Glennon Doyle is Not a Victim
But Also We on Substack Should Welcome Everyone
*SPREAD THIS ONE FAR AND WIDE: RE-STACK AND SHARE!
One camp feels that famous people can’t possibly take anything away from we smaller writers on the platform; that there is plenty to go around for everyone; and it isn’t a binary or a zero-sum game. Others feel that the famous folks are draining the literary quality and vitality from the platform and taking readers away from we smaller people because the two audiences probably won’t overlap very much and sex and fame is more glittery and attention-grabbing than serious fiction.
There’s been a silly—but also meaningful—little cultural snafu recently regarding the famous author Glennon Doyle (author of the hit sensational 2020 memoir, Untamed.) To expose my own biases up front (as everyone, including media, should always do but rarely make the mark): I haven’t read Untamed or any of her work in general. A few friends of mine read the book. A couple loved it, a few hated it. The small bit of her writing I vaguely recall reading (or listening to on Audible?) landed to me as generally too post-modern, New Age-y and, to use the most battered and irrelevant word now on Earth: Woke.
But all that aside.
Basically what happened was this. (And this is meaningful because it’s a microcosm of something much bigger going on here on Substack.) Doyle—already famous—joined Substack roughly two months ago. I vaguely recalled seeing her name back then, around February or March. I didn’t bother searching for her because, as I said, I hadn’t read her work and from the little I had it didn’t seem like my cup of literary tea.
Anyway, I finally saw her pop up on my feed again and this time I looked. She had a handful of posts and videos. I briefly scanned some of her material, and then noticed something both shocking and predictable: She had, after only eight fucking weeks (and I use the curse word here purposefully) 217K subscribers. You heard me right. Let me repeat that. Eight weeks. TWO HUNDRED AND SEVENTEEN FUCKING THOUSAND SUBSCRIBERS. Lord knows how much money she was no doubt already raking in just for being Glennon Doyle.
In short: Due to “bullying,” and “mass protests” on Substack (sort of), Doyle, surprising everyone, deleted her account. Gone, Poof. No more. Finito. Zero. Into the netherworld.
There has now been a sharp line drawn in the sand:
1. Those who think people like me are just jealous assholes who want to censor or remove people they don’t like or agree with or who are “too successful.”
2. Those who think, Fuck Doyle; she’s fucking famous, no one kicked her off the platform, and if you’re so hyper-sensitive that you can’t take a little criticism online, then why even write to begin with?
I land, basically, somewhere between these two poles. Number 2 seems irrefutable and undeniable to me: Remember what Stephen King said in On Writing: “If you expect to succeed as a writer, rudeness should be the second-to-least of your concerns. The least of all should be polite society and what it expects. If you intend to write as truthfully as you can, your days as a member of polite society are numbered, anyway.”
In other words: All serious, honest, good writers are, by default of the craft and the trade, going to piss some (even many) people off. That’s just the way it goes. You’re telling me that a famous author—one of the 1% of authors in contemporary America that can surely make a living off her prose—with a massive brand and 217K subscribers (in two months: Did I mention that?) gets off the platform because she feels bullied? Bullied by who, exactly? The “common people”? If I myself got bullied off Substack how many people would care? I can say the same for most of the other writers I know on Substack. Yet enter Doyle and we’re supposed to feel sorry for her precisely because she is famous.
Substack started as a place for serious writers generally outside of the mainstream. The “heterodox” writers, one might say. Writers who The New York Times and The New Yorker wren’t publishing in the insane summer of 2020 and after. Writers like
, , , , , , , , and so many more. It wasn’t ONLY for these kinds of writers, of course, but it was pushing back against the anti-free speech bullshit of major news media and the obvious, absurd biases of the literary magazine and book publishing world which had been growing since somewhere around 2010. (And metastasized once Trump came to power in 2017.)Since then, Substack has grown, bringing with it both the good, the bad, and the ugly, but always at the end of the day The Inevitable. “Progress” occurs whether we want it or like it or not. Horse-drawn carriages were replaced by cars. TVs by computers. Old-school computers by iPhones. Etc. Such is the way of things. Historical development, tech growth, capitalism. And this is generally all to the good.
