The internet tastes and smells like wet cardboard!
You feel it too, don’t you?
I often get angry when I open my inbox or scroll through Substack.
I get the unmistakable stench of tasteless mediocrity.
When I write copy for paying clients, real human creativity is the name of the game.
Sure, I know certain copywriting formulas.
But the creativity is real, the thoughtful choice of words is real, and I live or die by the power I instill in every carefully chosen phrase.
What makes me angry is the meh… so what? of reading 500 words that are grammatically perfect, structured like a high school essay, and completely devoid of a pulse.
We’re all drowning in it.
When you write on Substack, you’re not just competing with other writers anymore.
You’re fighting a war against a firehose of automated, synthetic goo.
But don’t despair.
Let me show you how to protect your Substack and help you chart a path through the sticky mess.
Good news! The bar for being interesting just got lower.
The Beast can generate text, but it can’t mimic your soul.
If you want to survive the AI avalanche, you don’t need to be smarter than The Beast.
You need to be more human than it.
Here’s how you build a fortress around your work and stop the AI slop from swallowing you whole.
Let’s strip away the hype.
AI Slop isn’t rocket science.
It’s much dumber than that!
“The Beast” is the result of millions of people realizing they can press a button to generate “content” without doing any of the thinking.
It’s:
Surface-level competent: It knows where the commas go.
Hallucinatory: It lies with the confidence of a delusional evangelist.
Averaged out: It scrapes the internet, finds the median opinion, and spits it right back at you.
Why is this a threat to your Substack?
Because attention is a zero-sum game.
When your reader’s inbox is flooded with ten AI-generated newsletters summarizing the “Top 10 Productivity Hacks,” or “The 25 Latest AI Tools”, fatigue sets in.
They stop opening emails.
They unsubscribe from everything to save their sanity.
You’re not losing readers (or not gaining them) because your writing is bad.
You’re losing them because the “quality-to-slop ratio” of the internet has nose-dived.
To win, you must first find your community.
And that’s important, because mindless AI junkies are not them!
AI has read everything, and it has experienced nothing.
It has never had its heart broken in a parking lot.
It has never burned dinner.
It has never felt the cold dread of a Sunday evening with a job it hates waiting just a few short hour away.
This is your human leverage.
When you write, you must inject elements that a Large Language Model (LLM) can never replicate - because it doesn’t have your soul.
1. The “I Was There” Approach
Stop writing “How-To” guides that anyone can Google.
Start writing “How I Did It” stories.
Bad (AI): “Here are 5 ways to deal with failure.”
Good (Human): “Here is exactly what I drank, who I called, and how much money I lost when my startup imploded last Tuesday.”
2. Sensory Details
AI is terrible at sensory language because it has no senses. It uses generic descriptors like “delicious” or “vibrant.”
Get specific: Describe the smell of ozone before a storm. The sticky feeling of a dive bar floor. The sound of a radiator hissing. These details trigger sensory neurons in your reader’s brain. They prove a human was present.
3. Have an Opinion That Hurts
AI is designed to be safe. It hedges. Its logic dictates that “it’s important to consider both sides.”
So, go ahead, pick a side. Be polarizing. Be willing to be wrong. A jagged, imperfect opinion is infinitely more valuable than a smooth, synthesized consensus.
Okay, let’s get deeper into the weeds. How do you structure your newsletter so a reader knows, within three seconds, that a human wrote it?
If your post answers a question that can be solved by a sidebar snippet on Google, you’re already dead.
Move up the value chain. Move from Information to Wisdom.
Information: “What is the best time to post on Substack?” (Commodity).
Wisdom: “Why my 3 AM posts get the most engagement from insomniac founders, and what that says about the hustle culture economy.” (Proprietary).
I’m serious. The Beast writes in perfect Standard American English. It uses transition words like “Furthermore” and “In conclusion.”
Break the rules.
Use fragments.
Start sentences with “And” or “But.”
Invent words.
Use slang that fits your specific niche.
Your distinct human voice is a fingerprint. It’s messy. Perfection is the red flag that screams “Robot.”
AI is great at broadcasting; it’s terrible at hanging out.
The most powerful protective layer you have is your community. AI cannot replicate the banter in the comments section or the riffing that happens on Substack Notes.
Action: Spend the same time in the comments as you do writing your post.
Reply to everyone. Create inside jokes. Build a culture.
Host your club: When people subscribe to you, they’re not just buying a PDF; they’re buying entry into a club. A bot can’t host a club.
AI is trained on the “mass” internet. It knows the best-sellers and the viral tweets. It doesn’t know about that weird book from 1974 you found at a yard sale.
Become a filter for the strange, the old, and the offline.
Quote things that aren’t on the internet yet.
Scan pages from your physical notebooks.
Before you hit publish on your next post, run it through this checklist. If you fail more than two of these, delete the draft and start over.
The “Proof of Life” Checklist:
[ ] The “I” Test: Did I use the word “I” to describe a specific, personal experience that happened to me?
[ ] The Hallucination Check: Did I include a specific detail (a date, a dollar amount, a proper noun) that proves I did the work?
[ ] The Weirdness Factor: Is there a sentence in here that makes no sense out of context? (AI hates lack of context).
[ ] The “Generic Adjective” Purge: Did I remove words like “game-changing,” “crucial,” “foster,” or “landscape”?
[ ] The Opinion Check: Did I say something that might make at least one person disagree with me?
[ ] The Visual Proof: Did I include a photo I took myself, something I created myself, or a screenshot of my actual work? Stock photos are the enemy.
The Beast is big, it’s fast, and it never sleeps - scary, right?
But I’m telling you, this is the greatest opportunity for writers since the invention of the blog.
For the last ten years, the internet rewarded “content.”
It rewarded volume.
It rewarded SEO keywords and perfectly structured listicles.
That game is over. The Beast won.
Now, we’re entering a time of Human Renaissance.
We’re on the threshold of an era where imperfection is a premium asset.
Where a story about your dog vomiting on your rug is worth more than an AI-generated essay on “The Future of Crypto.”
Readers are starving.
They’re desperate for a voice that sounds like it comes from a real person, not a server farm.
Protect your voice.
Dig your moat.
Be aggressively human.
See you in the comments.
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