7 ways Substack is ruining my life

And one perfect book

This happened while I was on vacation, so I’m late to the party. But last month, Emily Sundberg wrote an essay on her newsletter Feed Me that was impossible to avoid, if you spend any time at all on Substack. For weeks, the post was referred to exclusively as “the viral essay,” in what I always imagined as hushed tones.

I think everyone on Substack — and absolutely no one else — read and obsessed over this essay, so if you happen to fall into the latter category, here’s a quick summary:

• Sundberg’s central complaint seemed to be that too many “writers” are on Substack now, that everyone’s starting a newsletter, usually without any skill or a clear point of view.

• Even worse, many of these hacks are trying to monetize their newsletters — the audacity!

• And finally, all of these hack writers with their hack newsletters are getting around their lack of talent by doing listicles, mining their boring lives for boring content and presenting it in a particularly unskillful manner.

The entire post and its comments are now behind a paywall, but the most liked comment when I read it was a fellow Substacker complaining that the whole thing felt like punching down, which was true, it did feel like that.

But her long list of listicle offenders included Noah Smith’s regular “At least five things…” column, as well as the Smitten Kitchen newsletter, where Deb Perelman frequently titles her posts some version of “X things to make for Y.” This is not punching down! Neither is it a valid complaint about substance or skill! Whether or not either of those newsletters is your cup of tea, they are both extremely popular and well-written, both penned by people with extensive knowledge and experience in their respective fields. And as for her monetization complaint, Perelman’s newsletter is free and most of Noah’s posts are, too (though both, I would argue, are worth paying for).

The whole thing felt a little incoherent. You can’t blame Substack for lists — readers have been eating up listicles and their clickbait-y headlines as long as writers have been posting on the internet.

But you can blame Substack for making it look easy. For making people who’ve never done this before think that they can make easy money sharing more of their life online. A particular target of Sundberg’s ire seemed to be influencers migrating from visual platforms, content creators who’ve built up medium-sized audiences and are bringing them to Substack. The appeal for creators is clear (selling directly to consumers instead of, or on top of, having to negotiate with brands is pretty liberating, I would imagine). It’s a different medium, though, and Sundberg isn’t wrong that many of them are pretty bad writers. But they’re coming over with a few thousand fans who are already invested in their lives and happy to subscribe for a bit more access, and I imagine it rankles to see audiences pay for that kind of thing.

I think that’s why every writer on here immediately flocked to the comments, either in solidarity or to express outrage. The most interesting thing about the whole ordeal was seeing who immediately identified as one of the real ones, chiming in with an “omg YES, why are these people in my feed??” and who felt that their integrity and talent were being impugned.

And while I did not find this particular essay convincing, I am a bit sympathetic to what I think was ultimately driving her concerns.

This newsletter was never intended to be anything more than a fun way to keep in touch with friends and family — what I’m reading, updates on the new house, the things I’m stressing about as a parent. I agree that it would be a little weird to try to get people to pay me money for this stuff! And if someone I know and care about told me they thought my newsletter was stupid, that would hurt my feelings,¹ but generally speaking, feedback on this project just isn’t that important to me. I like it as a means for connecting with friends, but it’s the connection itself that I find meaningful — I have lost zero minutes of my life worrying about the numbers of likes or comments or subscribers I get here.

But this is not the Substack I spend most of my time on.

My day job is running, with Matt, a newsletter people actually read. And our family’s entire livelihood depends on its growth, on convincing people that what we do is worth liking and subscribing. We have, so far, been extremely lucky, but it’s luck that takes an extraordinary amount of work to maintain. Matt writes a ton, and I do my best to sell it, and my entire day (or week) can be ruined by bad numbers.

Which is to say, my identity and self worth are tied up in questions of performance and monetization in a way that is probably not healthy, and also probably not unique among those in this business.

Slow Boring is currently No. 8 on the US Politics leaderboard, which is lower than we used to be. And sometimes this really bothers me. It bothers me even though our drop in standings was concurrent with an increase in our subscribers (free and paid) and our revenue. It bothers me even though I know that we’re being pushed down in large part by bigger, multi-author outlets like Zeteo and Free Press — single author newsletters are, for structural reasons, simply not putting up the same numbers, it’s not a reflection on the work we’re doing. It bothers me even though I know the success of these other newsletters is objectively good for us, because the way Substack’s network works, we want bigger fish bringing more subscribers into our pond.² It all feels zero-sum, even when it’s not really.

I think it’s just really hard, as a writer, to be provided with all this data describing your performance and not take it personally. Making a living this way, out here on your own, feels a bit tenuous, even when you’re successful, and I think it can make many of us kind of territorial.

Those feelings are, of course, often directed at those who are more successful than we are, but airing that laundry in public can be embarrassing. No one wants to look that petty! Better to direct our complaints at the hordes who are threatening to ruin it for the rest of us, who are clogging up our feeds and making it harder for readers to discover the real writers. The ones who might eventually cheapen the whole thing and drive readers away.

Worst of all, though, are the shitty writers who are succeeding.

Before Substack reorganized its leaderboards, we were on a larger Politics leaderboard that included a notorious anti-vaxxer whose Substack is full of junk science, shit that could genuinely harm someone. And I am, of course, angered by the very existence of this swill, but on a very petty level, I was even angrier that he was more successful than we were — it added insult to injury.

I believe that the work we’re doing is good, and I don’t actually need Substack’s metrics to tell me that. But they still affect how I feel. It still feels shitty to see someone rewarded for work that I don’t think is good or helpful. It still feels great to see our numbers go up in response to something I did. And even though the Substack pond seems to be growing along with the fish, it still feels terrifying to be making your way with no institutional support. It’s never been easy for most writers to make a living, and Substack has — for the time being — provided a way for many of us to actually do so. But we’re bombarded with data and feedback and still uncertain of what it means and what the future holds. It all feels so precarious!

No wonder we’re a bit defensive.

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That was longer than usual, so I’ll be quick with this part. What I’ve been reading, etc:

• I’ve read a lot of meh books lately, but finally stumbled upon a winner in Rita Bullwinkel’s Headshot. Yes, it’s about boxing, but it’s beautiful and surreal and you might like it even if you hate books about sports. It’s also only 200 pages, and I think best enjoyed without knowing too much about it… but here’s the NYT review if you must.

• Jose and I finally finished watching Brooklyn Nine-Nine, which was for the most part delightful. It’s been hard to top (Andy Samberg really gets something crucial about nine-year-old-boy humor), but after striking out with The Good Place, I think we’ve settled on The Office.

• And finally, I don’t think you can escape the ads for these jeans (at least I couldn’t, they followed me everywhere), but I wanted to recommend this barrel leg pair, even if you’re a Madewell jeans skeptic. The brand doesn’t generally work for me, but these are incredibly soft and cut generously (I got my usual size, but you may want to size down). I’ve worn them almost every day since they arrived.

1. I mean, it is a little dumb, but that would still be a mean thing to say.

2. My understanding is that the leaderboards are not a big source of subscribers; only writers look at them.