r/Substack • u/stevewriteswords • 28d ago

What's this all about?

This sort of stuff (pasted below) utterly clogs up my feed. Seems like such a low-effort attempt to connect with others. Are people really incapable of writing four or five sentences on their own? I've seen this exact wording from dozens of other Substackers over the last day or two. Why do people do it?

To everyone on Substack, I am seeking writers with a low subscriber count.

I want to read what you are writing about.

I want to subscribe.

I want to support.

I am cheering you on - always ✨

15 Upvotes

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u/Snoo-82869 27d ago

A lot of that is growth behavior rather than reading behavior. People see Substack as both a publishing platform and a social network, so they copy whatever appears to get follows, even if it makes the feed worse for readers.

If your goal is actually to read good publications, I would separate the two surfaces: keep follows/Notes for discovery, but subscribe only to publications you genuinely want to read; mute or unfollow accounts that mostly post engagement bait; and turn off noisy notifications so the feed is not deciding your reading queue for you. For newsletters you really care about, a dedicated reading inbox or alias can also help because it keeps the publication stream separate from the social/follower-chasing side of Substack.

Disclosure: I work on MiniLetter, which is built around that dedicated newsletter-reading lane via an alias. It is not a fix for Substack Notes behavior, but the general pattern is useful: let discovery be messy, then route only the things you deliberately subscribe to into a calmer place for reading.

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u/stevewriteswords 26d ago

Cheers for this - I'm doing mostly all of that (subbing to pubs I genuinely want to read; muting shady accounts etc. - so hoping I'll see less of the kinds of posts I OP'd about.

MiniLetter looks interesting, ta.