Daybreak - On Substack, online knowledge olympics, and the fickleness of the www feat. Anurag Minus Verma

Episode Date: July 24, 2025

In this episode, hosts Snigdha Sharma and Rahel Philipose are joined by interdisciplinary artist and internet truth-teller Anurag Minus Verma to talk about what’s really happening to Substack and why it matters. The online publishing platform began as a utopian space for writers and artists that promised no algorithms, no ads and no hustle for likes. It allowed for writers and readers to forge direct connections for a simple 10% cut. But with a fresh $100 million in VC funding and a growing noise about discovery feeds and advertising, there seems to be a quiet shift toward platformisation. Anurag, the voice behind the Substack newsletter Culture Café, has been writing at the intersection of caste, cinema, digital absurdity, and internet culture long before Substack became a post-Twitter haven. As a digital artist who deeply understands the performance of knowledge in the age of monetised identity, he helps us unpack this growing tension between artistic freedom and growth strategies on online platforms. Is the enshittification of Substack now inevitable? How can artists adapt, resist, and survive in these constantly shifting digital ecosystems? Tune in!Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

Hi, this is Rohan Dharma Kumar. If you've heard any of the Ken's podcasts, you've probably heard me, my interruptions, my analogies, and my contrarian takes on most topics. And you might rightly be wondering why am I interrupting this episode too? It's for a special announcement. For the last few months, I and Sita Ramon Ganesh, my colleague and the Ken's deputy editor, have been working on an ambitious new podcast. It's called Intermission.

We want to tell the secret sauce stories of India's greatest companies. Stories of how they were born, how they fought to survive, how they build their organizations and culture, how they manage to innovate and thrive over decades, and most importantly, how they're poised today. To do that, Sita and I have been reading books, poring over reports, going through financial statements, digging up archives, and talking to dozens of people. And if that wasn't enough, we also decided to throw in video into the mix. Yes, you heard that right. Intermission has also had to find its footing in the world of multi-camera shoots in professional studios, laborious editing, and extensive post-production. Sita and I are still reeling from the intensity of our first studio recording.

Intermission launches on March 23rd. To get an alert as soon as we release our first episode, please follow Intermission on Spotify and Apple Podcasts or subscribe to the Ken's YouTube channel. You can find all of the links at the ken.com slash I am. With that, back to your episode. There's always been something quietly radical about Substack as a publishing platform.

When it started back in 2017, it felt like a genuine antidote to everything that was wrong with the internet. No ads, no algorithms, no chasing likes, no hustle, just writers and readers connecting directly to each other one-on-one. You wrote something thoughtful, if people liked it, they would subscribe. And substack would take a small cut, 10%. That was the deal. It was simple.

So it gave independent creators and writers the space, like almost this utopian space to be sharp, to be personal, political, whimsical even, whatever they wanted to be, with without interference. Those like our guest today, Anurag minus Varma. Welcome to the show, Anurag. So happy, so happy to have you. Thank you so much, Snigda, for inviting me to the show.

So Anurag here has been using Substak exactly the way that it was meant to be, to build something that is honest, that is layered, funny and totally his own. His newsletter, Culture Cafe, is not just about writing. It is critique, it is confession, observation, and in many ways resistance. He writes about cast, cinema, society and the subtle violence and absurdity of online life. And he does it with nuance and wit.

Anurag is an interdisciplinary artist. He's the host of the very popular The Anurag Minas Varma podcast. He's a creator of the cult-favorite Sobhagya series on Instagram and one of the sharpest observers of internet culture out there. He understands what it means to create within this system and also see through it. Actually, let me read out this excerpt from a recent edition of Culture Cafe and I cannot recommend this newsletter enough. This is probably a better

introduction to him than everything that I've said so far. He says, we live in the age of creators, not artists. The creator's job is to live happily and show the internet that they are having the best time of their lives. Even sadness has its place, but only if it can be monetized. And you know, that line stuck with me. And it is exactly where today's conversation begins. Because Substag, the platform that was supposed to resist all of this, is now raising another $100 million from venture capitalists. There is talk of advertising, feeds are being redesigned.

