I Tried Substack & Kinda Hate It

I’ve been wanting to write about this for a while now but alas, procrastination ensued. This summer I created a Substack account after realizing most of the bloggers I’ve looked up to for years had migrated from their blog sites over to the stack. I figured if so many of these highly esteemed bloggers I’d swooned over since the early 2000’s (when the internet was but a mere peach fuzz) had evolved to Substack writing it must be the place.

Like all new endeavors, I didn’t just dip my toe into the waters of Substack. I dove right on in- for a week straight I moved posts from my blog over, designed my feed, and scoured my for you page finding writers in which to subscribe. I spent hours of very precious free time while my toddler was napping learning what I could and discovering Substack.

After a week, my drive for Substack undoubtedly fizzled out. It wasn’t because my hyperfixation on Substack had become unfixated, It was because I realized a fatal flaw in the Substack machine. It felt like just another social media site and I immediately hated the whole experience. Not that I’m a social media hater by any means- I mean I am in fact in a guilty pleasure loving relationship with TikTok.

I might enjoy social media from time to time but I can’t mix the art of writing with social media. I’ll use social media to help get people to my blog, but to use it as the sole platform for writing felt like a crime. Maybe I sound dramatic, but I’m disappointed so many early bloggers abandoned their personal sites to write solely on Substack. I don’t want to call it a sell out, but it’s a sell out.

The argument of moving to Substack for monetization through paywall opportunities in an attempt to escape advertisement agencies isn’t really even a argument. Monetization through personal sites is easier than ever. You don’t have to know how to code to put a paywall on your site anymore; most blog hosting sites have made it as easy as dragging and dropping.

I’m not alone in the thought that Substack is a social media site. Hamish McKenzie, a co-founder of Substack recently sent a newsletter titled Substack Is a Social Media App, Let’s Just All Agree On This. He moves forward to say the following:

“We started Substack in 2017 as a response to the ways social media was warping culture, so it might seem odd that we’ve somehow built… a social media app.”

He discusses how Substack is different and how they are strengthening the core promise of what they originally envisioned for the site and how it’s different from the endless-scroll platforms instead offering a stimulating and nourishing long form content experience with discussions. I get it. I love the concept of their rebellion against short form doom scrolling content. That’s one of the main reasons I write a blog instead of only creating content on TikTok.

While I may love the idea of Substack, I can’t fully commit to the platform. It doesn’t give me the same feel of freedom I get writing on my very own website. I may be writing to an empty room and that room probably wouldn’t be empty if I commited to Substack, but I lose the artistic rebellious freedom that comes with my very own corner of the internet. It’s all mine. It’s a space that gives me the starving artist feel of only one hundred or less people a month reading the confines of my mind.

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