Hi friends,
These past couple of years have been somewhat of a public unravelling as I’ve been figuring out where I want to go next.
I’m no stranger to flying by the seat of my pants, following my nose, and figuring stuff out as I go (and it has worked out pretty well for me so far – from moving to the UK, to leaving behind my law degree and becoming a photographer, and more).
What’s new is doing it while having somewhat of a profile and a platform (although I’m pretty sure I’m so shadowbanned most people don’t see anything I talk about these days and I guess there’s actually certain comfort in that) — while also trying to grapple with my new understanding of the strange times we live in now.
I have just spent over a month in Russia, completely off social media (Instagram, Facebook and Youtube are blocked in the motherland and instead of deploying a variety of VPNs with varying degrees of success — been there done that — I decided to take the opportunity to unplug). The Russia piece is a complete mindfuck on many levels – good and bad – that deserves it’s own essay (and maybe several) but the point I’m trying to make is that an extended period of not having the onslaught of events and other peoples thoughts and feelings thrown at me on the daily (while still being very much aware of all the horrors) has allowed me to (somewhat) clear my head and focus in a way I’ve not been able to do for the past good while.
Anyway… All this to say, all this searching and unravelling and chaos over the past few years is starting to take shape. It feels more concrete, more solid. And I’m planning to be as transparent with the “behind the scenes” aspects of this as I possibly can (although let’s be real, you probably don’t need the updates from me in the pits of despair or while banging my head against the wall because I can’t solve a problem or make a decision).
Leaving Substack is just one of the steps on this long, winding journey.
So why am I leaving Substack?
Let me start by saying I actually still love Substack’s writing interface and it makes creating new posts and newsletters so much more friction-less and enjoyable (I also use Scrivener to keep track of complex notes and neverending drafts, but it’s still not quite the same, somehow). My home page on Substack also looks pretty sexy – and that didn’t require any coding knowledge or googling of CSS codes at all. But that’s just about only thing that I still enjoy about that place – oh and the select few newsletters I read.
The reasons for leaving are numerous. The Substack’s nazi problem has been written about in more detail elsewhere (this Atlantic piece or this NYT article, or you can literally search “leaving Substack” and you’ll come across numerous essays on the topic going all the way back to 2024) but it’s not the main reason for me leaving the platform (I mean I’m still on Facebook and Instagram, aren’t I).
The main reason is Substack’s continuing enshittification (here’s a good post from Pluralistic explaining the concept) which is slowly but surely turning it from a place for slower writing and thinking that I enjoyed, to a longer-form Twitter with a side-hustle in newsletters, which I do not.
I notice it in how my own behaviour here changed in the past two years I’ve been on it. With the infinite Notes feed scroll being the first thing I see when I log onto the app, I rarely make it to the actual essays, even if I save them to “read later”. My Notes feed is also full of people I don’t actually follow and while I realise this is great for potential discoverability, the reality is that I’m unlikely to subscribe to someone’s newsletter based on a random note of theirs I’ve seen in my feed (and don’t get me started with Substack adding a “follow” option alongside the “subscribe” option… man, if I wanted followers I would have stayed on Twitter!). Add to that the growing amount of AI-generated content, Substack sneakily introducing a setting allowing it to train AI on your work (yes you can switch it off but you need to know it’s there) and general focus on fast growth that I find a bit (a lot!) icky and contrary to everything I believe in… and it really seems like a no-brainer, for me, to get out before I’m more painfully enmeshed (like I am with Instagram, for example).
The discoverability bit is also frustrating. One of the main reasons for anyone to join a platform like Substack is the promise of being in a space where new people can find your work. This proved not to be the case for most (unless you’re a celebrity or an established writer with an already existing huge following and then Substack will promote you to no end – because that’s how they are able to make their money) and an average writer or creator on Substack has to work hard themselves to bring people over and get them subscribing.
Which is fine of course, it’s part of the work, but if that’s the case, why would I work so hard to bring people to a platform that I can’t control, that might recommend a nazi newsletter to my followers (in a “if you follow Antonina, you might like these hateful guys too” way), and that doesn’t have my best interests in mind?
If that’s the case (as it is with most platforms, really), I would rather do the same work to bring people over to my own space, thank you very much. I have also been deeply inspired by the work of Kening Zhu and Cody Cook-Parrott and several others who are building their own digital ecosystems away from social media and intend to implement some of this thinking in my own world-building.
And with that, allow me to introduce my new newsletter-slash-blog I’m calling Chaos Theory.
What is Chaos Theory?
The website Fractal Foundation beautifully describes chaos theory as “the science of surprises, of the nonlinear and the unpredictable”. Chaos theory deals with things that are impossible to predict or control, like turbulence, weather, our brain states – or, dare I say it, creativity and imagination – capturing the infinite complexity of nature, of which humans are very much part of.
And so, my Chaos Theory is the new iteration of my newsletter-slash-blog-slash-writing-slash-creative-practice where I follow all the threads and rabbit holes, think and feel deeply about complex things, and get inspired by the unexpected. A neurospicy heaven, if you ask me.
Expect more of what you’ve (hopefully) grown to enjoy on Work in Progress, but with more focus on creativity, behind the scenes of working on projects, and of course side quests, strokes of inspiration, practical tips and more.
I can only hope that what inspires me, will inspire you, too.
