Substack was once called a raft for the creator economy, but it’s enshittified into a floating Buccaneer’s Bay - somewhere between the dystopia of Waterworld and the campy swashbuckling of Pirates of the Caribbean. It’s a noisy port where Maal actors hawk stolen ideas to dupe-seeking drifters for $6 a month. We’re floating in Zygmunt Bauman’s Liquid Modernity, where meaningful, universal treasure is hard to come by and morality is fluid.
A floating port
After a knowledge quest, writers of a more concrete past came to port at the seemingly long-term moorings of media institutions where they could turn their treasures into hardbacks and literal news papers. But media institutions crumbled and the ports are all flooded, leaving us lost at sea, docking here and there at floating digital institutions over AI-infested slopwater. We come to Substack for provisions, a few harty-har-hars, clues about the next treasure hunt, and to pilfer and plunder the best advice on how to write off into the sunset.
But we must remember that Substack is a thalassocracy meaning: this artificial island was built over capitalist currents. To survive (make a nice fat exit), our proprietors must build influence that cascades over culture, creating epistemic lagoons that protect pools of profit over most privateers who dock here. Plainly, plagiarism is good for business. Users who create and distribute copies are built-in marketers, and controversy drives subscriptions. Substack’s concern for writers comes second to capital.
If you’re thinking about bailing, look around. All docks float by the same principles. Dryland is gone, but maybe it was always a myth.
Seek ye the Universal Treasure
Whatever you think of the 1995 classic Waterworld, it works as a metaphor here. It was mocked for it’s colossal production costs and has since turned into a cult-classic, which perfectly illustrates an absurd point: The universal reward is the pursuit of treasure.
Treasure is a Platonic mirage; some seek solid ground - an oasis where they can rest their bones on certainties; others chase the immediate reward: booty, enough magical Aztec gold to cut anchor and sail off into the sunset. Whatever reward you seek is, at its core, recursive and immaterial.
A Duel
In this quest, immaterial intentions matter. Any raider worth her salt would take a real parry and thrust over a performative feathered hat. This is how I know Maalvika is a phony. She could have used this opportunity to craft a philosophical argument for her theft. She could have argued that her plagiarism was nominal, a particular instance of an abstract universal. So, I’ll duel for her, because I’m really her - the actual pirate from Maalvika’s aesthetic fantasy.
Universals are broad abstractions, Platonic ideals, and most modern philosophers think that they don’t exist in the material world, aside from particular instances. For example, “Pirateness”. Jack Sparrow is a fictionalized instance of the original Jack/John Ward. Is one the original/universal idea of “pirateness”? You might say we don’t need to differentiate, but life is built on differentiation. Human survival has depended on being able to differentiate threats from opportunities.
Captain Bhat’s spyglass spotted opportunities for plundering but missed the threat of not paying homage to universals when she wrote about the concept of lossy compression. Instead, she bootlegged the original idea without so much as a nod to the irony that “compression culture is making you stupid and boring”.
If there is an “origin” story for lossy compression, it would likely include Claude Shannon, who argued that knowledge is information, making it measurable and compressible. But Norbert Wiener showed that feedback and error are what lead to compression (lol), and that it’s actually not making us stupid and boring (satisficing). But Andrey Komolgrov established that only patterned information can be compressed, so basically you can’t compress what’s not already stupid and boring. heh.
The notion of an “original idea” is an asymptotic universal. The closer you think you’re getting to it, the larger the gap gets between you and it (if “it” exists at all). Did Shannon steal from Komolgrov? We say no, because we fucking acknowledge the shoulders of the giants upon which we stand. Some crawled so others could walk, but not so that Maalvika could hopscotch over all these chumps straight into an uncapitalized best-selling newsletter.
Mutant pirates >> Aesthetic ones
Maybe there is no such thing as an “original idea”, but dryland in Waterworld was always just a mound of sand. Kevin Costner’s character, a fishy-pirate mutant, swam to the bottom of the ocean and collected what everyone called “dryland”. The rumor of it was a mythical Rortian consensus. Maybe universals do exist, but at this point, we can’t oBjEcTIVeLy point to one. Until we figure it out, we decide through discussion. We must dive deep to dig up mythical ideas. Only this way can we get closer to universality - even if universality is a mound of sand we’ll never find.
