Substack Is Great, But...

Long before the internet, I loved writing and world-building—I loved being creative! It fueled me, never abused or abandoned me, and I felt a great sense of joy, purpose, and belonging even when I had zero audience.

I remember days when I’d spend countless hours lost in my fantasy worlds, or poring over old maps, art, and history books. I never had “writer’s block”—I didn’t even know what that was—or recall a single day when I couldn’t immerse myself in my creative passions, despite what might’ve been going on in my life.

Writing and creating were my escape from all of that.

Then, about thirty years ago, I found my way onto the internet like everybody else, and, at first, it was a fantastic creative outlet. I joined the world of freeform role-playing on MSN Groups/Communities and chat, and met a lot of like-minded, creative people who simply loved to create.

Back then, the only competition anyone had with each other was in-character fantasy battles or dramatic storylines. And when out of character, anticipation looked like wanting to get home from work or school to check and see if anyone had replied to your storyline thread.

Rarely did people feel the need to show real-life photos of themselves or post random comments out of boredom or a need for validation.

Nobody spent all of their time scrolling mindlessly, admiring other people's art and lives and faces while being depressed by their own—because there wasn’t anything to scroll. People were too busy working on their creative projects and just wanted to share them with others. But hey, if there wasn’t anyone to share them with, that never stopped them from creating! 🤷‍♀️

This went on for nearly a decade before social media and then smartphones crept in and ruined everydamthing.

Sure, social media was technically a thing long before MySpace came onto the scene, but it wasn’t nearly as widespread as it is today, nor was it so in-your-face. There was instant messaging here, a chat room there, but nothing that made us walk hypnotized onto a conveyor belt that dropped us into a high-speed emotional grinder.

Personally, I think it was MySpace that killed creativity and kick-started a generation of social media zombies who feed only on their next digital fix and can never get enough.

On MySpace, we put up real photos of ourselves and our ASLs (age, sex, location); we pitted people against each other and played favorites by choosing our Top 8. Personal expression replaced the need to create so fast that we didn’t even notice it happening. We opened doors to allow anyone and everyone into our personal lives, and we essentially gave up human contact and connection for this drive-by, instant gratification sh*tshow that leaves us unfulfilled and begging for scraps of attention.

So, why am I picking on Substack, arguably the most respected social media platform that has ever existed?

Because of Notes.

Notes is a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

And most of you reading this have probably already realized that by now—but are still ignoring the obvious—the rest will fight me on it, and that’s OK, but don’t say I didn’t try to warn you.

No matter how positive the content or how kind the users are, Notes is still Twitter/X. It’s the same as Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, YouTube, and whatever else there is out there. And it’s the same because it works in the same way. It feeds us bite-sized bits of information that shortens our attention spans and makes us too impatient to read anything longer than a paragraph. The Notes feature leads people to the same high-speed grinder; it makes us addicted to constantly checking it—we’d snort it through a straw if we could. We’ve replaced reading books and working on our creative projects with scrolling, posting, liking, restacking, and waving our figurative arms in front of everyone, trying to get them to notice us.

It’s the same because most of us are here for the same things: attention, relevance, and money.

(Note that I said “most”, so if you’re not here for that, then I’m not talking to you.)

It’s not about being creative anymore, no matter how you look at it.

We’re here for likes, followers, subscribers, PAID subscribers; we’re here for attention, relevance, and validation (wherever I say “we” I also mean “me”). We get upset when people UNfollow or UNsubscribe, express how sad we are that we worked so hard on writing an article that only two people showed up for. We lose motivation and inspiration if engagement is low, and some of us stop doing everything else, even outside of Substack, because we start questioning our talents and abilities.

We start feeling sorry for ourselves.

And do you know what this proves? It proves that the work we’re doing isn’t for us, or for God, no matter how hard we try to make ourselves believe it—it’s for everybody else; it’s for that attention and validation I mentioned.

And today, I’ve decided to do something about it. It’s not the first time I’ve ditched social media for my sanity. Back in the day, I deleted my Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram accounts with tens of thousands of followers—and I didn’t look back.

I still have a YouTube account, but I deleted the app from my phone when I realized I was spending hours out of my day scrolling through Shorts—and I never looked back.

Yesterday, I deleted the Substsack app from my phone and will not be looking back there, either. Why do I need it on my phone? Why do I need 24/7/365, anywhere-in-the-world access to any social media app, even the nicest one ever created?

I don’t.

I want to be able to read books again, not pick up my phone every second to check out what everybody else is doing.

I want to be able to write articles I’m passionate about because I’m passionate about them, not because I’m trying to prove myself to others.

I want to be able to feel the passion I once felt for creating, and I can’t do that with a creativity-sucking app taking up all of my time and attention.

I want to feel joy, purpose, and belonging in my work again, and that’ll never happen as long as I keep feeding the machine.

So, with all that said, I’m stepping away from Notes (not articles). I’ll pop on every once in a while to post something about new articles and whatnot; I’ll say hi to the dear friends I’ve met here, but for the most part, I’m done with Notes because I didn’t delete Twitter just to rejoin Twitter wearing an orange suit.

You might not even notice my absence because I didn’t post much on Notes and usually ❤️ed a lot of other Notes. But I will definitely notice, because, behind the scenes, I spent a great deal of time scrolling mindlessly while my life kept passing me by.

P.S. Check out another relevant article I wrote titled “The Gift of Creativity | A Superpower You Didn’t Know You Had”.

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The text in this article is copyright © 2025 Jessica Redmerski.