I Heart Substack
Watering seeds, and yanking out roots.
In 2023, Substack launched Notes, an interesting feature that eventually acquired some wonky algorithms tuned exactly how we expect Silicon Valley algorithm wizards to tune βcontentββto maximize the immediate attention labor ($) of as many normies as possible. If a note doesnβt gain traction right away, it gets applied a tag that guarantees it goes nowhere because normies donβt want to see it. The note is sent to the Notes morgue within a day, where the words are autopsied for wrongthink, and then sent to decompose and rot for eternity at the digital cemetery. The tyranny of the normie majority strikes again.
No matter how clever or witty or insightful you think your note might be, expect it to end up in the Notes morgue before you sit down for the next bowl of morning Wheaties, the breakfast of failed Notetakers. If you have little reach, and you wish to use Notes to spread your wings and acquire new readers, keep it simple (very simple!) and obvious. Humans write algorithms, making them the digital versions of NPCs and Normies. Eight out of every ten humans on Substack are either NPCs (Heather Cox Richardson readers) or Normiesβreaders of the other top 99 Substacks.
Around the time Notes was released, its retarded cousins were conceived: Chats and also Direct Messages, or DMs as the kids call them.
I donβt use Chats.
Last week I got an email from Substackβs βbestseller growth teamβ that read in part:
βWe noticed a trending plateau in your growth revenueβ¦β
βWe noticed you donβt use Chats. Bestsellers who use Chats have double the rate of growth compared to those who donβt use Chats.β
It was like being admonished by Anna Kendrick in the global recession-era βcomedyβ Up In The Air.
βStudies show that bestsellers who use Chats will increase Substackβs revenue since weβre blowing through our VC runway at a wasteful clip by setting up in the Sham Fransicko Bay area where we have to pay our tech bros 3-5x the salary of anywhere else.β
I know the kid was just doing his job, but I couldnβt help myself. I clicked the reply button and began typing...
Dear *******,
Thanks for the tip. Chats are gay. Not the alphabet rainbow gay, but the 1990s gay which roughly translates to cringe or lame but Millennials stopped saying it because they were afraid of the speech police in their ranks, which also made them gay.
It would be a complete waste of my writing and research time doing AMAs or participating in any of the other attention labor extraction side shows you provide. Though I do use notes now and again for short posts and shit posts.
I resent Substackers who bomb my inbox with emails that say "Hey everyone! Chats are open, you can ask me anything!" I often unsubscribe when I get them. I canβt do that to my readers. Iβm not relevant enough to send them an email that takes time out of their very important lives to gossip about shit in some chat. Their days on this earth are limited, and I wonβt try to monetize even an hour of their time for my financial gain with silly gimmicks. Besides, I thought thatβs what the comment section was for.
I know why youβre pushing for maximum growth like Alec Baldwin in Glengarry Glenn Ross. You want your bestsellers to.. A. B. G. A-Always, B-Be, G-Growing. ALWAYS. BE. GROWING.
You see this watch?
But Growth is for βcontent creatorsβ to attract people who love to feed at their troughs of vapid and shallow slop for mindless gayntertainment. I resent the attention extraction carnival that has become the great mind control and human wasting program formerly known as the Internet. This isnβt some Don Draper βWhy Iβm Quitting Tobacco,β rant, either. When I launched it was entirely by accident, and I didnβt write for growth or money. When people came flocking to read my words I started caring too much about growth and made it a primary focus for a while, which was the wrong thing to do.
Growth requires formulaic performances, leaving no room for evolution or change. Things got redundant and boring. I knew it couldnβt last. But once you stop doing the thing that people liked that brought them to you, they get mad at you, which...they will anyway.
The only people I respect on your platform (apart from my based readers) are writers and a few exiled scientists who will never hold institutional jobs ever again, not content creators. And most of those writers arenβt even best sellers. Speaking ofβ¦have you read Heather Cox Richardson? I know she makes you guys a boatload of money, but perhaps my growth ambitions are limited by my pesky desire for self-respect.
