Substack – I knew little of it until this week other than it was some place online where Dominic Cummings posted endless screeds about the civil service blob – so avoided it. Conspiracy theory central, no doubt.
But it began appearing on my radar, so very early one morning (about 2.30), in a bout of insomnia, I visited the site and got quite hooked.
I am always looking for good sources of content online, in the belief that it doesn’t just have to be (apart from TheAfterword), just a howling wasteland of inanity, bombast and misinformation. For a while, I thought Bluesky might be a good place to focus. But maybe I loaded up too quickly with too many feeds – it seems to be very close to the windscreen of every passing attention-grabbing headline and news item. Trump thrives on this sort of constant shitshow, and it’s no good for sanity, dopamiine replenishment or contemplation of serious ideas.
Substack seems a bit more measured. Rather that short gobbets of text/comment, writers produce longform content. Has anyone else tried it?
I like it, as a consumer, contributor and a creator. As with all such platforms, you get some shit, but I’ve found plenty to engage me.
Thanks, Henry – can you share your account, so I can see what intrigues you? Like the Afterword, personal recommendations are more interesting than random browsing.
My first intriguing author is Ali Bin Shshid, whose ‘Regenesis’ substack, rather than being a Gabriel/Rutherford/Banks/Collins tribute, looks at ecology and natural systems.
It’s early days for me, salwarpe, mainly using it as a prompt to write more outside my day-job, so I’ve not subscribed to many, but browsed randomly. I do, however, follow Patti Smith https://pattismith.substack.com/ who posts long, rambling videos and occasional performances, and Notes On Pop Music, https://notesonpopmusic.substack.com/ which offers good, in-depth pieces. Oh, and my site, if you’re interested: https://thomasridge.substack.com/
I’ve subscribed to yours (drawn in by the pea-eating blog) and the notes on pop (God article on Tonight’s the Night). Look forward to reading more.
God article? Is that like the God particle? Or more of a religious tract?
Have you ever heard about the Higgs Boson Blues?
I’m going down to Geneva, baby
Gonna teach it to you
@skirky continues his longstanding blog at substack, I have noticed.
I have, seemingly, set up an account but not really done anything with it. I will give it a month and see if it works better than Bluesky (which isn’t terrible but it isn’t blowing me away).
Sounds positively Withnailish – I seem to have subscribed to Substack by mistake.
i hope it works better for you than for them – report back if you like on what you find after a month.
I think it may have been due to Luke Flounder, the wine guy. Which is still rather Withnailly.
Substack is generally both interesting and friendly. My main gripe is that a lot of the people I like now put a lot of their stuff behind a paywall. I’ve no problem with people looking to get some dosh back for what in many cases is a lot of effort but £2 a month here and £50 a year there soon mounts up. Understandable but, for me at least, frustrating.
I share your frustration. I can understand from a writer’s viewpoint — it’s hardly the world’s best-paid profession. But two things I notice are: 1/ many of the paywall accounts are people who are already known as writers, and 2/ those that aren’t seem to have an inflated idea of the value of their content (it’s not that compelling). As a writer and contributor, what I like about Substack is it can feel pressure-free (unlike LinkedIn, say), where you can try out stuff and not worry about whether it’ll win business for you.
Yes, I noticed that block on access pretty quickly. It’s fair enough as a business model, but does indeed suggest that subscribing to more than a few could be pricey.
That was one of two gripes I noticed on the site (recommended to be remedied by a model of general subscription, from which pool, writers could draw shared fees). The other one was a complaint about ‘reels’ – turning a deep attention span site into another version of the goldfish models. On that latter point,I think it just needs a bit of discipline, and restriction on who to subscribe to,
Responding to Henry – I think there is probably enough free content to determine whether a writer is worth paying a subscription for.
So what is it? Twitter / Blue Sky ish
Facebook , Wikipedia. ?
