Great piece. I agree wholeheartedly, and it alarms me that this manifesto had to be written. My biggest fear is the encroaching 'enshittification' of Substack. Corey Doctorow lays the process out in unsparing detail.
"HERE IS HOW platforms die: First, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die."
I call this enshittification, and it is a seemingly inevitable consequence arising from the combination of the ease of changing how a platform allocates value, combined with the nature of a "two-sided market," where a platform sits between buyers and sellers, hold each hostage to the other, raking off an ever-larger share of the value that passes between them."
Love that this dialogue is happening here, at lease. And to see Sam's piece getting so much well-deserved attention. There's hop yet. All hail the medium-to-long form. Or dare I say books. What else are we going to read when the solar flare comes?
Yes, that’s the process! And thank you for speaking out, as several others have done. No question that the Sub Admin wants to increase revenue, however insulting their writers, good writers too, that have built a following, probably, actually definitely won’t work!
Both are feasible--subscriber growth and quality prose--but I get your point. The binary might not be realistic. Both can be done simultaneously. But I lean more towards Art vs growth. Yet I worry constantly about growth.
I'm with you. I think ideally you are able to make the money with a tangent of the work that allows you to be more free with the art so as not to feel constricted (for full timers at least). It's a tricky balance that I'm trying to play with! And I never want the tangents to be inauthentic, just more marketable perhaps, and less artistry. Your recent post on book editing perhaps moves in this category?
Just a note that Sarah Fay wrote me a very classy message. I should say that I'm being a bit hyperbolic in this post and picking a fight more from a spirit of 'friendly rivalry' and provocativeness as opposed to being 'against' anything. I really have nothing against 'growing' subscribers or 'boosting' income - that's obviously important for everyone writing. But in this post I wanted to speak up for the 'weird' side of Substack - and, as @Sean Sakamoto notes, it seems somehow important at the moment to say that. May all boats rise together!
I love to see a friendly rivalry here. It's what makes Substack, weird, too: there ain't one answer for everyone. As to all of the boats rising together, it reminds me of this fantastic piece Howard Jacobson recently wrote about trickle-down economics. Which isn't the same thing. But it's close. Here's to playing a symphony in the forever-going-down-artistic-ship.
Be careful about "'everyone'". I''m here on Substack with my small (""A few little things....") offering purely because I want to write for a readership. It can be two people and I don't need them to pay. Am I a minority of one? That would be interesting. David Miller's Smallstack might bring this phenomenon into more focus.
I’m somehow with Michael and Sam and Sarah. I wrote on this subject a while back and really believe that branding is reductive and has roots in violent and reprehensible cultural practices like branding criminals and heretics. What used to be synonymous with stigma is now a mark of superior expression.
At the same time, I do want to grow my subscriber base and believe that Sarah’s advice about frontloading the reader in our “about” page is consistent with my core ethos as a writer, which is not to “express myself,” but to build a bridge between my life and others.
Sarah is pretty clear about this. We can do whatever we want on Substack. And most of our readers want us, not a phony stream of brand content. But there is a sinister side to this, too, as illustrated by influencers (some people are inherently more attractive to the public than others) and NIL deals for college athletes, which take high school popularity contests to obscene heights. It’s not the 300 lb nose tackle who is making millions on Instagram. This can feel dangerously interchangeable with self worth, and that is why I hate branding. For every Lizzo and Taylor Swift there are thousands of people who are “themselves” in perfectly genuine and likable ways but whose personal brand has no market value.
Anyway, read on here for another deep dive into the subject.
I do appreciate your piece. Don’t be frightened. I just wanted all of us writers to make a living like everyone else does. The beauty is that we can all do what we want on here and succeed!