But.
Over the past couple years Substack has seen massive growth. Along with much of the new changes on the platform—the introduction of Notes, live video reels, etc—have come famous celebrities, influencers, and famous authors. Some argue this is a wholly good thing: With famous people come more readers and, therefore, more potential subscribers for everyone. But is that really true? Do people who worship celebrities and influencers and read popular easy reads also want to read serious literature or in-depth book reviews about Nabokov? Maybe. I doubt it.
One camp feels that famous people can’t possibly take anything away from we smaller writers on the platform; that there is plenty to go around for everyone; and it isn’t a binary or a zero-sum game. Others feel that the famous folks are draining the literary quality and vitality from the platform and taking readers away from we smaller people because the two audiences probably won’t overlap very much and sex and fame is more glittery and attention-grabbing than serious fiction.
But this opens up a bigger debate: What is Substack “for”? Who belongs here? Who gets to write on the platform? Who should the algorithm help? There is, of course, the awkward, dirty, uncomfortable question of profit here, too, of course. Substack makes money off the 10% they take off the top of all paid subscriptions. So the math is obvious: If Glennon Doyle walks in and starts an account and almost instantly gains 217K subscribers, probably a huge chunk of which are paid, it’s a good day for Substack. (Whereas my petty 73 paid subs do very little for them.)
So clearly there is a motivation for the company to bring in The Big Guns.
To answer the previous questions: What is Substack for? Answer: Everything. It’s not a platform JUST for “literary writers” or “serious novelists” etc; it’s for people who write pulp fiction, total beginners, people who write on sports, medieval history, gender issues, climate issues, politics, music, tech, finance, etc. In short: Everything under the sun. This is one of the beautiful things about the platform: You can find literally just about everything you need, want and then some.
Question: Who belongs here? Answer: Everyone, of course! Very much including Glennon Doyle. One of the best things about Substack, as I said before, is it’s firm belief in free speech. A year-and-a-half or two years ago there was a very dumb debate about supposed Nazis on the platform which devolved into a ridiculous cultural argument online circling free speech. In short: Some on the left wanted to censor some speech in the name of purity tribal cleansing because, they claimed, there were Nazis everywhere on Substack and they were writing “hate speech.” (There turned out to be like six sort-of Nazis with very few followers. It was a non-problem, as most “issues” the New Left complains about are.)
Point is: I believe in free speech, and in creating an open, safe, non-censorious environment. And I believe that everyone should have a right to be on the platform and they should be able to write whatever the fuck they want. (Minus actual, genuine hate speech for which the standards should be incredibly high and rigid.) This is what democracy is all about. Yes, I know Substack is a private company and yes, I know “content moderation” is normal and allowed; what I am saying is that I respect the platform and the founders for caring deeply about the first amendment and allowing all speech.
However, creating a “safe” and pro-free speech environment DOESN’T mean criticism isn’t allowed. It means the exact opposite. By safe I mean everyone should have the ability to create a stack and write their words. By free speech I mean anyone should be able to respond to that writing in any way they want.
Who gets to write here: Everyone. Who should the algorithm help? That one I do not honestly know how to answer.
Glennon Doyle has every right to be here. Period. Hard stop. Whether I like her writing or not, whether I like her politics or not: All this is irrelevant. We can all create our own “walled gardens”: We get to mute and/or block anyone we choose. No harm no foul.
Am I jealous of Glennon Doyle and other famous authors like her both on and off Substack?
OF COURSE I AM!!! I wouldn’t be human—or certainly a writer, writers often being insecure, self-conscious, egotistical and highly ambitious—if I wasn’t. And yes, I posted an initial Note on the platform a few days back (before she closed her account) criticizing her and the ability to walk into a metaphorical room and instantly get 217K. Imagine you start with a tiny amount of land and very little money. You make some friends and get some help and soon you build a small cabin. Over time more cabins are built, more money is acquired, and, over the course of say three, five years, you have a nice little village of 3,000 people. Then suddenly one day BOOM, a famous person, wealthy and connected, moves in next door and builds a massive, palatial castle, a castle to which you have no access to. Is that fair?