It seems to have some elements of the microblogging of the first two, though much of the content seems to be one direction, long form articles by “journalists, subject-matter experts, and media platforms” (wiki) – so not really FB or Wikipedia either.
Again quoting wiki which reflects my limited experience – “few of its newsletters publish original reporting; the majority offer personal writing, opinion pieces, research, and analysis”.
Is say, just dive in, search for a topic of interest and try it out.
I think its twitter for Blues fans – or is that Smokestack ?
it’s like Instagram used to be like back in the day (two weeks last Thursday)…. lots of arty interesting people posting random stuff
I follow Lucy Worsley. Anywhere. Everywhere.
…Oh I see, you were asking about Substack!
https://open.substack.com/pub/lucyworsley?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=d55ar
Has that restraining order lapsed?
Sadly, she only opens her doors for those who pay. So I miss the truth behind this rather fruity story.
https://open.substack.com/pub/lucyworsley/p/the-stomach-and-fertility-of-mary?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=5l0byj
This article, on how to write, is quite good
https://open.substack.com/pub/lindac/p/the-best-writing-tip-ive-ever-read?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=5l0byj
I’m on there (for free) and rather enjoying it, having spent the last 20 years telling people I’ll never do a blog!
https://substack.com/@mrchristopherjconde
I’m sharing music stuff, digging out old articles from fRoots days, recommending gigs, using it to log useful stuff I find. I never got the appeal of trying to cram what you want to say into a tiny word count.
Thanks, @Murkey – it would seem Substack is a niche interest for Afterworders – and that’s OK. I’m very happy for it to be a slow burn thing. I have subscribed to your feed and look forward to exploring your writing and those of feeds you recommend.
Cheers, I think I’m following you back. The thing with Substack is that it feels worthwhile just to have it ‘out there’ even if I only have five people seeing each post, rather than a poxy Tweet or FB post which leaves me wanting engagement.
For my latest post, I’m celebrating the new album by Australian folk trio Bush Gothic by sharing a piece I originally wrote for fRoots magazine about them in 2016: https://substack.com/home/post/p-162779568
No ‘hearts’ or comments yet, but the stats tell me it has been viewed 38 times – of which no more than half can have been me ;). That’s good enough for me, and feels more substantial than shouting into the void on Facebook.
The two other pages I follow closely are Yakety Yak by the my friend and fellow writer Garth Cartwright (paywalled but with free posts every now and then), and Don’t Call It World Music which does a fantastic job of collating interesting music writing from all over the planet.
I subscribed to both of those on the basis that if they are not my cup of tea, i can unsubscribe later. The world music post I looked at was amazingly comprehensive – is that a typical regular post?
I thought the post on who owns substack was interesting and reflects what you seem to be alluding to (a quiet backwater for now), but threatening to turn big and corporate later – possibly prescient, possibly alarmist:
https://substack.com/inbox/post/156338064
Slow comment pieces seem to be what substack offers best.
Incidentally, I was up early this morning and was scrolling through the substack news, and was interested to note quite a few anti-vax, world government conspiracy, Reform sympathisers, so clearly no liberal echo chamber. Just have to be careful who to read/watch, to avoid falling into seductive King Creosote style elephant traps.
The ones I tried to read wanted money and TBH it was just a blog. I do enjoy the digital News Statesman which has great content, plus loads of newspapers and magazines via the local library subscription to the Pressreader and Libby apps so I’m sorted for content and comment on just about anything.
I am beginning to think it is not as great as it seemed at first. The paywalls are somewhat irritating, but I can live with those, as there is enough open content to be interesting, and I think there are credible authors on the site that make it worthwhile.
But what does annoy is the video feed, that seems to have more than its fair share (i.e. any at all) of anti-vax, 5g and contrail nutters, right wingers coaxing their bile surreptitiously into the public consciousness and general self publicists, all tilting the algorithm to more and more vacuous and vile bilge. I hope that by avoiding the video feed, there is still something worth staying for,