What This Substack Is

When one substack just isn't enough

We'll dance by the light of the moon in the sky
We'll sail on through forever for a while
You'll tell your friends and I'll tell mine
Well, goodness gracious, what a time
I found the sweetest human being Substack alive

—George Ezra describing things that may or may not occur here.

Goooooooooooooooooooood morning Vietnam.

Recently, I came across the Substack of a very stupid individual. Full of lies, distortions, and other deceptions, it was rather infuriating to read. And the worst part was, it had a significantly larger following than the angelic Benthams.substack.com, which I write. (Okay, maybe the worst part was the lies and deception, but the fact that it was larger than my Substack was a pretty bad part too!). Thus, out of jealousy and irritation, the controlled opposition substack was born.

My other Substack was never destined to become very large. There are pretty unsurprising reasons for this—I post often on topics that bore all people except roughly 20 random philosophers, half of them above 60, and I churn out posts almost daily, clogging people’s emails. And it’s also sort of weird and disjointed—one article I’ll be posting about why factory farming is bad, the next will be about why wokeness is bad, and the next will be a super detailed investigation of an unimaginably niche philosophical topic, like whether rational preferences have to be complete—they do, by the way.

My other Substack has been mostly just a place to discuss random thoughts I’m having—to get them down in writing so that I can reference them later. It has not been, to any significant extent, a place where I write with the intent of actually amassing an audience. This Substack will be different—I will write for you, dear reader.

I hope that this Substack becomes actually widely read—maintains a faster rate of growth than the other, which has maintained just over one new subscriber per day, on average. On here, I won’t post at all about utilitarian philosophy. I’ll also only post about once a week. The things that I write will be about factory farming, foreign policy, culture war issues, and more! This will be my Substack for a wider audience—on my other, I’ll continue posting about very niche philosophical issues, but here, I’ll post about things that people actually care about. I’ll also edit my posts, which I rarely do on my other Substack. So you’ll get to see the more official, cleaned-up side of Bentham’s bulldog.

(Behind-the-scenes footage of me writing this essay right now).

Glad to have you all here! Thanks for reading! See you soon.