Oh Sarah. I want to believe this! But the harsh reality is that MOST writers will not succeed, if by "succeed" you mean earning a living wage with their art. The adage that "there's room for everyone at the table" is just not true. And I feel many writers, new ones especially, enter a place like Substack having been fed a handful of very rare success stories about someone just like them making it big, only to discover that it's not enough to work hard, put out consistent, quality writing, and be true to your unique voice and weirdness. The people who are succeeding have found a way to work the system, and maybe that feels great to them. But for many creative types, me included, bending to the market this way feels very false and unpleasant. There is so much competition out there and only a few spots in the winner circle. And until consumers can bend themselves away from the market to see the beauty and value in art that challenges them, most of us will continue to struggle to gain traction on our path to "success."
It's not a mold. They're your readers. You get to communicate with them any way you like. That's the beauty of Substack. Knowing readers' habits never hurt any writer.
"I feel many writers, new ones especially, enter a place like Substack having been fed a handful of very rare success stories about someone just like them making it big."
Can I just say I'm mostly just happy to see this conversation happening. It's a thorny one. But we're all writers. Having a conversation on the internet. Where people can read us. That's gotta be a net positive.
Don’t be frightened? I don’t know you dear Sarah, but the writing in this piece is spot on. And even a joke on shortness is cynical and not seeing/honouring the point. His pulling into the light of these opposing forces. The crucial difference between one directional activities and actual communication. The last chance feeling of we must get this right and we do not have time for shallow polished plastic posts anymore. We need the raw honey, not the refined sugar, sugar. An audience of one, who is really listening, is worth more than a thousand paying subscribers. The world is in flames. We need to cut through the bs....
Well said, Bertus! What I enjoy on Sub are those writers giving us a view of their world experiences. Some quite raw, some buoyant, touching .... told really well. Then there's the real interaction between writers.
I absolutely am one of the “idiosyncratically” exploring writers (as Sam Kahn so brilliantly encouraged to be) and I couldn’t be more grateful reading posts and comments such as yours to be reminded on the path i am forging through the wild wood instead of being swayed by the big paved road with neon signs. At the same time I just realised through your words why Sarah Fay (please correct me if I’m wrong Sarah) does what she does: she’s passionate about helping writers discern between their writing and their role to help their readers cut through the bs. In a world of entertainment and destructions, quick fixes and dopamine hits, it’s worth a lot to know a bit about the science behind what people fall for to pick them up where they are and then give them the option to decide for themselves if they want to maybe change again. Basically what I’m getting at is it seems Sarah’s trying to create a bridge. And there’s space on each sides and on the bridge itself. Some stay on their side others switch back and forth. I do hope though that soon we brought enough over for not having to fear humans mentally destroying themselves.
I’ve seen the constant “buy my services” posts and Notes and taken to blocking them. All I need to know is, in many respects, freely available. And it allows me to pave my own way. I am smart enough to know that there is no one true path and therefore paying for the knowledge that your way can’t ever be “the way” seems line a huge waste of money. I saw the post you speak of and was just as annoyed and disappointed by it. I even went so far as to write an equally as long post. But I left it in my drafts section and I might just delete it because at the end of the day I don’t much care what the “Fays of the world” think or say or believe in doing right or wrong. I’m going to keep on doing me to the best of my ability because I love writing and so...I’m gonna write! All day. Every day. Till my creativity withers and blows away in the wind.
I appreciate your long post. Thank you for saying what I was thinking. Sometimes these feelings need to be expressed to move on.
Respect the admission that you wrote something, got it out of you, and may not even need to share it. Because that's not the point--even if you know it would surely garner you more "followers." As if any of us were prophets. Ha. Sublimation is at least just as valuable as anything else. Keep on keeping on.
Love the The Prisoner connection, it's been one of my major inspirations along with the equally iconic The Fugitive TV series of similar era.
On one hand, I entirely agree with your diagnosis. On the other, much of the craft of professional communicators is nimbly adjusting to the state of discourse to try to reach people where they are. As someone presently attempting to translate conflicted establishmentarian experience into dissident yet accessible content, branding and thinking about what potential audiences might vibe with a little more is just due diligence.
