Why I am not on Substack (a rant)
Everybody and everybody’s uncle is on Substack these days. It’s the new place to be for established and emerging writers, thinkers, curators, artists, cultural commentators, and basically anyone with something to say and an internet connection. Whether it is essays, recipes, film recommendations, political rants, the whole range of human expression is now available on Substack. And I get the appeal, I guess? Some of my favorite thinkers have started one, so I would lie if I didn’t feel a slight fomo when yet another person I appreciate announces their Substack launch like it’s the opening of a small intellectual café on the internet.
A friend of mine told me I'd love it there, and that I might want to give it a chance. But instead, I decided to go public with a good ol’ webblog that had served as a semi-private space where I wrote about the absurdities of academic life for the past seven years or so. Here I publish rants mixed in with loose theoretical reflections, and fragments of ideas that didn’t make it into journal articles but still needed somewhere to exist. Back when I started this blog, Substack wasn’t a thing yet. But even now that it is, I don’t feel the urge to move there. As a matter of fact, I think we should all resist it. Especially as writers and social justice activists.
On a personal level, my resistance is partly rooted in the pressure of writing with an audience constantly in mind. It already took me quite a while to announce the existence of this blog at all. Writing here felt safe because it was slightly off the grid and not part of an ecosystem designed to measure your relevance in followers, likes, comments, and reshares. Substack, by design, makes writing performative in a very particular way. People get notified when you publish (that's the entire point of the platform) and your profile exists inside a recommendation system where your posts circulate through algorithms and engagement metrics. Of course I want to be read, like everyone else who writes on a digital platform, but I don’t want that reading to happen inside the machinery of what we now call the attention economy.
It's the economy of things for me, including platforms that serve as online marketplaces where everything is loud and messy and, ultimately, for sale. Yes, my blog runs on a platform too, but I believe there is a difference between a relatively humble hosting infrastructure and a social-media-style ecosystem of posery. Platforms like Substack are built around visibility loops, engagement, and growth, and once you're inside that system, it necessarily reshapes what and how you write. The widespread use of LLMs (Large Language Models that we have all decided to - mistakenly so - call "AI") is not helping either. The internet is drowning in pompous prose because so many people are publishing an abundance of text right now, and most of it is so, so bad.
But I'm not just a hater, I'm genuinely concerned. Because if platform history tells us anything, Substack is built for the typical eventual decay we have witnessed before. Mark my words: it is going to give you a shitty experience very soon. It will inevitably enshittify. Coined by journalist and author Cory Doctorow, enshitification describes the process of quality-decline in online platforms. All the well-known platforms begin by offering users great platform experiences so we all sign up for them, but then they slowly start to abuse us by tailoring their services onto business customers instead, whose only reason for signing up is to sell things to the large number of "regular" users (us). And finally, the platform cannibalizes both regular uses and business customers to maximize profits for shareholders, leading to platforms that are bad for everyone. Financially, mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually.
Remember when Google's search engine was awesome? And then it suddenly started to require multiple tries before giving us what we're actually looking for, just so it can show us more ads along the way. But because alternative search engines don't get to invest billions in superior search algorithms, monopolistic data infrastructures, and defaulting deals with Apple and Android, most of us stick with Google anyway. Enshittification thrives in these kinds of two-sided markets, where users/creators and creators/businesses alike are effectively held hostage. We stay and watch as platforms slowly degrade due to the constant rollout of useless features, increasingly invasive data collection, the algorithmic push of distressing content, the shadowbanning of politically relevant voices, and the list goes on. And we stay, of course, because we are addicted to scrolling and attention. Meanwhile, account deletion options are constantly moved around, buried or obscured to make it harder for us to leave.
I believe it’s only a matter of time before Substack turns into yet another controversial platform many of us end up dependent on for income, network, news, jobs... And controversial it already is: Substack recently received criticism for its hands-off approach to content moderation that allows literal Nazis, among others, to circulate harmful content without sanction. CEO Chris Best has defended the platform’s commitment to such “free speech”. So, people are already moving away from Substack, migrating to yet another platform. And so the cycle continues.
"There are people making a fortune on Substack," my colleague told me the other day. Many people join platforms like Substack in the hopes that it will make them rich and famous one day. They believe in this digitized version of the American Dream that frames constant output and self-branding as pathways to success. Playing into this fantasy, Substack offers users a business model through subscription-based paid content, hence buying into the trend of monetization that turns everything into a product. And yes, a handful of people do make some serious money on Substack, but really most don't. It's OnlyFans, but for the hipster elite. And I just refuse to be part of it. Besides, I believe there’s poetry in writing for the sake of it. And I believe there is power in sharing our writing freely and for free, without expecting anything in return.