and society. In short, it is a newsletter about life, and the things that give it meaning.
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Approximately once a week an email lands in my inbox entitled “collaboration opportunity”. I can’t know precisely what those words conjure for you, but I’d imagine it would be something about working together, for mutual benefit, ideally with some financial remuneration, and perhaps even (the word “opportunity” glitters with possibility) some extra bonus in there for me? Something special. Something I can’t get elsewhere.
This is never what it means. What it usually means is the PR department for a brand wants me, a journalist, to write about their product. And I already know, from the subject line, that they don’t have a story or even an angle to pitch me, they simply think they can get me to be a free mouthpiece for them. Why they think this, I will never know, but it’s a familiar situation. Back in the late 2000s when I was staff on a newspaper, I used to get PRs calling to ask if I could feature their products. “I think you want the advertising department,” I’d say sarcastically (because, yes, people used to call each other on the phone back then). Whether ignorance or audacity, I was never sure. But, like I say, it’s not new. What is new is the use of the word “collaboration”.
Take this recent example:
“Exciting Update - Collaboration Opportunity,” read the subject line. But then inside…
“I would greatly appreciate it if you could feature my [product] in an upcoming article or update an existing piece to include information about [product] and its improvements.”
Yeah, I bet you would.
It continued: “I genuinely value your expertise and your potential interest in the [product]. I am excited to collaborate with you and share this update with your audience.”
Sorry, but… WHAT PART OF THIS IS A COLLABORATION???!!!!
This is you asking me for a favour. It is a request for services. Of course I understand what’s gone wrong here. Brands and business owners have seen influencer culture at work and got confused. They see folks on Instagram “collaborating” with brands and think that’s how it works now. But what they’ve missed is that those influencers are getting paid. It’s advertising. Sure, it’s creative, it’s bespoke, it’s pitched for specific audiences. Heck, it’s even fun! None of that stops it being advertising. And that’s fine! But, as I said to those people on the phone back in 2009, if you want advertising, you need to go to advertising. And you need to have your budget ready.
But that’s not what makes me sad. The part that makes me sad is that I really, genuinely love collaboration. And, in this post-journalism era, as we attempt to squeeze ourselves into a saturated yet hyper-individualised media marketplace, contorting ourselves into ever more wretched shapes in order to appear unique yet authentic, original while also having broad appeal, I see fewer and fewer opportunities for it.
Every time I get an email with that word in, a little part of me lights up with hope. Maybe someone wants to work with me? Maybe someone has read or listened to my work and recognises the value of my skills? Maybe they respect my game, match my freak, and think we could build something cool together?
I have always felt myself strongly to be a collaborator. Ever since I started out in journalism, I bucked against the dog-eat-dog mentality, the idea that great reporting came out of individual hunger, that we were lone wolves jealously guarding our patch, our stories, our contacts, our leads, our bylines. We’re so much better when we work together. But working together requires other people to feel the same way.
The people emailing me never really want to collaborate. They just want me to do something for them, for free. As for what’s in it for me? That’s somebody else’s problem. The scene is the same on LinkedIn. “Someone wants to connect!” Do they fuck. What they want is for me to help them sell whatever it is they’re selling: their product, their service, their voice and expertise.
I’ve been freelance for ten years now and my god it’s been lonely at times, but never as lonely as it feels right now, at the end of 2024, as I watch every single person I know launch a Patreon or a Substack, desperately trying to draw an audience willing to pay for them and them alone. Even those of us who talk about collectivism and anarchy, are forced to try to market our takes on those subjects as being the ones worth paying for, the top ones, the best ones.
Substack wants to be the saviour of great writing. As far as I can see, all it’s doing is pitting writers against one another. Isolated in our personal brands, we’re more alone than ever, more competitive than ever, and thus less and less likely to be able to (afford to) do good, meaningful, creative work. And I’m almost sure others feel the same way. I guarantee none of us really want to be sitting at our cold desks, compiling content strategies by ourselves, trying to figure out how to “grow our platforms,” entice readers into our paywalled lair, convince them to invest in us specifically, all while knowing that what we offer isn’t particularly unique or special, all while pretending to love the freedom it gives us.
And freedom from what? From a reliable income? From criticism? From fully developed ideas? From journalistic rigour? Freedom from “the constraints of the mainstream media”?
The constraints of the mainstream media look pretty good to me right now. What I wouldn’t give, most days, for an editor. An art desk. A features meeting. I don’t want to write guest posts for your newsletter in order to promote mine, I want us to be on the same editorial team. I don’t want to collab when collab simply means cross-promotion. I want us to actually build something together.
This has never been more clear to me than it is right now, working on my podcast Mag Hags with my friend Lucy. It is a collaboration in the truest sense of the word. The show was entirely her idea, and it was thanks to her persistence and belief, that I was convinced to embark on it. Without her, I doubt I would have come up with it, much less made it happen. But equally, it’s my podcasting experience and skills that have brought it to life. We don’t put in an equal number of hours by any stretch (and we have a collaborator contract to reflect that), but neither of us could have done it alone. More importantly, we make each other - and therefore the show - better. I see it happen constantly, in our exchanges of ideas, our expressions of doubt, the giving and requesting of opinions, the questions, the answers. Just this week I noticed myself trying to steer Lucy towards a move that would have made my life slightly easier this week, but to the detriment of the episode we were working on. Thankfully she stuck to her guns. On WhatsApp, she laid out her view, her reasoning. “…If that makes sense?” she wrote at the end. It made total sense. I was being lazy before. I’m glad I had her to pull me out of my ditch of least resistance and get me back on the track I actually want to be on aka The One Where We Make A Really Good Show.
