The Future of OK Doomer
I’m taking it into my own hands.
Last year, I launched a Substack newsletter in order to voice my inner thoughts about the biggest threats we face and the mindsets we need in order to move past passive hope and hopeless doom. The newsletter has resonated widely with people who are trying to keep it together while dealing with a daily onslaught of aggressive optimism, toxic positivity, and wishful thinking.
The newsletter has given me some creative freedom after Medium started tamping (once again) what they considered clickbait. Unfortunately, they recently doubled down on that attitude and rewired their algorithms to pay even less for work that doesn’t meet their narrow, elitist standards. If that weren’t enough, Twitter has been restricting links to Substack for months now. As several substackers have noted, that poses a real problem because content creators have been relying on social media platforms to build their readerships.
These developments have left writers like me between a rock and a hard place. (After all, I’m trying to raise a family.) I put a lot of work into these posts, and it’s been getting harder to keep that up. I’m not rocking thousands and thousands of paid subscribers, and I’m trying to keep the site open, especially when it comes to information about public health. There have been times this year when I…
