Internet – HELLO, I'M SETH WERKHEISER

STOP PRAYING TO ALGORITHMS

I see this so much on Substack Notes: “I wish the algorithm…”

STOP! Stop wishing a computer in the cloud is going to deliver your new favorite band, some cool new writer – the algorithim can only process 1s and 0s, and by doing so turns all “content” into 1s and 0s, so just stop with this belief that if only the algorithm were better you’d be able to know about better stuff.

It’s all bullshit. Don’t rely on computers to discern editorial quality, or help you discover.

Don’t let AI take these jobs of editors, curators, DJs, writers, and various other conveyors of taste and fine art.

Via Stephen Moore’s Trend Mill:

“A lot of people seem to actually enjoy AI-generated content, and are ready to eat up more. We should have seen that coming. There’s a simple explanation — too many people have become so lost in platforms, so dictated to by algorithms, ‘for you’ feeds and suggested content, that we’re collectively losing our taste.”

Everything has been reduced to bits. Cleaned up, covered with a vanilla scent, and optimized to keep you tied into whatever platform you think is somehow “good.”

Friends are filters. People are guides. Pick up something in print that still requires some editorial discernment, or find your local college radio station. Email the writers of the newsletters you like. Go find some blogs again.

Moore is right, we’re collectively losing our taste, and we’re become helpless babies being spoon fed whatever media someone else wants us to consume.

LEAVING MORE OF SUBSTACK BEHIND

When I saw how fragile social media was, I knew I needed to exit. It was terrifying to see people lose access to their accounts. I can’t imagine how isolating it would feel to wake up and be unable to reach your fans or readers.

When I saw Lucy Werner’s Substack experience, how an inadvertent click destroyed most of her work, including her paid subscriber base, and being told there’s no way to fix it? No way.

I used to believe in having everything under one roof. One website for everything. Now I’m not so sure.

I signed up for Transistor to host my interviews. You can’t embed Substack podcasts on your site. That makes sense to drive people to Substack to increase subscriptions, but what about my own site?

I moved all my paid subscribers to Memberful, which I’ve used before. They’re owned by a solid company (Patreon) and do memberships. I pay them monthly, so if anything goes wrong, I have one company with a dedicated support team to contact.

Next is my email list. Linking to Memberful violates Substack’s terms of service.

“You may not circumvent your payment obligations to us by soliciting payment from a Reader outside of Substack or by using any alternative method to collect subscription payments. This includes receiving payments for your publication through links to PayPal or a separate Patreon page.”

True, I don’t “charge a subscription fee for your publication,” but I could wake up one morning to find my account suspended for linking to an “alternative method to collect subscription payments.”

This means I can’t promote my weekly Zoom calls to the 6,500 people on my email list.

In early 2024, I wrote “maybe centralized kingdoms of power and influence aren’t the answer.” Putting all our marketing eggs into the social media basket wasn’t a great idea, and I’m beginning to think the same of Substack.

I WRITE TO REMEMBER

From my People & Blogs interview with Manuel Moreale:

Given your experience, if you were to start a blog today, would you do anything differently?

Honestly, no. WordPress and the hosting and such works fine for me. I don’t care much about the name, or the theme, or whatever. The blog is 100% for me.

“I write to remember,” as the lyrics go in ‘One Armed Scissor’ by At the Drive In.

Read the rest here.

ACTIVATION VS PERSUASION

Your next big break is probably right under your nose. Your next sale, job, whatever.

“Marketers face a choice every day: hustle for new people or serve the ones who care. Activation is much more productive than persuasion.” Seth Godin

The most frequent question I get with my Email Guidance offering is “how do I get more subscribers,” and I never answer it. Instead, we dig deeper into their existing audience, asking “are you 100% that everyone on your current email list knows about your thing?”

And if so – is your website set up in a way that makes it easy for them to support your work?

BUZZGRINDER BUSINESS CARD TYPO

For one, I can’t believe I still have this. But two, yes, that’s not just a typo on the business card, it was the logo on the music blog for probably a year or two, as well.

DELETING ALL YOUR SUBSTACK DATA IS TOO EASY

It is UNREAL that any setting other than DELETE MY ENTIRE SUBSTACK would delete your whole entire substack.

Please help.

My Substack publication. All my subscribers. All my posts. Everything gone.

How? I deleted my podcast and a glitch in the substack system meant it wiped everything.

A similar thing happened to

Chelsey Pippin Mizzi (although she still had her publication and data it wiped all her posts).

My stripe account is still working. I don’t know if my publication will come back. I don’t know if I create a new publication if it will attach to old stripe data. Or if I have to effectively bankrupt myself to refund everyone and then re-ask them to subscribe to a new publication.

Has this happened to anyone else? Can anyone help?

This happened to me, but it only wiped out about 10 video posts. Thankfully I had full back up copies of those videos, and was able to piece together the posts again. But the permalinks, the comments, the views, etc. – all gone.

BLOGGING IS FIGHTING

It’s a lie that “people stopped reading blogs.” There are plenty of people reading blogs, and writing them. It’s just that there’s no giant smoke-and-mirrors machine at work convincing everyone of the fact – that’s what social media has been doing.

The product makers (Apple, Samsung, etc) all convinced us we need the best new phones.
The cellular companies convinced us we needed unlimited plans and 5G speeds.
The social media companies kept us scrolling, watching, liking.

Three collosal industries working together to keep you consuming, and making it seem ludicrous to consider anything else.

Which is why all those “I left Instagram” and “I switched to a dumbphone” articles are so popular. They’re like the Matrix allowing certain people to leave the system, knowing so many other people will accept the program as it’s built.

Make your blogs. Link to other blogs. They’re not back, they never left.

BUILD DENSE THINGS

From ‘3 Ways to Amplify Your Creator Gravity,” by Alice Lemee:

LinkedIn posts and Substack notes and Skeets (that’s Bluesky for the uninitiated) are not dense. They extend your reach, sure, but they’re more like your planet’s atmosphere—thin, easily dispersed, and quickly forgotten.

Instead, you need density. When I say dense, I mean something that doesn’t have a 24-hour life cycle and can’t be plucked from the top of your head.