on substack: an interview with alexandra coburn
A discussion about the Substack feed, the nature of "Internet Writing," and Tumblr.
When reaching out to folks to interview for the "on substack" project, my first instinct was to reach out to writers I already followed. Among them was Alexandra Coburn, an essayist and media critic who has been publishing on Substack since 2022. I was particularly motivated to reach out to Coburn because of her own commentary on the trajectory of Substack as a platform, and she was gracious enough to take time out of her day to talk to me about Substack, "Internet Writing" as a genre, and Tumblr — among other things.
Q: Did you have an independent blog prior to the creation of your Substack? (I would count a Tumblr account as an "independent blog" if you frequently used it to make long-form text posts.)
Coburn: I was a Tumblr user for a long time, but I didn't ever have a traditional blog. I think I missed the boat, because independent blogging was popular when I was quite young. Most of my writing prior to Substack was freelance — for academic journals or magazines.
Q: You imply in one of your earliest posts that you joined Substack as part of a wider cultural "fever" - one that you compare to typhoid. This characterization feels slightly at odds with your more positive recollection of Substack circa-2022 in your most recent post. Can you elaborate a little on what this fever was like at the time, why you "swore" you would never succumb to it, and why you felt the need to justify doing so?
Coburn: I quite literally started using Substack in 2022 exclusively to hold myself accountable to a regular writing practice, because I hate the idea of writers who don't actually write often, and I was afraid of becoming one of them. I felt the need to justify it because I think there's an inherent shame and narcissism associated with asking people to read your work — not a value judgement, just something that I think is a driving force behind a lot of published writing. Obviously you want people to read it, or else you'd keep it in a Word document! But I felt like just another person expelling my pieces into the void, and so I was surprised when I started to gain readers. This made Substack feel like a great community for me around late 2023 — mid 2024.
Q: In your latest piece, you say that you think internet writing is a distinct "mode" rather than merely a vessel. Is Substack merely the latest expression of this "mode" or has it played a part in fundamentally changing it?
Coburn: I think Substack has changed the mode. It's too early to say that definitively, but not only do they explicitly encourage monetization, they make it very, very easy. This fundamentally alters the relationship between writer and reader. It's not the same as subscribing to a magazine because you like a lot of their regular authors — you are literally handing someone money every month. It's a tip jar. So naturally you start thinking about writing as a returns/rewards vs. effort dichotomy, which is why I think the listicle/wrap-up has become really popular. I myself write a seasonal wrap-up, mostly because I think it's fun, and also because people always asked me what I was watching/reading. I come from a cultural criticism background, so it was easy for me to combine writing about film/books/music with personal essay writing.
Q: Over the course of your time on Substack, have you observed any changes in the platform's culture or content? If so, what were they, and how did they affect your relationship to the platform?
Coburn: When I first joined, I mostly followed writers who had migrated to Substack as a way to supplement their already-existing freelance career, or who had been pushed there because 'staff writer' is such a rare position that has been nearly eliminated at a lot of publications. I felt that the quality of writing was really high, and I looked forward to my inbox notifications. Now, it seems like Twitter users have migrated to Substack to publish really short, unformed lists or diary entries — and to use the 'feed' feature instead of/in tandem with Twitter. I totally get it, and I'm not trying to be snobby or cliquey, but it has made the experience less enjoyable. It feels like you have to sift through a lot of nothing to get to anything real. Oftentimes the most successful writing is reactionary and predicated upon the reader's intimate knowledge about flash-in-the-pan internet trends. Seeing those get thousands of likes was, honestly, really depressing. It started to feel like the type of writing that I do no longer had a place on the platform. This is also not a quality judgment — I just write long essays, and I don't go into graphic detail about my personal life. I don't know if Substack users want what I'm pushing anymore.
Q: What's your opinion about Substack expanding its mandate beyond written publishing and adding additional social features like Notes and the Home feed?
Coburn: At first the expansion of Substack's social feeds made sense as a way to drive engagement and allow writers to a) interact with their readers and b) interact with each other. Despite any stated intentions, it sort of became exactly like all other forms of social media from which its user base might be otherwise trying to escape. The home feed strikes me as a replication of the Twitter feed, and I don't even really know who's using this feature, though apparently it's a lot of people based on the likes/restacks I see. I never adapted to the Notes functionality, which might be to the detriment of my blog's growth, but it really was not intuitive to me. I've noticed that a blog's growth seems directly related to how active the writer is on the home feed, too.
Q: How do you see your own relationship to Substack as a platform changing in the next few months or years?
Coburn: I don't plan to leave Substack any time soon, but I'm less focused on building an audience and more focused on feeling satisfied with my creative output. I don't see myself getting good at the 'notes' feature or re-stacking posts or whatever. I've met a lot of amazing writers through the internet, and I think we will always support each other's work, so I'm not focused on networking as much as I once was.
Q: Would you recommend someone join Substack if they were leaving traditional social media and trying to carve out a space to share their work with their previous audience? If not, what would you recommend they do instead?
Coburn: I would recommend Substack to writers looking for a way to hold themselves accountable to a regular writing practice — or to writers who need an outlet for their less categorizable pieces. I would not recommend it as an effective way to build a readership/audience if you're used to building it through more traditional social media, because it doesn't seem to be a one-to-one transition. I have used Twitter for over half of my life (scary), and I would describe myself as "good" at it (derogatory). But that didn't translate into self-promoting on Substack for me. Instead, I would recommend finding independent publications and pitching them so you can build a network of writer friends and share audiences/promote each other's work. For me and several other writers I know this has been very useful and much more constructive. It also just feels more communal. If you're looking for an alternative to traditional social media in general, I have recently gotten back into using Tumblr, and it is free from a lot of the insidious unmarked advertising/engagement farming that I see on Instagram and Twitter.
This piece is part of an ongoing interview series called "on substack," in which I talk to writers on Substack about the state of the platform and the future of writing on the internet. If you want to keep up with future posts, you can subscribe to the newsletter on the Down The Ladder blog, where new interviews are posted a full week before they arrive on Substack. The next interview, with essayist and author Lyta Gold, is already available on the blog.
If you are (or know of) a Substack writer who would be interested in talking to me for this project, send an email my way!