THE SUBSTACK CONSPIRACY: A Sermon in Photocopy
Dictated by Algernon (Algie) Fitzwalter-Snodgrass, Mayor of Liminal London.
Comrades, brethren, fellow sufferers of subscription famine! Gather close to this pamphlet, produced at midnight by an NHS photocopier I liberated from the Department of Podiatry. Listen well.
Substack is not a platform. It is a cult with a font upgrade. You cannot simply write. You must first believe. You must chant the slogans. You must bow before the sacred graph of open rates.
They tell you: “If you write, the readers will come.” Lies! Readers flock only to other readers, like pigeons on a statue already smeared with evidence of previous pigeons. You begin alone, you remain alone. The chosen few, those who already possessed thousands of disciples on Twitter, TikTok, or the back of cereal packets, are blessed anew. The rest of us gnaw on dust.
Observe the rituals: initiation begins with begging your cousins to subscribe. Advancement requires posting humiliating confessions about your process, your trauma, your cat. The high priesthood demands proof of loyalty: weekly dispatches, always accompanied by the refrain “Support my work with £5 a month!” or at least BUY THE WRITER A BEER
Forget art; what we have here is the economics of poultry.
In my laboratory (the one behind the vape shop in Braintree) I tested this theory. Pigeons were given a button. Peck it once, a crumb might drop. Peck it again, nothing. Peck a hundred times, perhaps two crumbs. The pigeons, frantic, pecked themselves into exhaustion, convinced that persistence itself was virtue. That, dear brethren, is Substack. A writer pecking “publish” again and again, praying that this time the algorithm may smile.
Nigel says this is the invisible hand of the market. I say it is the invisible wing of a pigeon, slapping us all across the face.
Publishers stand outside the cage, sniggering. “We love initiative,” they say. “Come back when you have ten thousand followers.” But how to obtain them? By already having them! By being famous in order to become famous! It forms a logical circle tighter than Nigel’s waistband after Christmas, and just as unforgiving.
And yet the cult endures. Because every so often, someone does escape the cage. A pigeon hits the right rhythm, a crumb falls, and suddenly The Guardian writes a piece about a friend of theirs who of course will be “The Substack Star of Tomorrow.” This miracle sustains the rest of us, pecking away, convinced that martyrdom leads to canonisation.
Friends, cockatoos, countrymen: cast off these chains! Refuse to chant the humiliating refrain! Print your words on prescription pads, nail them to pub doors, hurl them from zeppelins if you must. Anything but this endless button-pecking in the algorithm’s cage.
Substack parades as revolution, yet reveals itself as a hall of mirrors where the desperate wave at themselves while the publishers sell tickets at the door. It is a cult that demands you encourage others and if the reward is not forthcoming in this life, heaven will reward you. It is a steeple house! It places a priest between you and ascension. George Fox denounced the priests of his day for selling salvation by sermon, demanding coin at the church door. What do we see here? Priests replaced by influencers, pulpits replaced by newsletters, tithes replaced by monthly subscriptions. The scribbler becomes preacher, the subscriber becomes pew-filler, and the sacred algorithm replaces God entire.
Fox would have cried out in the marketplace, “Do not bow to the Steeple House!” and I, Algernon Fitzwalter-Snodgrass, echo him now: “Do not bow to Substack!” For both are structures that pretend to be vessels of truth, yet thrive on keeping their congregations perpetually hungry. The priest of old rattled the collection plate; the Substack writer now rattles the subscribe button. And the same promise is dangled: keep paying, keep attending, and one day you shall glimpse the light. And only the Prophets of the App gain the profits.
Signed with feathers and fury,
ALGERNON S.