On Substack

Subscriber counts, open rates, conversion stats. The polite knock at the door of your creativity, asking, Is this good enough? Will they come back? Will they share it?

Substack tells you it’s not like the others. It whispers promises of liberation from the noise, a refuge for your words, a space that belongs to you. No algorithm meddling in your thoughts, no endless scrolling turning your days into blurs of nothingness. It’s clean. Purposeful. A haven for writers.

But then come the numbers.

Subscriber counts, open rates, conversion stats. The polite knock at the door of your creativity, asking, Is this good enough? Will they come back? Will they share it? It starts quietly, the way all addictions do. You tell yourself you’re writing for the joy of it, for the connection, for the space to breathe. And maybe you are—at first.

But then the dopamine hits arrive. A new subscriber. A boost in your analytics. That small, dangerous rush that says, Keep going. Do more. Grow. And just like that, Substack isn’t a refuge anymore. It’s a numbers game, another echo of the platforms we thought we’d left behind.

Is it social media? Not quite. But it plays the same tricks if you’re not careful. It offers connection, but only if you keep producing. It hands you ownership but quietly asks, How are you monetizing that ownership? It can feel like freedom until the pressure creeps in, until the focus shifts from what you want to say to what people want to read.

But maybe the problem isn’t the platform. Maybe it’s us—the way we’ve been trained to measure our worth in metrics. To crave visibility like it’s oxygen. To turn even the most sacred spaces into stages.

So, is Substack social media? That depends on how you use it. It can be a tool, a sanctuary, a small rebellion against the endless noise. But only if you hold your boundaries. Only if you write what matters to you, not what you think will keep them clicking.

Maybe it’s time to reclaim the act of creation itself. To let Substack be a space for words, not performance. For stories, not stats. For connection, not validation.

And maybe, just maybe, it can stay a refuge—if we let it.