218 Comments
User's avatar
Pranav's avatar

Man i love this so much. Every friend I've shown substack to has enjoyed it for exactly a week before the notes become UNBEARABLY insufferable. Shallow wisdom abounds when people wanna write to say they write.

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Laggy's avatar

Weak friends

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Pranav's avatar

mmm sure

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Sol's avatar

This is exactly how I’ve been feeling !!! Everybody treats this app like Twitter then act so pretentious because they just “understand” life more because they’re an artist/writer. That’s why I I even have a hard time saying I’m a writer myself because I’m not into the same movies,books,artists as they are

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Luciana Cole they/them's avatar

you just made me stutter with the the truth of what you just said

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Courtney Traub's avatar

Thanks for the laugh in a week where I’ve been insufferably whining about AI stealing my potential audience. I’d share this post on Notes, but I assume you’d throw cat food.

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Luciana Cole they/them's avatar

no please share it and say it’s written by an AI that would be even better

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mari reads's avatar

me when a unsourced Pinterest mood board get more motion than people’s actual art and photography

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Luciana Cole they/them's avatar

so real

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hey daisy's avatar

i like using Notes to talk to myself and restack other notes that reflect how i feel

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dreamnetic's avatar

same though! i thought that was the entire point of it

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hey daisy's avatar

i thought so too and im sure that's what some do but y'know there will always be exceptions. people gonna people. people gonna do the most and people gonna do the least.

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dreamnetic's avatar

true

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The Songstress's avatar

this is a well-written article. and while i hate a lot of those notes, i think some of them are people just trying to get some relief by posting their real feelings. i just let them be fr

also that bit about van gogh was so substack note-y😂

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Luciana Cole they/them's avatar

i completely agree with you and thanks about the van gogh bit

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Im Writer-nim's avatar

Been feeling the same way about notes. They also take up so much space and makes it harder to find actual Substack posts..

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Luciana Cole they/them's avatar

couldn’t agree more i just want to read quotes from cool posts

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Stone Wolf's avatar

Lmfao my god I love this. Everything is so goddamn performative and catering to silly little emotions these days. I’m 35 years old and have been a poet since I was 12 and never once have I needed an audience to feel good about what I’ve made. I write because it’s in me and it feels *right* to authentically express whatever the fuck is happening in a moment. Would it be nice to make a living from it? Of fucking course. But if I never make a single dollar or ever have a single fan, I’m going to keep writing because it’s simply a part of who I am.

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Luciana Cole they/them's avatar

i wish i could restack what you just said because it truly spoke to me. having an audience is a bonus to an already beautiful journey that is artistry. since you’re older you must sense the fake depth of those emotional notes much better than gen z who always falls for fake positivity (remember the body positivity movement?)

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Stone Wolf's avatar

Yes!! It’s a huge problem where we’ve taken compassion to an extreme and it’s created massive levels of entitlement and confusion about reality. Compassion and kindness need to be balanced with accountability and a fostering of inner strength. And omg do not even get me started on the body positivity movement! Straight up toxicity disguised as something that feels good. Drives me nuts.

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Jamelah's avatar

I loved this! As someone who is very new to Substack I’ve been trying to figure out Notes…the ONE thing I like is when I read someone else’s writing if there is a standout sentence or two that really hits me I can highlight and re-stack it as a note…it gives the writer more exposure AND it’s a direct link to their writing when you click on it. That feature is gold imo…but the rest is so similar to threads or Twitter why not stay original here and be different than the rest. That’s the pull to this platform in the first place.

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Luciana Cole they/them's avatar

this is the one and only way notes should be used. it should be used to highlight writers and not to give AI compliments you can read also in an horoscope

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dreamnetic's avatar

my feed is full of old tumblr screenshots recycled over from pinterest, pseudo-deep notes that look too polished to be authentic, and lots and lots of twitter clones. i thought substack would be like screaming into the void, everyone writing nonsense anonymously with the occasional author posting about their extremely specific that they have extremely specific knowledge ( and probably a phd) on. it has, to my great disappointment, turned out to be like every other social media, except that everyone on here claims to be smarter than the herbivores lumbering on the other sites. i think i'll just look for smaller accounts now

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Luciana Cole they/them's avatar

no but exactly

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Caleb's avatar

Thanks for the negativity I needed that balance to help me keep going because it’s been all roses and sunshine so now I keep going N with renewed focus

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Vaishali's avatar

LMFAO SO TRUE I NEEDED IT TOO, I thought I was losing my mind when I first thought these posts were unnecessary 🙏

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dylan's avatar

haha this was funny but really tho i wish the notes would go away so i’ll be able to only read posts😭

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samantha nagel's avatar

i swear at least half those notes are written by chat gpt!!!!

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Vaishali's avatar

People do that? It's mostly oneliners tho 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

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samantha nagel's avatar

i mean maybe not!! i could be so cynical that i assume. i just see so much of the format of “it’s not about X — it’s about Y.” and other chat gpt faves

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Rea de Miranda's avatar

Exactly! "I only have 2 subscribers". You must work not whinge.

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Luciana Cole they/them's avatar

lmao so true

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Vaishali's avatar

And that gets 80 likes and 50 restacks and boom more subs

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Brian Lamacraft's avatar

The ones that advertise how many subscribers they have is the most annoying. Here's a hint. no one cares.

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Luciana Cole they/them's avatar

i just wanna know if i can smoke weed with u tbh

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Christin's avatar

Ugh. They drive me bonkers! Although most of the ones I see like this have far too many likes. Sometimes a couple thousand. I don’t get it. I guess people DO care. 😂 Congrats and all, but it’s just such an odd thing to go viral to me.

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Shelley-Marie's avatar

This was the laugh I needed this week, thank you for writing it!

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Luciana Cole they/them's avatar

thank you for reading!!!

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