Being a solo creator in the social media age is dire. It’s relentless, it’s abrasive, and it’s empty. It doesn’t even pay the bills. And yes, I get to make all the decisions but guess what, I also have to make all the decisions. It’s like Sisyphus celebrating having creative control over his boulder. I don’t want to do it any more and yet what choice do I have. I’m halfway up the hill again. Maybe this time, I’ll make it?
I don’t yet have an answer for any of this. As you know, I rebranded this newsletter in the summer to make space for new ways of doing things. But what I’ve realised more than anything is that I don’t really want to do it on my own. Writing a newsletter is fine, if it’s part of a bigger picture (as the Mag Hags newsletter is), if it's one strand of a wider-ranging vision. But trying to make this be something on its own, on my own, feels deeply, deeply unsatisfying. Substack wants us to believe we can build community here, and perhaps we can, but what community do you know of where everybody in it is paying subs to a single organiser, creator, leader, decision-maker? That’s not a community, babe, that’s a cult. And while I actually think I’d make a pretty great cult leader, I’d rather do that sort of thing offline. I want to be able to see and hear and touch my community. Mainly, I want to be able to show off my outfit.
As always, I welcome your thoughts on this. A few people have sacked this newsletter off since it got sketchy and sporadic but a surprising amount of you have stuck around and I’m interested to know what you think. Is there a way to make this Substack experience more collaborative? Is that something you even care about? And if not, what do you care about? Why are you here? What is it you like about me, above all, specifically, uniquely, and forsaking all others? Would you sacrifice an animal in my honour? If not a cow or a deer, then perhaps something smaller like a rabbit? How about a wasp?
OK, but seriously, what do you think? I find it hard to believe readers feel genuinely served or delighted by this model. But perhaps I’m wrong… tell me!
Let’s end on a more constructive note! It’s been a confronting week to say the least, even before I got to writing about spurious “collab opportunities”. I’ve read so many takes/outpourings/calls to action/screams into the void on the US election at this point and it does not behove me to submit my own. I choose to concentrate on what makes me feel alive, what makes me feel curious and purposeful. So here are some of my good tomatoes i.e. things I’ve read, watched, listened to, or experienced this week...
Eating oysters on the beach after having a sauna and (extremely cold) sea swim.
“Americans Didn’t Embrace Trump, They Rejected Biden” - New York Magazine
“Was Casual Sex Always This Bad” - The Cut
“As a middle-aged man, I would’ve saved loads on therapy if I’d read Baby-Sitters Club books as a kid” - The Guardian
My two-year-old daughter saying “Mummy, can I say something to you?” and then pausing dramatically before telling me, somberley, “I had a biscuit.”
“Top Billing” (an exploration of the design of movie and TV credits) - 99% Invisible
"Substack wants to be the saviour of great writing. As far as I can see, all it’s doing is pitting writers against one another. Isolated in our personal brands, we’re more alone than ever, more competitive than ever, and thus less and less likely to be able to (afford to) do good, meaningful, creative work." SO MUCH THIS. I have so many thoughts about everything you wrote here (and almost certainly need to come back and read it again). I'm quite inspired by all of this (and, tbh, by my Patreon account getting removed this week) to rethink some of my plans for projects and writing in 2025...
Oh My, Franki!
This was a great piece, in many ways, but also a bit heartbreaking.
I know from your work in other..fields? genres...? how much you love a genuine collab, and so I was a bit surprised to see the title of this newsletter. But on reading it, I both understood entirely why you titled it as you did, and was really sad that it was an appropriate title.
In any type of human interaction, there are disagreements and misunderstandings. But one thing that particularly irks me, in any context, is the deliberate misuse of of a commonly understood word or concept, for the purposes of cynical effect. And the worst of it - a surmise by me, as you didn't explicitly say so - is that even though you KNOW that 99% of the 'wanna collab?' email titles will be pitches, you have to open all of them, in case if you didn't, you'd create the impression in some keen and genuine person, that you weren't interested in genionely, honestly and wonderfully, working with them. I'm very sorry that you've having that experience, and that it's contributing to the sense of demoralisation that you're feeling about your work.
For what it's worth, I LOVE my box of tomatoes! It's everyone's right to unsubscribe if it's not their perfect pizza topping, obviously. But I think that in doing that, those folks are missing some really good, zingy and nutritious mental vegetables. And I appreciate the 'sporadicy' (is that a word? Tragically I'm not bessies with Susie Dent, so I don't know) and the 'sketchiness' of the current format. Because while I'm no artist, my understanding is that a sketch is an important part of the process - rapid,, impressionstic, and therefore flavourful.
I really hope you will continue with these pieces, and I'll be looking out for your podcast shortly..
Best wishes,
Aaron