Kind words 🙏 lots written so more to publish soon!
AirBnb analogy is quite compelling, haven’t heard that one before, thanks for sharing.
Agree There is an oxymoron in prospect of taste or high-brow or belonging scaling, but I see Substack wants and needs to scale … Something will have to give.
I’ve largely had positive experiences on Substack too, but I see a big shift happening now. The savior so far is the inbox, I can ignore what’s happening on the app. But every “creator” will sense the tipping point where that ignorance goes from neutral to a disadvantage. Staying tuned …
I've been missing your essays, Anu. Great to have you back here (and the wait was worth it).
Can taste scale? When I worked at Airbnb, The Verge published a scathing critique of Airbnb's impact on global taste, labeling the emerging aesthetic of bland as "AirSpace". From interior decor to high street shops, the AirSpace was colonizing cities across the world. It's unfair to lay all the blame on Airbnb, of course – it's an inevitable result of taste makers going viral on visual media, and entrepreneurs trying to profit off that taste. de Tocqueville identified the mass market-ification of taste and craft as early as Democracy in America; the web just radically decreases taste's half life.
You write "Substack sells intellectual taste as cultural currency and contemporary belonging." The statement is rife with tension. Can taste survive "selling"? Does "belonging" risk the differentiation that taste (sometimes) requires?
Unlike nearly any other web property, Substack sits squarely in a positive column for me. I've benefited so much from reading essays like this one that I never would have discovered in the past. RSS feeds, Medium articles, Twitter links – nothing has exposed me to more, better writing and interesting ideas than Substack.
But you're right that writing isn't really the point. Intellectual taste and community is. Writing is just the medium that expresses this taste most consistently (writing is thinking, yadda yadda).
Now the test is whether intellectual taste and community can withstand the pull of market forces. I'll keep my fingers crossed.
Agree so hard on this. Another victim of too much venture funding for something that would probably have been a fantastic service for a “niche” market (sub 50m users)
Your essay arrives at a fascinating moment – we're witnessing an exodus from Twitter (presently X) to Bluesky. As Substack positions itself to become a major social platform, I'm curious about two possibilities:
Could this Twitter exodus have arrived at a perfect moment for Substack? Users seeking a new intellectual home might find what they're looking for here with Notes.
And perhaps more intriguingly – could Substack be uniquely protected against future mass departures? Even if its social features favour low-brow content and trivial engagement activities, the direct writer-to-inbox relationship ensures quality content reaches readers regardless of where casual engagement happens. This might create an interesting symbiosis between Substack and other niche platforms.
Yeah unique for text-based social which is fascinatingly so central to real-time culture. That’s the biggest challenge against Twitter imo, discourse here still feels more asynchronous.
> Substack used to feel like a cozy book club for intellectuals, and I’ll admit I liked that vibe. Substack now feels like a sprawling bookstore—the kind with an entire Starbucks inside—where you head straight for the quiet corner upstairs, only to find all two chairs already taken. Now they’re installing TVs everywhere … and a lot more people are about to show up.
Why do you allow Substack to "feel" like whatever in the first place?
Best way is to use it as for what it was initially created for: find some newsletters and follow them. Never engage here except with your audience, do not care for Notes, and do not care for whoever else is or isn't hosting their newsletter here.
Great article. I'll take the liberty of adding something.
Yes, Substack is a business and, as such, needs to find a path to profitability/scale/etc.
One way of doing that - potentially! - is to chase after low-brow creators/content/audiences. Or rather, it could sit at the higher end of low-brow. Not full-on brainrot but tasteful pap and pre-digested faux-intellectualism. Plenty of that alreday available on TikTok, btw.
An alternative that doesn't betray its roots is to change the business model. Become like cable. Start bundling newsletters, instead of forcing readers to pay for each, individually. Pick 4 and you get x% off or such. It impacts revenue sharing with writers but it makes it far more appealing. It would create a network effect, bringing more writers to the platform because readers are on substack...not just on a single newsletter than can move elsewhere (plenty of examples of that already happening).
Kind words 🙏 lots written so more to publish soon!
AirBnb analogy is quite compelling, haven’t heard that one before, thanks for sharing.
Agree There is an oxymoron in prospect of taste or high-brow or belonging scaling, but I see Substack wants and needs to scale … Something will have to give.