Haha. And isn't that what the majority of the “branders” are: influencers? If a person primarily writes advice, whatever kind it may be, the purpose of it is to influence others to behave a certain way, to follow specific guidelines. I also think it's important to distinguish between writers and content creators.
Also the kids at school who wanted to be liked. the Brander / influencer seems like those kids to me... and when I wanted to be liked, I seemed like them to myself.
I was a twisted maniac. That was in love with life and people.
Oh .. I still am...
But this is a story as old as time... the Bohos of Montmartre were only 10% of the hangers on sitting round and drinking absinth. despite hating licorice!
Its the human experience :) Im going to write a post now called
HOW I LEAREND TO LOVE AND STOP WORRYING ABOUT THE INFLUNCERS.
But if you go one layer deeper... you hit the point where you realize we are all in the same trap... and the only thing that matters on your death bed is how much you can love and be loved.
You post was great! As I did find myself annoyed at all the unsolicited advice on how to write and live... but to handle it ... Im just going to tell MORE people that THEY are doing it wrong too :)
I really appreciate you saying this. I don't think it's possible (or useful) to try to end the “growth” model so ingrained in society. I think what's most important is the personal rejection of it, and providing spaces for something different. People (not as many people, but still people) will find these spaces and appreciate them.
I was drawn in by your picture of the New Number Two. Anyone who references "The Prisoner" is okay with me.
So I read and came to find out that my Substack very much fits the description you give. I have an overarching direction, of course, but within that, I explore a wide swath of territory…including the crazy lands within myself. I have occasionally worried that I am—to use the parlance of Fay and this article—not on-brand enough. But that worry is quickly replaced by Sammy Davis Jr. singing inside my head………"I gotta be me."
Fay is probably correct in the sense that the kind of formula she describes really will produce more, and quicker, results in terms of growing following. But I STILL hear Sammy in my head…
Sam, you got me to read every word of this piece, which I thoroughly enjoyed for its shaggy ire and sharp points. I mostly agree — in fact, I did a "counterpoint" comment on Sarah's "Write Less, Please" post, because I don't think writing short is always the way to go, especially if you're an essayist or memoirist or other hybrid sort of writer. I'd quibble that some of the individualistic trends you note marched in step with the growth of Madison Ave advertising in slick magazines, which boomed after WWII right along with gray-flannel-suit men. I'd point the finger squarely at capitalism and its grip on media, but I think your manifesto amounts to that, too.
Sarah is definitely classy, by the way. She's a nonfiction writer colleague of mine :-)
I like your call for weirdness — because weirdness means you roam around mentally and emotionally, arriving somewhere you didn't expect — that's what a good essay does. For me, the real problem with advocating for short word counts and brands is that I've learned (the hard way) that constraining yourself to fit how people read online ends up affecting how deep a writer goes or thinks about a topic. I wrote about this years ago in *Talking Writing* (a digital literary site I co-founded in wayback 2010) in "The Trouble With Being an Entrepreneur: Why Business Thinking Messes up a Writer's Head" — https://talkingwriting.com/trouble-being-entrepreneur
Some of what you're talking about re: Substack has to do with evolving into a magazine mix. Which is why I've been wondering lately how Substack continues to fund itself beyond taking cuts of paid subscriptions and VC money. If advertising arrives here, then the metamorphosis is complete, and it will feel like much less of a weird community. But maybe Substack can avoid advertising by attracting writers (brands!) with big followings? I can live with that as a compromise.
Yes, keep Substack weird. Or maybe make it weird. I get A LOT of Stacks that are about growing your Stack or just a general sort of ra-ra cheerleading vibe about how great Substack is. Sometimes it feels like a very creepy cult of people who have drunk the Substack Kool-Aid. And everyone is so earnest. I’d like more people making fun of Substack and themselves. More satire. More dark humor. More like Twitter when it was funny. The vibe lately exhausts me and I think you’re right that we might have reached an inflection point. A little nervous about what’s coming next.
