bye-bye substack!

For the past five or so months, I’ve been trying to decide if I should leave substack. If you’re on the platform enough (meaning the website/app not just the newsletters you might get in your inbox), then you’ve noticed it has become much like twitter/tiktok/linkedin which is to say increasingly addictive and overwhelming.

Lately, I’ve been doing my best to limit my social media intake. I reactivated and deleted my twitter so many times that I’ve been banned from the platform (honestly thank god). I only log onto instagram once a month and then ask my bf to change my password. I even deleted linkedIn (although life will probably demand that I get back on one day, but for now I need to escape the nauseating enthusiasm of linkedin influencers…). And in the case of substack, I don’t plan to delete my account or previous essays, but I want to take a step back from posting here.

Some people are claiming that substack has the essence of 2010 tumblr, just people shooting the shit and expressing their thoughts, trying to develop their writing. All this is true to a certain extent, there is a nostalgic vibe here that reminds me of the “old internet”. The lo-fi, low-pressure fun of the blogosphere, twitter pre the commodification of virality. But the thing about substack (and maybe about all social media platforms) that wasn’t present during the prime of tumblr is the gnawing presence of money and the pressure it activates, at least for me. Every time I post something, I can’t help but hope that maybe I’ll finally get hundreds of likes, that perhaps this thing has the potential to change my material reality. It’s embarrassing to admit, but I think the thought is natural, because, as we all know, this has happened for certain people.

There are substack bloggers/writers/content creators/influencers whose lives have been drastically altered by their posts getting a lot of attention. Trying to make money from writing nowadays is essentially a fool’s errand, especially in the wake of shuttering publications, so of course, it is amazing that substack provides opportunities for career progression and financial stability. But contrary to what substack wants you to believe, this isn’t going to happen for most people. In order for this engine to work, there has to be the creators and the strivers, and if you’re not lucky enough to be a creator (who makes lucrative amount of money), then you’re delegated to being a striver, hoping and hoping to break through. (There are of course the people who are just having fun, not worried about any of this. If you are one of these people I envy you!) (Also it goes without saying that most of the people who have made careers out of substack had relatively thriving careers or big audiences before the substack boom. For example, Haley Nahman, Hunter Harris, Alison Roman, Jessica De Fino, etc.)

Ok, maybe most people don’t relate to this and I’m just exposing my own anxieties and jealously. But I can’t be the only one who is boggled down by all this. The pressure to produce consistently and publicly; to build an audience; to change my life. And amidst this immense pressure that I’ve placed on myself which is only activated by this crippling attention economy, amidst all these icky feelings is the fact that my writing isn’t really getting much better and that I’m not writing as much as I want to, or letting myself explore because I’m stuck in this endless vat of envy and anxiety and content. I’m not sure about this thought (or any of these thoughts really), but I think trying to develop as a writer under the demands of substack and its algorithm is too fraught. I think I need to hole up for a while. For my writing and, most importantly, my sanity, I need to spend less time striving.

I’m going to continue keeping a weekly poetry newsletter (of other people’s poems) via mailchimp, a platform that I like because it is truly for newsletters. It’s not social media! I don’t feel any pressure to share my own work or make a great newsletter. I think I can just have fun there, and for now that is what I want and need. I transferred my subscribers over already, but here’s a link to subscribe just in case you need it. <3