Issue #74: Does Substack have a jealousy problem?
Or is it just me?
Written by
. Edited by .A few weeks ago, Aliza sent me a screenshot of a writer in our niche. She’d been featured by another, much bigger writer — one who’d politely turned down our request to collaborate three months earlier. Immediately, I rolled my eyes.
We’d been talking about this writer since she started her Substack, and it was clear she was growing quickly. More quickly than us.
“Ugh,” I messaged Aliza. “Can I be honest? I’m jealous of her.”
“Me too,” she wrote back. “And that’s okay!”
But it didn’t feel okay.
I like to think of myself as supportive and gracious. Capable of working hard for something while celebrating someone else’s success. But I was finding that increasingly hard to do, as Aliza and I spent hours every week on
, getting up early and staying up late to write articles, organize partnerships, and grow the business. All of this was — is! — fulfilling and interesting and sometimes — when we were the ones with the viral article or Substack Reads shoutout — exhilarating. But when it was someone else, I felt irritated and resentful. And that made me feel petty and small.The only thing that made me feel a little less small? Hearing Aliza was jealous, too. I started to wonder who else was feeling envy and jealousy on Substack… whether it was more universal than I’d realized.
I turned to seven successful Substack writers with audiences ranging from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of readers to find out — and maybe it’s because we all write about ourselves online, but they were impressively vulnerable and honest. I learned, yes, envy and jealousy are very common — both on Substack and in “real life.” And that those feelings don’t go away as you get bigger; they simply evolve.
“I had no expectations when I started my newsletter,” she says. “I’m in Germany, I’m not a writer, and I wasn’t coming with any audience.”
Because she didn’t start her Substack intending for it to get as big as it has, she says she struggles with anxiety about where to take it more than jealousy. “I don’t want to be a full time New York writer girl. That’s not the life I want,” she explains. “But it’s like, ‘Oh, if this is doing really well,’ and people are telling you they like your writing, and they like your content… Shouldn’t you have more of an aspiration for it?”
We go back to envy and jealousy. She points out they’re different: “Envy is about wanting what someone else has, and jealousy is about wanting to protect what you have from someone else.”
This delineation is useful. As I speak to more writers, a theme emerges. Substackers who are smaller but growing quickly tend to be envious: They’re looking for the kind of success they’ve seen others achieve. Substackers who are already big and “successful,” on the other hand, tend to be jealous: They have a lot more to lose.
, founder of Refinery29’s Money Diaries and financial newsletter , still identifies as the former. “I find envy to be a huge motivator. This is probably a silly thing to say — people will be like, ‘Come on, Lindsey’ — but I’ve always sort of felt like an underdog.”“Yes, Money Diaries is big, and The Purse has had some nice success… But then I look at somebody like
, who launched her newsletter [] this week. I wouldn’t say that I’m jealous of her, but she’s had a really great career, and she’s been able to build herself as a very big media personality. That is something that I would love for myself, and I am not there yet.”
As we talk, I realize I’ve been viewing myself and Aliza as underdogs, too. Like Ochuko, we don’t have backgrounds in journalism or media. We didn’t start with a list or big Twitter audiences. But, as Lindsey calls out, “I’m sure Taylor Lorenz is looking at Kara Swisher, and saying, ‘She’s so big, she’s so successful.’ The goal-posts are always moving.”
“And maybe… we’re all underdogs on Substack?” she says. “None of us are working for The New York Times or Glamour or any of the traditional publications. We’re doing our own thing, and that is inherently scary. By all accounts, we are the underdogs, all of us — even
and .”, who founded the beloved newsletter Girls’ Night In and now writes , says her relationship to jealousy has shifted over the years. She used to feel “holistic jealousy… of the person, their life, their work, what they make, what their lifestyle looks like, what press and praise they’re getting, and so on.” Now, she feels jealousy about the work itself.“I get jealous when I read a gorgeous piece of writing and think, ‘Why can't I write like that?’ I get jealous when someone is a fantastic interviewer and think, ‘Why can't I think of questions like that and have incredible, quick-witted conversations like that?’ Usually, this type of jealousy motivates me to work harder. In a way, it's fun because it gives me a challenge and gives me something to strive toward.”
Years of being in a “very public and fast-paced entrepreneurial role — and yes, showered with attention and praise and lucrative deals” helped Alisha reach this perspective.
“I used to feel so jealous, particularly in the ‘girlboss era,’” she says. “But now I know first-hand that there’s always more to the story when someone’s landing glowing press pieces about them in The New York Times.” She adds, “Often, it’s burnout.”
, founder of fashion newsletter , agrees:, whose full-time job is running political newsletter with her husband, , tells me “jealousy” is a more relatable emotion than “envy” for her.“I think sometimes [envy] stems from a lack of information. Every year, when fashion week rolls around, I feel sparks of FOMO over all the cool events and shows, because they look so glamorous on social media. But it’s also the whole point from the brand POV to foster a sense of exclusivity and unattainability. The more informed I become about the fashion industry through first-hand experience and accounts from colleagues and friends, I see the drudgery, the exhaustion, and the exploitation behind the glittery exterior. And you can be aware of all that and still feel envious. It’s a liberating mindset to tell yourself: I am allowed to feel envious. I’m allowed to feel anything. How you act on it, however, is a different conversation.”
