How Substack Changed My Reading

Generosity. Substack, in counterpart to ‘established’ publications, has no quality control, and this produces a kind of sargasso sea of writing, much of it mediocre. To the Substack detractors — Becca Rothfeld, Brandon Taylor, Teddy Brown, etc — this is the primary point of complaint: that you just find yourself awash in a lot of junk. But, in my Substack fervency, I’ve found myself not being bothered by this — and have found my reading habits changing. For the most part on Substack, I’m not reading enviously or even critically — I’m just curious what people have to say. A lot of the people I read aren’t professional writers and have no desire to be. They’ve had interesting lives, or are just testing out their voices, and I find myself reading them sort of the way a parent might — excited for them when they say something surprising or interesting, just sort of skimming forward whenever the piece gets a little muddy. The difference seems to be about medium. If I read somebody who is printed in a book or newspaper, what I am really reading is the editorial selection process behind them — I am upset with the editors if they published a piece that I deem to be not ‘of the quality’ and aggrieved on behalf of everybody else who, implicitly, is denied those column inches or that print run. But, on the internet, where storage space is infinite, it’s silly to be upset — if I don’t like something, I just scroll on to the next piece.