Is Substack really 'The Great Escape' from social media?

Or is it more similar than we might like to think?

In December I wrote a ‘manifesto’ for my own Substack - a list of 10 commitments I was making to myself as I added another thing to the never-ending list of things I spend my days doing. The first item on the list read:

I commit to challenging myself. Can I publish consistently? Can I publish quality consistently? Do I have enough to say?

My drafts folder can attest I have not yet run out of things to say, but last week I broke my weekly-posting streak and it’s now over two weeks since I last published here.

I made a conscious effort to treat this as not-a-big-deal - client work has suddenly ramped up, and I took a couple of work days off to go on a writing retreat #winning - so this is not a post about what I’ve learned from giving myself permission to lift the self-imposed pressure.

Rather, taking a mini-break has allowed some thoughts that have been stirring in the back of my mind to develop, and I’ve become aware of how familiar the dynamic between me and Substack is starting to feel.

Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash

Could I have been here before?

Opening the Substack app to check if there’s a little orange dot underneath the bell; checking my email several times a day to see if any new people have signed up; visiting my dashboard to see how many subscribers I have altogether, are new versions of old habits I thought I had kicked.

When I identified I was feeling agitated about not posting because I was worried people would forget me if I wasn’t visible, or the growth (and associated dopamine) would dry up, I realised ha, I’ve been here before…

The time required to meet my commitment to weekly posting feels reminiscent of the content demands of Instagram. When I factor in that it takes me longer to write one long-form piece here than it does to create a week’s worth of Instagram posts that level of expectation feels crushing.

And that’s not all: along comes my old friend, Comparison, here to join the party… it’s been a while, and yet here she is again, dressed in finer words but talking the same language about account growth far faster than my own. ‘How are they doing that?’ was starting to slide into ‘I must be doing something wrong’ and it’s only a short hop from there to, ‘I’m rubbish and should just go away.’

This frustration has been exacerbated by how hierarchies and networks, an established feature of Instagram and beyond, have replicated themselves on Substack. This platform does not exist in a vacuum, immune to the influences of entrenched social structures. And, while I acknowledge my many privileges, a network of enormously successful writer friends who publicly talk about how excellent I am is not one of them.

I know exactly how this sounds (because it’s exactly how it feels), and although I can’t recall the difference between envy and jealousy, I know it’s one of those unflattering emotions we’d all prefer to pretend we never feel. Most of the time I shrug and just get on with it. I’m sure they’re lovely people who also work very hard, and some of them are preternaturally talented writers, but Substack hierarchies feel disappointingly, albeit not surprisingly, familiar.

Realising my relationship with Substack was starting to resemble some of the bad old days of my Instagram use, before I learned (it was a matter of survival as a social media manager) how to keep it in its place, placed me on high alert to other ways Substack might not offer the escape from social media it promises.

Nuance, overwhelm, and the pressure to be a ‘good community member’

We talk often about the noise of traditional social media platforms but here on Substack - a supposed refuge from the shouting - I also find myself overwhelmed.

According to Sarah Fay in ‘Write Less, Please’ nearly all subscribers feel the same way I do about the number of emails I now receive. I sign up for things that look interesting then feel harassed when they show up in my inbox. Like many subscribers, according to Fay, this constant competition for my attention makes me ‘desperately want to delete your newsletter’.

My overwhelm is in part because of the time it takes to initially read and digest long-form pieces, but also because of the emphasis placed on Substack being a platform for community, where long, nuanced comments are the norm. This cultural norm is beautiful but it’s also added another layer of expectation: to be a ‘good’ member of the community I feel like I should thoughtfully respond to every piece I read out of a deep respect for each writer’s craft.

I’m reminded of the pressure to be constantly available to respond to messages and comments on Instagram. I know (because you’ve told me) that writers often feel this intensely as the connection you have with the members of your community is personal and relatively intimate. You want to respect the time they are spending with you and setting boundaries can feel counter to that.

In the same ‘Write Less, Please’ piece, Fay also identifies that, should your newsletter avoid the trash basket, 80% of subscribers are likely to only scan it; online, they’re highly likely to stop reading after 118 words; and on mobile 65-90% of readers only read 400-500 words.