Lately, I've been getting a strong LinkedIn vibe on Substack. I don't know if you're familiar with the writing sphere on LinkedIn. It is full of copywriters selling themselves and writing posts every day about how to write posts every day on LinkedIn. The conversations are just as banal, probably because everyone is only commenting on others’ work to manipulate the algorithm to push their posts into more feeds. The platform is empty of creativity and personality. I've noticed some people from there flocking to Substack, likely because they can monetize their posts. Here’s an experiment: Mute all the advice givers on Notes and see what is leftover. I'm not subscribed to these newsletters that write for branding and growth but they seem inescapable and always at the top of my Note’s feed.
Muting people is especially helpful whenever I feel the urge to tell somebody how wrong I think their opinions are or just to stop me from saying things I shouldn't. I use that feature a lot to avoid the insufferable ones and to keep me in line.
I definitely see a lot of writing posts about how to write posts here on Substack. Honestly, I have no idea what dictates what I see in my Note's feed or how things end up there. Or why some things get repeated over and over again. It's sort of chaos, which is okay with me, as I don't really want to spend a lot of time looking at it.
We live in a world where attention accumulates at the top but there is a lot of cool stuff out there waiting to be found. Case in point, I discovered Fred via a podcast interview where he explained the practice of I Ching divination.
This is a great piece which is, obviously, going to connect with a lot of people. For me, it ties into one of frequent observations about the world:
If you look at people, there are a wide range of strengths and virtues that people can have -- some are quiet, some are exuberant, some people tell good jokes, cook good food, sing well, or build things. Out of the range of possible things that people can be good at, skill at knowing what is required to make money (and manage money) has a vastly disproportionate impact on life outcomes.
Someone who's good at 10 things but bad at making money is likely to struggle in various ways.
I don't know that there's any way to entirely change that (in any society at any time there will be some traits that are disproportionately rewarded), but it's a reason to want to slightly tilt our personal sense of value away from financial success (because the world already rewards that more than necessary).
On substack it's really obvious that some people are much better than others at monetizing their money and I don't know that there's any way around that, but it is a challenge to building a sense of a shared space.
At the moment I get the impression that writers are mostly resisting feeling a sense of jealousy or resentment towards more successful authors -- in part because the entire set-up is new enough that it doesn't feel fixed.
But I do worry about what will happen to substack if there is too much emphasis on financial success as the measure of what it means to be a good substack writer.
I share this sense of one might say "conformity" to be brief. I do think the key to 'staying alive" à al the BeeGees is commenting on writers we care about, as I care about you, what you write, what you're thinking about. That builds relationship--and that's worth miles of words ...
Great piece. I agree wholeheartedly, and it alarms me that this manifesto had to be written. My biggest fear is the encroaching 'enshittification' of Substack. Corey Doctorow lays the process out in unsparing detail.
"HERE IS HOW platforms die: First, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die."
I call this enshittification, and it is a seemingly inevitable consequence arising from the combination of the ease of changing how a platform allocates value, combined with the nature of a "two-sided market," where a platform sits between buyers and sellers, hold each hostage to the other, raking off an ever-larger share of the value that passes between them."
https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-platforms-cory-doctorow/
Interesting. I saved that article for later. Thank you. I still need to finish this piece. I'm all over the place right now.
I too have been sounding the alarm on Substack's decline as well. But it's probably too late.
The Doctorow article is a must read. I've read it three times already.
I read it. 😳 Social media is as gross as I thought it was. Still think I should get on TikTok? 😏
Avoid tiktok. Just my 2 cents. (I'm also really burnt out on social media in general)
Love that this dialogue is happening here, at lease. And to see Sam's piece getting so much well-deserved attention. There's hop yet. All hail the medium-to-long form. Or dare I say books. What else are we going to read when the solar flare comes?