It's true what you say, my growth has been flat, but I'm proud of it. I'm the only 5-figure Substack who has cycled through 2k readers in one year. Why? Because I endeavor to tell the truth (as best as I can see it) and no matter how much people say they want to read the truth...the truth is, they're lying. The truth shocks and insults them, and makes them feel uncomfortable, and if anything has become forbidden in our present age, itβs feeling uncomfortable. People will resent anyone who desires to tell them the truth, but they won't even know why. But because I desire to tell the truth, I believe I can tell you whyβthey donβt like feeling uncomfortable.
Over the past year, Iβve lost most MAGA cultists who cannot see theyβre being played for damn fools by a rebranded globohomo package which has zero elements of nationalism and is hardly masking its total subjugation by Israel, its service to UN Agenda 2030, the WEF, and the Club of Romeβs technocratic future dystopia, now fronted by Bliderberg whores Peter Thiel and Elon Musk. Iβve purged Electric Vehicle owners, National Fixedball League lovers, Dispensationalists, Zionists, two Israeli citizens, other non-Israeli genocide lovers, Con Inc. media enthusiasts (aka Mossad blackmailed propagandists), American voters who still believe change is possible at the ballot box (itβs pretty much all of them), Churchill worshippers, women who think criticism of feminism is criticism of all women, Tim Pool normies (a special kind of normie), bronze age butt plugs, super brain force male vitality consumers, and parents of child Swifties.
Do you have a special plaque award for 5-figure substackers who cycle out 2k readers in a year? Please let me know and I'll send a mailing address. Iβm certain Iβm the only one in the short history of your platform who has earned it.
In numeric terms, it was about two thousand readers. In relative terms, it was no loss at all. They were all replaced with (+2400) open-minded skeptics, chud uncles, based mamas, truthers, noticers, historical revisionists, and V8-driving salt of the earth swill-swigging BAMFs.
To summarize....I know you're just doing your job, and I respect that, but to hell with growth. Success for me is measured in truth, honesty, and respect for my readerβs time and minds. Nothing else. Iβve seen your top bestsellers, and itβs no company I wish to keep. If I end up on a downward trend for the next two years and lose my bestseller badge, I will not care because it probably means I still have my integrity and self-respect, which are not for sale.
Thanks for the pep talk.
Best Regards,
Good Citizen
PSβ how much runway does Substack have left if youβre sending desperate emails to bestsellers after a mere 2% revenue slide?
It was a cathartic email reply to compose, but I never clicked the send button. So it ended up here. The kid was just doing his job, and he probably lives in San Francisco, so I didnβt want to add any more misery to his life.
When messaging first appeared, I started receiving notices or requests. Strangers were βslipping into my DMsβ but not with any shirtless selfies. It was exhausting, so I stopped reading them completely for 14 months unless it was from a paid subscriber. It was a nice, peaceful, and relaxing 14 months. But Silicon Valley companies donβt want humans to have peace and relaxation. Substack wasnβt happy that my attention wasnβt going to these unread DM requests that piled up, so they kept reminding me with annoying emails that my attention was urgently required.
As I sifted through 14 months of unread requests I counted about two or three weekly βunreadβ DMs telling me I must read a post they had written. It might seem flattering to be called upon to validate the work of others, but most of these were spam. The messages were often elementary, soft, weak, and passive. My curiosity was rarely piqued. Two were somewhat interesting, and I read those and shared them on Notes. And perhaps I missed something brilliant, and itβs my loss, and maybe sometime in the year 2068, on my deathbed, Iβll ponder this regret.
If youβre going to self-promote, or try to slip into someoneβs DMs, start with a connectionβhumor, irreverence, sarcasm, hope (people love that), or even flattery without seeming desperate. At the very least put some thought into it, and be different. Be exciting. Be interesting. Donβt be a spammer.
Tickle their undercarriage with something like: I enjoyed your post on diversity initiatives for trade union bosses in the greater Atlanta metropolitan area. Iβve been talking about this for years with my husband whoβs a two-spirit bisexual plumber, and he agrees! You articulated the issue in such a unique way. My husband printed your article and is taking it to his white cis trade union boss. Iβve been writing about this issue on substack for a few months and expressed my ideas here <insert a link to your BEST substack post>. If you have a minute let me know what you think. Iβd love to get your feedback.
