Substa-gram

When sincerity becomes a brand, the real self starts to disappear.

I’m going to be mean for a minute.

I’m normally not. I try not to be anyway. I genuinely love people, and I love the people on Substack even more than most.

But a few weeks ago, I posted about writing from the heart of real. About writing through the blood on the floor around you, not sidestepping it. What I meant was, I want everyone to write from their heart, from their gut, and acknowledge the reality of what it is and isn’t. Not gloss it over with a cover-up paint job.

Show us all the dents and dings in your soul.

Lately, that does not feel like what I am getting.

Lately, I see performative reality.

Let me explain.

If you post about some heartfelt thing in your life, and then post a clearly posed, manufactured version of that thing in a photo, how am I supposed to take you seriously?

I don’t turn to Substack for that. If I want that, I go to Instagram, where I can see it on everyone’s feed. Substack is where I go to see the bloody wounds. The ones people are trying to heal, the ones people want to share because they want us to feel seen in their words.

I’m not afraid of blood.

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The irritating part is the manufactured candidness of it. The implied posture is, “Look at this spontaneous intimate truth,” while the mechanics scream, “I staged this for engagement.”

That’s the part that makes it feel Instagrammy.

I think my real objection is not that people shouldn’t post personal moments. In fact, it’s the opposite of that. I think what I’m saying is that Substack was supposed to feel more like writing, thought, essays, letters, and actual interior life.

Then Notes starts drifting into:

“Here is my curated vulnerability.”

“Here is my healing aesthetic.”

“Here is my candid moment that required careful camera placement.”

It starts to feel less like writers thinking in public and more like people branding sincerity.

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That’s the phrase, honestly:

branding sincerity

Once you see it, it becomes hard to unsee.

I’d also say this gently to anyone who feels like I’m truly being unkind: my cynicism is partly a sign that I am getting clearer about what kind of online world I don’t want to live in.

I don’t hate sincerity. I hate the performance of sincerity.

Big difference.

If I follow you, it’s because I like you better when you lean into actual lived weirdness, irritation, grief, humor, memory, mortality, loved ones, pets, LIFE, and the fact that being human is often absurd and not very photogenic.

But what is happening now is that Substack is starting to feel like Instagram more and more.

That’s it.

Maybe it’s turning into Substa-gram.

Substa-gram: where essays go to put on lip gloss and pretend a tripod wasn’t involved.

Honestly, that term nails the whole irritation. It’s not that people are sharing their lives. It’s that the platform is slowly rewarding the same curated faux-candid intimacy that made Instagram exhausting.

Substack was supposed to be:

“Here is what I think.”

Substa-gram is:

“Here is my carefully framed authenticity. Please validate my truth.”

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I don’t know. Maybe I’m just getting cranky as I get older. Maybe this is just me telling the kids to get off my digital lawn.

Or maybe, just maybe, I want to see the real you.

Because I want to love the real you.

And I want to feel safe enough to share the real me with you in return.

That, more than anything, is what I came here for.