Substack Put a Badge on My Soul
Since when did reading and supporting someone's words have to come with a badge?
You know how we always vent about apps turning into these soulless money machines?
Yeah. This new badge Substack is rolling out has me fuming. The kind of fuming where I pace around my flat talking to myself, where I send voice notes to my friends that are three minutes long and mostly just me saying “it’s the principle of the thing.”
Let me explain this badge. Because if you haven’t seen it yet, I’m about to ruin your day.
It’s this stupid little gray flower icon. It pops up next to your name if you’re shelling out cash to someone’s newsletter. One paid sub gets you the basic one. Five gets you something fancier. Ten gets you… I don’t know… a golden flower? A bouquet? A small woodland creature personally thanking you for your investment?
When you click on someone’s profile, it tells you how many paid subs they have. Or if they have none at all. It’s like a neon sign screaming “Not a real supporter!” if you’re just there for the free reads.
I wasn’t even going to write about this. I have other things to do. I have a draft about my mother that I’ve been avoiding for three weeks. I have laundry. But then I saw this post from Emily Starr Kwilinski, and she nailed it so hard I had to restack it and reread it for the next five minutes like it was some kind of a religious text.
Why isn’t there a badge for the people who show up? Who engage? Who build the actual community? The ones who read every post, who reply, who send it to their friends, who make the whole thing feel like a conversation instead of a transaction?
Instead, it’s all about turning us into walking wallets.
I need to be careful here. Because I am, technically, a person who still uses this platform. So I get it. I do. Monetization helps writers eat. If people want to support that way, cool. More power to them. I am not anti-money. I am very pro-money, personally, I would like more of it.
But.
Badging like it’s some elite club? It’s turning community into hierarchy. It’s making “success” mean bank account instead of, I don’t know, touching someone’s heart? Starting a real conversation? Making someone feel less alone at am?
Substack started as this cool space for ideas. For raw creative writing. For conversations that actually mattered. I would scroll through Notes and feel connected to these strangers spilling their guts over a poem or a hot take. It felt like the early internet. The good internet. The one before everything became a sales pitch.
Now? It’s like they’re gamifying it all. Making monetization this shiny achievement you “unlock” with enough subs. That flower badge isn’t celebrating writers; it's pressuring everyone to chase dollars as flex. It’s making the whole thing feel less like a corner for thinkers and more like a LinkedIn knockoff for essayists.
And I am so tired of LinkedIn. I am so tired of everything becoming LinkedIn.
The worst part (and I mean the actual worst part, the part that made me feel physically sick) happened the other night.
I was scrolling through my home feed, half-watching something on TV, not really paying attention that much I guess. I saw this profile that looked interesting. Someone writing about something that I cared about. I went to click on their picture to read more, but I missed. I tapped their name instead.
And bam.
Just their username staring back at me. And underneath, in this very small, very polite font: No paid subscriptions yet.
Like what the actual fuck?
Why is that even a thing? Why is that public information? Why do I need to know that? It felt like I was peeking at someone’s credit score. Like I had accidentally opened their bank statement. Like I was seeing something intimate and embarrassing that they hadn’t chosen to show me.
I felt so gross. I closed the app. I opened it again. I closed it again. I sat there on my sofa feeling like I had done something wrong, except I hadn’t (I had just clicked on a name). The app had made me complicit in something shaming without my consent.
It’s shaming people who aren’t ready to pay. Or who can’t. Or who just want to read without the transaction. It’s turning every interaction into a potential sales pitch. Everything’s becoming a profiteer playground, centering money over everything else.
These apps are supposed to bring us closer. Spark ideas. Not turn every click into a judgement.
I want to be fair. I want to acknowledge that Substack is a business and businesses need to make money and writers need to eat and I am one of those writers. I am not pure. I have a “paid subscriber” button. I have thought about what I would do with a golden flower when I subscribe to someone else.
But there’s a difference between “here is a way to support writers if you want to” and “your value as a reader is determined by your financial contribution.” There’s a difference between community and hierarchy. Between gratitude and gamification.
I don’t want to know how many people you’re paying to. I don’t want you to know how many I’m paying to. I want to read your words and feel something and maybe reply and maybe not, and I want that to be enough. I want showing up to be enough.
Is that so radical? Is that so impossible?
Apparently, yes. Apparently, we need badges now. Little gray flowers to tell us who matters. Little gray flowers to tell us who doesn’t.
Ugh. I’m so over it. We need more Emilys calling this shit out. We need more people saying: this isn’t what we came here for. This isn’t what writing is. This isn’t what reading is.
I don’t want your badge. I don’t want your flower. I just want the words.
What feature made you feel like a walking wallet?
When did the internet stop feeling like a conversation and start feeling like a transaction?
Reply to this. I read every one. Especially the angry ones.
Until next time,
Aleksandra
Ahh thanks for the shoutout!! So true, all of this.
i wasn’t sure what the badges were and a search led me here. thank you for explaining right away.
i’m not able to monetize at this time; i’ve considered what kind of content i might place behind a paywall if i could — as someone who’s worldly finances have more than once placed strict limits on ‘luxuries’ like reading, i’ve often missed information in news publications, discussions of prose contained in articles not afforded me, etc.. i wouldn’t want to do the same to exclude others.
right now, i think my badge would be for discovering my substack exists lol. it feels good to consider the possibility of badges you can customize for what works within your own community of readers. i like that.