Young People On Substack
You may say I'm a zoomer, but I'm not the only one.
There don’t seem to be very many Gen Zers on substack. There’s one with a huge following named Freya India—she writes mostly about bad things happening to my generation. Her substack is very well done, quite well written, and consistently interesting. But are there other popular Gen Z writers?
Freya isn’t that young. She was 24 a few months ago, so is at least 24 (this is because ages increase over time). Now, to a 20-year-old like me, she’s positively ancient—4 years ago, I was 16, in my second year of high school. So, are there any prominent 20-year-olds on substack (other than, of course) yours truly)?
I have various friends on substack who are a similar age to me—Amos is 19, I think, which, never forget, rounds down to zero if you round to the nearest 39 (unlike my age). Ethan is also around my age, though I don’t know his exact age. But neither of them have particularly enormous substacks (they have very good ones though!). So, are there any big substacks from people age 20?
My substack isn’t huge. I currently make annually about 4,500 dollars a year from substack and have 1,685 subscribers. So I’m about 10% the size needed to make a significant living from substack. Still, it’s possible that I have the largest substack in the world of any 20-year-old. That’s pretty cool, if true, though I don’t know if it is.
I also surely have the biggest substack of the ones that have written upwards of ten articles defending the self-indication assumption, which is no doubt a much bigger achievement.
But anyway, does anyone know if this is true? Are there any big substacks had by people too young to legally drink in the U.S. and A? Or am I, until I get outcompeted by some pioneering infant, the biggest 20 or below writer on substack?
P.S. as I was doing intensive research for this article (very intensive. very research) I came across this very adorable article.
Update: Apparently Austin Scholar has a bigger substack, despite being younger! Still…#2 isn’t bad…
I guess I'm Gen Z (25) but my impression is blogging was a bigger cultural phenomenon 10+ years ago. I remember looking for books on the Arab Spring a few years ago and many of them were explicitly about the role that blogging played in the various revolutions. Whereas I don't see anyone talking about how the blogosphere has influenced more recent social movements (but more on Twitter and TikTok).
Great to hear about your achievements Matt! I think Substack has a lot of pull for a particular "free thinking" kind of demographic, I'm not sure this appeals to Gen Z or at least what I've seen of them. Well done again! All the hard work and consistency is paying off.