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Susan Niemann's avatar

"The Trump phenomenon doesn’t exist because people are stupid. It exists because many people are ill-informed or influenced by mass media and oligarchs like Elon Musk and his massive 300 million user-base Twitter empire."

Truer words never spoken, Charles. People are either just stupid or willfully ignorant. We haven't paid attention to what's happening in our government for so long that when we really should, we don't.

Like you, I lose some subscribers the minute I hit send! It bothered me at first, but I've learned it is inevitable. There are so many great writers on Substack I cant possibly read them all, and I hope that is the case with those who leave me. Obviously I would like to keep them all.... but I'm sure I'm not everyone's cup of tea. 😂 I'm writing for the love of it...and the discipline of it. And I always look forward to what you have to say. ✌️

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Cliff Lake's avatar

It's more than just not giving the reader the content they want - a lot of people are treating Substack like they treat Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and so forth: they're after numbers and they think you are too. So they subscribe. They subscribe so that you'll subscribe back. They aren't writers and they aren't writing. And because they aren't writers, there's a good chance that they aren't readers either; they're subscribers. They are validated by their subscription numbers and when you don't subscribe back, they're gone. And then there's the subscriber/numbers persons that, once they have your subscription, that's all they were ever after and they unsubscribe because they were never interested in your writing in the first place.

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