On Substack, Meritocracy Is a Myth

It’s better to be lucky than good.

“How to be a success on Substack” is—predictably!—a fairly common topic of discussion on Substack. It’s been some time since I touched on this perennial theme, so I figured why not share my secret?

Here it is: my secret formula for success on Substack is…(drum roll!)

I got really lucky.

I can (and will!) provide more details. But luck is really the core of my (limited) success on the platform. And I think it’s important to state that clearly, because Substack itself, and people on the platform, have fairly powerful incentives to argue that success here is a meritocracy. Writers build an audience through brilliance and virtue, and therefore (the convo goes), if you are brilliant and virtuous, you can build an audience too.

I do not want to deny my own brilliance and virtue (since I’m sure many will be happy to deny them for me.) But, again, I don’t think brilliance and virtue is why I have managed to get to the point where my writing here is self-sustaining. Meritocracy, in Substack as in America as in life, is a myth. And seeing through that myth is important if we want to build solidarity and create a more equitable and more just world.

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It’s weird to ask for contributions when I am acknowledging my own lack of merit…but on the other hand, you could argue that my lack of merit means I need your support all the more! This newsletter is entirely supported by readers, so if you would like to ensure it keeps cranking along, please consider becoming a paying subscriber; it’s $50/yr, $5/month.

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What does luck on Substack look like?

I started this substack back around May 2022. I think I opened it up for paying subscribers in December of that year or thereabouts.

In the beginning, I was hoping to get some subscribers and maybe build enough income to justify writing a few times a week on the platform, but I can’t say I was wildly hopeful. I’d been on Patreon for years, and while it wasn’t a total bust, it was not exactly wildly lucrative either. I’d also tried selling ebooks on Amazon—and again, while “failure” might be a bit harsh as a characterization of that initiative, I can’t in good conscience call it a success either.

So when I came to Substack, I was hoping for, at best, a mild cushion income which might help me weather the vicissitudes of an increasingly unstable freelance writing landscape.

Instead, some two years after I started, Substack accounts for around a third of my freelance income—a desperately needed third, since most of my reliable outlets (NBC Think, CNN Opinion, LA Times) have shuttered or kicked most of their freelancers to the curb.

So what’s the difference between Substack and Patreon? Did I suddenly start writing much more interesting screeds about fascism and/or obscure films? Did my years of hard work suddenly pay off in mass recognition of my brilliance?

As you’ve probably guessed, the answers to those last two questions are “no” and “not really.” The big break for me on Substack is that I started writing for Aaron Rupar’s wonderful Public Notice, a massive newsletter also on Substack. Lots of Substack readers found me through Aaron, and some signed up for Everything Is Horrible. Somewhere between a half and a third of my subscribers found me through Aaron according to Substack’s metrics—and it was a larger percentage than that earlier on.

My newsletter also got a big boost when Substack started Notes in April 2023. For some reason best known to itself, the Notes algorithm got obsessed with my posts on the platform; for a while, just as it was starting up, I ended up as a kind of Notes mascot. When you signed into Notes, the first thing you saw was me babbling.

As a result of this random and confusing AI glorp, my free subscribers tripled and paid subscribers quadrupled in about a month. Suddenly I was making something that looked suspiciously like regular money here…which made it easier to write more for the site, which got me more subscribers, and low and behold, I had a weirdly reliable gig.

Is this merit?

You could argue, I suppose, that my (limited) success is in fact a function of hard work and skill. People saw me because I write for Public Notice and because Notes boosted me, but if they didn’t like my writing, they wouldn’t have come on board. If they didn’t continue to like my writing, they’d have left. So maybe it is merit after all!

I’m not convinced though. Lots of people work hard and lots of people are talented writers. But talent and hard work don’t necessarily lead to success—as I demonstrated on Patreon, where I worked as hard and had as much talent as I have on Substack, but got nowhere.

Part of the difference between Patreon and Substack is that Substack has some powerful network tools which make it easier for people to find you. But again, not everyone benefits from those tools; you have to be in the right place at the right time. I was able to connect with Aaron while he was looking for freelancers. Notes (bizarrely) decided I was the thing everyone and their cousin should see. A baseline of quality and productivity were probably required to take advantage of those things, but they weren’t really things you could plan for and they aren’t exactly tactics you can reproduce.

When you succeed (even in a modest way), there’s a powerful incentive to attribute your success to your own choices—you found a niche, you figured out the right mix of paywalls, you post regularly, you write insightfully, and therefore you have found supporters and subscribers.

But just as often people who do everything right in terms of finding a niche, writing insightfully, etc., don’t end up finding an audience. The secret is often not the thing you did; instead, the secret is often other less effable factors. A lot of people who succeed on Substack, for example, are writers who came to the platform with a substantial audience in journalism or the academy or other venues—people like filmmaker Michael Moore, or former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich. The best way to succeed, in Substack as in life, is not to learn the ins and outs of the platform, nor to post quality content on a regular schedule. The best way to succeed is to be successful already.

Don’t believe the hype

People sometimes bristle when you point out that meritocracy isn’t real. Those at the top don’t want to hear that they owe their position at the top of the heap to luck and happenstance and/or privilege rather than to their own shining virtue. Those not on the top feel like you’re discouraging them. If hard work and talent don’t win out in any predictable way, why bother? It feels like you’re robbing people of their dreams.

I think it’s important to push back against the myth of meritocracy, though, because that’s the myth that underlines and justifies much of what’s unjust and cruel in our society. If you believe that the most intelligent and the most hard working inevitably win out, then you tend to think that those at the bottom of any particular hierarchy—poor people, women, Black people, LGBT people, immigrants, marginalized people—deserve what they get.

That’s the logic at the back of our current nightmare exercise in government by billionaire. Elon Musk is rich and therefore feels he is virtuous and brilliant and is entitled to all the government’s money. Poor people, people who need help—the very fact that they need help means, in the eyes of Trump and Musk, that they are disgusting and unworthy and should be crushed. If you get a communicable disease, if you get food poisoning, if you get ripped off by crypto or AI hucksters, if you have an unplanned pregnancy, if you get cancer, if you have depression—to Trump’s cabinet of billionaire clowns, that means you are refuse. They giggle at the thought of your suffering and death.

Obviously, people on Substack talking about how you can win at the platform through hard work and five easy steps are not evil fascist pieces of shit the way Trump and Musk are evil fascist pieces of shit. Everyone wants to succeed, and so people share tips on how to succeed which might help some people in some situations if the stars align. It’s not wrong to hope.

But it’s important to remember that hope is hope, not a system of rational and virtuous awards and punishments leading all to slot into their righteous place in the hierarchy. When you realize that meritocracy is a myth, you can start accepting that the people at the top don’t deserve power and the people not at the top don’t deserve to suffer.

Rather than focusing all our thoughts and effort on a futile effort to win whatever platform we happen to be on, we need to work together towards a society in which everyone has housing, food, medical care, and yes, even some capacity to make art and experience joy. I’m very grateful that I’ve managed to find an audience willing to read and even pay for what I write on substack. But I also know that success (limited or otherwise) is no substitute for a society in which we care for everyone. As we’re discovering now to our sorrow, a meritocracy, in which we worship those who win is ultimately just an oligarchy, in which no one except the absolute biggest assholes succeed.