Category: Internet

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.

ENGAGE YOUR CURRENT SUBSCRIBERS

Had a nice live chat with Sarah Fay today on Substack – and actually uploaded to YouTube for once.

I really enjoy these sorts of live chats, because I get to talk about stuff I’ve loved talking about for like… decades. LOVE. I love this nerdy stuff. This media outlet stuff. This creative journey, and how it aligns with the machinery of the internet.

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.

LEARN FROM THE FAST MOVING BRANDS

Love this bit from ‘When Fashion Brands Curate Better Than Museums,’ which goes along with the bit of wisdom we learned from Olivia Rafferty, about looking outside of your industry for inspiration (listen to that here).

“Meanwhile, museums are out here filming awkward TikToks and selling tote bags that say “Support the Arts.”
Meanwhile, Gucci drops a film series directed by Harmony Korine and it’s sold out before you even hear about it.”

Replace museums with “bands” or “authors” or “photographers” and drop in whatever cookie cutter / color by numbers marketing dreck they’re producing.

NO ONE HATE LISTENS A PODCAST

What a great piece from Coco Mocoe:

Podcast hosts with 10,000 followers on Instagram (who barely post) can sell out theaters. Meanwhile, TikTokers with 5 million+ followers sometimes can’t get anyone to show up to a meet-and-greet. Why?

One of my mentors, Jamie Gutfreund, said something that stuck with me:

“No one hate-listens to a podcast.”

I started repurposing my video interviews into podcast format (you can find them here), because I know some of my readers enjoy listening without watching, so they can wash the dishes or go for a walk.

But yeah – large numbers on a quick-hit platform don’t always translate to a longer-form audience.

HOW TO FALL OUT OF LOVE WITH MUSIC

I’m sad when I click to listen to someone’s latest offering and I’m left with a long narrow list of digital music streaming providers and download partners.

Now, a “landing page” with lyrics and photos and other “on brand” delights would be so appealing, and it’s not that hard in 2025.

But instead, a legion of talented music makers are content to do what everyone else is doing, sending their adoring fans to faceless corporate data collection services instead of pulling them further into their own creative world (and capturing a few email addresses in the process).