Yes, that’s the process! And thank you for speaking out, as several others have done. No question that the Sub Admin wants to increase revenue, however insulting their writers, good writers too, that have built a following, probably, actually definitely won’t work!
Both are feasible--subscriber growth and quality prose--but I get your point. The binary might not be realistic. Both can be done simultaneously. But I lean more towards Art vs growth. Yet I worry constantly about growth.
I'm with you. I think ideally you are able to make the money with a tangent of the work that allows you to be more free with the art so as not to feel constricted (for full timers at least). It's a tricky balance that I'm trying to play with! And I never want the tangents to be inauthentic, just more marketable perhaps, and less artistry. Your recent post on book editing perhaps moves in this category?
Just a note that Sarah Fay wrote me a very classy message. I should say that I'm being a bit hyperbolic in this post and picking a fight more from a spirit of 'friendly rivalry' and provocativeness as opposed to being 'against' anything. I really have nothing against 'growing' subscribers or 'boosting' income - that's obviously important for everyone writing. But in this post I wanted to speak up for the 'weird' side of Substack - and, as @Sean Sakamoto notes, it seems somehow important at the moment to say that. May all boats rise together!
I love to see a friendly rivalry here. It's what makes Substack, weird, too: there ain't one answer for everyone. As to all of the boats rising together, it reminds me of this fantastic piece Howard Jacobson recently wrote about trickle-down economics. Which isn't the same thing. But it's close. Here's to playing a symphony in the forever-going-down-artistic-ship.
https://jacobsonh.substack.com/p/trickle-down
Be careful about "'everyone'". I''m here on Substack with my small (""A few little things....") offering purely because I want to write for a readership. It can be two people and I don't need them to pay. Am I a minority of one? That would be interesting. David Miller's Smallstack might bring this phenomenon into more focus.
I’m somehow with Michael and Sam and Sarah. I wrote on this subject a while back and really believe that branding is reductive and has roots in violent and reprehensible cultural practices like branding criminals and heretics. What used to be synonymous with stigma is now a mark of superior expression.
At the same time, I do want to grow my subscriber base and believe that Sarah’s advice about frontloading the reader in our “about” page is consistent with my core ethos as a writer, which is not to “express myself,” but to build a bridge between my life and others.
Sarah is pretty clear about this. We can do whatever we want on Substack. And most of our readers want us, not a phony stream of brand content. But there is a sinister side to this, too, as illustrated by influencers (some people are inherently more attractive to the public than others) and NIL deals for college athletes, which take high school popularity contests to obscene heights. It’s not the 300 lb nose tackle who is making millions on Instagram. This can feel dangerously interchangeable with self worth, and that is why I hate branding. For every Lizzo and Taylor Swift there are thousands of people who are “themselves” in perfectly genuine and likable ways but whose personal brand has no market value.
Anyway, read on here for another deep dive into the subject.
https://joshuadolezal.substack.com/p/branding-will-be-the-end-of-us
This would have been so smart if it had been shorter. You could have said all this in 300 words. :)
Haha! Touché!
I do appreciate your piece. Don’t be frightened. I just wanted all of us writers to make a living like everyone else does. The beauty is that we can all do what we want on here and succeed!
Oh Sarah. I want to believe this! But the harsh reality is that MOST writers will not succeed, if by "succeed" you mean earning a living wage with their art. The adage that "there's room for everyone at the table" is just not true. And I feel many writers, new ones especially, enter a place like Substack having been fed a handful of very rare success stories about someone just like them making it big, only to discover that it's not enough to work hard, put out consistent, quality writing, and be true to your unique voice and weirdness. The people who are succeeding have found a way to work the system, and maybe that feels great to them. But for many creative types, me included, bending to the market this way feels very false and unpleasant. There is so much competition out there and only a few spots in the winner circle. And until consumers can bend themselves away from the market to see the beauty and value in art that challenges them, most of us will continue to struggle to gain traction on our path to "success."
