Post Tik Tok Substack Era

What I’ve been up to lately (originally posted to Substack March 17, 2025)

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In the year of our lord 2025, on the day my meaningful life ended (January 19th) I deleted Tik Tok. To me, she was dead in the water and my behavior kept re-opening the wound, tender and raw. In a mindless tap frenzy I’d open the app only to be reminded 1) I no longer had access and 2) Donald Trump would hopefully save our ADHD souls (doubtful). So away she went— apps trembling as I cut my losses.

And then the craziest thing happened.

So now Tik Tok is back and i’ve been forcibly detoxing. I’m going on week 3 post tik tok. People who had deleted tik tok before it went away (for 8 hours) would drone on and on about how it monopolized (read wasted) all their time, and so now you’d assume I’d have reclaimed valuable free time to do valuable things like paint still life or play violin or learn French. All worldly individuals do stuff like that. In reality I’ve just filled my tik tok time (often occurred when waiting for coffee, waiting at a red light, rotting) with more Instagram.

Even though I feel desperate to get back to my sweet sweet algorithm, I’ve found a new passion: Substack. This comes from a new initiative I’m implementing in 2025 where I go more analog (see also vintage, old school, and retro). I bought a watch (which expeditiously broke); I do the daily crossword (which I can never finish); and I bought cards to mail (but no stamps). Substack, however, is low effort. It’s content consumption, just a hell of a lot slower.

My first reads were authored by friends. They wrote about things we had talked about. Things that were relevant to me (important). And they were good at it. I could read it in their voices. Voices put through a mesh strainer. Versions of them I hadn’t been privy to in any other medium. It was a new landscape. Something between a text and a book. Equally formal and informal.

Things started to go downhill for me when I inexplicably started up a paid subscription for a singular column. (Note that there’s free content on substack— duh you’re reading this for free thank you by the way.) $6 to one guy. I hope he enjoys his latte (*no flavors or alternative milks*). You could read like three for free but to access his whole catalog you needed to cough up the cash. How quickly I became desperate for more content when my unlimited cache of free advice and brain rot and thirst edits of celebrities (and various political figures) was ripped from my cold dead hands. I’m in a post algorithm world and I don’t know how to navigate it.

I’ve actually been enjoying reading through his old posts. (I’ll refrain for now from naming him, not to gate keep but because I haven’t decided if my enjoyment and endorsement of his column expresses the right things about me and my interests.) I don’t know this guy at all. I saw him for the first time in a youtube video where he wasn’t named in the title or description. He’s a bona fide writer though. He wrote for Time magazine (and others probably). He writes with wit and grit and a self deprecating type of confidence.

I read about his wine collection at work, Philip Zimbardo at stoplights, and the intuit dome app at the scandanavian coffee shop. It’s my newest addiction. He’s single handedly extending my attention span… to 4 minutes according to the substack read time. I even read his posts when I rot in bed (which makes me better than you).

If I were to be honest with you dear reader (and so far I feel I can be), I don’t think I would be here without deleting Tik Tok (and the following forced sobriety). I think the allure of that app and its speed and dexterity and my committed relationship with the algorithm would have kept me from other applications. And I think that because it’s true. But on this day I’m glad I’m on Substack. I’m happy to take it slow. I don’t want to rot my brain away.

So i’m in my post tik tok era and substack is my new old slow less visually stimulating replacement. Now the only way to contact me is by pigeon and if you’ll excuse me I’ll be spending the next 4 hours reading his substack (until I run out of content and I have to kill myself).