Weekend Tales #9: I'm not made for Substack Notes

'You need to be on Notes to grow your Substack'. But what if your brain is just not cut out for it?

A few weeks ago, my galpals and I had a lovely Italian dinner at a hotel and this was our view: An amusement park in Shah Alam. This amusement park was a sad place just a few months ago but they recently added one of those water rollercoaster rides. Now, it’s full of bright lights! Sometimes, I think social media is like this, full of flashing lights, and screaming people hurtling down noisy tubes.

I read a really sad Substack Note a few weeks ago.

It was the usual “I grew my Substack to a billion subscribers” type of Note, but the saddest line I read from that newsletter was (paraphrased): “You have to be on Notes to make this possible.”

Looks like I won’t be part of the billion subscriber club any time soon!

Because I’m not made for social media.

I mean, honestly, are any of us?

If there’s a range when it comes to social media endurance, I’m probably at the low, low end. Like, the weakling end.

My brain has a tendency to pull away suddenly from social media. I call it my natural tripwire. When my brain has had enough of the chaos and noise of social media, it just nopes out, and when it does, it nopes out hard whether I like it or not.

My longest nope period lasted two months. Imagine, two months of not consuming much social media or even writing a post! (It was bliss.)

I often joke with my friends who stubbornly remain on Facebook that if they see me post on Facebook, it’s just to tell that I’m still alive.

Some may envy my ability to just disconnect like this, but a big part of me is worried what it’ll do to my relationships and livelihood. What if you run a business where you need to promote yourself to be visible to potential clients? Or have a Substack with paid readers?? Having a brain that refuses to look at social media can be a tad problematic!

A while back, I had a minor social media fracas at a Discord server I lurked at. Basically, I was told that since I couldn’t keep up with the conversations happening there, I really shouldn’t expect the rest of the Discord members to “slow down for me”.

Needless to say, that stung deeply. But it also woke me up to the fact that I need to prioritise my mental energy better.

And when I was honest with myself, I knew I wasn’t getting any benefit from that server beyond the slim hope that a group of strangers whom I barely know would be friends with me.

On top of that, I wasn’t learning anything new from this topic-specific server and the extra social media time was distracting me from bigger goals, such as building relationships in real life and improving my Mandarin.

I also had to conclude sadly that the interaction I had with the group had not been enough for the members to value me. Was it worth it to “keep up with them” so that they’d finally welcome me as one of their own and not treat me like a guest?

So, I moved away from Discord and have not opened it since.

So, as a social media “weakling”, should I “keep up with” Notes to grow my newsletter?

Well, of course not, we logically tell ourselves.

But that pressure is there each time you open Notes, watching everyone busy Note-ing, trying to be visible so they can “win” the Substack game and finally be read.

Are their comments (or mine) genuine, or am I just trying to get clicks?

A sad state of affairs, because when I first opened my Substack account, I was filled with joy at the idea of finally being free of dancing to the algorithm and the SEO.

However, Substack is quickly becoming an algorithm-driven walled garden, and the route to enshittification may be inevitable.

Nothing Chinese or cultural related today, except to say that I took off in May by accident because my brain got overwhelmed by personal matters at work and at home, but I hope everyone is doing well!

What I wrote

iTOR: A cosy Western-Malaysian fusion cafe is a tentative start at hyperlocal blogging, inspired by hyperlocal blogs like My Southborough. Rather than weep about the demise of journalism in Malaysia and angst about how to save community journalism, I decided to take one tiny step by starting a hyperlocal blog of sorts that will connect to a future project of a friend, who plans to do the same.

Despite it being a tiny, tiny step, it has been fun connecting and talking to local business owners, and then flexing my journalism skills to write about their business. I’m getting zero money from this, but I feel alive each time I do this.

I have no idea if community journalism, which is barely existant in Malaysia, would ever return to the glory days of Metro pullouts at the national paper, but I rather do something than nothing.

What I watched: An actress replaced by AI and green screen tech

Love Never Fails. 100% most of the time I will not watch this type of xianxia drama. However, I have a soft spot for leading actor Liu Xueyi and this drama is a controversial one - the lead actress was replaced by another actress (the one in red in this trailer) using AI and top-notch green screen tech. Can you tell if she was pasted in? You can read my review of the drama, Love Never Fails.

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