An Elephant Never Forgets

…the comment section was awash with all of these pearl clutchers…

 When I’m bored at work, sometimes I will check out an old Elephant Journal article to see the difference in my writing from years ago. I have been consistently adding a few hundred followers every month, which I chalk up entirely to the fact that there are virtually hundreds of those articles still floating in cyberspace. Strangely, I did not set out to be prolific for this reason. I didn’t have a clue that anything like this would happen. I wrote a lot because when I first started writing for EJ, you had to have a few articles out every week to ‘win” money for your stuff.

This is, of course, how most great things happen. Or, at least, that’s what I’ve always been led to believe. Greatness is the result of just showing up and doing your thing, the best you can, day after day. Most of the time. It isn’t exactly working out that way with my Substack, though.I started a year and a half ago with 300 subscribers and I don’t think I have much more than that now. Somehow, those articles don’t get as much exposure as the Elephant ones.

Don’t get me wrong, though. I don’t romanticize the past.There was a lot of stress writing for Elephant Take, for instance, the dog piles on Instagram. These were usually started by people who were reacting to the title. You didn’t need a private investigator to tell you that they never read it. They were just offended by what they assumed the article was about. Unfortunately, no one is going to read an article called “A Socially Conscious Look at Vegan Cooking” but “Fuckboys Have Feelings Too” will get thousands of clicks. And it’s great as long as you can stomach comments like “You’re not even that good looking, bruv.”

Yes, “bruv.” Somehow, this passed as the diminutive for “brother.” Don’t ask.

Of course, you should also prepare yourself for being advised to “Do better!” a couple hundred times a month. “Do better!” is code for “please learn to write what I agree with.” I don’t care who you are or what you believe in, there will always be someone who will school you on why you are offending people. The only tried and true method for not offending anyone is to just not create anything.

In fact, if you want to be a warrior for social justice, don’t write anything. Just scroll Twitter and Instagram and write scathing comments on everything you see that you don’t like. Call out everyone you can. Ask Elephant Journal how they could possibly “employ” such a tone deaf writer. Vow to cancel the subscription you don’t even have.

Seriously, though, a lot of that public criticism can be traumatizing. You can fall under the spell that everyone in the world thinks you’re a creep and you probably are. It’s the modern version of being humiliated in the public square. The only thing is, back in the Victorian times, you had to go outside with dozens of other people carrying pitchforks. Today, this can be accomplished without even leaving the comfort of your mother’s basement.

You can not imagine how many times I’ve been informed that “I don’t get to” have an opinion about this or that. This, I always found rather short-sighted because if “I didn’t get to…” we wouldn’t be having this conversation. The truth is, if you can be compelling enough, you get to do whatever you want. This is what would exasperate me so much about this audience. If they really felt so strong about their convictions, they’d write a rebuttal and try to get it published. Like Robert Bush. 

He was an editor at Elephant who decided to call me out in an article based entirely on the one that I wrote the previous day. There was no subtly to it. It came right out and said “here’s why Billy is gross and I am so wonderful.” And the comment section was awash with all of these pearl clutchers congratulating him on his sensitivity and righteousness and admonishing me for essentially being a dude. 

This is what put my days of writing for Elephant on life support. Writing for for them wasn’t just a hobby for me. It became my identity. It took several months for me to get the courage to walk away after that. But make no mistake. That’s what did it.

I guess the part of the whole thing that made me the angriest was the contradictory nature of it. For anyone who ever wrote for EJ, you know that you’d only get paid if your stuff got massive amounts of views and comments. It follows that you’re only going to get massive clicks and comments if you wrote about controversial stuff. The staff may have said they desired socially conscious material, but their pay structure said the opposite.

I watched it play out on a much larger scale with the writer, Alex Myles. She wrote mainly about astrology, but she brought nearly a million readers to the site every month. I watched as they tried to profit by her popularity and simultaneously humiliate her for writing about such a frivolous topic. One day after Waylon wrote an entire article about how inconsequential and unimportant her writing was, she quit. 

Realizing that he just inadvertently changed his entire financial situation and the future of his business, he wrote a public apology. If you’ve ever tried putting toothpaste back in the tube, you might have an idea of how well that worked. 

Now, there were some things about writing for Elephant that were great. Having to consider titles and staying in a strict format, while initially restrictive, can produce incredible results. Think about how many timeless songs are 3 ½ minutes long. It’s essentially the same thing. Being on your own is a lot less stressful, but that stress can be helpful. 

I try to go with the flow as much as I can and even though I prefer what I am doing now, I will never regret those five years. It brought me many friends from all over the world, adventure,women, money and a priceless education. 

It also forced me to write thousands of words every week. 

And finally, it’s probably how I met you.