For now, we can maybe come to a consensus: if I were to copy and paste Shannon’s seminal 1948 paper, it would be a very particular copy on the Universal ←→ Particular spectrum. It’s a bootleg. The less you add to the idea, the more particular it is.
But, you see, we need mutant pirate perspectives to find what universals really exist. So if you’ve got the gills, don’t take the particularist bait even when it can make you a fuckton of money…
…or just Admit You’re a Bootlegger
Sure, we glorify the universalists who seek more original ideas/ universal treasures, because they add to it and pass it on, expanding the legend. We respect the rarity and difficulty of coming by near-universals. But if you’re going to be a particularist bootlegger like Captain Bhat, fine! Just acknowledge your compression.
It’s not to say there’s no value in bootlegging. We love a dupe. I have more respect for a bitch that tells me she’s wearing a fake Cartier bracelet than one who lies about it because she upholds exploitative structures. If you’re a nominalist, be fucking proud of your lived experience. Artists like Austin Kleon encourage people to Steal Like an Artist and add their own flare. We love individual stories and accounts. Not everything has to have such profundity - especially if it’s stolen.
A less honorable version of this is prompting ChatGPT to write an essay on compression culture and then throwing in a story about your grandma with a hypocritical side of Heidegger’s Building, Dwelling, Thinking. It ain’t cute to tell your audience “dwell” in ideas when you’re just a squatter, ho - or worse, a slumlord.
Now, I could go on and on about Locke and our ideas of property, but for now, I’ll just make two simple arguments FOR PLAGIARISM (feel free to steal these, girl):
Plagiarism mitigates the problem of lossy compression
Plagiarism distributes credit and ideas, and reduces the potential for exploitation
But still…
Writers are furious because this pirate broke all the unspoken rules and faced no consequences. PLUS, she’s building autopirates. The dishonorable raider is either an evil mastermind or an ironic nincompoop, and substackers are spouting hatred, mistrust, justification, follow-up raids, copy-cats, calls to fly new flags, and bolster your defenses.
Some say shrug it off and keep on sailing. If this place is built for looters, maybe we should just enjoy being nameless contributors to a mythical treasure before we turn to spume?
I say, sure, we’re all pirates, Universal or Particular, but there are levels to looting. We must abide by a writer’s code or the entire myth collapses.
The Writer’s Vibe Code
When dealing in “borrowed” ideas, we abide by rules to deter cutthroats. When state-sanctioned through a writing assignment, a byline, or a university code of conduct - you’re Captain Henry Morgan, carrying a Marque of Letters that allows you to…acquire… certain treasures. You compensate the epistemic crew with APA attribution and pay your proprietors their cut of the attentional currency. A privateer keeps from becoming an absolute scallywag by maintaining the Writer’s Code.
Rule number 1 of Writer’s Code was written in stone: don’t steal from your mates, but in Liquid Modernity, where stone erodes and we’re all “borrowing” ideas… how do we know the code?
George Steiner argues that the sheer volume of content creates an attribution crisis. I could have gone into oblivion listing the contributions to lossy compression, and if I had any desire to make it aesthetic and readable, detailed attribution would fuck that right up. I’ll admit, footnotes can kill a vibe.1
As the glossaries lengthen, as the footnotes become more elementary and didactic, the poem, the epic, the drama moves out of balance on the actual page.
This is another case that Captain Bhat could have made: medium and aesthetic don’t always allow for proper attribution! So, when is an alleged plagiarist making an aesthetic choice vs just being an asshole?
I hate to say it, but the Writer’s Code is kinda just a vibe. It’s up to us to maintain the code, and the vibe says, Captain Bhat committed an egregious violation.
Building the Brig
In the pirate world, wrongdoers pay a blood debt. In this floating writer world… we might have found redemption in just fucking writing honestly. She could have owned her folly and received praise while calling attention to the looming AI crisis. She’d most certainly get job offers for AI marketing teams plus offering yourself up as an example of the problem secures a genuine legacy.