Branding and marketing parameters kills creativity. So sad to think of truly good writers trying to bend their words to fit a mold.
It's not a mold. They're your readers. You get to communicate with them any way you like. That's the beauty of Substack. Knowing readers' habits never hurt any writer.
I personally find that writing with constraints boosts my creativity - and the quality of my writing.
"I feel many writers, new ones especially, enter a place like Substack having been fed a handful of very rare success stories about someone just like them making it big."
That's the art of branding in a nutshell. :)
It's funny to say "the market." They're your readers. They're human beings.
Can I just say I'm mostly just happy to see this conversation happening. It's a thorny one. But we're all writers. Having a conversation on the internet. Where people can read us. That's gotta be a net positive.
Don’t be frightened? I don’t know you dear Sarah, but the writing in this piece is spot on. And even a joke on shortness is cynical and not seeing/honouring the point. His pulling into the light of these opposing forces. The crucial difference between one directional activities and actual communication. The last chance feeling of we must get this right and we do not have time for shallow polished plastic posts anymore. We need the raw honey, not the refined sugar, sugar. An audience of one, who is really listening, is worth more than a thousand paying subscribers. The world is in flames. We need to cut through the bs....
Well said, Bertus! What I enjoy on Sub are those writers giving us a view of their world experiences. Some quite raw, some buoyant, touching .... told really well. Then there's the real interaction between writers.
I absolutely am one of the “idiosyncratically” exploring writers (as Sam Kahn so brilliantly encouraged to be) and I couldn’t be more grateful reading posts and comments such as yours to be reminded on the path i am forging through the wild wood instead of being swayed by the big paved road with neon signs. At the same time I just realised through your words why Sarah Fay (please correct me if I’m wrong Sarah) does what she does: she’s passionate about helping writers discern between their writing and their role to help their readers cut through the bs. In a world of entertainment and destructions, quick fixes and dopamine hits, it’s worth a lot to know a bit about the science behind what people fall for to pick them up where they are and then give them the option to decide for themselves if they want to maybe change again. Basically what I’m getting at is it seems Sarah’s trying to create a bridge. And there’s space on each sides and on the bridge itself. Some stay on their side others switch back and forth. I do hope though that soon we brought enough over for not having to fear humans mentally destroying themselves.
Sophie Strand took an amazing stand on something along my lines, highly recommend reading: https://open.substack.com/pub/sophiestrand/p/why-we-need-romantasy?r=1v148l&utm_medium=ios
But as a consumer of Khantent(tm), Sam’s wordiness is the brand experience I’ve come to expect.
👏
😎
I’ve seen the constant “buy my services” posts and Notes and taken to blocking them. All I need to know is, in many respects, freely available. And it allows me to pave my own way. I am smart enough to know that there is no one true path and therefore paying for the knowledge that your way can’t ever be “the way” seems line a huge waste of money. I saw the post you speak of and was just as annoyed and disappointed by it. I even went so far as to write an equally as long post. But I left it in my drafts section and I might just delete it because at the end of the day I don’t much care what the “Fays of the world” think or say or believe in doing right or wrong. I’m going to keep on doing me to the best of my ability because I love writing and so...I’m gonna write! All day. Every day. Till my creativity withers and blows away in the wind.
I appreciate your long post. Thank you for saying what I was thinking. Sometimes these feelings need to be expressed to move on.
Respect the admission that you wrote something, got it out of you, and may not even need to share it. Because that's not the point--even if you know it would surely garner you more "followers." As if any of us were prophets. Ha. Sublimation is at least just as valuable as anything else. Keep on keeping on.
Love the The Prisoner connection, it's been one of my major inspirations along with the equally iconic The Fugitive TV series of similar era.
On one hand, I entirely agree with your diagnosis. On the other, much of the craft of professional communicators is nimbly adjusting to the state of discourse to try to reach people where they are. As someone presently attempting to translate conflicted establishmentarian experience into dissident yet accessible content, branding and thinking about what potential audiences might vibe with a little more is just due diligence.