It is starting to look and feel quite familiar, like most of the social media platforms that we love to hate. So the question that we will be exploring in this episode today is, Can substack survive the pressures of scale and still remain a true home for independent voices? Or is its enchantification, like every platform before it, now just a matter of time? Okay, Anurag, my first question to you, tell us a little bit about your journey as an artist, writer and creator on the internet that led you to substack. Yeah, thank you, thank you, Snigda. So I'll keep it very brief because journey is pretty much.

long so I'll just keep it very brief to the recent changes so I was on Instagram since many years creating videos and everything and earlier I used to put long videos like I might put seven minutes video eight minutes video like three years ago when it was not exactly the real platform so people used to watch like there was one of my diary on the ghost story ghost story of Bhankar. It was a satirical take on it and it was seven, eight minutes of video diary and, you know, the views were in Lex. So many people used to watch it and I also used to put midnight diaries and a lot of,

lot of content around. I mean, it was as good as any long-form content on YouTube. It was not a short content. But suddenly Instagram changed the policies and they decided now everything will be reels. Now there will be no IGTV. earlier it was IGT which was very similar to YouTube and they said that now you have to say whatever you have to say in 60 seconds and now you have to say whatever you have to say only in this vertical format so your shooting style has to change like I normally shoot in the portrait mode so that whole so everything changed so initially I thought that as an artist my job is to resist such kind of dictate by the algorithms and I decided that I'll continue what I'm doing, which is to post bigger videos and

everything. But after one or two months when there was like everybody left me, I felt like that because there was no engagement because obviously people then got addicted to 60 seconds, 70 seconds. So I decided that whatever I'm seeing now, I have to see in 60 seconds, 70 seconds. So that was a challenge kind of thing because for example, if you are telling a story in the in in cinema format, then it becomes very challenging to tell the story in an advertisement format, for example, in two minutes of ad or one and a half minute of ad. I mean, it's, it's a, these both are different medium, obviously cinema and any, any video ad.

But it's sometime, it also become very interesting and challenging to see what can be the possibility of the medium. So I started it and then my views went into the millions and game. lot of followers and everything. So that, that changed. So, substack, so that, that was my experience with the Instagram. And by that time, I realized that it is very difficult. Like, as a creator, you have to be pretty much ready for these kind of changes on,

on these platforms, because there is no other option. So then on substack, I initially joined as a, actually, I was quite bored by the mainstream the way in which mainstream publication post the articles or the way in which they even seek what kind of information, what kind of data or point of view they want to seek. So it became very, very limited. So my point was to start a vlog in a very old-fashioned style and just keep my work there. And if people are reading it, then it's fine. If nobody is reading, then it's also fine.

Initially, the idea was that. And when was this, Anurang? When did you time? recent, I think it's just six, seven months back. Right. Right. Yeah. It's very recent.

So that was the idea. Then suddenly I started like the, there was large rise in the subscriber and the readers also grew. And like, I can see the whole algorithm thing at play there. So I also got very excited by that whole possibility. So I started writing more and more. And then I realized that the new. newsletter as a format has a lot of possibility because it's a very direct and very intimate kind of a medium where you are directly reaching to your readers and the readers are also not like casual

user a casual consumer of let's say Instagram where you're real on Instagram for example the following is doesn't matter that much after that for you page that you know where you scroll the reel and then you can randomly through the grace of algorithm encounter something random so algorithm is now throwing some random accounts random reels on it so following is not

that loyal in that sense like whatever is coming I'm consuming but substack is more loyal and more close network and intentionally and so that is the most beautiful part of it and recently I saw growth in it and even when I was meeting people offline there were many people who were saying