If youβre not a free or paid subscriber to the writer you solicit, youβve lied, and they can see that youβre a liar because next to your handle it will say one or the other. This is why I went 14 months without reading requests. I had four in a row who lied and said they were βfansβ but were not even free subscribers. They were simply mass-spamming βbestsellerβ DMs. Iβm sure thereβs some toggle switch setting somewhere in Substackβs vast and ridiculous dashboard settings to block these people but I donβt know where it is and Iβm sure if Graham Hancock went looking for it, even he wouldnβt find it.
As for the rest of them, Iβm not sure why theyβd want the opinion of a writer who started out as a performer caring too much about growth, and who just spent a good year purging his Substack of readers through truth or insults, though the former is often misinterpreted as the latter.
I'm no arbiter of what's 'goodβ and what isn't. I donβt believe many people are, no matter how few or many works theyβve sold, or how many readers or subscribers they have. After all, Iβm here as a very weak βbestsellerβ and entirely by accident. In 2021, a friendβs girlfriend set me up on a blind double date with a sweet younger woman of another generation, who, if it wasnβt for a disturbing set of peculiarities might have made us a good match. I spent the evening like Larry David in a Curb Your Enthusiasm episode, trying not to be repulsed by her assortment of poor bodily aesthetic choices.
The next morning I began spilling a torrent of articulations about my repulsion, in an essay on the Banalty of Tattoos. Within a few weeks, I had hundreds of subscribers. I never planned to get them. I didnβt think many people would see the damn post. Then I knew I had to create a βbrandβ and jump through all the creative hoops in a βdashboardβ tab provided by Substack. It was all very exciting and unplanned. And yes, to be clear, this Substack was birthed accidentally by insulting people with tattoos. Thatβs over half of Millennials and Zoomers, a quarter of Gen X, and all Boomer biker gangs, sailors, ex-cons, and dykes.
Yet because of that orange check mark next to my name, and despite my penchant for unintentionally insulting readers, I still get a few weekly DMs requesting my arbitration on some piece of writing. As I said, Iβm not a good arbiter. Nor do I have the courage to tell someone they suck. Because most of my life I sucked as a writer, and probably still do, and the minute I believe I donβt suck, Iβll start sucking real bad, and not even more cowbell will cure the fever of suckiness that envelopes this place. My point is that we all start somewhere, and itβs more than likely that this somewhere is a place called Sucksville.
Escaping Sucksville takes thousands of hours of practice and dedication.
One has to love writing and be capable of tolerating a whole lotta suck for what will probably be years. Encouragement will come slowly with progress, as Sucksville fades into the distance with each passing year, and then magically one day that place will be a distant memory.
But writing for fun and writing on Substack, are very different beasts.
One is freeing and open, the other is restricted by the constraints of an audienceβs expectations that something will be published, sooner rather than later.
To the DM-ers, spammers, or honest writers who have started or plan to start a Substack that keep contacting meβif you think youβve put in the hours to escape Sucksville, the rest of this post is for you. Actually, Iβm also writing it for me so that I can copy and paste the link to this post as a uniform reply to DMs.
While Iβve done my best to help other writers on here, often sharing the work of some who have become bestsellers when nobody knew who they were, Iβve never accumulated all my tips and tricks on launching a Substack (and setbacks/things I wish I knew in advance) into one concise post.
The following is some friendly advice since people keep soliciting it every week. And mistakes Iβve made on this platform that you donβt have to repeat.
The Good Citizen List For Digital Whoring on Substack
If you want to be a βcontent creatorβ good for you. Go and copy and paste other peopleβs ideas and articles into posts, and give them BREAKING! headlines. Become an aggregator who runs the current things through an ideological slant blender, or summarize PDF books through AI, and pretend to pass the work off as your own. Youβll do well. However, if you want to write on Substack and share your original ideas, you should first be able to write well, express yourself well, and see the world objectively, preferably without getting emotionally attached to any of it. Some people will love it, some will be offended, especially if you endeavor to be honest. If youβve put in the time and are already out of Sucksville, youβll eventually find an audience.
If you want lots of readers and their adoration with constant growth youβll be pegging yourself to a formula that should at least half the time end with hope. People are desperate for it, but too much is dishonest. The balance between honesty and hope will be a tightrope act youβll have to figure out. The former often undermines the latter. Too much hope, and youβre a lying Pollyanna, and honest people will detect it. No hope at all and people will get depressed and call you a blackpilled doomer because they need others to furnish hope for them. Youβll never win them all.
