Influence-stack: How Will The Substack Community Handle The New Wave Of Content Creators?
This past Friday (the 20th), Substack Reads sent out its semi-regular newsletter covering all things Substack. This particular post, titled “This is Something I Feel Like I Can’t Talk About On TikTok,” featured two rather conventionally attractive females who appear to be in their early to mid-twenties having a public discussion over a Zoom call. The topic was centered around their recent move (and success) to Substack, as they both have built a massive following on TikTok and leveraged that loyalty to garner paid Substack subscriptions.
One of the girls posts recipes of a ho-hum, copy-and-paste variety that could be sourced from any cookbook available in any kitchen, anywhere. From 7-layer bean dip to Aperol Spritz’s, her posts, almost all of which are paywalled, offer the basic recipe with a paragraph or so of some basic culinary insight.
The other focuses on creator content strategy and the social media industry at large. As one would imagine, both are pretty, fashionable, with outgoing, bubbly personalities. They are the archetype of the creator economy, Gen-Z personified. Their publications are predictably punctuated by selfies, images of Sabrina Carpenter and the like, flattering photos, and them being, just, well—cute.
These two girls, as per the article, “have transformed their followings on TikTok into sustainable subscription businesses on Substack”. While their new enrollment to Substack may be good for them and the platform’s bottom line, some writers feel the tides turning, and see their (among others) presence and success here, brought on by their TikTok fame, as more of an invasion than a welcome addition.
In a post from last week, Hamish Mckenzie wrote that one of them was making a six-figure income on her Substack alone. She apparently joined Substack earlier this year. They have both been promoted before from the officials at Substack, adding a bit of insult to injury to those who arrived at the platform to read and write years ago and have doggedly churned out poems and essays, to little or no avail.
With the TikTok ban looming, and Substack taking center stage as the newest and most attractive platform around, many fear this will change the platform for good—a platform known by the seriousness of its writers, that has as of late, embraced a function that more closely resembles typical social media and the boosting and celebrating writers with any kind of celebrity status.
In fact, even without a TikTok fallout, the dam has been broken, the trend has been set. Keep your TikTok or Instagram if you can, Substack need not be a stream of income as a replacement, but as an addition. It is not hard to imagine the ease with which even a D-list celebrity could turn their fans into yet another source of revenue.
Judging by the comments left on the Substack Reads post, many readers are bemoaning the vapid and cyclical nature of the content creator sphere and are familiar with its ability to drown out long form writing, deep investigative dives and any other form of literature where quality and insight are the main drivers.
The old gripe about writing about writing about writing online, and the dog-chasing-tail nature of the How To Make Money Writing Online coaches and courses is still alive and well, but there is a new gripe to contend with: the parasitic nature of the ubiquitous influencer.
Ask a group of children what they would like to be when they grow up and a common response nowadays is just that, an influencer. And one could see why fairly easily, and perhaps, empathetically. The idea of being an influencer is quite attractive on the surface level. After all, it is mostly about you—it is not influence per se, it is your influence. And we have long determined that narcissistic behavior patterns are a common result of too much screen time and posting.
But, of course, there are other factors that point in the direction of the phenomenon; influencer culture feels like a workaround, a short cut. A generation or so of young folks have watched previous generations break their backs for their living, and they are not buying in. They have seen another generation go broke attending exploitative universities that financially ruin their student's lives before they have even begun, with very little insurance for real-world work at the end of the line.
They have seen, too, many examples of corporate exploitation, in real-time, on a massive scale. Trusting in any old-fashioned regiment for survival feels not only unreliable and precarious, but is also terribly unsexy. And it is not just a case of not wanting to work, as the influencer is where terminal narcissism meets hustle culture, and become indelibly connected to formulate the end logical result of branding, that is, the branding of one's own self. Afterall, it is not always an easy task to be model perfect for videos and photos with the constant, but required façade of having the perfect life. What sells is cheerfulness, positivity, physical attraction, and a contemporary sense of fashion.
It is not at all likely that content creators build massive followings because of the content they create. Much of the so-called content is often based on reliably copying trends, engaging in viral challenges, and opening similar refrains in a bubbly Gen-Z cadence. It is unclear why I would need a Substack subscription for a recipe for bean dip, an avocado wrap, or anything else that sounds like a food that has been Trader Joe-ified.
But I would be wrong to think it was about bean dip in the first place—being a part of an influencer’s daily regimen, whether it be diet or travel, is designed to make me feel good about being a part of something. In this way, you gotta serve somebody—and it is better to be a servant with many others than to be on the internet alone.
One should see why this dynamic, in stark contrast with Substack’s perceived culture, would be irksome to writers, poets, and essayists. The prevailing notion is that celebrities, influencers and the like will drown out thoughtful, long-form content; in other words, folks whose fame precedes them, and who never really need to engage in the comments section, the Notes feed, or with the community that has for so long been the driving force of the platform.
Writing is a technical, laborious, and many times a painful process, but most of all, it is quite slow. It feels parasitic because it is. The influencers and celebrities who may flock to Substack won’t likely be doing it for the community, the chance at new friendships, and the chance to read the writers here. They will be tossing most of that away, and strip the platform to its most bare essential function—e-mail list, post to subscribers, getting paid. Repeat.
But Substack never promised us anything more than that. It was always the writers and thinkers that made Substack what it was, not the algorithm and not the higher-ups. And it was only a matter of time before the platform would be exploited or begin to exploit itself. Substack is a business, after all.
And perhaps those that have mastered the newest dance craze, or post seductive selfies, will find themselves instantaneously greeted with the highly coveted orange check mark. And those who doggedly churn out essay after essay, poem after poem will always struggle to be read and heard.
But this only reinforces what the poet and the artist have always known—the world is slick and shiny, unfathomably shallow—that is something that the artist must always remind themselves. Your finely carved essays and heartbreaking poetry won’t often matter to many, but only, if you are lucky, to a few. Perhaps that will make it all worth it. And perhaps, there is a twenty-something-year-old with a recipe for bean dip, that just does it all much better than you.
JSV
2024
Judson Stacy Vereen is the author of American Pleasure, 62 Poems from Judson Vereen, and Like A Bird Knows To Sing. He is also a staff contributor to Wrong Speak, where he publishes a bi-monthly opinion column. His substack page is Dispatches from Bohemian Splendor.
Wrong Speak is a free-expression platform that allows varying viewpoints. All views expressed in this article are the author's own.
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The world has been going “to pot” for sometime. Just ask the lords who had to start paying serfs for labor, or ask Wilfred Thesiger about his thoughts of oil ruining Arabic culture.
Something always comes along and replaces something. I don’t even DuckDuckGo anymore. I ask Grok. Much easier than sifting through pages of algorithmicly selected pages when I can read a compiled synopsis on what the best bean dip is.
There will always be some curator of great writing. It’s how I found you!
Good writers will either rise to the top or sink to the bottom. But they will still be great!!
In so many ways the world seems to be going to pot but there are countercurrents: slow food, slow travel, a resurgence of interest in all things analog. I, for one, am grateful for long form writing and poetry. I´m trying to learn how to write and have been reading Dispatches from Bohemian Splendor and writing out stylish turns of phrase to add to my Sentence Collection, hoping that something of the syntax seeps into my brain. This is just to say that I think there will always be people who appreciate art and artists, all appearances to the contrary notwithstanding.