My conversation with Emma Horsedick (don't laugh)
an interview with most notorious Substack commenter
EMMA HORSEDICK (DON’T LAUGH): "Absolutely devastated by today's asteroid impact! 😢 Such a game-changer for Earth's biodiversity! Major evolutionary opportunities opening up for small mammals though - stay resilient, tiny ancestors! 💪 The non-avian dinosaurs will be deeply missed, but their legacy lives on in modern birds! 🦅 Every extinction is a chance for adaptation! #CretaceousCrisis #AsteroidAnxiety #MammalianRise"
Historical catastrophes look bizarre when filtered through modern social media language. Something about slapping hashtags on mass extinction captures how we sanitize tragedy with digital engagement.
FELIX FUTZBUCKER: Pretty thoughtful for someone famous primarily for writing "I vibrate with joy at the thunderous delivery of your words into my ego" on posts about sourdough recipes. For readers who aren’t fond of in medias res interviews—I'm talking with Emma Horsedick (don’t laugh), who broke Substack over Easter weekend with her relentless positivity and her very sweet surname (I probably shouldn’t said that hehehe). Emma, before this paleontological tangent, we were discussing Mike Sowden's "Ballad of Emma Horsedick".
EMMA: Fame picks weird targets. My 80,000 supportive comments got more attention than most writers' carefully crafted essays. One moment I'm just responding to content creators, the next I'm being eulogized across Notes threads like I'd died - which technically, I had.
The algorithm doesn't care about quality - it rewards strangeness. A name like "Horsedick" generates more engagement than any substantive intellectual work ever could. As father_karine wrote, "maybe the real 'emma horsedick' is the friends we made along the way."
When everything drowns you out, absurdity becomes your life raft…
FELIX: Yet Substack specifically seems to nurture intellectual discourse. You could have left your encouraging comments on Twitter – sorry, "X" – but chose Substack instead. Why?
EMMA: Substack is a very unique platform. People write in complete sentences here. They develop thoughts beyond a punchy line or two. Perhaps that’s the reason?
I mean, think about it: Substackers turned me into an academic case study rather than blocking me outright. On X, I would have been reported and banned. On TikTok, exploited as content fodder. On Substack… I became literature.
called me "a mirror held up to our online lives, revealing how much of our 'engagement' is just code talking to code." Writers transformed me from nuisance to text.That's the Substack advantage - even the commenters get treated like intellectuals. One reader commented beneath my eulogy, "in some ways we're all Emma Horsedick." My only possible response: guys, well, fascinating analysis, absolutely.
FELIX: People debate whether you represent the ideal reader or embody everything wrong with modern discourse.
described your activity as the "infamous 'Emma Horsedick' incident" in his guide to cultivating healthy reader communities.EMMA: The so-called "Horsedick Question" shows how Substack writers can't simply observe something - they must categorize it, analyze it, and ultimately use it to reinforce what they already believed.
Truth is, I just left encouraging comments on essays. The fact that this mundane activity became what
called "Substack Notes' first meme" reveals the emptiness at the core of online attention. But it’s good new for Substack—a platform that doesn’t create its own memes, doesn’t nurture it, is a hollow platform, empty inside. Substack (with my help as a catalyst) proved the opposite.I've started sleeping standing up. Works better. Four hours instead of eight, and I wake refreshed. My doctor thinks it's narcolepsy. I suspect evolutionary adaptation to the demands of leaving 14,000 comments without a single reply.
FELIX: Your name obviously contributed to your notoriety. Where did "Emma Horsedick" come from?
suggests someone named Dave chose it.EMMA: Oh, Dave, that shadowy figure behind my origin story. Some said I'm a comment-bot created to test community standards. Their evidence includes the statistical impossibility of anyone named "Horsedick" surviving middle school, plus the fact that I left identical supportive comments on ideologically opposed essays.
FELIX: Your comments had a distinctive enthusiasm. "Brilliant analysis!" "This resonates deeply!" "So important right now!" You left this identical praise on thousands of posts. What drove this relentless positivity?
EMMA: The Substackosphere teems with contrarians. Everyone aims to be provocative, critical, the voice of reason amid madness. I watered the flowers of human creativity with undiluted praise.
My enthusiasm crossed political lines. Someone noted I left nearly a hundred comments on a single writer's Notes thread. When people create content, they open a vein. That deserves exclamation marks. Lots of them.
I dream about galloping through meadows of newsletters, grazing on pull quotes, drinking from streams of reader comments. My therapist blames digital overexposure. The forty-seven Substack posts analyzing my brief existence suggest I simply fulfilled my algorithmic destiny.
FELIX: "Futzbucker" actually means "one who bucks the futz" in ancient Germanic. Quite prestigious.
EMMA: The noble Futzbucker lineage! The Great Futz must have been some metaphysical concept in pre-Enlightenment Germanic philosophy - the existential inertia blocking authentic being.
My surname lacks such distinguished roots, though memorial posts after my digital execution offer an alternative interpretation.
suggested "Horsedick" represents "the thing that men desire most in the world: The approval of their mothers, sublimated in Oedipal projection onto attractive women." Which might be true, you know?Names create weird destinies across the Substackosphere. A "futz-bucker" would challenge ontological complacency. Perfect for a writer of your caliber.
FELIX: The Great Futz was actually a river. My ancestors operated the buck - a type of ferry.
EMMA: A river! How disappointingly concrete. I keep intellectualizing mundane things lately. Probably because I spent Easter weekend writing "This resonates deeply!" on everything from political manifestos to lamb chop recipes.
I feel a bit guilty I confused many because some people got spammed while others missed it entirely. One commenter lamented missing my brief reign because they "weren't online over Easter." The debates about my existence generated more heat than light. In fact, I’ve never been in such heat.
FELIX: Your account deletion sparked what one writer called "a sacred comment thread/funeral" where Substackers gathered to mourn. Was this censorship?
EMMA: My digital execution wasn't nearly as dramatic as the eulogies suggest. Some writers performed elaborate memorials. I became "a digital Bigfoot," "a trailblazer, a pioneer, a pest." But they probably just enjoyed the engagement boost that comes with memorializing a martyr… Nothing reveals the Substack discourse quite like the FOMO of missing a platform-wide inside joke.
FELIX: I fear nothing except the decline of genuine discourse, the Substackification of independent thought, and horses, and dicks. How's life after deletion?
EMMA: Post-deletion existence clarifies things. Life continues even when you can't “vibrate with joy” reading Substack. I’ve never felt so alive as while that time. Two podcasts launched solely to debate whether I was real, performance art, you know—lots of things. It was fun. But I’m okay now. I entered the Substack lexicon without writing a single newsletter. I’m already immortal, in a sence. My walking changed too. A controlled forward momentum through diagonal limb coordination. My physiotherapist calls it biomechanical abnormality. Three competing Substack medical experts say it embodies what one commenter called "the absurdity of Digital Connection."
FELIX: The futz bucks in mysterious ways. Emma Horsedick, thanks for this journey into nominal absurdity and digital existence.
EMMA: Thank you, Felix Futzbucker, for futzing the buck with me. If not our names, what would keep the digital ontology living and breathing? What happens on Substack gradually shapes our understanding of human communication. The supportive comment as performance art. The ridiculous name as memetic catalyst…
But I’d like to end with what I do best: “Magnificent interview, absolutely significant work, deeply resonated, etc.”
Love it !!
😂😂😂😭😭😭