I would probably self-identify as a writer. Although I’ve recently been spending more time scrolling on my phone and crying, I’d like to think that I have a pretty good grasp of writing. I’ve also been on my fair share of writing websites before, but truly none of them compare to how I’ve felt about Substack.
Don’t get me wrong, I am very happy that people are engaging with writing and interacting with it, but being on Substack has elicited absolutely no joy from me while I’ve had it. Initially I thought that Substack was the answer to all of my needs: a place to scroll, a place to write, AND I felt as if I was actively getting smarter because I was reading again. Unfortunately for me, I underestimated how people write on this app. Constantly I would get advertisements for essays saying that an excerpt from this essay changed someone’s life, but every single one I clicked on I felt as if I had already read it before: a think-piece on the digital detox written in the most insufferable way imaginable, a list of journaling ideas where most of them were identical to ones I had seen before, and (at the very worst) pieces defending the use of AI in published writing, music, and art.
All in all, Substack is inherently a platform used by people to share their writing, which is usually riddled with uselessly long and difficult words to make them sound interesting and are edited to hell and back to be grammatically perfect. If this is you, STOP IT. I want to know who you are in your writing, not this image you’re trying to force yourself to fit. You don’t have to be a philosophical person to write well, you don’t even have to edit to write well. Personally, I would much rather read a piece of work that is not grammatically correct and purely in your raw voice than something that you have run through the editing ringer time and time again to sound like a perverted version of yourself.
We feel as if we need to performatively and pretentiously write because of the digital age that we’re in. Personally, the idea of my digital footprint affected the way that I wrote or posted online. It is already difficult enough to share your thoughts and opinions on the Internet, especially with the fear of scrutiny or ostracization looming over your head. When I wrote fanfiction in high school, I was constantly afraid of what someone would say if they found out about it. I obsessed over the details of it, constantly polishing it in the hopes that I could eventually be proud of it.
Perfection is impossible to achieve, so why do we feel the need to push ourselves beyond our limits to achieve this? Maybe if I put a big word here… what if I started over… or the worst case scenario: what if I just gave up?
This is my second time writing this article, and I still can’t help but make it sickly sweet at the end. In this world where we have artificial intelligence, it is now more important than ever to be yourself while you write. I want your draft to have YOUR voice in it, not you mimicking someone else's. Self-expression is so important in our lives, especially nowadays. Don’t feel a need to impress or show your audience that you are smart. You just being here is good enough, and I will defend that forever.
And finally, to the people who naturally write with all of the big words and the overanalyzation, that’s actually crazy and I laud your achievements tenfold. I'm just curious on if you talk that way in your normal life or not, because that's literally insane of you.