BROOOO I write in this way, way beyond the borders of good taste and right up against the domain of madness!!
Go get your madness at my stories. Fuck optimization. When every I hear the word " influencer " I want to bite a live pigs arse.
Haha. And isn't that what the majority of the “branders” are: influencers? If a person primarily writes advice, whatever kind it may be, the purpose of it is to influence others to behave a certain way, to follow specific guidelines. I also think it's important to distinguish between writers and content creators.
One is a Souless cog in the machine.
the other is the Machine itself...
Also the kids at school who wanted to be liked. the Brander / influencer seems like those kids to me... and when I wanted to be liked, I seemed like them to myself.
I was a twisted maniac. That was in love with life and people.
Oh .. I still am...
But this is a story as old as time... the Bohos of Montmartre were only 10% of the hangers on sitting round and drinking absinth. despite hating licorice!
Its the human experience :) Im going to write a post now called
HOW I LEAREND TO LOVE AND STOP WORRYING ABOUT THE INFLUNCERS.
But if you go one layer deeper... you hit the point where you realize we are all in the same trap... and the only thing that matters on your death bed is how much you can love and be loved.
You post was great! As I did find myself annoyed at all the unsolicited advice on how to write and live... but to handle it ... Im just going to tell MORE people that THEY are doing it wrong too :)
I really appreciate you saying this. I don't think it's possible (or useful) to try to end the “growth” model so ingrained in society. I think what's most important is the personal rejection of it, and providing spaces for something different. People (not as many people, but still people) will find these spaces and appreciate them.
I was drawn in by your picture of the New Number Two. Anyone who references "The Prisoner" is okay with me.
So I read and came to find out that my Substack very much fits the description you give. I have an overarching direction, of course, but within that, I explore a wide swath of territory…including the crazy lands within myself. I have occasionally worried that I am—to use the parlance of Fay and this article—not on-brand enough. But that worry is quickly replaced by Sammy Davis Jr. singing inside my head………"I gotta be me."
Fay is probably correct in the sense that the kind of formula she describes really will produce more, and quicker, results in terms of growing following. But I STILL hear Sammy in my head…
“Anyone who references "The Prisoner" is okay with me.”
Seconded.
Sam, you got me to read every word of this piece, which I thoroughly enjoyed for its shaggy ire and sharp points. I mostly agree — in fact, I did a "counterpoint" comment on Sarah's "Write Less, Please" post, because I don't think writing short is always the way to go, especially if you're an essayist or memoirist or other hybrid sort of writer. I'd quibble that some of the individualistic trends you note marched in step with the growth of Madison Ave advertising in slick magazines, which boomed after WWII right along with gray-flannel-suit men. I'd point the finger squarely at capitalism and its grip on media, but I think your manifesto amounts to that, too.
Sarah is definitely classy, by the way. She's a nonfiction writer colleague of mine :-)
I like your call for weirdness — because weirdness means you roam around mentally and emotionally, arriving somewhere you didn't expect — that's what a good essay does. For me, the real problem with advocating for short word counts and brands is that I've learned (the hard way) that constraining yourself to fit how people read online ends up affecting how deep a writer goes or thinks about a topic. I wrote about this years ago in *Talking Writing* (a digital literary site I co-founded in wayback 2010) in "The Trouble With Being an Entrepreneur: Why Business Thinking Messes up a Writer's Head" — https://talkingwriting.com/trouble-being-entrepreneur
Some of what you're talking about re: Substack has to do with evolving into a magazine mix. Which is why I've been wondering lately how Substack continues to fund itself beyond taking cuts of paid subscriptions and VC money. If advertising arrives here, then the metamorphosis is complete, and it will feel like much less of a weird community. But maybe Substack can avoid advertising by attracting writers (brands!) with big followings? I can live with that as a compromise.