that we really like your work so I thought they like my video diaries and Instagram videos because I've been making them for three four or five years but strangely there were many people who were saying that they really like my substack and substack is something that they now consume more so I was also surprised by the reception because I thought there is not much of an audience for for writing at such but I was wrong about it so that was my initial experience with substack and I really liked it

later on we can talk about the payment method and everything yeah right right like you joined at a very like obviously it was recent like maybe this year or later last year right very interesting time to join the platform because the shift had already started right money had already started coming in

tell me first of all like how do you As an artist and a creator, how do you look at all this money that is coming into this platform that kind of gave you a space, right, to be away from the noise of the internet? I don't know what it means for the creator as of now. Because for example, I also create on Spotify. So my podcast initially was primarily on Spotify, among many other medium. But Spotify was one of the main platform. but Spotify doesn't pay Indian users anything. Recently they started doing some fund and everything

but they had very good funding till now but they don't pay anything to users in India but even outside of India there are many artists if you go through internet pages and everything so many are criticizing Spotify of paying so less. Yeah, there is like this very anti-Spotify sentiment that is going on.

A lot of people are actually you know leaving the platform. Yes, yes. But you know, something that I wanted to talk about was this community that you spoke about, right? Like, you met people and it took you by surprise that they actually were consuming. They like reading your newsletter. And the whole point about Substack has been this community thing, right? And even the last funding rounds that they did, like the two years ago, like I said earlier,

they raised $8 million only from their own community, readers and writers. right and the whole idea was like you know we don't want to forego our ethos which makes us who we are and then the next round they had this funding round where they took money from like big shot investors but they were like no these are people like you know a naval uh navil ravicant right these are people who actually like you know fit into our ecosystem and our beliefs right we'll only take money from them But now, $100 million from VC funds, right? So, so this whole thing is changing. So, what do you think of this, you know, what do you think of community and how it has made substack what it is right now?

I mean, yeah, initially it was more about that. Even right now, there are many jokes on it substack when I joined five, six months ago. So people were writing, that. this is the slow corner of the internet or something like this. And most of the posts were about how I quit social media and they would write on substack. And they would treat substack as some kind of a calm vacation in some village area or something like that, which was very pretty pretentious because substack is also social media. Right after you post anything on substack, you're very curious.

to see the reactions, how people are liking. You go to analytic box and you see how many people have opened your newsletter, what are the stats, who is commenting, who is liking. So that was the whole funny aspect, a very romanticized version of substack, I think, initially. So I never had it. I knew because that's how the world operates because initially you say you will do this and then you do something else. for example, like KGDival in Delhi said that I will only take Wagner.

Then he started roaming in some big cars and big houses. So that's okay. Like idolism transitioning into brute capitalism. I mean, that's how it happens in the world. So that's how. But I'll give you very interesting example of one of my friend, Vimo. So Vimo was one of the person who really guided me in this whole process of joining substack, how it works, and everything.

He's one of the like Mark Dashek bundle of substack users. Uh-huh. I see. Like he knows everything about substack. So his thing was that he was, he had a very good follower count on Instagram. It was, I think, more than 2 lakhs or something. And the reach and everything was very high. But he was feeling that it's very shallow and it is, you know, taking his attention away.

And there are a lot of distraction happening. He can't write better because of that whole Instagram thing. So he was very serious about substack. And then when he was, I mean, he was very regular on substack and everything. But then substack introduced the video format, which is more like a TikTok kind of thing. TikTok or Insta-Real, you can say, kind of a thing. And then he realized that same thing which I was doing on Instagram,

now I have to do on substack. So then finally he also has to leave Substack and then join some other. blog so I don't know how he's already quit he quit substack because of that so he's one of like yeah it's pretty interesting right

like what you're describing and what's coming up constantly is that there is this growing sense of like annies frustration with Instagram with Twitter and all of that and like do you think that the people on substack are primarily like those people that are just exhausted of the constant kind of

you know the doom scrolling the re-s, the mindlessness of social media and are now here. And they're also then quickly turning this into like the knowledge Olympics and like Instagram ifying knowledge in a way on platforms like substack. Stigda and I were talking about this yesterday where like clearly there is a hunger for like knowledge and information. But at the same time, maybe like the only way of like doing it is this like, you know, kind of like Instagram or sign substack in a way, right?