I’ve largely had positive experiences on Substack too, but I see a big shift happening now. The savior so far is the inbox, I can ignore what’s happening on the app. But every “creator” will sense the tipping point where that ignorance goes from neutral to a disadvantage. Staying tuned …
I've been missing your essays, Anu. Great to have you back here (and the wait was worth it).
Can taste scale? When I worked at Airbnb, The Verge published a scathing critique of Airbnb's impact on global taste, labeling the emerging aesthetic of bland as "AirSpace". From interior decor to high street shops, the AirSpace was colonizing cities across the world. It's unfair to lay all the blame on Airbnb, of course – it's an inevitable result of taste makers going viral on visual media, and entrepreneurs trying to profit off that taste. de Tocqueville identified the mass market-ification of taste and craft as early as Democracy in America; the web just radically decreases taste's half life.
You write "Substack sells intellectual taste as cultural currency and contemporary belonging." The statement is rife with tension. Can taste survive "selling"? Does "belonging" risk the differentiation that taste (sometimes) requires?
Unlike nearly any other web property, Substack sits squarely in a positive column for me. I've benefited so much from reading essays like this one that I never would have discovered in the past. RSS feeds, Medium articles, Twitter links – nothing has exposed me to more, better writing and interesting ideas than Substack.
But you're right that writing isn't really the point. Intellectual taste and community is. Writing is just the medium that expresses this taste most consistently (writing is thinking, yadda yadda).
Now the test is whether intellectual taste and community can withstand the pull of market forces. I'll keep my fingers crossed.
"...Substack is making everyone into writers the way Instagram made everyone into photographers.." totally spot on!
Yes! quote courtesy of @emilysundberg
Agree so hard on this. Another victim of too much venture funding for something that would probably have been a fantastic service for a “niche” market (sub 50m users)
A forced hand in a sense for the next evolution, but the cultural momentum breeds some hope.
Your essay arrives at a fascinating moment – we're witnessing an exodus from Twitter (presently X) to Bluesky. As Substack positions itself to become a major social platform, I'm curious about two possibilities:
Could this Twitter exodus have arrived at a perfect moment for Substack? Users seeking a new intellectual home might find what they're looking for here with Notes.
And perhaps more intriguingly – could Substack be uniquely protected against future mass departures? Even if its social features favour low-brow content and trivial engagement activities, the direct writer-to-inbox relationship ensures quality content reaches readers regardless of where casual engagement happens. This might create an interesting symbiosis between Substack and other niche platforms.
Yeah unique for text-based social which is fascinatingly so central to real-time culture. That’s the biggest challenge against Twitter imo, discourse here still feels more asynchronous.
Great article. The medium had always been the machinery, they needed critical mass before they could go big on being the infrastructure for creatives.
> Substack used to feel like a cozy book club for intellectuals, and I’ll admit I liked that vibe. Substack now feels like a sprawling bookstore—the kind with an entire Starbucks inside—where you head straight for the quiet corner upstairs, only to find all two chairs already taken. Now they’re installing TVs everywhere … and a lot more people are about to show up.
Why do you allow Substack to "feel" like whatever in the first place?
Best way is to use it as for what it was initially created for: find some newsletters and follow them. Never engage here except with your audience, do not care for Notes, and do not care for whoever else is or isn't hosting their newsletter here.
Observations! Personal conclusions on how I’ll engage at the end.
Memetic desire summed up nicely
sss
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Bad idea wanting to scale at all formats
Great article. I'll take the liberty of adding something.
Yes, Substack is a business and, as such, needs to find a path to profitability/scale/etc.
One way of doing that - potentially! - is to chase after low-brow creators/content/audiences. Or rather, it could sit at the higher end of low-brow. Not full-on brainrot but tasteful pap and pre-digested faux-intellectualism. Plenty of that alreday available on TikTok, btw.
An alternative that doesn't betray its roots is to change the business model. Become like cable. Start bundling newsletters, instead of forcing readers to pay for each, individually. Pick 4 and you get x% off or such. It impacts revenue sharing with writers but it makes it far more appealing. It would create a network effect, bringing more writers to the platform because readers are on substack...not just on a single newsletter than can move elsewhere (plenty of examples of that already happening).
Super curious which newsletters do you pay for. For me it's currently only the Lindy Newsletter.