Readers will quickly have expectations that you must meet. The more you stick to a formula, the more growth youβll have, and the more theyβll resent you when it becomes tiresome, or youβve changed in your thinking, but they havenβt. Consider all of this before you start. What is your focus? Who are you writing for and why? Can you keep it up long term when you succeed? Are you endeavoring to be a writer or a carnival performer at the digital whore house? I didnβt think any of this through and made mistakes in the process.
Never put anything behind a paywall until you hit at least 3k-5k dedicated enthusiastic readers. Otherwise, you're wasting good words on nobody. You will not grow with paywalls. Everything must be free for at least a year if you're a part-timer, but maybe six months if you go full-time and promote the hell out of it. Then you can go to one-third paywalled for another year, and bump that up to 50% when you hit at least 10k. Who knows? Maybe you reach that with your first brilliant post. Donβt consider the paywayll as a behavioral nudge for free subscribers, but as a benefit for your patrons. If the free subscribers want the same occasional benefit, theyβll become patrons.
You can try and submit your work for third parties to publish. Make a list of editors of websites that might be willing to share your work with their readers. Otherwise, the only way you can promote the hell out of it is in bestsellersβ comment sections or on Notes, but you wonβt get much traction on Notes without subscribers. However, thereβs a method to this self-promotion that works and if you ignore this method it will do more harm than good and you donβt want to ruin your brand before youβve started. Yes, youβre essentially creating a brand. Welcome to digital whoring.
Don't just drop links in the comments of bestsellers with like-minded readers that you seek. People will resent you for it and it will seem like spamming.
Leave a comment 100% related to THEIR post. SHOW THAT YOUβVE READ IT! Itβs their readers who will also read it, so if you disrespect their favorite writer, youβre not winning anyone over. If you can make it witty, insightful, and complimentary without seeming like you're just doing it for self-promotion youβre off to a good start. Irreverence and sarcasm worked for me.
You can also do a 'tie-in' to a nonrelated essay if there's connective tissue that you can convincingly create. DO NOT DROP MORE THAN ONE LINK to your Substack in their comments. More than one will appear as desperate spamming. Never drop an unrelated link.
You'll gain the most success by revealing something the author missed to their readers about that subject, a kind of βauthoritative cock blockingβ without sounding smug or arrogant. You can also just add to what they wrote about (synthesis) and expand on it with a few new ideas youβve already written about.
Be first. The first good comments will get the most likes. If comments are sorted by "most liked" you've struck gold. If you can speed read the minute someone's post hits your inbox, think on your toes, react, and drop one of the first 10 comments that meet those above criteria, you could be seen/read by hundreds of their readers. That's how I went from 0 to my first 500 in just a month. Lew Rockwell and Jon Rappoport later helped me rocket to 5k in just four months. I was fortunate they liked my work. Donβt expect to get lucky.
Once you hit a few hundred, your greatest asset will be your readers. Ask them to share your work, restack, like, etc. But if you've written a gem, you won't even have to. They're going to want others to read it. They will want to show people what they've uncovered/discovered, "You have to read this essay!" etc.
Key elements: Title, subtitle, and top image are essential. You can make titles literal like a news agency, but expect those kinds of readers. I opted for abstract, metaphor, mysterious, irreverent, anything sticky that pokes the curious minds. Grab βem by the balls at the start or the humans will not stay to read anything. If you succeed with the title, subtitle, image, and first sentences, they'll keep reading. The thesis of an essay used to be afforded placement leeway, but not anymore. The first paragraph, maybe the second. Thatβs all theyβll give you before they get fidgety, lose focus, and succumb to their hyper-digi-flitting tuned attention span, especially if theyβre under 35. Donβt worry too much about them, itβs probably thoughtful readers youβre after anyway.
Have a hook that drags them along to the next paragraph and so on. The seeds you plant at the start must be watered throughout in a way so that they don't see whatβs growing. And if they stick around until the end, reward them with something that won't make them regret itβa revelation, an insight, a controversy, a new way of seeing something old, a call to action. They'll finally see the thing you planted at the start as you return to it to connect it all. It should feel like a 'full circle' journey.