Like you were talking about your friend dropping off. substack. Have you seen that happen? I call him digital refugee. So he's just trying to find a home since. So there is a thirst for knowledge and knowledge olympics is also very interesting point that Rahel used. So people really want to. So there is a lot of chaos, the chaos of information on internet.

So we are seeing so many videos, the culture is shifting, the politics and everything. So we really need curators in our time. but it's very difficult to find good writers, good curators who can make sense of this whole confusion and chaos. So people are really interested in understanding what is going on. So even on Instagram, there are many people who make videos about what is happening in the culture and everything, which I don't find it. I mean, I don't find it that good because it's very much made for that algorithm.

touch and whatever is happening right now. There are very basic point of view that they repeat. But on substack, it's interesting that you can expand whatever you are trying to say. Like, you can go into longer arguments of like even for yourself, you can also, it's also a medium of thinking out loud. So when you're writing something, you're also thinking something. So for me, it becomes very interesting. That whole format become very interesting.

For example, I wrote, so like last day. today I published a post about understanding internet post irony through Himish Hashemya. So if I post it on substack, then I might reach like 6,000 reader or maybe 10,000 reader. But if I make a reel out of it, of the same thing, then I might reach in the millions. So now it's the choice of me as a creator. What do you want exactly? Do you want to reach millions of people on Instagram who are not? loyal and even whatever you're saying will be totally diluted and for the algorithm or you

love writing that much you love the you know beauty of the words and everything that you want to write something even though it reaches maybe 10,000 people or 6,000 people 7000 people so that is a tough choice one has to make but for me it's very clear that I really want to write not make reals of of explainer reels of it but right because writing there's a a lot of scope for uncertainty and confusion as compared to an explainer video where the creator behave that they know everything but when i'm writing something i'm also a little bit confused and uncertain i really like that vibe of substack or vibe of let's say writing your argument rather than making a real out of it yeah you you kind of actually talked about this in your newsletter also

the one about doomscrolling. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, but I'm not talking about this. Like, do you think as a writer, of course, you have already made this very difficult choice, right? But still, you are on these platforms. You are on substack. You've joined at a time where the platform is already kind of shifting its nature. Do you find yourself kind of, you know, is there a change in your approach towards,

you know, say culture cafe as a writer? There is initially when I started, there was most of, like there was obviously love for writing and everything, but I was also writing a book at that time, which I finished recently on internet culture. So my idea was also about practicing, practice the whole art of the writing so that I get into a flow. So for me in that sense,

substack played a very big role because, I was also practicing and then because of that I can get into a very good discipline of writing and then it also helped me in writing fast in writing clear so that helped me in the book so those things were also running parallelly but for me the change in the platform and everything I'm not very concerned about it to be to be very frank apart from the fact that substack's problem the biggest problem of the substack is the payment method for Indians, Indian users.

That is the only problem. Apart from there, even if it releases videos or everything, I'm not going to watch it personally or I'm not going to make videos on substack because I'm very much

invested in watching absurd and random videos on Instagram and I would have meant to be a new platform. So speaking about payment method, But can you, Anra, can you tell our listeners,

like, what is it like? What is the business model like? Yeah. On substack. Yeah. So, substack,

on substack, you can offer membership to your readers, which is basically a paywall kind of a thing. So you can, I think you can, $5 is the minimum, but you may go up than that and something like that. So $5,

I think is minimum. So that membership option are there. And then you can. can access their paid newsletter and paid post and everything. So there were many Indian users who were totally dependent on this method. But recently, Stripe made a very unusual decision that they are not going to work in India. So they stopped their services. And because of that, almost everybody in India, like so many users lost their subscription.

and heavy loss of revenue generated to sub-stack and even also other medium because Stripe was banned, not banned, but Stripe was, Stripe withdrew from India. And the Stripe is a payment platform. And there were many platforms which were connected with Stripe. So sub-stack was one of them. So because of that, no Indian user or no Indian sub-stack creator, can now offer any paid membership. So because of that, there are very limited or very less chances to earn on substack.

