This peculiar app cured my doomscrolling (and repaired my dopamine receptors)

Summary

Substack provides a conscious social media platform.
It encourages focused, long-form content consumption.
Writers can create content for free or monetize on Substack.

We did it, we cured boredom. Humanity now has an endless rushing river (don’t let anyone ever tell you it’s just a trickling stream) of cheap dopamine hits that have all but eliminated the blank spaces in a day.

Your browser is taking more than half a second to load? I bet you’re already four swipes down the

TikTok

For You Page
. Coworker droning on during a meeting that definitely could’ve been an email? You’ve already all caught up on who went on spring break where. There are a myriad of rabbit holes I could sprint down to express all sorts of despair at the notion, but instead, I’d rather tell you about the one I stumbled down that could mean hope for us all.

Ironically, the light at the end of the tunnel came to me in a TikTok message. A dear friend — who has the most uncanny talent of finding diamonds in the roughest of places (I couldn’t ask for a better thrifting partner) — always manages to share the most niched-down media with me. She recently sent a thread that had gone viral: the particular Substacks that some TikToker had been reading that week.

Substack

Substack is an online platform that lets writers, journalists, and creators publish and monetize content — usually newsletters — directly to their audience.

Pinterest: the one social media app I can relax on

If a soft conversation or inspirational speech was an app, it’d be Pinterest.

Substack, the unlikely hero

And the reason life is suddenly whimsical again

Substack is an online platform and community of writers, journalists, poets, and creators of all kinds to publish and possibly even monetize their content, which can be sent directly to their audience’s emails. It’s like bloggers made their own social media platform — which is exactly what they did. The home feed is reminiscent of

X
(formerly Twitter), with a timeline of content, images, and, most importantly, sneak peeks of full posts. If it piques your interest, you can click on an excerpt in your feed to read the rest of the written post.

After tooling around and quickly getting my bearings, the algorithm quickly got its own about my reading haunts. When you first make a Substack account, it prompts you to select the topics you’re interested in.

Instagram vs Pinterest: which is best for new ideas?

Is Pinterest still the queen of inspo, or has Instagram taken over?

History and philosophy? Check. Health and wellness? I’m there. Pop culture? I actually opted out for once — I’m tailoring this app to be like my own personal library, serene meadow, and beachside escape, thank you very much.

Suddenly, I was gently bombarded with the most thoughtful hopecore. I had cultivated a feed of content that was uplifting, educational, and — much to my delight — highly poetic and eloquent. It made a former English major in me feel like I was back in the USC Humanities building walking to British Romantic Lit.

Patience, dear reader

No, seriously. Substack has the ‘feed’ element of the quick-hit dopamine littered feeds you find on X, Instagram, and TikTok, but you open the app with the intention of reading something long-form. Patience and curiosity are the landlords, and if you aren’t willing to pry your attention span open for more than 4.5 seconds, you’ll sign your own eviction notice.

Substack is a place to hone in on one or two specific pieces of content and be present with them. I’m talking about sitting with these Substacks like your dad used to with the morning paper — steaming black coffee in his mug — before the day began.

Manifesting, but make it digital: how I build vision boards with just two apps

Forget glue sticks — this is how I create the ultimate vision board on my computer every year.

I’ve found four or five favorites so far — the War Kitchen Substack sitting stoically on the highest pedestal. I had been following it on Instagram for years, but I was ecstatic to see the rest of the iceberg through reading its long-form content. Talk about a coffee companion.

Opening a Substack grabs my attention and focuses it on one subject for the next few minutes — the antithesis of the scroll. More importantly, it’s a subject I consciously chose rather than the whirlpool of brain rot, depressing news, and unrelatable influencers.

Substack is a conscious social media app. It acts as a living library, not a million voices vying for your well-worn attention.

Can I write on Substack?

The screen is your oyster

A stack of books, open book and quill, and typewriter.

It’s completely free to make your own Substack account and get writing. I have friends and colleagues who write their own personal essays whenever they feel like it, and others who instead use it as a newsletter to keep their long-distance friends informed about their lives.

Some creators choose to paywall some of their content, but that doesn’t mean you have to pay anything. However, if you want access to all their content, you can subscribe to individual Substacks and choose between their payment tiers.

Something I think the platform did well was letting writers keep most of the money — around 90% minus credit card fees.

A woman holding a laptop beside moss and a mushroom.

I touched grass and now space gray laptops make me sad

If this earthy hardware trend took off, I’d be thrilled.

How do I find Substacks to read?

You probably know creators on there already

Substack / Pocket-lint

Substack has gained substantial traction since its launch in 2017. There are over 20 million active users monthly, and has recently surpassed 5 million paying subscribers. If the ‘millions’ talk hasn’t convinced you that a long-form content platform is thriving right alongside giants TikTok and Twitter, I’d advise you to hop on the app yourself and see if sparks fly.

All those numbers to say, some of your favorite content creators on other social media platforms may very well already have their own Substacks. Like my favorite War Kitchen Instagram account did, my favorite content creator, Kyle Prue, launched his own satirical Substack. Search for your favorite influencers and see if their writing appears, too.

However, don’t write off Substack’s algorithm. Just because you need more patience to read the content doesn’t mean you’ll need it to find it. Who knows, you might be inspired to write your own post. As a writer myself, I urge you to put pen to paper (err, fingers to keys?) and see what spouts out — you might just surprise yourself.