Things I’ve noticed about Substack Notes that are better than Twitter was, even in the old days when Twitter was marginally less poisonous than it became:

• Significantly less of a sense of the whole thing being dominated by noisy fuckpigs who vastly oversimplify the world and wish to remake it in their own image.

• Fewer people telling people who’ve written books what they are dead sure their books are about, despite having not read the books, or any books, recently, because their brains are too fucked from being on Twitter.

• Several months in, and still not had to deal with a scary parasocial stalker (result!).

• Even the people who are very into it seem less inclined to treat is an obsessive communication with a nebulous god made of wires who they want to show what a flawless, right-thinking person they are and how much they condemn all forms of flawed human behaviour.

• Nobody uses the word “tweeps”.

• Supportive egalitarian vibe that contrasts with Twitter’s frequent sense of watching a masturbatory Londoncentric circle of already rich-and-famous media people plugging one another’s work.

• Seems to carry the reassuring wisdom that the best way to promote your writing is via your writing, rather than, say, via swiftly manufacturing a strong and obnoxious opinion on something that happened that day that everyone is talking about.

• Nobody saying “be kind”. And nobody getting loudly, excessively annoyed with people for saying “be kind”. But a lot of people being kind.

• That editing function. So sexy.