I mean, if there was a payment option on it, then maybe even me as a writer could have earned a lot and could have made, you know, writing one of my primary livelihood. But that's not possible. So there is a complete policy failure in that for. any independent creators in India because of that. And not just this, there is another problem as well, which is the, because of the RBI guidelines, there are the failure of that recurring payment thing is very, very high. So because of that many, not just substack, but I think many news organizations also are facing big crisis because of that.

Even the Ken suffered because of this. Yeah. Yeah. But speaking about, you know, Indian substack users, can you tell you, tell us a little bit about creators and subscribers here in India, substack users. What is the ecosystem like over here right now? The first thing I do is whenever I see any post by Indian user, I just mute it. Because they are just doing the same engagement farming that they do on Twitter, romanticism or chai, romanticism, weather, pacoda, whatever. So I just mute it. And then I try to read something which is not done for the engagement farming.

Because if I'm on substack, I'm just coming there not to hear somebody's random thought or not to hear somebody's, you know, just random musing. Yeah. Something which is substantial from my experience. So that is one of the problem with many, many users in India. So because that whole idea of engagement farming. not putting too much emphasis on the craft of writing or developing a skill or chasing the easy virality has become one of the, you know, trademark of our digital universe. So everybody is chasing that easy virality rather than providing anything which is of substance to their audience.

So which is one of the biggest problem I see in India. So basically Indian users, most of them are using substack as any other social media. Yes, yes, yes. And I think it's a very important thing to understand what is the purpose of each medium. For example, I have consciously decided to put a different personality on different mediums. So my Twitter would be different, little different than what is my Instagram is. So Instagram is more absurd, more random because that's the kind of platform that it is. On Twitter, I might write political. thing, political opinion, because that's the kind of medium that is. On YouTube, I'll make long form, very artistic essays, because that gives a space for you to create there. So on substack, I'll be a little more serious or on, on let's say, podcast also. It's a different approach to creating. So every medium, like that classic quote by Marshall McLuhan, the medium is message. So every medium has a certain kind of a personality. And we

have to also respect that, I guess. Yeah, like, I think so then maybe in India, substack has not reached that, I don't know what to call it, if maturity is the right word, because like in the US, for example, substack became like a really important place for political discourse and like this whole post-Twitter world, right? Like for both sides, of course.

I mean, there are a lot of, you know, cases where like a lot of right-to-wing fundamentalist, conservatives, yeah. that was also happening. There was also an article the Substack has a Nazi problem. Yeah, yeah, exactly. In the name of freedom of speech, yeah, that was the thing. But, you know, and that's how all these people also got so popular and Substack also got popular because all these people like Nate Silver, this political analyst, he's a statistician,

like, you know, he got really popular during the US elections because of his forecasts. Then so many other legacy media journalists who were done with their children. channels and, you know, their publishing houses, wherever they were working, they got on and became like independent on Substack, right? So, there was a purpose there that Substack was serving. Whereas in India doesn't seem to be the case. No, but Snickda, you have to also understand that every cultural trend comes after, let's say, eight or nine years.

For example, the podcast were very famous in, in US. Or, you know, maybe it started from 2009 or 10. it started becoming very famous. So here the podcast boom came almost after 9, 10 years. So even same for the substack thing. I think it will change. But the two problems are there. One is obviously the payment thing.