I would argue that no, it’s not fair. But then again, it’s also a silly argument because guess what: Life isn’t fair. (How many times did my mother say this to me as a boy?)
I can separate out my bruised ego and jealousy from what’s right, which is that Substack is a platform for EVERYONE, even if it annoys me sometimes, even if I totally disagree with someone, even if they’re famous, even if they get an instant audience for doing virtually nothing specifically ON the platform.
And yet, still. The question also can’t be ignored: Did anyone actually kick Glennon Doyle OFF of Substack? No. She self-exiled; self-cancelled, in effect. Was she “bullied”? Maybe. I honestly don’t know. I don’t feel that my original critical Note was “bullying”: I thought it was moderate, thoughtful and fair, and coming from The Little Guy. Isn’t the left always screeching about “punching up and punching down”? Aren’t we little writers, in essence, “punching up” to power? We don’t have Doyle’s power, connections, fame, wealth or prestige. (Most of us. 98% of us.) So why not? We can’t vent our frustration? Look, I don’t blame DOYLE herself. It’s not her fault that she became wildly successful. Hey: Good for her! But it does open this bigger question around the small versus The Big on the platform.
I can, as always, see both sides of this debate fairly clearly. I think anyone who writes anything is always going to have to face criticism, especially the more famous and successful one is. That’s to be expected. That’s just the way it is. On the flip side: I don’t think it’s a healthy precedent to set if people genuinely were bullying. Cancelling or online bullying is bullshit and I don’t like it. It’s what the Woke Left has been doing for the past 10 years now. I hate it. But bullying and criticism are not the same. Especially when the criticism is aimed not so much at An Author but at The Deeper Truth underneath all this which is that life ain’t fair, not everyone succeeds, not everyone gets the same opportunities, not everyone starts at the same place, etc.
I’m not saying Doyle either deserves or doesn’t deserve her fame. I don’t know if she does or not. She probably does, because I have to imagine that anyone that famous did something incredibly right, otherwise she wouldn’t have gotten this far.
But that’s all beside the point. The point is: Whoever you are, please do join Substack. But remember: Not everyone is going to like you.
And if your main goal is just to be liked…you’re probably in the wrong profession.
I think the dust up and discussion about Doyle is less about her and more that we are seeing the era of the influencer culture that focused on those like Doyle with of tens of thousands of devoted followers. The influencer paradigm, which flourished on other platforms, doesn’t fare well on Substack. Why? Because Substack audiences seem to prefer to engage with multiple perspectives and thoughtful conversations rather than hanging on the words of a single influencer who claims to have life figured out.
What we're witnessing is a shift toward more democratic and distributed wisdom.The pushback against Doyle's entrance to Substack reveals this tension—communities that value substance and depth are actively questioning whether celebrity status and emotional storytelling should grant automatic authority in spaces dedicated to meaningful discourse. People are growing weary of following personalities who position themselves as authorities primarily through their own painful experiences.
What figures like Glennon Doyle, who built their platforms on personal vulnerability and trauma narratives, now face, here and on other platforms, is increasing skepticism from audiences who once eagerly consumed their insights. This doesn't mean the end of influential voices, but rather a healthier ecosystem where authority is earned through a wider narrative and genuine insight rather than personal brand or follower counts. I applaud a platform that gives AOC a bigger boost than those coming from Instagram and other platforms to see if they can add followers. Perhaps, the backlash she received wasn’t an attack on Doyle but the inevitable fatigue with her message and the influencer paradigm.
Yes—thank you for naming that. It’s so important to distinguish criticism from bullying. What I saw wasn’t a personal attack—it was a deeper conversation about platform power, visibility, and fairness.
Was she hurt? Probably. And that matters. But naming that some voices arrive louder isn’t cruelty—it’s reflection. We can speak about inequity and still be kind. Both things can be true.
Of course she deserves to be here. No question.
But people are allowed to feel the ground shift when someone with that much reach enters the space. That’s not envy—it’s awareness. It’s okay to talk about what that means for the rest of us.
And yes, if she felt unwelcome, that feeling is valid. But discomfort doesn’t always equal harm. We can hold space for her feelings and for the larger conversation. Empathy and accountability aren’t opposites—they belong together.