Substack Is Redefining Community and Even Better

How Working Professionals Spend their Lunch break

Today’s letter is brought to you by one of my favorite substack writers

Tobi Odeyale

, author of the

Jollof-Write👨🏽‍🍳

publication, a funny and intresting social commentary on random life experiences. Enjoy!

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I can't talk about community without thinking of Substack because it’s teaching us a new way to be in community. Hence, it’s a sin to separate the two. This was originally going to be a piece about community but instead of making this feel like a your scary maths teacher in front of a classroom board—i’ll attempt to make this feel like your favourite TedX.

Substack feels like LinkedIn professionals on their 30-minute lunch break. A spot where they gather and take a moment to connect by just being real with each other.

Most people use their real names only in their professions, but substack writers come as they are—real names and faces attached, giving the vibe of “we are proud of what we do outside of work too.”

Picture from Pinterest

It reminds me a lot of Desperate Housewives and how the women of Wisteria Lane were more than just neighbours. They knew each other’s names, addresses, husbands, kids, exes, haters, farts, and pizza delivery guys.

Substack feels like a small neighbourhood in the suburbs where everyone has their own circle and their own writing groups, but nothing is entirely separate from the other. We’re all in this shared space, cheering each other on, encouraging each other to keep flexing our writing muscles, to keep going even when it’s tough.

There’s this constant stream of positivity and support, and it’s a powerful thing to experience.

I've made connections with writers on Substack who feel like friends I’ve known for years, even though we’ve never met in person. That’s the magic of it. You find yourself thinking, this is what community is supposed to feel like. It’s why I keep coming back. That is why I spend so much of my time here. It makes me wish that how we love and support each other on this platform could be mirrored in the real world, though unfortunately, it often isn’t.

If I could trade my online Substack community for my real-life community, I’d do it without thinking. That’s how much it means to me.

So, what does community mean to me? Community should be something that nudges me into becoming better, breaking me free from the popular ideas of society, a place where I can be myself and be challenged and supported all at once.

CommYOUnity should feel like home.

And that's exactly what Substack has given me—a home for my original thoughts, a home to share, a home to cheer, a home

where writers can come together, share, inspire, and just be.

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Author’s Note:

I want to talk about how often writers lean on the ‘you’ approach, as in ‘you this’ and ‘you that.’ It’s easy to project ideas onto the reader this way, but what if we focused inward instead? Many writers don’t realize they’re doing this out of habit, often imitating styles that rely on ‘you’ without adding much depth. Instead, we could personalize it, using ‘I’ or ‘we,’ making it more about self-reflection or shared experience.

I hope we, as writers, take the opportunity to shift away from ‘you’ and towards language that invites readers in rather than instructs them. By speaking from a place of ‘me,’ ‘I,’ or ‘we,’ we can avoid the trap of projecting and engage more honestly. This constant projection is BS. It’s on us to do better.

I’d like to give a special shoutout to

Bea

for inspiring this author’s note. She said it way better than I ever could:

Song of the week:

Listening to Sunrise by Lavender Rodriguez. 🥹

Y’all should go check out Tobi’s newsletter ☺️