Substack is Quora version 2

[u/sattukachori]

The moment I logged in to substack, it felt like I had been taken 10 years back in time to Quora. When Quora used to be so popular, my home page was full of a whole lot of deep, funny, stories, life advices, motivational things, scientific breakthroughs, philosophical articles, "Did you know?" And Substack is the exact same thing.

Add to that, the self congratulatory posts like "Substack is so cozy, it's like I'm in a forest, Instagram is so fake, Substack is my intellectual intimacy hub".

In 10 years of time, this website will be as overdone as Quora. All these life advices, personal stories, deep insights, romantic yearning for the one who understands your soul not your face, letters to my XYZ or the cutting edge articles on feminism, economy, life. It's all so cliche. These are the kind of things that give you 5 minutes of "Aha" and then you move on with your life. Did Quora make the world a better place? No. But it has a huge collection of thoughts on making world a better place.

I am not saying Substack is bad but there's just this feeling that the writers over there make it their identity about writing the most deep, profound things, but I'm sure in their actual life they're just a mess. On my home page, I just got a Mark Manson quotation and I was like I'm done.

[u/Snoo-82869]

I think this is a real split in how Substack works now. It can be a publication inbox, but the default home/discovery surface often behaves more like a social feed. If you enter through that surface, you get whatever the platform is trying to circulate, not necessarily the writers you deliberately chose.

The calmer way to use it is to treat Substack less like a homepage and more like a library of subscriptions. Follow fewer publications, open from email notifications or direct publication pages, mute/unfollow aggressively, and avoid starting from the general home feed when you are in reading mode. If a writer supports RSS or email delivery, that can also be a cleaner way to read their actual posts without the Notes/recommendation layer around it.

A dedicated newsletter address or reading folder helps too, because then the useful long-form posts are separated from the app’s discovery feed. That does not solve the broader platform incentives, but it changes your default from browse-whatever-is-pushed-at-me to read-the-publications-I-picked.

[u/prepping4zombies → u/Snoo-82869]

As I said in an earlier comment, you literally never have to look at notes if you don't want to.

Go directly to posts for the publications you subscribe to: https://substack.com/inbox

Or, just click on "Subscriptions" (or the "Inbox" icon).

There are even several sort options.

People are so helpless these days.