I’ve received a few questions regarding my experiences with Substack and why I made the switch over to this platform.
It’s technically my third week here (not quite a month) so I’m still learning and getting my bearings, but I do have my reasons as to why I made the shift in the first place.
This is a long breakdown. I am, however, leaving it open to free subscribers (until it’s eventually archived behind the paywall) because I want to be as helpful and as transparent as possible.
Before I dive in, I want to start off with the following 3 points to provide context:
I’m a content strategist with 18 years of experience working with brands as a fractional CMO and also in building my own businesses.
All that means is I’ve been in the social media and content space for a long time. I’ve seen a lot of things come and go and dramatically evolve over the years.
Those experiences influence my particular perceptions and why I make certain decisions.
I’m a very big believer in the following (which I’ve shared with all of you many, many times):
There is no one way
Do what works best for you
Everything I’m sharing here is what works for me. This is specific to my experiences and what I value and want in my life.
Everyone is different and alignment will mean something individual to each of you.
I’m simply sharing my thoughts behind my choices and what I’m learning / realizing as I go. There are no answers here - just what I’m doing at the present moment and why.
I’m an artist, a creative.
This is the lens with which I view what’s right for me in terms of my work. This greatly factors into what I value and am seeking.
There are many, many reasons why I’ve gradually been pulling back on my work as a fractional CMO, including misalignment with what I want in my life right now.
One particular reason was I no longer wanted to remain behind brands, helping them build their voices. It was no longer interesting to me (boredom is now one of my favorite ways of assessing alignment).
Instead, I wanted to honor and better realize my own voice.
This meant re-examining the work, meaning, and impact of what I do. It meant reassessing whether my actions and choices genuinely reflected what mattered to me.
Doing this led me to uncover my general fatigue with social media. This shouldn’t have surprised me but it did.
During my years as a concert pianist and as an author, I spent large amounts of time offline.
When I prepared for a concert tour, I was either at the piano or in active thinking, daydreaming, imagining mode.
When I began writing a new novel, I’d retreat into what I called my “writer’s cave” and pulled away from the internet and the world in general so I could do the work. Similar to my years as a pianist, any time outside of that was devoted to thinking and reflecting.
I nourished myself with art, books, other quiet, creative endeavors, and time spent in nature.
For me, it is impossible to do quality, deep, creative work and be chronically online at the same time.
Granted, there are things I enjoy about social media.
It has enabled me to form extraordinary relationships and friendships. It has allowed me to build and run several businesses. It has given me space to share my thoughts and ideas to a larger number of people.
When I hop on to socials, I feel like I’m visiting my local neighborhood coffee shop. I see all the familiar faces and say hello and catch up on what they’re doing.
But as I enter this next chapter, the two main issues I have are the following:
Issue #1: Content is Not Art
I’m adding another quick reminder here because I know many people struggle to manage fear and anxiety especially with social media content.
Your mental and emotional health always come first. If that means only seeing positive, light content or happy animal photos in your feed, please do what’s right for you.
The views and opinions expressed here are my own and are through the lens of who I am as an artist (the context I mentioned at the start of this essay) and what matters to me.
The advantage and disadvantage of social media is that there’s no gatekeeping. Anyone can join - anyone can begin to post content for free.
This allows nearly everyone in the world an opportunity to express their ideas, thoughts, and opinions and connect with others.
At the same time, it also means your public content is visible and accessible to everyone in the world.
This has been the number one problem that has faced every client I’ve ever worked with regarding content.
This visibility - its public nature and the exposure to mass amounts of opinions - triggers a fear that I compare to a kind of performance anxiety.
It’s the fear of what others will think of them, the fear of being judged by all these voices.
It’s a fear that manifests in the need for external validation, the desire to be likable and for everyone to think of you as a nice, talented human being.
It’s a fear that demands safety.
This then results in people posting bland, banal content that won’t upset anyone, a current of regurgitated ideas lacking individuality and heft.
It’s apologetic writing, constantly flinching, without voice or risk. It’s designed for broad external acceptance rather than expression of personal truth.
It becomes boring and uninteresting.
Yes, of course there are those who do the opposite and purposefully rage-bait and spew vitriol constantly. But those are obvious and very easy to identify.
I’d argue that this blandness is far more insidious because of its consequences.
Not only is it fear actualizing in a form of self-suppression, but this insistence that one should only post “nice” or “positive” content is a way of policing what others share by means of passive-aggressive shaming.
It’s an odd kind of moral superiority designed to keep people in a certain paradigm or framework.
This is something I’m particularly aware of as a woman of color because I have many many experiences in which I’ve shared an opinion or personal lived experience and have received pushback because it triggered someone’s insecurities.
It’s a defensive reaction because I wouldn’t stay in the “comfortable” place (ie the pleasant / “nice” zone) where they thought I should exist, a place that made them comfortable.
It’s this policing that leads to people feeling an inevitable pressure to only post perfect photos, or only share the best, most infallible version of themselves.
The irony is that in its reasoning to make social media more pleasant, these actions instead contribute to the collective issue we all have with its falseness.
It’s an amputation of vision in favor of a syrupy presentation that prioritizes shallow attention over depth.
This blandness - this vanilla, flat, and palatable creating for everyone - is something that deeply goes against my fundamental values as an artist.
Art requires challenging societal and cultural narratives and contributing to the greater intellectual discussion.
It requires nuance and a willingness to go beyond the surface into the darker arenas.
It necessitates the conviction to stand in one’s individual voice and the honesty to express our humanity, including emotions and thoughts that are not pretty or perfect or acceptable to everyone.
It requires the full complexity of the human condition.
Issue #2: The reward of speed and quantity over quality
Social algorithms are designed to keep you on the platform.