“There’s no one out there where I’m just like, ‘Oh, I want what you have,’” she says. “Of course, there’s always someone who publishes something amazing, and I’m like, ‘Oh, wow! I wish we had done that’ — but overwhelmingly, I feel anxious about the stuff that we’ve worked to build disappearing.”
is currently #8 on Substack’s political leaderboard. It used to be higher, and she struggles with that.“I feel overwhelming gratitude for the fact that [Matt and I] are able to do this. We don’t take it for granted; we know that it is in large part luck. Yeah, we work super hard, but everybody works super hard, right? I’m not looking out there and saying, ‘Oh, there are so many people who have things so much better.’ But I am afraid of losing what we’ve built. This is our whole life. We put everything into this. And if it went away tomorrow, we would be okay. But that would really suck.”
Whether it’s jealousy or envy, it quickly becomes clear that what we’re all feeling is not unique to Substack. But it is heightened here.
And that’s probably because, as a social media platform, Substack facilitates — encourages, really — comparison.
“What’s your day job?”
, founder of culture newsletter , asks me. “I bet you don’t feel as much professional envy there, right?”She’s correct. I’m a Senior Director of Marketing at a tech company, and while I feel the occasional pang when someone else gets a cool project, it’s nothing like the feelings Substack provokes.
“[With Substack], there are numbers attached,” Emily says. “Somebody can visit my newsletter and see how many likes and comments and shares I have. Whereas, when I was working at Meta, I couldn’t see somebody's inbox, or how many texts they got saying, ‘Great job.’”
Aliza and I watch Platonic Love’s metrics closely. They tell us what content resonated most with our readers — but we also know that those metrics are an important factor in the Substack leaderboards, and those leaderboards drive traffic and new subscribers.
Several Platonic Love posts have made it to the daily leaderboard, which shows what’s trending by category. The first few times it happened, we were giddy — sending each other a flurry of excited texts and sharing screenshots with our friends. But when my piece on Mormonism didn’t make it to the trending leaderboard, I was surprised and disappointed. It made me wonder if the piece was actually good.
“If a piece didn’t do well, it would really affect me,” she says. “I’d think, ‘Oh, my writing isn’t good; I didn’t efficiently convey my message;’ etc. It used to get me down a lot. But I’ve stopped paying as much attention to metrics.”
The shift came for Clara after having several pieces go viral.
“I feel like people don't take the time to read through something before they react to it, and that really bothers me,” she says. “So when a piece doesn't go viral and it has the normal number of readers that you would expect from your audience, you get more thoughtful commentary. And I find it really valuable that the people who are meant to see something are seeing it.”
Clara continues: “It obviously feels lovely when a piece is very popular. I'm not going to pretend I don't care how many people are reading. But there is something to be said for staying within your built audience.”
Emily takes a similar approach:
“Of course, I get jealous of things every few days or weeks. I see other newsletters with similar formats as me — which, I didn’t invent the format; plenty of people had daily newsletters before me. But I always have to come back to reality. I can look at my newsletter every day, and I can see growth, and I can see opens, and I can see paid subscribers, and that gives me such a sense of calm and self-confidence. From day one, this newsletter was paid. This was always a business for me. So obviously, my satisfaction comes from the business growing.”
Focusing on Platonic Love’s growth and our relationship to readers, and paying less attention to other newsletters’ growth, feels like a straightforward and effective answer.
But that doesn’t mean ignoring the envy and simply hoping it goes away. Viv has one of the healthiest relationships to the emotion I’ve heard yet.
“I’m jealous of the girls with super rare archival Prada shoes,” she says. “I’m jealous of the girls who seem to write so beautifully and intelligently and effortlessly, because why does writing often feel so difficult for me? I’m jealous of the girls who always seem to be on vacation and have fake jobs.”
“But,” she adds, “These aren’t things I literally want or need to feel fulfilled. It’s not really about the Prada shoes or endless vacations. They’re just triggers that offer insight into my mental health and how I’m feeling about myself and my life.”
A few days ago, a new post from the writer who makes me jealous popped up in my inbox. I automatically scrolled past it — I’d intentionally been avoiding everything she’d written for months. Then I paused and scrolled back up.
Did I still feel jealous? Yeah, I did. Just seeing her name and icon had made my heart beat a little faster. But the jealousy had lost some of its potency; it felt more muted and contained. And, I realized, I wasn’t immediately feeling a second wave of emotion: smallness, loneliness, frustration. I felt more matter-of-fact: Well, yeah. She has something I want.
I opened the post and gave it a heart.
We’d love to hear from you…
What helpful tips do you have for combatting (or gleaning insight from) your relationship to envy and/or jealousy? In what contexts do you feel these emotions most acutely?
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Loved this piece so much. I write a top food newsletter, my posts are almost always on the leaderboard just due to sheer volume of readers, and I still get the substack envy! I really don't feel it on Instagram like I do here -- probably because it is so much more closely tied to financial gain.
"A rising tide lifts all ships" has become my motto over the past few years, though. The more I lift up and support other writers, the more it comes back around. Sometimes I'll see yet another massive food tiktoker join substack and my first response is "shit, they're coming for my spot!". Then I take a deep breath, welcome them to the party, and tell them to call me if they need any help settling in. This approach feels much, much better than the spiteful ignoring of their posts, which I also used to do. Now, hearts for all ❤️❤️❤️❤️
wow this came together so nicely. such an important conversation to be having :)