[frankest]

The poem is absolutely on point. Nobody wants to consume AI content, especially on the parts that should be all-human.

At the same time the poem is published on Substack, instead of a hand-crafted custom blog.

There are 1) the tools that let us surface the human, then there is 2) the human, and then there comes 3) the factory generated business (someone doesn’t care but has to do it) content pretending to be human to sell stuff to humans. The human 2) is drowned out by the “had to do it” 3) while there is a small corner of some of us who are making 1) tools to surface and reward more 2).

[SlinkyOnStairs]

> At the same time the poem is published on Substack, instead of a hand-crafted custom blog.

Look. I am a massive fan of the janky old manually created website. <marquee> will never die and it is hilarious that browsers will have to retain the feature for years to come.

But "the blog was generated by a machine" isn't the problem with Substack. "Machine Generated" blog sites have been around ever since blogs went big. Blogspot and Wordpress were practically a duopoly in the peak days of blogging. The problem with Substack is two (really, only the latter):

1) It's gotten the Post-Zuckerberg "everything must follow our company letterhead" disease. That's not a substack exclusive problem and designers need to be bullied harder for it.

2) It's the nazi bar where all the nazi blogs are. This one is the actual reason you should not be using substack.

[holistio]

I'm building something that aims to take on a bunch of the issues Substack has. I'm aware of what you refer to in (2), I see the results of all the "use our agent to write content in your voice, _totally_ human" tools, I'm fed up with everything needing a recurring subscription.

But I'm not entirely sure what you refer to in (1). Would you care to elaborate? I'd love to learn more.

[SlinkyOnStairs]

> I'm aware of what you refer to in (2), I see the results of all the "use our agent to write content in your voice, _totally_ human" tools, I'm fed up with everything needing a recurring subscription.

I'm sorry but I think you're misunderstanding.

I do not mean "nazi" euphemistically. Not general right-wing politics, not even such hardcore opposition to immigration that it borders on Nazism. Not even crypto-fascists. (No not the bitcoin kind) I mean they're hosting blogs written by out and open nazis. The swastika-armband wearing kind that names their blog "NatSocToday".

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2026/feb/07/revealed-how-s...

There's some contrived argument about net neutrality in all this, but the Substack people have been pretty clear about their support for these nazis beyond merely hosting them. (And no matter how you look at it, being on "The Site With All The Nazis" despite many better alternative existing, is going to be a bad look)

> (1). Would you care to elaborate? I'd love to learn more.

Look at any contemporary Facebook page. Look at any of the older MySpace pages that preceded it. (e.g. A 2008 news article with a screenshot attached https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna24161656)

Spot the difference.

Early platforms up to and including MySpace included functionality to write custom CSS (and HTML)

While Zuckerberg is not solely to blame, Facebook has popularized the removal of those features in favour of a uniform website design.

(And congratulations to the smart readers, who at this point in the reply have put together that the "MySpace-era" sites died and were supplanted by the (post-)Facebook era sites right around the same time when smartphones became big and that removing user-CSS features means the pages look the same in-app as on the web as well as making mobile-web responsiveness significantly easier.)

The consequence of this is a significantly more uniform and boring web, which amplifies the "soulless" feel of many of these newer Medium/Substack/etc blogs, as compared to older platforms.

[holistio]

> I do not mean "nazi" euphemistically.

I get it. There was a comma after my "(2)", I meant I see the nazis _and_ the slop.

[frankest]

The point is that that an “impurity” for some is a tool that lets many more others speak up and show their humanity. AI abused as a sales tactic becomes slop. For others may be a tool they use to finally build things they would have never ever been able to build before due to lack of access to skilled people that would help them. The poem hopefully sticks in that people who could express themselves should do it instead of outsourcing to AI. Thus the emotion it triggers will hopefully mitigate some of the disrespectful slop.

[PaulRobinson]

The "If it's on substack, it's not a real blog, it's just sparkling page bloat" take is a little strained for me.

The content is great. The tool gives writers a low-friction mechanism to charge for premium content, and works on most people's devices. I would rather have read this on substack, than the author get frustrated at having to learn how to publish pages by hand and give up.

Maybe we just need a better alternative to substack if that's the problem.

[frankest]

It’s not about substack but about the fact that some tools can be used both to spam and to enable more humanity to come out.

[alex_suzuki]

Being great writer and capable of self-hosting your blog is a pretty unusual combination once you venture outside of the realm of tech.

[threetonesun]

It wasn't 20 years ago, and it shouldn't be today, but somehow we've made it harder. I suppose some think AI will "fix" it but I tend to think it'll just make it worse.

[causal]

> instead of a hand-crafted custom blog

I think this kind of elitism also misses the point.

[frankest]

That’s the premise - the same tool can enable both slop and more humanity. The poem hopefully sticks emotionally onto humans who could be doing more of the latter and less of the former. It’s a choice. It’s an etiquette. It’s kind of a hygiene.

[aidenn0]

So what's the kind of elitism that gets the point?

[causal]

Elitism excludes humans from one another, which is exactly what the poem is encouraging you not to do

[aidenn0]

The poem itself is elitist. If you leverage a broad social network, you are better than if you use AI.

[causal]

You completely misunderstood it then. It was not about utilizing broad social networks nor was it about not-using AI.

[aidenn0]

If it's not about those things, then it's ineffective writing.