By feeding you a steady stream of personalized content you’re interested in (TikTok’s FYP is incredible at this) within a system in which you’re rewarded for commenting / engaging, likes, views, shares / reposts, and follower count, it provides continuous dopamine to keep you immersed as long as possible.
Speed becomes paramount. The quicker you scroll, the greater amount of content you consume. The more content you produce, the greater likelihood others will find it.
Most TikTok users now watch short videos at 2x the speed - and there are now widespread complaints that there should be a 3x option.
This level of speedy consumption rewards quantity. It’s not meant to encourage reflection, consideration, or thoughtful discussion.
When platforms start to prioritize engagement over everything else, the lowest common denominator rises to the top.
Why? Because for content to reach mass popularity, it must appeal to the widest swath of people.
Rarely will you see a profoundly intellectual argument or interesting insight go viral…because it takes a certain level of reading comprehension, education, and understanding to grasp what is being communicated.
And that level, unfortunately, is not uniform.
What that means then is that memes, celebrity gossip, inciting clickbait, and shitposts will garner the highest degree of attention and engagement.
This then creates a domino effect of greater numbers of people producing low-barrier, zero thought content that hops onto trends in the hopes of gaining more visibility.
It’s a never-ending spiral.
But here’s the thing - there’s nothing wrong with fun content. If that’s what makes you happy, I’m all for it.
There are many times when I’m exhausted and have no energy to exert brain power. That’s when I’ll scroll through my feed and laugh at silly memes and funny videos, or watch a movie that requires no thinking or effort.
Again, there’s a time and place for everything. There’s room for everyone.
But over the past six months or so, this has been bothering me more and more on a personal level.
It’s a bit like eating fast (convenience) food. Believe me, I love my NY pizza slices, bodega bacon, egg, and cheese on a roll, and bagels oozing with cream cheese.
But it’s not healthy to eat it every single day. Technically, you could, but it comes with effects / consequences.
I want to maintain the quality of what I’m inputting - what I’m nourishing myself with - because I’m aware of the mental and emotional effects.
Why Substack?
I’ve been watching Substack closely over the past year and assessing whether it might be a good fit for me (shoutout to Daniel for encouraging me to explore it).
While it’s an ecosystem that has a powerful community building structure in place, Substack is not a social media platform.
The main reason for that is Substack monetizes differently. They don’t rely on or need ad revenue which is what fuels the current social media cycle of mass views and engagement.
Instead, Substack takes a cut from each paid subscription to a creator.
Because of this model, Substack’s priority is NOT advertisers and mass adoption, but rather the empowerment of individual creators.
The more Substack writers succeed in finding their unique audiences and gaining paid subscribers, the more money the platform makes.
This means emphasizing quality over quantity and real community-building over followers.
This is a very critical difference that sets this place apart from any other platform.
In addition, the changes and developments Substack has and is continuing to make clearly represent an overall vision that honors the creative process.
Once I understood that, I realized this was the platform that best aligned with the kind of work I wanted to do.
I don’t plan on leaving socials any time soon. So many of you have let me know how much my posts have mattered, how they reached you at the right moment, and how you’ve bookmarked them to return to time and time again.
That has meant the world to me and I will continue to show up because I know the ways in which impact can still happen on those platforms.
But when it comes to my work - to what I want to create and incorporate into my life - there is a disconnect.
The more I understand this about myself, the more I’ve made shifts for better alignment, including establishing a far greater degree of selectivity.
It’s why I decided to put this newsletter and my writings behind a paywall.
This is how I’m establishing boundaries. I’m an author, a writer - I get paid to write. I know the value of my writing.
And I want to align with those who also see its value, who understand that it’s worth more than a blip on the timeline as you’re scrolling.
That’s also the reason I didn’t auto-subscribe existing subscribers to my Sketches experiment.
Those near daily musings are deeply honest, raw, and personal and they’re not meant for mass consumption.
I only wanted readers who really really value my ideas, my voice, and want to connect with me, those who enjoy my writings enough to make the effort to subscribe to them.
Deep, not wide. Quality over quantity.
That has always been and will continue to be my primary focus as I build community.
As of now, I’m focused on sharing the bulk and depth of my ideas through my writings, speaking, and teachings, whether it’s here on Substack, in the Kizuna Studio community, on the podcast, and through the Break Down The Box programs.
Is this a bet? Sure.
I’m betting that people will give a shit about my ideas, my voice, and my writings beyond what randomly pops up on their feed.
I’m betting that people will read through essays like this, that they will take the time, effort, and concentration to consider and explore.
But I also think the risk extends beyond me.
Because what I’m really betting on is that there are still people out there who want that.
That there are those who seek depth and quality, who are searching for meaningful connections beyond algorithmic shifts, banal how-tos, and immediate dopamine hits.
That there are those who seek art, not content.
To be honest, a part of me is terrified to send this essay out into the world.
I’m worried a bunch of people who are just interested in growth and cheap tactics are going to flood this platform from X with their frameworks, fake, calculated posts, and nonsense bullshit and take away what’s special about it.
Because I’m really loving Substack. I love the vibes, creative energy, and contemplative slowness.
I love the discourse, thoughtfulness, intelligence, and breadth of ideas and talent. The level of writing here is incredibly inspiring.
As I’ve spent time here over the past three weeks, I’ve realized just how starved I was, how social platforms haven’t nourished me in the ways I need.
My current favorite part of the day is settling down in the evening and slowly reading all my Substack subscriptions, sinking into language and voices and feeling a calm, uninterrupted contentment.
Feeling this way tells me this is exactly where I need to be.
Recent Sketches
Need help navigating change and finding authentic, aligned integration of vision, self, work, and voice? Let’s talk.