Substack and Medium "blogs" are the most soulless abominations to have ever exist on the Internet. Paragraphs of black text on a white background with constant pop-ups telling you to subscribe. Get an actual blog, either through self-hosting or on a site like WordPress.com (it's free). You get your own theme (even if it's pre-made) and no annoying pop-ups outside of banner ads that can easily be blocked (though I think WordPress.com allows you to disable them for your viewers if you pay).
I see zero reason to use Substack or Medium unless you want to paywall your content or avoid censorship (both of which can be achieved through self-hosting).
Substack is a known focal point for people who want to say something in the standard online political method. It was a great place during the pandemic when only nazis and antivaxxers were using it, but now women have discovered it and it's become Tumblr mixed with AI slop.
It's a decent platform, but not one I'm in love with. The owners are retards because they tried to make the Notes™ feature into a new Twitter, but the algorithm is so stupid and so unfathomably obtuse that it frequently shows you things that were liked™ by people you don't follow. I once made three or four replies to woman blogs calling them dumb bitches and that was apparently enough to turn my recommended timeline from genAI slop dads into bipolar women writing micropoetry.
@Hephaestic >Substack is a known focal point for people who want to say something in the standard online political method.
That's my other beef with it. It's 90% philosophy/political blogs. At least Medium has blogs on things like programming, even though I wish they were hosted somewhere else.
Yeah, it sucks. The only fiction seems to be the aforementioned women posting micropoetry and that one guy who LARPs as a hobo living out of his van and fucking mid Asian bitches on the West Coast.