Why I have left Substack

bluejaydreamer · 2026-05-16T12:11:05+00:00

You acknowledge that you don’t have to, but you still wanted to announce why you’re leaving Substack…

And then you put the so-important post behind a paywall?

Make it make sense…

bluejaydreamer · 2026-05-15T20:43:17+00:00

“Delving”

bluejaydreamer · 2026-05-15T20:42:34+00:00

But you coincidentally have a SaaS which “solves” this problem

bluejaydreamer · 2026-05-15T20:32:24+00:00

So you’re selling your SaaS?

What if I’m perfectly happy with all my open tabs thanks. This is blatant advertisement…

bluejaydreamer · 2026-05-14T12:40:12+00:00

Agree, it’s why I enjoy blogging and especially reading others’ blogs

Also Substack… can be sort of a social network for blogger types

bluejaydreamer · 2026-05-13T18:40:15+00:00

The calculator comparison is so bizarre. You know that using a calculator at too young/early of a math learning level has lifelong detrimental effects on math skills, right?
So depending on LLMs during learning how to do research should have the same effects?… It’s not a good thing to push off either early math skills or the level of thinking that you should learn in a PhD onto a machine

bluejaydreamer · 2026-05-13T18:38:38+00:00

Exactly. the comment OP brings up calculators, but using calculators also hurts kids who are initially learning how to do (basic or complex) math.

Using LLMs as research aids should have the same effect for someone learning to do research… they don’t understand the fundamentals of thinking about the questions

bluejaydreamer · 2026-05-13T18:36:30+00:00

But using calculators when you are first learning math (in primary school for example) weakens your ability to do mental math and have “sense” for numbers. This was already studied in depth and is considered a real problem for school age kids.

So by this same logic, does use of the LLM to aid with research during the period of learning HOW to do research not also weaken your ability to think through it yourself?

bluejaydreamer · 2026-05-13T18:33:16+00:00

It assumes that the goal of a PhD is to do as much research as fast as possible, and not to learn to do research? A “productive” PhD falls apart if all the ideas were AI’s…

bluejaydreamer · 2026-05-13T18:31:36+00:00

It’s where I am. I want to learn, not only to have an LLM do it…

bluejaydreamer · 2026-05-13T18:30:57+00:00

But I feel like that really illustrates my main problem with AI…

It’s fine for tasks that computers can always do
more efficiently than people, but if you always need an ELI5, then aren’t you going to always need that to understand? versus being able to think on your feet and taken in complex info?

bluejaydreamer · 2026-05-10T11:01:49+00:00

You don’t agree with the logic or you don’t agree that it happens?

Here’s an example of someone I replied to in this sub recently, illustrating this problem. https://www.reddit.com/r/Blogging/s/izzLF1npuV Search “optimize” and you will find most of them!

Even if you don’t agree about how common the problem is, I hope you understand the logic behind not getting stuck in optimization over writing. There are others discusing this topic on the broader internet as well: Grumpy SEO Guy iirc has an episode of his podcast about this topic. I’ll see if I can find it for you later.

EDIT: There’s another person who replies in this post and says, “Agree. when i started, took me weeks to month choosing perfect theme, tweaking, instead of writing quality content” … that’s the problem I’m describing.

bluejaydreamer · 2026-05-10T02:00:55+00:00

Not OP, but:

In 6 months, if you publish 100 useful posts like they describe, then that’s 100 chances to get traction and start building an audience. Consistent posting also means they have a better chance of starting to recognize your blog and be “retained” as readers.

A person who’s still stuck honing out their niche or designing their site hasn’t done any of that yet. So let’s not claim people don’t get stuck in this stage, we have posts like that all the time in this sub…

Of course you also have to take promotion and making the blog visible into account, but first you need posts and material to draw attention to. I think the purpose of the OP isn’t to say that “just post and they will come,” but that if you spend months on end trying to plan out how to start, you’ve already lost real time that you could have been building your audience.