This lends a lie to the idea that Instagram is home to superficiality, while Substack provides depth. When it’s possible only 0-1% of readers will read 1000 of our finest words or most carefully balanced arguments, the case for our supposed appetite for nuance starts to look a little shaky.

The shaping of Substack culture

Compared to the OG social media sites, Substack’s culture is still in its infancy and still could offer a genuine alternative. However, its youth also makes its culture more vulnerable to user-driven shifts that might be unintended by the developers of the platform, but could also be facilitated by them.

The arrival of Notes 10 months ago introduced gamification to Substack and was identified as a risk to the platform’s culture by some users at the time. From what I’ve seen, they were right to be concerned, as it is mainly on Notes that I’ve noticed the creeping influence of tactics from social media Days of Yore.

Round-up posts featuring and tagging multiple writers are a useful resource if you’re looking for something new to freshen your online eco-system, but it’s also a pretty good bet that the people who’ve been tagged and featured will share that post with their network. This used to be a commonplace growth tactic on Instagram and, while not entirely cynical, is far from purely altruistic.

It’s also been interesting to witness the recent emergence of tactics that look remarkably similar to old-skool Instagram engagement pods. For those of you who’ve never come across this idea, it involves a group of loosely-linked, often subject-adjacent, people arranging to alert one another when they post something new. The agreement is that each member of the engagement pod interacts with (possibly without reading) the new post so it is pushed out to wider audience.

In some ways, this is exactly how community should work: we have friends who we want to do well so we make an extra effort to share what they do. I do this on Instagram and here on Substack, but the difference is those connections have organically developed over time, and our relationship is often built on foundations of shared values and interests. ‘Engineered’ reciprocal networks are by their nature less (warning: social media buzzword incoming) authentic, a value Substack-ers typically rank highly.

Thankfully, charmless, at times harmful, characteristics of traditional social media such as trolling, pile-ons, polarising algorithms, and general bad vibes, are not (yet?) prevalent in Substack’s culture. However there are signs the platform is (of course) not immune to the less edifying aspects of human behaviour.

Writer

Anna Wharton

recently shared how someone subscribed to her publication in order to read a paywalled post, and then promptly unsubscribed before they’d paid a penny. Other writers have experienced people binging their paywalled posts during a free 7-day trial and not progressing to pay . ‘Not in the spirit’ said Anna Wharton, and she’s not wrong, it’s lamentable behaviour, but it also feels like an inevitability of growth in the platform’s user-base: confirmation that yes, wherever you are on the internet, people are going to people.

Could paid subscription be a cultural Achille’s Heel?

The question of who shapes online culture is a knotty one as both platform developers, and their users have their part to play.

Substack have undoubtedly introduced gamification to the culture but there are also important differences in how the platform is set up that might counter some of these effects. There is no requirement to download the app to access all of Substack’s functions, and Notes - easily the most social media-adjacent aspect of the platform - is entirely optional.

Perhaps the biggest Achille’s Heel in the platform’s claim to be an alternative to social media however, is also one of its clearest distinctions. The opportunity to be paid directly by your reader is what originally set Substack apart, and although Instagram especially has been testing a Subscriber feature, the results so far are inconclusive both for creators and users.

Substack offers an alternative income stream for many writers that may support, or even replace, other work, but is it possible that aggressive growth tactics will become more prevalent as the stakes are raised?

Is it possible this appealing USP might also come at a cost to creativity? If writing about a particular subject brings your publication attention and a jump in paid subscribers, how tempting is it to write more about that subject? How quickly might we start to feel trapped and stifled by the pressure to keep paying customers happy? And how does our creativity fare when it’s how we pay our bills?

Could Substack become just another place we hate on the internet?

To be clear, this piece is not intended as a defence of traditional social media, or an argument against using Substack.

Rather its a call to remember that we are still the same people. And the internet is still the internet. And capitalism is still capitalism.

It’s an alert to be alive to the possibility Substack may not be as different to legacy social media as we would like to believe.

It’s a warning that without judicious, intentional use, Substack could become just another place we hate to hang out on the internet.

It’s an invitation to consciously shape how we use this platform, to pay attention to how it acts upon us, and to establish robust boundaries to keep it in its place.

And it’s a reminder to myself not to stress when its over two weeks since I last posted.

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash