Drop Your Substack
Engagement wasn't the only thing they were farming.
(this was done in collaboration with who created a comic based on this short. Visit his Substack to read the graphical version!)
“Hey! If you’re a writer who is just starting out then drop your Substack in the comments so we can build our community together and be mutuals!”
It was harmless enough at first. Someone would post a Note on Substack asking for a link to newsletters in exchange for a subscription, a follow, a like, or whatever gave out that little hit of dopamine when you find out someone wants to read your writing. In the beginning, there was a writer behind them genuinely asking for suggestions, but it didn’t last. Like all other platforms, eventually, Substack became a victim of its success as users, bored of one social network or another, moved through them like locusts to find a new place to eat up a fresh audience.
In some ways, I wish it had stayed this way. LinkedIn bullshit I could deal with.
I began to see more and more of them crop up over time, with the number of replies increasing. I dug into a few of them just to try and fathom what made them so popular. Were writers really that desperate to be found? I thought to myself, some have subscribers already who enjoy their work, what gives here?! There was nothing out of the ordinary, not on the surface, at least. But as they increased in number, I noticed a pattern. Similar Notes but with subtle differences.
There was also something about the tone of them, though, something insistent.
When I dug deeper, I found that the profile images were AI-generated, and they would make claims to be writing fiction, fantasy, or something genre-specific, but when you looked at their Posts, they were all generic AI-generated stuff about the topic. They never wrote what they said they did. To make things even more confusing, there was not one reply to the myriad of people who commented with a link to their Substack, and when you checked the list in their profile of the Substacks they did subscribe to, it was the stock list you’re presented with when you first sign up.
Nothing added up. Not yet, anyway.
So, they’re all fucking bots then, I concluded. It figured that Substack would end up this way, like all the rest.
No, not like all the rest at all. Something far worse.
This went on for weeks, months even. Increasing in frequency. It felt like a secret club I wasn’t invited to. I ploughed on with my writing regardless - it’s all I wanted to do, but then I noticed that my stats started to drop off a cliff. My usual subscribers weren’t opening my emailed Posts, my viewer counts were tanking too. I didn’t understand and started to get paranoid.
Was there some secret club after all?
Then I started to get tagged on Notes asking for Substack suggestions. A lot. This started to freak me the fuck out even more, it felt like I was being beckoned to join in, like someone under compulsion from a vampire’s stare, every time I saw a notification with my name on it I was being slowly drawn in to add my Substack in a comment. Eventually, I had to delete the app from my phone. It was getting too much.
It helped a lot.
Using just the online version meant I had to physically be near a computer to use Substack, so I only logged in when I wanted to write something or read another’s work. And that’s when I noticed something else.
People had stopped reading my stuff, but I wasn’t getting any of theirs, either.
I checked my emails, and sure enough, one by one, the writers I had subscribed to stopped mailing their newsletters. I knew they were still on Substack, they kept tagging me in on those damned Notes. I started to go through their Substacks to see whether there was some kind of glitch. Maybe it was a platform bug, and nobody was getting any emails - it would certainly explain a lot about the stats I had been seeing. But as I checked each one, none had written anything new for weeks.
Weeks!
But they were online, tagging people still, begging for them to drop their Substack.
It wasn’t until I checked into an older piece of one writer that things turned even weirder. As I was scanning through it, words started to disappear. I’m not joking. They were being deleted as I was reading. Look, I know how this sounds because Substack isn’t a real-time platform that you can read whilst someone is bashing out their magnum opus, but I’m telling you, words were fucking disappearing at random right in front of me.
It didn’t strike me at the time to think about it this way, but knowing what I do now, they were being eaten.
I refreshed the page, more words had gone in that instance. I clicked on another piece, it had been emptied, and it was blank. I went to another writer’s Substack, and each Post was in a different state - some empty of words, some Posts half-eaten, some being devoured as I watched.
Substack was disintegrating.
At this point I thought it was being hacked, fuck knows why, we just wrote for ourselves and our audience, and there was nothing worth hacking or holding to ransom, for what, email lists? I mean, come on.
I dropped DMs into some chats and waited, but as time passed, I was met with nothing but silence.
But they were still online!
I knew one of them - Jay, who went by the handle ‘Robopulp’ - we had spoken before joining Substack, and collaborated on a couple of pieces. I had him on WhatsApp. He was still active, tagging people on those fucking Notes. He hadn’t written anything in weeks either, but he was still active, too, like all the rest. I tried to video call a few times from the PC, but nothing, he didn’t pick up.
I kept trying throughout the day.
On the second day, he picked up.
