A Quick Bite About The Celebrity Substack Invasion

Who remembers the "Stars—They're Just Like Us!" column?

Lizzo came on Substack and wrote about her response to her weight loss, legal woes, and cancel culture. 6,500 subscribers.

Charli XCX shared all of her realities of being a pop star. 13,000 likes.

Lena Dunham wrote about her body and her diagnosis. 1,447 likes.

Doeechi wrote about her showerhead being racist. 183 comments.

Tegan and Sara are writing about a whole lot…but most of it is behind a paywall. Pretty much every post has at least 100 likes.

Troye Sivan wrote about dealing with aging and feeling uggo. 2,500 likes.

For a while, Substack used to feel like this:

And in some kind of way, that’s what folks liked about it. Dropping “omigosh I follow this Substack that…” into conversations at parties or sharing posts to Instagram stories, with that not hella recognizable logo in the corner that made you curious enough to click.

It was this little, lowkey corner of the internet. Folks who were looking for writing of all kinds they weren’t getting enough of in major media, and the writers who weren’t getting opportunities to write it, or maybe they were, but not consistently.

By the time I got to it a few years ago, it was out of the whole bootstrap startup phase. I mean, at one point Mr. Musky was trying to buy it, but it wasn’t up for grabs, but it still felt cozy.

And now everyone knows about it. There are so many pieces about Substack, what it is, and what’s more interesting to folks—who’s on it.

Celebrities of every alphabet list are popping up. I think a lot of them already had accounts, reading and subscribing, but didn’t want anyone to know. It’s like celebrities with secret Letterboxd profiles. I just KNOW Cillian Murphy has one, but WE’LL NEVER KNOWWWWWW.

NEWAY…people are having some thots and opinions about it.

Some are playful..

but a lot of folks are not having it.

I too have some feelings about it.

On one hand, these people are artists. Each in their own right. Writing their own lyrics, or in a phase of their career where they want to be taken seriously, and like okay, they deserve that.

They’re also literally just humans. Imagine having your life just in the media and on social, with actual millions of strangers giving opinions, memifying it, and all you can do is sit there and take it. I get why Substack can feel like a little rebellious spot where they can speak for themselves and just BE themselves without approval from a PR team (who I still imagine looks like Angelica’s mom from Rugrats)

I know how freeing writing can be. It’s part of why I am a writer. I know what it feels like to release something onto the paper.

Writing it out. Seeing my feelings. Connecting them to something. Putting it on the page. Feels really good.

But like also—I’m not famous.

Like some folks on here, I feel a bit of the “unfair” of it all. Media suckssssssss right now. If you’re not already connected to a publication in some way, getting a recurring byline is the fuck HARD if you want to go the standard media route.

Making a living as a writer was already hard—but there was another way. You could create a Substack, write here your way, and get paid for it. Folks who wanted to directly support a writer they “really knew,” someone outside a larger publication or media house with politics or agendas they didn’t align with, came here.

When I first started my Substack, I didn’t tell anyone about it. I used it as a place to write the things I couldn’t land elsewhere. I wrote the pieces here that made me continue to love writing everywhere else. At the time, I was working as the culture editor at Autostraddle and had bylines at other publications but Substack was my favorite little secret corner of the internet.

Then, about a year after I started my Substack, my role at Autostraddle ended. Some of the other places I wrote for started laying folks off or just shuttered. I needed to not only keep writing, but also make monies. And all the people who loved my work on Autostraddle became the start of my audience here, which was so dope.

These are regular people who give me $5 of their hard-earned money every month to support me. I make them laugh. I tell them what movies to watch so they can relax in their daily lives. I share my life through films they’ve already seen—or I just say insane things at 2 a.m. in Notes. And they support me.

I didn’t start seeing celebs on my Substack feed until a few months ago and EYE WAS SURPRISED. That leads me to this note.

I kind of agree. The word normies is wild to me lol and I’m not necessarily looking for an escape when I’m on Substack, but I agree with the general vibe.

The other side of how I feel is… perhaps they’ve “lost” the privilege of some parts of normalcy?

Because of your fame, you can’t just go to Trader Joe’s on a Tuesday with your headphones on, sipping the cold brew you just bought as you slowly go aisle by aisle… and maybe you like also can’t be on Substack without some scrutiny.

Celebrities on Substack is one thing. Celebrities with content behind a paywall is a wholeeeeee other conversation. Large publications on Substack? Another WHOLE ASS conversation. Like, I don’t understand why something like New York Magazine needs a Substack.

AND THEN there’s the argument that celebrities being on Substack isn’t the reason your posts don’t get engagement or subscriptions—and for the most part, that’s true. But you have to admit it does become way more difficult to get eyes on your work when celebrities, with less than three posts, show up on the bestseller or rising lists.

I also think people hesitate to say how they feel about it because they don’t want to seem bitter or like a hater. That sucks, because feeling bitter—or being a hater—is often fair.

Also, also I feel like many folks are afraid to share their feelings because it invites critique of their work that’s usually harsh for no reason, or completely unfounded… and usually from an account that only follows celebrities.

Anyway. That’s how I feel about it.

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Extras:

• Speaking of publications, remember when Carrie made $4.50 a word at Vogue and then Candace Bushnell (SATC Creator) did that interview with The New Yorker basically confirming that in the 90s that’s what the going rate was? Carrie could write like 5 words and keep 5 Substacks going for like…ever.

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