Of course it is. 

There are notes, there is a feed, there are engagement metrics, there are algorithms. And it’s not an accident.

We shouldn’t be surprised. But we often are, because we’re clouded by nostalgia for a past that’s gone, or delusional about a future that Substack simply wasn’t built to deliver. We want the quiet purity of a direct email connection, but we also want the viral growth of a billion-people network.

We want to believe that if we complain loud enough, we can change things for the better. But getting angry at Substack is like getting angry at the rain.

The weather isn’t trying to do anything to you. It simply is. It doesn’t matter what you want it to do. To see what’s happening to Substack, we have to look at the system.

A Few Words About Systems

When a company takes hundreds of millions of dollars from venture capital firms, it enters a system. 

Over the last fifty years, venture capital has perfected a very specific system trap: fund an innovation, acquire the early adopters, provide the scaffolding for a habit change, and then aggressively subsidize it until you achieve a network effect.

That venture capital system doesn’t want a quiet sanctuary that helps a few thousand writers make a moderate living. 

Substack has to play by the rules of the system it’s part of. If you want to scale, you have to build an arena for people to play a game. You create a feedback loop. You reward the people who bring you more attention with more status. And once that feedback loop begins, it turns insatiable.

The early adopters loved Substack because it offered an escape from the noisy feeds of Twitter and Facebook. But as Substack grew, it hit a wall. The logical thing became to play it safe and do what has worked before. So they built the very tools of distraction and short-term dopamine that power every other big social network, because that is what the masses have been trained to click on.

None of this is evil. The system wants what the system wants.

Substack is Not Your Best Friend

The mistake we make is believing that a tech platform is our partner, caring about our success and sharing our goals. This leads to the first myth about systems: believing we have unlimited power. We believe we can endlessly outsmart the system. We become the manic growth-hacker, convinced that if we just post enough Notes, optimize enough headlines, and hack the algorithm, we will be successful.

When you spend four hours a day building your presence on Substack, posting Notes for the algorithm, hoping to capture a fraction of the “free” traffic it creates, you are feeding the system. You are generating the content that keeps users scrolling, hoping you will get paid for it (or go viral).

Substack will gladly take your generous work and use it to increase its valuation. That leads straight to the second myth: we have no power at all.

Cynicism Is a Comfortable Chair

Say you don't care about growth often enough, in a comment section full of people saying the identical thing, and you can almost believe it. Almost… But nobody who has stopped wanting something needs to announce it this many times. 

It’s tempting to cross our arms, declare that Substack is succumbing to the same race to the bottom as every other social network, and paint the picture of the defeated idealist.

Cynicism is incredibly comforting.

When we decide the game is rigged, it lets us off the hook. The algorithm decides if our work gets seen. It’s not our fault. We can blame the venture capitalists, the platform updates, the attention economy, politics, the weather…

We play the cynic, but we still check the dashboard. We still quietly hope that maybe, our authentic post will accidentally trigger the algorithm and go viral. We resent the hustle, but we leave the door cracked open secretly hoping we win the lottery by being a good person.

Resenting the system while hoping to be picked by it is exhausting. It leads to burnout. And worse, it deprives us of our agency.

Culture Creates Change

It is easy to conclude you don’t have any agency because you are not one of Substack’s shareholders.

When looking at how systems work, it’s hard to see that there is a hidden driver underneath it. Systems are driven by culture. And culture is the results of interactions between people. Which is to say:

We are the culture.

Culture is the defining mechanism of any community. The system only amplifies what the nodes inside the system choose to feed it. When we reward the growth hackers with our attention, we teach the system that growth hacking is our culture. When we complain about the noise but refuse to do the emotional labor of building deep relationships, we hand the power to the loudest shouters.

Our job as creators is to create the culture for change.

If we want to preserve the core ethos of this space we cannot wait for the executives in San Francisco to do it for us. We have to take responsibility for it.

What Are You Going To Build?

Complaining surrenders the very power we need to make things better.

We have the agency to decide how we want to shape the future we want to live in. We can choose resonance over reach. We can replace performing with creating art. We can choose to be the person who writes something real instead of optimizing it for the algorithm.

You don’t have to build a funnel. Instead of waiting for the platform to remain a sanctuary, it’s on us to act like we belong in one. The system will respond to the culture. What kind of culture are we going to build today?

Use Your Agency

The future of Substack is predictable. It will continue to look more like the rest of the internet, because the system of the internet demands it. The noise will increase. The temptation to sprint for short-term engagement will grow. The pressure to conform will feel overwhelming.

You have a choice. You can surrender your agency to the system and complain when the rules change. Or you can start creating the future you want to live in.

People accuse me of complaining too much. Listen, I have German roots. Complaining is part of German culture. But what these people usually miss is the deeper core of what I’m actually saying. Because it’s not what they want to hear. It’s neither complaining nor delusional optimism.

Life sucks. But it’s our responsibility to make the best out of it. Taking responsibility is hard. Making a change is hard. But creating something meaningful is never easy.

Use the system, but don’t let the system use you. Are you feeding the algorithm? Or are you feeding the culture? 

P.S. Changing the culture starts with you. To create something real, you have to know the difference between the performance you give for the algorithm and person underneath it.

Discover Your Creator Archetype

I created The Archetype Navigator to help you with that. It’s free and takes less than 5 minutes to uncover your natural pattern, so you can build a body of work that actually looks like you. Take it or don't, but build from who you are, not from what the algorithm rewards.