I'm not sure I'm actually enjoying Substack.
I moved my main email there last August (2025), and I am somewhat active on Substack Notes (actually very active to most standards, but with very limited engagement). I was really bullish on it at the time, because the platform is amazing : short notes, but also long articles, you can post images and make pretty carousels, add videos and AUDIO to your emails... It feels like the platform of my dreams.
But 10 months in, I think what I might be enjoying is just the medium. And that makes me reconsider everything.
I wrote very briefly that platforms are medium. Which is part of my broader idea of strategic disloyalty : "I treat my socials, Substack Notes, my YouTube channel, and all the social media circus as second-tier spaces. I can't take them seriously as creative partners. Because they're not. To these platforms, I'm just another account. So to me, they're just interchangeable entry points."
Substack is a nice medium. Very flexible as I mentioned earlier. But Substack is NOT just a medium, it's a social media. So it's a medium that requires a culture.
And I'm not sure I enjoy the culture on Substack.
But you can't take away the culture out of a social media medium. It's not like oil painting or collage, where you can really shape to mean whatever and use in whatever situation. The medium of Substack has to BE on Substack. You can't bring it to another place, unless you build that place, and then it's something else entirely.
social media = medium x culture
if you will indulge me trying to reconnect with basic maths
So what _is_ the culture on Substack? It's soft. Rounding corners and drinking tea. I log onto Substack Notes and I see the thoughts of gentle people on lovely walks. There's little real spontaneity, no mission, no statement, no real business. It's often about writing about writing. To some extent, all platforms do that. But I feel like Substackians are a little blind to this. The format the platform rewards feels to me like it's encumbered by big words and trying hard to be smart.
And it bugs me. I drown in clouds (it's not without reason that one of my first statements here was "fuck format"). My best stuff on Substack has always been in reaction to this culture, never a contribution to it.
And I don't think that's very healthy. That makes me think Substack should not be the place that I actually try to inhabit. Even though I really really really want to enjoy the medium of Substack. And even though I really really really want to make it a place for people like me.
To be fair, I've been active online for 10+ years (in a full-time job kind of way), and the culture fitting has always been the hard part. I swear I'm trying. And I'm not, like, saying, "Oh, culture doesn't accept me." It's just, I understand that I am made in such a way that makes me difficult to read for most people, and that makes most people difficult to read to me. Historically, I try too hard to fit.
"very square peg, very round hole" - as Iris says in The Holiday
Or, in math language :
experience = medium-fit × culture-fit
Which brings me to a perhaps more interesting idea.
When AI came out and people started dreaming about what the world could become (I feel like we don't talk about the effect of hope on people in that way, and we tend to dismiss it as 'hype', but not the point here).
When people started dreaming about what the world could become, I LOVED the idea that AI could free us of format. Or more precisely, that it could allow us to experience stuff through our preferred formats.
Catering to our particularities when it comes to learning and consumption of information. For example, I will enjoy a good video or a documentary sometimes, but I much prefer doing my learning through reading, and if possible with tons of images. As a creator, I prefer writing, and will pull my hair from the roots if I need to edit extended videos again.
AI made me imagine a world where a piece of content could be produced in whichever form the creator prefers, and consumed in whichever form the consumer would prefer.
To some extent, I got my wish. AI made text-to-speech and speech-to-text MUCH more reliable, and I am now using tools such as Reader (affiliate link), which allows me to read YouTube videos and podcasts. And sometimes, when the world has been particularly overwhelming and I need to lay in the dark, I can even listen to some books, without needing a specific audiobook. It's never perfect, often awkward, and sometimes buggy, but it works.
Even without specific tools, 'reader mode' on Safari allows you to read an article in the color scheme of your choice, in the font you prefer... Effectively freeing the content from format.
I CRAVE the same thing for culture.
That's why I'm bullish on making websites at the moment. Because I don't feel like I'm finding my culture fit anywhere else. So, in a way, I use the internet as a huge medium to make a space where MY culture IS the fit.
And here's the long reason why (reasons to have your own website).