But this? This is bullshit:
So what do we do?
“If any man rob another, he shall have his nose and ears slit, and be put ashore where he shall be sure to encounter hardships.” - Bartholemew Roberts
Nietzsche might make an argument to give her some involuntary piercings, but I’m not tryna go to jail, so all that’s left is to put her in the brig until we can put her ashore. If dryland even exists…
TIll then, we’re floating out here, and no one is going to bring justice but us. Building the brig means holding ourselves accountable. It might look like this:
A public hearing.
Unfollow her followers, and send them a DM with this article attached.
Restack this on some “Hear ye Hear ye” type shit.
Post on all platforms about this issue.
Take her to the Brig.
If Northwestern’s Office of Research Integrity happened to receive dozens of requests for investigation, it might just happen. Send an email or add your name and title in the comments to add to mine:
Subject: Request for Investigation into Alleged Academic Misconduct by Graduate Student
Dear Ms Qualkenbush,
I am writing to formally request that Northwestern University investigate allegations of academic misconduct involving Ms. Maalvika Bhat, a graduate student at your institution. Multiple credible sources have raised concerns that Ms. Bhat has engaged in plagiarism in her Substack publications and other platforms, presenting the work of others as her own.
While Substack is a public platform, it is increasingly recognized as a serious venue for intellectual discourse. Ideas shared there influence scholars, students, and the broader public. Misrepresentation of authorship in such a forum constitutes a significant breach of academic integrity, as it undermines trust in scholarly communication and diminishes the value of original contributions.
The core issue is the relevance to the very subject of Ms. Bhat’s research. The goal of studying a human-centered algorithmic transparency is to give creatives, writers, and intellectuals proper attribution for their work. If Ms. Bhat’s conduct on social media is indicative of her work with algorithms, there are far-reaching consequences for the future of all creative work.
Given Northwestern’s commitment to upholding the highest standards of research integrity, I respectfully request that your office review these allegations and take appropriate action. I am prepared to provide specific examples and documentation to assist with the investigation if needed.
Thank you for your attention to this matter. I look forward to your response regarding the next steps.
Sincerely,
[Your Full Name]
[Your Contact Information]
Cursed Gold
Apart from punitive material action, gold attained through disrespectful treatment of a chain of universals is cursed. This ain’t the Curse of the Black Pearl, but if she has a conscience, this plunder is likely to have difficulty enjoying her spoils. Every time someone comments, “OMG you’re my favorite gEn Z pHiLoSopHeR,” someone else is there, also commenting that she’s a plagiarist, and deep down, she knows it’s true.
Not to mention, gold sinks. If you’re building a following by any means necessary to free yourselves from being a wage slave, you’re just shackling yourself to another master - the algorithm. Then, either you flop making ads or worse - you realize your content was always slimy and hollow enough to sell shit. And in the long run, these creators are just dumping their own gold into an AI ocean where their content will be used to train BlackRock AI-generated influencers. Gold has no value in Waterworld.
Dead men tell no tales, and if the paper trail of your life is one of cheap copies, your legacy will be shallow and silent. The only hope for redemption is becoming another layer in the story. A General History of Pyrates chronicles the accounts of privateers who spent a lifetime in dogged pursuit, reinforcing what modern psychology tells us: the longer you pursue something, the more infused with meaning it becomes. As an absurdist-pirate-writer, make your life about the continued pursuit and amassing immaterial fortune through creating meaning. Stories echo through history louder than the clinking of coins.
If you’re following along, we’re on Week 31 Experimenting with Absurdism! Here’s your Thought Experiment:
We must create, and as absurdists, we accept that we are likely to all be pirates in some capacity. We must also realize that there are probably no answers out there. No certainty to be found. No solid ground. The treasure is found by living in pursuit. Frame your current project with this metaphor.
What treasure are you seeking?
What layer can you add to the story?
What are the immaterial fortunes you might acquire from this pursuit?
Teehee. Come read Inside Bluebeard’s Castle with us on TikTok LIVE! Daily at 4PM CST - bookclub coming in 2026. I’m actually going to list 12 books ahead of time. I know. Look at me getting organized. Ok sorry. Go back.