Why I decided to go with Substack

Two romantic boomers struggling with social networks.

Here I am again.

I’ve been on Substack for just a week, and it already feels surprisingly familiar—which I take as a good sign.

I wanted to share why I’ve decided to move much of the content we create over here from now on.

Andrea and I have a lot to say—on many levels and across many topics. A couple of years ago, Bailey (one of Substack’s founders and a friend of ours since 2017) introduced us to her friend Sophia, who was coming to Rome for a few days. We met up, and felt close instantly. She’s in charge of Substack’s development half the time, and she spent an afternoon walking me through how the platform works and what kind of opportunities it could offer to people like us—who’ve spent years working in outreach and education, often unpaid, and who certainly can’t make a living off it.

That conversation lit a spark, and we opened the profile in a flash. Over the course of two years, however, we've been so overwhelmed by demanding projects that we had no choice but to keep it there, silent and inactive. Now, though, the timing feels right to go with it.

We genuinely hope this platform can offer a better, more respectful environment for people creating original content—or at the very least, that it attracts an audience truly interested in what we have to say.

The problem with Instagram is that it doesn’t protect creators—quite the opposite I’d say.

All the hours we spend editing and preparing material are often stolen and reused elsewhere, especially by professionals, without so much control or as a credit. At the same time, the platform floods us with embarrassing or useless AI-generated posts and but on the other hand, it can also decide to ban a nude painting by Tiepolo or Andrea, according to its obtuse algorithms.

Leaving our feed in the hands of an app that can suddenly freeze or delete your profile—often for no good reason—is risky, and the appeal process is a nightmare. It’s an incredibly unfair one-sided relationship.

That’s why we’re here on Substack now. Because we believe it offers more freedom to express ourselves, and maybe even a way to have readers support us for the making of contents that are thoughtful, beautiful, and worth reading or watching.

I want to make clear that Substack isn’t paying me to say any of this—I just thought it was important to explain why we’ve chosen to focus our creative and editorial energy here. We’re also thinking about new formats, like short videos where we share things that interest both of us and that we think are worth discovering.

We’re curious to hear what you think—what you’d like to see more of through our window on the world.

From Rome, with love,

Daria