He looked like shit. Drawn and grey-skinned, and his hair was a mess like it hadn’t been washed in days. No, weeks. His eyes were severely red-rimmed and bloodshot, he had that thousand-yard stare they talk about in movies when some veteran comes home from a war, too. I could tell the brightness of the screen he was seated at had been cranked up - the light just made his face look even worse with all the shadows highlighting just how gaunt he really was.
I wish I had recorded the video call, it’s not enough for you to be hearing this. You really should have seen him to understand the reality. I recorded the rest of the call from my phone manually, It’s audio only, I’m afraid. I’ve transcribed it and annotated some parts. You need the mental picture.
Me: …..a minute, should be recoding now, what the hell is going on?
Jay: Hey, man.
clackityclackityclackityclack *he’s typing, fast, non-stop.
Me: You working? I can call back.
clackityclackityclackityclack
Me: Jay?
Jay: Theo. Whatever you do, don’t drop your Substack, dude. *he’s not blinking. I haven’t seen him blink at all yet.
clackityclackityclackityclack
Me: Mate, you’re freaking me out. What the fuck is going on?
Jay: Bots, man, they’re all bots, but they’re not just bots.
clackityclackityclackityclack
Me: You’re not making any sense, Jay.
clackityclackityclackityclack
*at this point, he turns briefly to stare directly into the webcam. Those fucking eyes, Jesus, pure panic and fear.
Jay: They eat words, that’s all they do. They consume content. They’re insatiable. They came to Substack because there’s so much of it here.
clackityclackityclackityclack
Me: What? Who eats words? I don’t get it…Jay, who eats words? Fuck!
clackityclackityclackityclack
Jay: It’s all I can piece together. They’re bots but nothing like we know, not the stupid ChatGPT stuff, something worse, evil, possessed maybe, like leeches or vampires but for words. I dunno, it sounds so stupid. *he’s crying at this point, but he hasn’t taken his eyes off the screen or stopped typing
clackityclackityclackityclack
Jay: Theo, don’t drop your Substack, man. That’s how they latch onto you.
clackityclackityclackityclack
Jay: They feed on your existing content, and then they compel you to write more. But it’s never enough, I’m literally typing for my life here, dude. I’m typing into Substack, and they’re eating my words faster and faster every time. I can’t publish anything new because they’re devouring it before I can finish. Didn’t you think all those Notes were a little funny?
Me: Yeah, I did notice something but couldn’t put my finger on it.
clackityclackityclackityclack
Jay: The words they used, man, like some sort of invocation, and then there’s the ‘help us build our community’ line, every time. They wanted us to spread them. They weren’t engagement farming, they were farming us.
clackityclackityclackityclack
Me: Just stop, then. What the fuck are you talking about? Typing for your life? Just fucking stop, Jay!
clackityclackit….
*I wish I hadn’t said this, I wish I hadn’t made the damned call, I was better off not knowing. Jay stopped typing. I’ll never forget what I saw next. He raised his hands, they were trembling and bloodied, fingertips worn to the bone. He winced in pain, and I noticed that the skin around his jaw looked as if it was being eaten way right in front of me, bubbling then disintegrating.
Me: Jesus fucking Christ!
clackityclackityclackityclack * he started to type again, and the jawline began to repair itself somehow as he did
Me: Jesus fucking Christ!
Jay: I can’t stop, mate. It’ll kill me. It’ll kill me anyway eventually, but maybe I’ll pass out and not feel anything by then.
clackityclackityclackityclack
Me: What do I do? What can we do?
clackityclackityclackityclack
Jay: There’s nothing you can do, not for me, not for anyone else like this. Just warn people, mate, warn them, warn them not to drop their Substack. To anyone. I gotta go. Remember me, man.
*he killed the call at his end
That was the last time I spoke to Jay. I never logged back into Substack after that. I’m glad you found this podcast. From what I can gather, these things just feed on the written word, I don’t understand how, why, or where they came from. Nothing makes sense anymore.
But I’ll never write another word online again.
Not on Substack, not on Medium, not anywhere.
Thanks for listening to this podcast.
Please, for God’s sake, heed my warning! For all our sakes.
This podcast recording was brought to you by Theo Priestley.
Please like and subscribe to get every episode when it’s released. And remember, feel free to drop your podcast in the comments and let’s grow together.
Remember to give the comic version a whirl in this unique collaboration!
Did not realize it was a story at first and that made it so enjoyable haha. Excellent work.
Drop your substack! Let’s grow our community together! It’s like a bloody war cry for the validation seekers.
You are a word-sniper Theo. Loved this, relevant and sharp. Keep tearing the house down with wit and humor. You are good at it.