There is no incentive as such to be on substack for any Indian user. The second problem, as I mentioned earlier, like if you want to put your thought to the public, then the easiest way is to make a video of it or even if you are not making any let's say you know instant kind of a shallow video even if you're making a good video then also you can make on YouTube like you like

you can make a seven minute of video explaining things right so why write because writing is very difficult work there's a lot of things going on in writing like if I have to write something it will take me two days of thinking that whole thing then it takes me two more days of writing that whole thing but as I said earlier despite investing so much on it

I might reach a very limited section of people which I can 10 times or 20 times if I make a reel or really or so it's a big question why should somebody right yeah yeah so that I think but one thing is that I also also consider myself very

privileged that sense that I have some time to, you know, because of the kind of the audience I built over the year and everything. They also pay me money through Patreon, through buy me coffee and other medium. So I'm in a very relaxed zone. So I don't have to go out tomorrow for the work or I don't have to think that much of, you know, 10 or 20 different things. I can focus on what I'm creating and I can be assured that there are people who like what I'm creating. So because of that, I can invest that time. But I don't think this particular privilege most of the people has. So they are, because of that, they are looking for some way to earn quickly or some way

to get famous quickly. So I can also understand that whole aspect. Yeah. Yeah. But, you know, for people who are more like towards your, you know, the way you approach writing and your art, right? What about them? Do you think like, you know, a good.

way to go about things is to diversify like you are. Like you said, you have multiple sources like patron, buy me coffee. Is that really important? Is that the advice that you would give? I mean, both in terms of payment. Yeah, obviously in terms of payment method, one has to, like I was also on razor pay. So razor pay onboarding is also extremely tough. it takes two, three months to get permissions and you have to refill the form and then when the razor pay was active they closed it saying that you are taking donation.

I said it's not donation, it's subscription. Then I have to explain them again. So these payment methods and everything are very complicated in India, all of payment method. So that is one thing. But obviously that whole diversification of payment method is also important because one day there is a possibility that Razor pay. closes your account or maybe Patreon because of some reason changes its policy that they don't allow Indian use or something like anything can happen. So one has to be sure about that.

The second thing is that diversification of the content is also useful for the audience to cater to different kind of audience. But also as an artist, it makes life more interesting. Like I'll be very bored if I do only podcast because podcast is boring after a point of time. Thanks. I mean, it's boring. So that is the thing. I just keep doing a lot of things.

Because to just save myself from this ultimate boredom of life. So that is one of the reason. I also make YouTube videos. I also make documentaries, podcast, substack. Everything is. A lot of things are going on because I also want to explore my limits, my creativity and yeah

you also get very different kind of audiences through all these medium because it's very interesting that there are many people on Instagram

that don't know that I have a podcast also there are many people on YouTube like they are comments like this a banda

can do a whole day gountary so comment I said then some people tell them he also has

a serious podcast and everything there are many people who consume my podcast know I make funny videos. So, so I also like it.

It's very, it's fun to confuse people. Yeah, it's also fun to confuse them and keep them guessing. Right. But, um, you know, if we had to,

uh, you know, go to the other side of this whole argument, right? Anurag, like what basically the founders of substack, for example, how they are justifying this kind of shift,

right, towards ads, towards like more becoming more like a, social media platform. They're saying like these tools can actually empower our users. Do you think that is that that, that is a possibility? Is that real? I don't, I don't think so because substack currently is a perfect medium for a newsletter,

for whatever the idea of the founder was. So substack is already perfect, except obviously the Indian think of the striping and everything. Otherwise, it's a perfect medium like you can write the kind of. the kind of tools it has, it makes writing, publishing so easy. You can add buttons, you can add photographs so easily. So substack in that sense,

purely in terms of UI, UX, it's a perfect already. So there is, you don't need, I don't know why you need 100 crores more. Because it's already perfect. So that old code, like, don't,

don't fix what end broken. Yeah, exactly. So, I think, but now the problems for people who are really, you know, like for example, my friend Wimo, like for them who really want to want a space which is distraction-free, for them it is going to be very difficult because if they are investing so much of money, then sub-stack has to give them reports every month or quarterly or whatever, how many users there are gain, what is their average view duration, what is their ever

stay on the website and everything. To increase that, they have to push videos, they have to push other mechanism because substack is not a very live platform. For example, if I put a tweet on internet, let's say, on Twitter, if I explain this Hamesha Shemi and post or anything on internet,

it's a very live platform. Within five minutes, I'll get so many reactions, so many this thing. So it is, you know, there is some kind of a Russian So I'll be very addicted to Twitter because there is so much going on every every minute actually to see the reaction everything. But on substack, if I put my post, then maybe in four hours I'll get some reaction. Maybe in six hours I'll get some reaction. It is like old email kind of style.