Congratulations youβve hit a thousand readers! By now youβve had at least one essay go βviralβ for your reach. Readers are enthusiastic, youβve found a loyal audience for your writing. Youβre flying high, like Leslie Chow in Hangover 3, but instead of screaming βI love cocaine!β youβre screaming βI love Substack!β Right now is a good time to resist the urge for dopamine highs. The more readers you accumulate, the more restrictive things become. At least once a month youβre going to start getting rage-filled hate emails for your viewsβespecially if theyβre honest. Laugh it off and delete them. Do not respond. You didnβt offend anyone. Taking offense is a choice by people who canβt control their emotions. Most of them are lying and trying to emotionally blackmail you for the upper hand. If you do respond donβt call them a silly feminist cunt, but itβs best to never respond. Their rage will reveal everything about them as people and nothing about your work. If they havenβt unsubscribed, take them out of your email list and send them to normie purgatory where they belong.
If you write a political or history Stack, don't write about Jews, Israel, or Zionism. If you do it, do it at the start, but don't make it all about that, unless thatβs your focusβalso donβt expect to monetize it or be prepared to be demonetized by Stripe. Itβs the only forbidden subject, and you should ask yourself why. If you do it later once you've launched be prepared to lose more subscribers than you gain (especially boomers and Gen Xers who refuse to deprogram from their Rockefeller-planted malware). Youβll spend a year rebuilding with zero net growth. See the opening of this post. That's been my lesson for the past year.
Branding: Create an avatar, alias, or anon figure while you still can, or if you want to use a real photo (I recommend not) and your real name and you grow big, be prepared for the notoriety, celebrity, and all the wrath, harassment, doxing that might come with it if you tell some upsetting truths-which is really what all truths are in the end. If you get big enough, it will affect those around you, family, loved ones etc. Sadly, thatβs the world we live in. You canβt change the world youβre living in. Maybe your words can alter the future. Expect to lose your primary source of income if you tell too many truths under your real name.
Already Launch a dud Stack? If youβve already launched and have a dozen posts with no likes (no readers), do a rebrand, unpublish all the posts, and republish under your new branding. Start with your strongest first. Rewrite and edit like crazy so itβs tight. Thereβs always fat to trim. Promote the hell out of it as mentioned above (in Substacks where other like-minded readers lurk).
Do not publish a second essay until you have 50 new subscribers from that first essay, and so on. By the fifth or sixth you should hit 500 with a moderate network effect...if they're good and you promote the hell out of each one. Also, get creative with the name of your Stack. Think about it long and hard because youβll be married to it forever. Just about anything creative or abstract will create more interest as it shows a creative and original mind is probably running things.
Congratulations, youβve hit at least 3k subscribers. Itβs time to consider a paywall if you want to monetize your creative works. You can still offer the majority for free. As soon as you do your official paid subscriber launch, get ready for everything to change. You now have to deal with Stripe, another ruthless Silicon Valley monopoly run by a Zionist, the IRS, and paid readers who are loyal and dedicated enough to take a piece of plastic out of their wallets as a show of appreciation for what you do, with the hope youβll continue to do it.
Youβre rolling. Youβre flying. Youβve hit bestseller status with at least 100 paid subscribers. Congratulations. Unless youβre a noticer and historical revisionist, youβre headed for the moon. Nothing can stop you! Except Stripe, and Substack if you suddenly start noticing and they get the call from Jonathan Greenblatt at the ADL.
Use an editorβGrammarly or something similar to alert you to misspellings, and basic errors that you will miss. Mistakes can turn off readers. Never use it to rewrite your paragraphs or style or change your voice.
READ THE COMMENTS your readers leave under your posts, for at least 36 hours after publishing, but maybe 48 if you arenβt swamped. Like each comment every reader leaves (even if you donβt agree with it), to let them know youβve read it and as a way to let them know you appreciate them taking the time to leave a comment. DO NOT delete comments unless youβre a wussy. Delete spam and reply to borderline spammers with warnings. Comments are awesome and you should encourage them. Iβm often blown away by the thought and insight my readers provide to me, and other readers with their comments. Itβs one of the most rewarding aspects of this journey, and as Iβve told my readers I often gain more from their comments and link shares than I do from a month of reading other Substacks. Youβd be surprised how many bestsellers completely IGNORE their reader comments. Itβs sad. Respond to as many as you can, especially early on. Engage with them, not just for the sake of it, but so you can learn from them and use their insights to help you grow.
