Low Lift Ask is Ending

+ we finally release the results of our anonymous "How many inches you got" survey

Well—today’s the day, folks. I haven’t spoken to Ritam about this yet (or my parents), but I’m closing up shop today. Get your last heartfelt goodbyes in now—any retrospectives, long essays about our impact, DMs you want to get in under the wire. Now’s the time. Cause it’s over.

It’s not actually ending, I just saw how much everyone nutted over “Good” “Hang” finally hanging up the cleats and wanted some of that juice. I mean, look at this:

Are you kidding me? We’ve never even brushed those numbers. And as it’s been our longstanding, sole goal to go unreal viral on Substack (with no care for aesthetic quality or intellectual heft), it’s kind of shocking we haven’t tried a stunt like this before.

When I was in high school, a local 24-hour donut shop threatened to close, and everyone rallied massive support to go buy a bunch of donuts to see if we could get one final rent payment across the line, Iwo Jima style. Then they announced they were fine and they were just reopening under new management. Happy Donuts is still there.

That’s the kind of chicanery we should be resorting to. I’m also currently battling the Influenza A virus, which affects thousands of people every winter, and so I’m kind of in a worse mood than normal.

Look at the outpouring of love these fools received:

If everyone could please post comments like this below, that would be awesome. It would boost our numbers in the Notes algorithm, and then we could maybe hit a big subscriber bump, thereby ensuring the ploy worked.

I don’t care about writing anything “good” here anymore (neither does anyone else on Substack 😂😂😂 fr tho…) We are fully in the engagement bait game now. We must use every trick in the book to climb to the top of this embarrassing heap of pseuds. There’s too many people trying to write now, thanks to Substack—what we need to pivot to now is naked, unashamed, cheap, soulless cash grabs for reader attention, with a neutral moral valence (but slightly threatening aura).

Let me get one of these restacks. How about something like, “Your favorite Substack writer’s favorite Substack is ending?” (Again, we’re not, I just want some of that engagement juice). I love that little rhetorical construction—your favorite x’s favorite x. So fun and saucy.

Maybe we’ll finally get a shout from The Big ‘Mish (Hamish). Long time reader, first time restacker. I don’t know. I’m dreamcasting here. All I can do is place my little fake Viking in a rowboat, send it gently down the river, riddle its hull with flaming arrows, and then crouch by the riverbanks (where I’ve surreptitiously swam to after jumping aboard) to see how many people are crying.

TL; DR: We are ending Low Lift Ask (😉). Please publicly post as many heartfelt tributes as you can think of!!!

And now? We wait.

Ritam’s Footnote

Hard to describe the wave of emotions that washed over me when I logged in and saw the title: relief, joy, freedom, peace. Realizing that it isn’t actually ending has cast me into a pit of despair, convinced that my unending humiliation will continue indefinitely as I proceed to pump low-tier slop into an uncaring world in which anyone I’d care about reading my ideas is discerning enough to know that they’re low-effort ravings of an unoriginal mind… Well, it’s fine. Had a good bagel this morning!