A Substack manifesto in 10 commitments

The 'rules' are up for grabs so I've come up with my own

In childhood I was described as compliant, mature-for-my-age and well-behaved, the classic ‘no trouble at all’ child. Predictably I’ve spent a large part of the last 10 years attempting to unravel where my people-pleasing stops and I begin.

More and more often I find myself squeezed into the uncomfortable space between my conditioning vs what I think is my more skeptical, challenging nature. I’ve noticed how often I nod and make noises that sound like, ‘oh yes, that sounds good’ to anyone in a position of (pseudo-) authority, while thinking, ‘sod that, I’ve got a better idea’.

Looking back I can see how this has been a pattern in my adult life. When working as a secondary school teacher I regularly bent, or straight-up ignored, edicts from Senior Leadership or Ofsted about what made lessons or ‘behaviour management’ (sicks in mouth) ‘effective’ (sicks in mouth again). I mostly got away with it because most of the time what I did instead, worked.

My blog and personal Instagram - the gateway drug to my professional habit - traversed some seemingly disconnected themes in a landscape that emphasised the importance of The Niche. It often felt like the only thread that held it altogether was me. But it worked.

The small businesses I’ve worked with, since retraining as a social media manager, have trusted me when I’ve told them social media works best when connections, not sales, are prioritised. This defies the dominant ‘bro’ culture of marketing, where headlines focus on growth and conversion rates, but it has worked every time.

I am not a confrontational person, nor a rebel, but my view is there are rules that make sense and should be followed - laws that keep us and other people safe, for example - while other rules are arbitrary, set at the personal whim of an ‘authority figure’ with a personal agenda that may hold some value but is certainly not the full picture - think No Ball Games on the only available open spaces on housing estates, a rule that elevates the needs of one group of people over another.

Meanwhile there’s another set of rules which have evolved over time, received wisdom passed amongst people about the ways things ‘should’ be done. These kinds of rules underpin many of our social interactions, and explain why we are so disorientated when we find ourselves amongst a set of people who do not follow the same set of social norms (rules) that we’re used to - I’m always surprised by how socially acceptable it is to stare in some cultures, a behaviour Brits are pathologically unsuited to.

The ‘rules’ around social media platforms belong firmly in this last group and are therefore always vulnerable to challenge and disruption. While platforms such as Instagram have a relatively mature dominant culture, there is still space for subculture; for The Rules to be bent, ignored, or harnessed for our own purposes.

In correspondence with a client recently, I wrote, ‘I'm excited about working together to subvert Instagram's culture and bend it to your purpose’, a sentence as close to professional nirvana as I’ve reached.

The relative maturity of the dominant culture of Instagram, clearly characterised by appeals to ever-shrinking attention spans, outrage-farming, and follower-count-based false authority, actually make it easier to sidestep, while simultaneously exploiting its tools.

However, it’s much more difficult to define Substack’s dominant culture, which in turn makes it harder to work out which bits serve us, and which bits we should ignore.

The platform is young and the shifts are seismic and happening at pace. The evangelism of some of its users makes me wary, and we’re nowhere near finding out whether Substack can deliver on its promise to create ‘a different kind’ of social media-publishing hybrid platform.

So, while the upheaval plays out I’ll be taking in the landscape, observing those who endeavour to shape it, and in the absence of a well-defined culture to subvert, I thought I might as well create my own in this microscopic corner of the internet.

Here are my 10 Commitments for 2024:

1. I commit to challenging myself. Can I publish consistently? Can I publish quality consistently? Do I have enough to say? This is not an intellectual exercise: the only way to find out is to Do It.

2. I commit to improving my writing. It’s a muscle and I’m sometimes slow to find the words that express my precise meaning. Maybe I’ll find this is just the way it is for me, but maybe I just need more practice. I want to find out.

3. I commit to using this space to figure out more of what I really think. Sometimes I start writing thinking I know what I want to say but the act of putting words down in a linear fashion exposes the holes in my thinking, the obstacles to my logic, or I arrive at a fork in the road presenting alternative paths. Sometimes I set off with no map whatsoever, and follow a trail of crumbs through the woods to a destination I had never considered.

4. I commit to exploring some ideas in greater depth. I say some ideas, because I know I’m not the only one who’s written 800 words to say something that could be summarised in 10. Those ideas belong on Instagram;-)

5. I commit to testing my ideas about social media and beyond to see if other people find them useful, interesting or relateable.

6. I commit to dialogue. I want to be in conversation with people whose perspectives can add to and enrich my experience and understanding of ideas and the world.

7. I commit to a slower-pace of ‘input’, a balm for my dopamine-hungry brain’s self-destructive behaviour.

8. I commit to reading more insight and experience that feeds my curiosity or makes me feel seen and understood.

9. I commit to empowering writers to leverage the upsides of social media, while side-stepping the downsides. As much as I like Substack, it is still mostly writers and creatives, talking to other writers and creative (if you don’t believe me, ask your ‘non-creative’ friends if they know what it is) so social media still has a job to do in finding the readers your work deserves.

10. I commit to exploring whether Substack could be a suitably (relatively) low-fi home where I can host a community of writers who want to use Instagram more effectively to grow their readership. Not poetic, but maybe useful.

How are you going to use Substack in 2024? How many of these would make it into your ‘manifesto’? Is there anything you’d add or change?

Photo by Luis Quintero on Unsplash