Chats! I know many of you are thinking about Chats, but I canβt do it. For me, thatβs what the comment section is for. If you want to βdouble your growthβ for Substackβs revenue print, knock yourself out, but youβd better make those Chats damn interesting, and compelling or youβll risk being resented for wasting peopleβs time by dumping stupid shit in their inbox. Then youβll have to manage the infighting, shitposting, violent threats, and spamming, which all takes away valuable time from your writing.
Speaking of dumping too much in peopleβs inboxesβ¦never publish willy-nilly unless youβre a daily news aggregator, in which case, youβre not a writer. Donβt run and chase the current thing for clicks without thinking about it first. Itβs often best to WAIT and see what happens in the days that follow. Chances are that your reaction to the events will be embarrassingly βwrongβ or at least miscalculated. And days later youβll cringe at your words. Those who rush to be first are usually very wrong. This has happened to me more than once, and itβs not fun but can be humbling. Itβs best to avoid it with patience, thought, and observation. Then more thought, writing, rewriting, and more thought again. Just as itβs dying down (about 72 hours later in our goldfish world), release the thoughtful beast.
Never use AI to write anything. It simply cannot write like humans and you'll be figured out in one or two posts. Zerohedge just published a three-part Substack series (by someone named Joshua Stylman) on the evolution of psyops and cultural control (engineering reality) that was written in part by GPTβs easily recognizable (completely uncreative) latest Canvas engine. The topic of the post was relevant and interesting, but not the authorβs ideas, which someone with a lengthy academic background on the subject could easily detect. The delivery was molded on the garbage writing patterns of GPT (βA was not merely B, but also C; systemic, systematic, dynastic, not just X, but Y and Z; a tapestry ofβ¦β I could on for a whole post), which made it very difficult to read past a few paragraphs.
I should do an entire post on how to spot AI writing with GPT which I learned from trying to assemble a Suvivialist Bible, that compiled the top ten most important Survivalist and self-reliance books into one giant 2000 page tome. I gave up after a few weeks (on the first chapter) when I could see the writing was terrible and it would require a year to edit. Still, I could make a list of its 50 most repetitive buzzwords, and style elements. If you read the words not merely this, but that, or not just X, but Y, more than once in an essay, it was written by GPT. If itβs in every paragraph like Joshua Stylmanβs work, youβll be able to see the entire thing was written by a machine with the occasional quote to break things up. Whatβs sad in this case, is the writerβs substack is dedicated to exposing technocracy. He takes the books of Patrick Wood (technocracy.news) and others and uses AI to pump out a summarized post every other day, each as formulaic and technically mimetic as the last. Anyone who has tested LLM engine writing capabilities will discover fraud very quickly. DO NOT use AI to write unless your goal is unoriginal writing and βcontent creationβ via a tepid assembly line to monetize peopleβs attention who donβt care theyβre reading the words of a machine. You might fool the dummies for a week, or a month, or even a year, but eventually, theyβll discover youβre just pumping out machine summaries and it will bite you in the ass for not disclosing it. Unless they donβt care in which case youβve accumulated a lot of normie readers and are worse off than a content creator in the digital whore house. And yes, Grammarly has an AI engine now, but you can shut it off.
Thatβs it. This is all the advice I have. And Iβm no arbiter of whatβs good. And neither are the masses who might flock to read your glorious works by the millions.
I know a musician and audio engineer who started a podcast that had zero listeners. It was a daily podcast, 15 minutes each morning. A stream-of-consciousness purge to go with his morning coffee. He did it for a year with not one single human listening, but he didnβt care. I think he went for a full 18 months before stopping when his second kid was born. When I asked him how many listeners or subscribers he got via the Podcast RSS connector (which connects to all the major platforms) he proudly replied, βNone.β
But he loved it!
If you love writing, go on then, do it.
But do it for you. Not for growth, or dopamine, or money, or anyone elseβs affirmation.
Itβs the only way youβll be free to still love writing.
<run ending: a revelation, an insight, a controversy, a new way of seeing something old, a call to action .exe here>
<run program: hopium release v.1.19.2025 here>
Good luck and Godspeed.
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How I Escaped Sucksville
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