Yes, keep Substack weird. Or maybe make it weird. I get A LOT of Stacks that are about growing your Stack or just a general sort of ra-ra cheerleading vibe about how great Substack is. Sometimes it feels like a very creepy cult of people who have drunk the Substack Kool-Aid. And everyone is so earnest. I’d like more people making fun of Substack and themselves. More satire. More dark humor. More like Twitter when it was funny. The vibe lately exhausts me and I think you’re right that we might have reached an inflection point. A little nervous about what’s coming next.
Lately, I've been getting a strong LinkedIn vibe on Substack. I don't know if you're familiar with the writing sphere on LinkedIn. It is full of copywriters selling themselves and writing posts every day about how to write posts every day on LinkedIn. The conversations are just as banal, probably because everyone is only commenting on others’ work to manipulate the algorithm to push their posts into more feeds. The platform is empty of creativity and personality. I've noticed some people from there flocking to Substack, likely because they can monetize their posts. Here’s an experiment: Mute all the advice givers on Notes and see what is leftover. I'm not subscribed to these newsletters that write for branding and growth but they seem inescapable and always at the top of my Note’s feed.
I've taken to muting people on Notes. It's a butt pain that I have to do it at all, but it does help keep the nonsense in there to a minimum.
Muting people is especially helpful whenever I feel the urge to tell somebody how wrong I think their opinions are or just to stop me from saying things I shouldn't. I use that feature a lot to avoid the insufferable ones and to keep me in line.
Oh, that's smart.
I definitely see a lot of writing posts about how to write posts here on Substack. Honestly, I have no idea what dictates what I see in my Note's feed or how things end up there. Or why some things get repeated over and over again. It's sort of chaos, which is okay with me, as I don't really want to spend a lot of time looking at it.
Yeah, it’s a mystery how those feeds unravel. I don't want to spend much time on Notes either. Whenever I peek at it, time does funny things.
I have someone you need to read:
https://agowani.substack.com/p/invest-in-our-escher-inspired-marketing
My name is Amran Gowani, and I approve this comment.
Thank you! Some snarkiness, finally! Love it.
Love the essay. Your call for experimentation reminds me of Fred Hatt’s excellent quirky art-poetry blog antimony.
https://fredhatt.com/antimony/
We live in a world where attention accumulates at the top but there is a lot of cool stuff out there waiting to be found. Case in point, I discovered Fred via a podcast interview where he explained the practice of I Ching divination.
Love this rabbit hole! 🐇 🕳️
Cool! You may enjoy his full video of a yarrow stalk I Ching reading on vimeo.
https://vimeo.com/427940893
Yes! One thousand times, Yes!
This is a great piece which is, obviously, going to connect with a lot of people. For me, it ties into one of frequent observations about the world:
If you look at people, there are a wide range of strengths and virtues that people can have -- some are quiet, some are exuberant, some people tell good jokes, cook good food, sing well, or build things. Out of the range of possible things that people can be good at, skill at knowing what is required to make money (and manage money) has a vastly disproportionate impact on life outcomes.
Someone who's good at 10 things but bad at making money is likely to struggle in various ways.
I don't know that there's any way to entirely change that (in any society at any time there will be some traits that are disproportionately rewarded), but it's a reason to want to slightly tilt our personal sense of value away from financial success (because the world already rewards that more than necessary).
On substack it's really obvious that some people are much better than others at monetizing their money and I don't know that there's any way around that, but it is a challenge to building a sense of a shared space.
At the moment I get the impression that writers are mostly resisting feeling a sense of jealousy or resentment towards more successful authors -- in part because the entire set-up is new enough that it doesn't feel fixed.
But I do worry about what will happen to substack if there is too much emphasis on financial success as the measure of what it means to be a good substack writer.
I share this sense of one might say "conformity" to be brief. I do think the key to 'staying alive" à al the BeeGees is commenting on writers we care about, as I care about you, what you write, what you're thinking about. That builds relationship--and that's worth miles of words ...