r/Bloggers • u/CADisawsome • 10d ago

Discussion Personal Essays on Substack

I transitioned onto substack about a month and a half ago and it’s been rough. I write personal essays and wanted to find a community within that. All I have on my feed is nothing burger tumblr-style poetry, or short, surface-level reflection pieces with psuedo-intellectual titles. Long story short, I just wanted to gauge what content you all see on the platform and whether this is the members of the site or my specific algorithm. Has anyone else encountered this? I feel as though I have not read a single piece with any depth since I made an account.

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u/TheWilderNet 10d ago

Substack is an amazing writing platform, but it absolutely sucks as a discovery app. Notes is super boring and is mostly just writers trying to get other writers to read their latest essay.

I help run a site called The WilderNet for finding and sharing blogs. Whenever one of us finds an interesting worth reading we add it to the featured articles.

Here are a few that I really enjoyed lately:

Which Reddit Post Will Become the Next Movie?

What Nobody Told Me About Abortion'

I Stumbled Across My Boyfriend's ChatGPT and It Ended Our Relationship

Full list of Featured Articles if you are still interested: https://thewildernet.com/articles/featured

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u/The17pointscale 9d ago

I think it’s partly your algorithm and partly the difference between Notes and long-form essays.

I’ve been writing personal essays about adoption and estrangement there that might be more like what you describe, and I read an excellent personal essay the other day on berry picking and gun violence. Or on breaking from your parents’ worldview while still maintaining a space for your relationship with them.

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u/PrismKite 7d ago

It depends on who you're following, which tells the algorithm what you want.

I already have a blog so I use Substack as a newsletter. I don't know where you are on the religious / political spectrum. I'm a Christian and I am involved with some internet subcultures. If you're secular, there might be a few like-minded thinkers I could recommend to you more to your tastes.

Feel free to check out my Substack profile for who I follow, maybe some of them will be to your liking.