Substack Sickos

Please connect me with my community 💌🙏✨

A dear friend of mine recently did the Dear Substack trick. She jumped from a single digit subscriber count to triple digits overnight. As one of those first single digits, this made me feel all sorts of things. Sorrow. Pride. Envy.

For a moment I wished she had posted to the void a little longer, gone stir-crazy, become a companion in solitude. I felt she sold out to the engagement farms and sub-for-sub harpies, but was glad I still held my dignity. Though I craved the social proof too; a couple of dms, an assortment of compliments. If only they knew how fast I’d snake them out, just to wake up to a glittering trove of notifications.

This assortment of guilts and intrusive thoughts sent me down a rabbit hole. Someone other than her I would have easily scoffed at and belittled their attempt at socializing on social media, because any hint of success would threaten my strategy of never trying. But with someone I know and respect, I thought it was more likely that I was being insecure and cowardly, so I went to her replies to observe.

At first glance I was mostly impressed. Most of the accounts I scrolled through seemed real enough, and had a common interest with her. But the next day, substack thought I really enjoyed reading those replies, and my feed was chock full of them, and that’s what I’d really like to rant about.

Dread it, run from it, LinkedIn still arrives. The most common words that popped up in an hour of scrolling related notes.

I get what it’s like to post something new, to feel like you have something worth contributing, seeking praise and judgement. It’s cool to be on a platform that respects writing, and to be surrounded by a bunch of internet strangers where you can see if they value anyone enough to pay to read. There’s so much talent and perspective here that you’d honestly be foolish to not cast a line in the pool. But why do some of you have to be so vapid?

I’d rather you connect me to the nearest live outlet

You wish you could feel shame to be a human. I’m not sure what disgusts me more, AI pretending to be human or low effort human posting.

Some might say “Kevin just scroll past them, it’s fine every platform has bots and spammers.” No. I want heads on pikes and my feeds purified.¹ I need more people to be aware of and use this button in generous amounts. I need to overcorrect with some draconian id verification so I don’t lose hair over illusions.

I hate how drained and cynical these sorts of posts make me. I hate how quickly my trust and clarity collapse, how wary I become of everyone’s intentions. I hate seeing vulnerable, wide-eyed impressionable writers getting targeted and taken advantage of. I hate that one of my first comments on something I put heart into was an oil guzzler. A clanker. Sycophantic, soulless sludge. I hate that my phone buzzed with an email notification, my heart leaped, and then I had to spend 10 minutes deciphering whether or not I was being a jerk or if it was actually an automated script. I hate how much better they’re getting, how easy it is for them to amass large followings and pollute the algorithmically driven feeds. I hate feeling stupid and less and less confident that I can detect it, and I hate that I don’t even have a good target to direct my frustrations at.

Of course, some of these frustrations might say more about my pride and ego or inexperience on social media. I wish I had been there for the golden days of twitter, tumblr, or myspace, back when I’m told the internet was more sincere and the signal to noise ratio was better. It’s debatable whether there is room for hope on the public feeds, or whether we should all just retreat to private discords and group chats and spend less and less time with the grifters and screechers.

It’s also possible that Substack may actually be a better platform than we give it credit for, and it just takes time to figure out the moderation and personalization tools to separate the wheat from the chaff. This could be an exceptionally bad time of year due to an influx of low quality New Year’s Resolutioners. Perhaps this plague is a sort of blessing in disguise, an opportunity for those of flesh and blood inclinations capable of the friction and spirit necessary to produce real art and insight.

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Dear Substack the right way

I think you should get one chance. Maaaaybe it can refresh after 6 months or if you go in a coma and want another one. No sin is greater than abusing the “new writer” tactic.² Shut up and move along. That said, if you think you deserve readers, you should be specific. Think about the sorts of people you want to attract, and who to repulse. You should actually want to read and collaborate with your early readers, because you will spend a lot of time alone as a writer, and why should your first 100 subscribers be automatons that love delving into philosophical themes through the lenses of psychology and neuroscience?

I won’t post what my friend did on request of anonymity, but mostly I think it was very well done because it was specific about her niche interests and a little self effacing. That’s it. Just tell me whatever bare minimum separates you from the live laugh lovers, maybe link a post or sentence you’re proud of. The bar is so low currently. Personally, I think the only thing more cringe than doing it is thinking you’re too cool to do it. Wiser people have said “kill the part of you that cringes.”

Maybe I should have skipped all this and just done a stupid dear substack note, but thought this was worth posting to navigate my own tensions with self promo and finding an audience, and I was inspired by Jayson Fritz-Stibbe. In all honesty, all I want is a similarly aged cohort to compare myself to with similar interests to bounce ideas and drafts off each other, but for the most part I’m stuck in gender war and TDS substack, which frankly isn’t conducive for meeting people in their 20’s.

Someone is Using AI to Exploit Lonely Writers on Substack

I’ve had a couple real interactions on substack that I don’t think I could find in other media. I told a friend that I would find the nearest cliff if AI was able to reproduce their style of writing, and they said it was the highest form of compliment someone could give. I commented under a prominent pro-natalist writer and he honestly told me an area of research that was lacking in evidence to make his claims. These tiny positive interactions add up, this sort of honesty and authenticity is one of the best parts of substack, but this culture shouldn’t be taken for granted. You should venerate and celebrate the good when you see it, and preserve your strong antibodies of resentment and shame the bad when you see it.

1. I’m aware some of my feed was contaminated by virtue of doing some research for this article. The mute and report button works pretty well, but I still see enough low-effort spam and slop to warrant complaint. Yes the former is a little dramatic.

2. Other than harming shrimp without using an appropriate stunner of course.