So their reactions are very slow and because of that I'm not that addicted to substack. But now they will do something to get me addicted. They will do make it more more addictive as all social media are. So that is the biggest danger, but then it won't remain that kind of platform. And there is a very big chance that it may be just another generic. So you think. Right. Right.

So basically this whole, the whole end certification thing, right, that we spoke about. Basically, where, you know, a platform first it starts off great for users and creators, then slowly it becomes less fun, less enjoyable, less substantial. because it becomes focused on maximizing profit, right? So, it's inevitable with the way substack is going, you think? I think technically it will become. So that is the whole thing. For example, you know, if you study the club culture of, let's say, Berlin,

some club or some music festival comes up, then everybody goes there because it's very niche. Not many people know about it. and there is a very strong pride of going to that club because it's underground, it's niche. And then the community is very strong because the people are less, but they are very committed to that. But then after a point of time, you realize that many people have joined in and everything. So people then feel that what is the point? So they then find new niche.

Then maybe new club will, underground club will open somewhere and then they move towards that. So this is how it happens. even in India, their music festival, which started as very niche kind of a music festival. Not many people know about it. Later on, they become totally mainstream and commercialized. So they attract a very different kind of crowd. And then these people shift to another place. So that's how culture shifts one, one platform to another.

And one should be completely ready for it. So like how Modiji said that, I'm the fakir-admi-y, Ji. Jolla up and go and go. this is a good approach on internet. So, on that note, actually, actually, on that note, like, what do you think? Like, you would also jola upkechal from substack.

See, substack gives you very good jola because you can take your users along with you. It gives a list of CSV list of all the subscriber, all the email address that you have. So that is one good, very one good thing about it. I don't know it will continue or not. But that is one of the very good thing that you have the control of your email, control of the users who are reading you. So maybe then you can shift.

Like YouTube doesn't give you that. YouTube will never give you the user list, your member list. I have also a membership on YouTube, paid membership. So they won't give me the list of who are the members that joined it. But substack gives me that. So it is giving me jolla and saying that if you want,

you can leave. But the question is where will you go? What is the alternate? Maybe something new will come up after a point of time. Something like it's like blue smart gone. Now there is super black chauffeur. Something new will come. One has to be ready for it because these mediums are very temporary kind of a setup.

So you don't know. Like it's like if you go to Canard Place, there are people selling item. Aachanaku Boulda, police. Then you see there is nothing. There was it even there. Like, was it even there? Yeah, there. Yeah, there was it even there?

Yeah. There were. There were. There were. There were no. There's no. There's no. So, that whole idea of temporality is also the hallmark of not just these medium,

but of internet itself. It's many so platforms. There, so many platforms go. So, this is a part of internet. Which is also exciting thing. about it because there is nothing which is very permanent. But it also for some people might be very... Just like life.

Yeah, just like life. So it's good. So that is one of the reason I post most of my things on story. I post very less on feed because story is like it, you just have 24 hours of commitment to things. Then it's more. So it's... Right. All right.

On that note, thank you so much. This has been such a great conversation on a rug. Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of the Ken. India's first subscriber-focused business news platform. What you're listening to is just a small sample of our subscriber-only offerings. A full subscription unlocks daily long-form feature stories, newsletters and podcast extras. Head to the ken.com and click on the red subscribe button on the top of the Ken website. Today's episode was hosted and produced by Rahil Filippoz and I, Sinkda Sharma,

and it was edited by Rajiv Sien.