I don’t want to belabor the point here but I’m getting tired of people saying that Substack elevates mediocrity, bad posts, etc.

Pieces you don’t like going viral doesn’t take anything away from your work. (You may not want the audiences that they’re speaking to, anyway.)

I don’t want to minimize how competitive writing is. Substack has undeniably changed the landscape and made it more competitive. The death of Twitter — which is how many writers, including myself, built their careers —doesn’t help things either.

Tons of people grow on merit and talent. The lion’s share of ultra-successful writers got to where they are, in part, by network effects though. A lot of that is just luck. You catch the right person’s eye. You hit the right beat. You joined the platform at the right time.

None of this is the platform’s fault. And it’s not a conspiracy or cruel trick played by individual writers.