An Open Article to Substack
On Why it's Important for Substack to Resist Social Media Hooks and Status--and Why Serious Journalists, Writers and Readers Should Bail if They Don't
Though I still prefer Substack over any social media site by about a million miles, the new format makes it feel more like social media, and I like it less. A lot less.
***Sigh***
Case in point, someone’s stack blurb flashed by today before I could shut it out, opining that if you want to write, don’t open Substack because there’s so much to read. I don’t think that’s so much of an issue (in fact, that’s part of what’s great about Substack) as are the relentless inundating suggestions to follow this person, that person, your “friends”, “notes” and the endless scroll of suggested articles and authors; in my opinion, the new “notes” and “scroll” features especially, can take a long walk off a short Pierce Brosnon. Immediately.
Risking sounding like a modernish grouching luddite, I’ll offer that these new “features” are making a mess of what was as close to a pure platform as we’d seen in a long time.
And if we need anything right now, it’s purity.
I’m able to ignore most of it, despite its in-your-faceness. But should I have to??
I read/listen to a few people’s stacks almost without fail, simply because the content is fantastic. I found these folks via my own searches, wanting to hear more from people I’d discovered on other platforms doing great work, or because these people commented on my own writing and I found I respected theirs as well. I also don’t really mind, when I subscribe to someone I enjoy, that a few writers they follow are suggested to me. Fine; I’ll take suggestions from those I respect and follow.
But things seem to have recently taken a smells-like-MSSM turn.
Substack is (or was) the opposite of mainstream social media—refreshingly un: an uncurated, uncorporate, uncensored place for writers and journalists to offer up their untampered-with work without needing to bury themselves in the garbage of a social media machine.
When I discovered Substack, it was in the burgeoning era in which independent journalists often actively forced out of the corporate/political agenda-machine-sham the mainstream news media became adopted Substack to report real takes without being censored or shut out. Isn’t uncensored media just MEDIA as it should be?? Obv. What we used to consider “the news” is clearly now just a political/corporate push agenda. But that’s nothing if not old news, blah blah blah.
Substack is, from what I can see, dedicated to remain a legit uncensored platform. But many of us who gravitated here because of the un, also gravitated away from mainstream social media—not just because of its heavily censored and politically/corporate (no differentiation there, really) agenda-driven nonsense and underhanded tactics, but because it’s also, well, dumb.
I don’t care to scroll through a bunch of ads and trash and age-old LCD disturbing negative-news-cycle shit to get to something I might be interested in. My brain circuitry and chemistry are my business—I’m in no way interested in subjecting my sacred Self to Machiavellian charlatans who use bots and our biology against us to retain users and mine personal “data” to push agendas, deviously influence elections and social narratives, sell trash and create mindless, dependent consumers. I’m good, thanks. I also don’t care to share my personal life on a platform filled with the above-mentioned. If I could do on mainstream social media what I used to be able to do on Subtack (just write my stuff and subscribe to and engage with those I’m interested in, period), I’d be back on ms social media in a real way, not just using it primarily as an over-designed phone book.
The other day I tried FB Marketplace (thought that’d still be useful) to sell a few items and buy a couch. Well. I had no idea that even Marketplace had also been taken over by sham offers and scam “buyers”. Within about 5 minutes I’d fallen for a scam and given away my Google voice password or something I could care less about but that seems to have been a security and privacy breach I have yet to rectify. So, um, no thanks.
MSM and MSSM (in reality both fingers on the same hand) are ultimately, in my opinion, vibration killers—both personally and in a larger sense. In fact, they’re often nothing short of toxic (if actual people operated like these entities, we’d give them the boot ASAP). And as with toxic people, opting out or vastly limiting contact is the best option. We are magical expressions of the Divine who should treat ourselves as such. Good old supply and demand doesn’t so much apply anymore.
My suggestion to Substack is to step away from the social media garbage and stay independent and good-different. The serious writers and journalists Substack originally attracted will eventually just roll out their own new platform if Substack is ultimately infiltrated and consumed by meaningless (or worse) hooks and format. No one needs a new social media. What we need now is what Substack originally offered: a blank page on the internet on which to write and share independent ideas and information. Substack: keep it real. Keep it pure; keep your readers and writers.