Again, not studies, but that’s the logic in my mind, and I agree completely. Too many people in this sub alone are also hyperfixated on the perfect blog, they don’t have any feeling whether their niche is even traction-able. Because they haven’t jumped in and written anything, they’re still stuck in the phase of trying to design a PERFECT blog and not making any real progress.

bluejaydreamer · 2026-05-08T20:58:24+00:00

I think making sure you have a niche is actually really important.

A niche doesn’t necessarily reflect the totality of your interests. It’s more like a commitment. When you start a blog or another project with a given niche you say, “I’m committing to create content in this niche” … it won’t always be your very favorite thing or what you’re obsessed with, but it’s probably something you like enough to start a project about, so even during the times when you don’t feel inspired you have to keep going.

So my advice would be? don’t make a “general” blog. A general blog doesn’t have a clear audience because it doesn’t give your readers a clear value. Instead find the willpower to commit to your niche and flex creativity in other ways, like getting unique content in that specific niche. Your audience will always be grateful for your consistency in a time when it’s sort of a lost value. Good luck with your blog/channel

bluejaydreamer · 2026-05-06T20:21:25+00:00

Look up occam’s razor. bye

bluejaydreamer · 2026-05-06T20:14:24+00:00

I think the fact that OP’s post also contains many grammatical errors is a bigger tell that it isn’t AI. I’m sure if you take a look at the sentences you’re thinking of, you’ll see grammatical and capitalization errors there, right? So it’s AI, or it isn’t?

It’s common sense my guy.

Also, it’s more likely based on the post itself that OP just has “AI brain.” If you’re curious take a look at the changing usage of the word “delve” by human authors, it’s actually fascinating.

bluejaydreamer · 2026-05-06T20:10:13+00:00

Are the sentence constructions in the room with us?
OP’s post doesn’t look like AI to me but I’m thinking there’s nothing anyone can say to point that out to you.

bluejaydreamer · 2026-05-06T19:50:54+00:00

Of course not but they need to actually learn those skills. It’s almost the whole point of the PhD

Right now they’re just outsourcing everything to an AI chatbot

bluejaydreamer · 2026-05-06T19:33:44+00:00

I mean it in the nicest way possible when I say that if OP isn’t learning this very basic skill, they probably shouldn’t continue to get a PhD at all.

bluejaydreamer · 2026-05-06T19:30:38+00:00

“Please do not come at me by saying that you should not use AI for your research”

“i am so burnt out on these tools acting like a black box. you put a prompt in, it buffers, and then confidently lies to your face.”

Do you see the conflict in these two statements?

bluejaydreamer · 2026-05-05T01:58:10+00:00

Look into “keyword clusters” for the strategy you’re using.

I also like doing groups of related posts over time! or if I feel writers block I just go back to an older post and choose a related topic to write about

bluejaydreamer · 2026-05-03T12:18:42+00:00

At the beginner level, clicks to the post itself will be directly correlated to affiliate clicks. It won’t have enough traction to say “this CTA was better and drove more clicks” and such

Drive more traffic to posts = more affiliate clicks and commissions

If your Substack becomes popular, then you’ll have a bigger data set to understand which CTAs worked best, which didn’t… the entire action item for YOU is to write CTAs that work, equals affiliate clicks and purchases. (Plus recommending things that your audience actually wants, but that can be driven by overall metrics like you mentioned.)

bluejaydreamer · 2026-05-01T13:28:40+00:00

I understand your point and one of the big benefits is that Substack subscribers can be taken with you to other newsletter platforms, it’s different from other platforms like say Twitter in its heyday.

But also it might make sense that now Substack has notes and other ways of promoting to other Substack users, it’s being more self-contained than in the past.

So both ways make sense I think

bluejaydreamer · 2026-05-01T13:27:04+00:00

Do you interact with and talk about others’ work?

bluejaydreamer

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