This past year - 2025 - I went ‘viral’ on Instagram more times that I had before. It was kind of jarring, really, and not something I was really expecting to have to deal with. Don’t get me wrong - it was good and I’m glad it happened because I think it helped get me in ‘the room’, but that’s really not what I was doing this for. For the most part, I’ve been doing this for myself. I’ve been doing it for my own edification and as a release for my thoughts and memories…because…I don’t know…I just felt like it was something that needed to be done.
So when I was bombarded with all types of rewards for my persistence…followers and likes and features and comments and shares and engagements and monetary bonuses, things became THAT much more difficult to follow up with. So after something went viral, I’d have dry spells of days or weeks or months where nothing would get any attention whatsoever and I’d start questioning my worth. And…I dunno…it felt like something significant had shifted?
I mean, I empathize with the struggle that Instagram faces: if we are all, on average, following 100 or 1000 or 10000 people, and each of us live life in real life, how in the hell are we supposed to see every post from each of those people every day? How are we supposed to ingest the videos and the quotes and the images and the slideshows of all of the people we follow? Add ads on top of that? You’d have to sit there scrolling Instagram for a billion years before you could really get to the end of it. So things really do have to be prioritized, and my priority post is not necessarily your priority view. All that to say - I really don’t think our brains were made for this much information.
Usually, after I’ve spent a few days tying my self-worth to my ‘business insights’, I’d ask ChatGPT ‘what’s wrong with my style of posting’, and every time I’d get a response akin to ‘you’re thinking about this too deeply’ (or ‘you’re presenting this in a way that’s too complicated and would take someone more than 0.2 seconds to understand’), ‘and that doesn’t work well for IG - you need quick hits.’ And that always bothered me - despite the fact that I knew it was true.
I started messing around with Instagram when I was 33 years old. I’m 45 now. I think - instead of hoping the algorithm would change - I decided I have to change.
For a long time, real life was where my relationship with sneakers lived. And then NikeTalk enhanced it. And then Instagram was where my relationship with sneakers ultimately ended up.
That wasn’t the plan. It just kind of happened. The world kinda pushed me that way.
First - I showed up to talk about shoes the way I thought they deserved, and it didn’t really resonate with anyone. So I kinda shifted more to the way I talked about anything - through memory, context, curiosity, and lived experience - and over time, the audience found me. Or maybe I found them. Either way, Instagram became the place where I processed sneakers in public. This became the place where I tested ideas around sneakers and worked them out in real time.
And for a while, that worked. It worked surprisingly well. Astonishingly well. Better than I could have ever hoped for. 17,500 people follow me. The scale of that is mind-boggling (for me).
But at some point - slowly, and then all at once - I realized something had shifted. I wasn’t writing about sneakers anymore. I was performing my relationship with sneakers. I was crafting posts for the algorithm. For engagement. For relevance. For the conversation.
And maybe that doesn’t sound like much because it is a subtle distinction, but it definitely started to change how I saw the hobby.
Because Instagram is very good at visibility. And it is very bad at memory. But I’m entirely the opposite. I have a great memory. But I was never much for being visible.
Instagram rewards speed over context. Consensus over nuance. What performs over what persists. And that’s not dissing it - that’s just how the platform works. It’s optimized for scrolling, not staying. For reaction, not reflection.
The problem is: for me, sneaker culture doesn’t actually live that way.
For me, sneaker culture lives in details. Sneaker culture lives in regions. Sneaker culture lives in stories that don’t scale well. Sneaker culture lives in half-remembered moments that don’t fit neatly into a square. Sneaker culture lives in conversations that used to happen on basketball courts, in magazines, in classrooms, in record stores, on NikeTalk and ISS, and enthusiast gatherings (that used to occur well before their current form of high-powered interstate commerce) - these were places where nobody was counting likes or followers or checking StockX, and nobody thought much of the inherent incentive structure of simply being interested in something.
Over time, a lot of it just felt…weird.
I’d catch myself asking questions like:
“Will this land?”
“Is this worth posting?”
“Will people care?”
Instead of the only question that should have ever really mattered:
“Is this true to my experience?”
That’s when I knew I needed to move some of the work somewhere else. And this isn’t my first attempt.
Years ago I made a similar attempt, with Substack, but I was kind of unsure and still reeling off of the highs that IG has provided. I’ve learned something over that time, though, and it’s that Substack isn’t better than Instagram. It’s just different. And as I’m getting older, I’m really just starting to understand why these differences matter to me.
Here, the incentive isn’t speed. It’s clarity.
Here, the currency isn’t engagement. It’s attention.
Here, the work doesn’t disappear in 24 hours unless I want it to.
Most importantly, Substack lets me write things down. And it allows me to keep being me. And there is no character limit.
Not hot takes.
Not trend reactions.
Not content.
Stories. Context. Observations. The small stuff that gets lost when everything is optimized for reach.
I don’t expect everyone to follow me here. Although it’d be kinda cool to have a massive subs list - that’s not really the point.
Because this is for the people who’ve ever said:
“Wow, I had no idea.”
or
“I never thought about it that way.”
or
“That reminds me of something I forgot.”
Instagram will still exist for me. I’ll still use it. But it’s no longer where the work lives. It’s where the work points.
Substack is where it’s going to live.
Because if sneaker culture is going to survive as anything more than a highlight reel, someone has to slow it down long enough to remember it.
And this is my attempt at doing so.
For the first few months, this is going to be completely free. After a few months, though, I’m going to put up a paywall. Not because I think I deserve money, but because I think these kinds of essays and ideas take a ton of energy, time and experience, and the only way to ensure they get their proper respect is to put them up behind a wall.
I wanted to charge something absurd…like…$1.27/per month, because I don’t think the money will make a damn bit of difference…but Substack won’t allow anything below $5/month so I’m going with a slighly more absurd amount…$5.27. If this is something you can’t afford but wish you could - hit me up. I think I can give out a few free subs.
If, when the time comes, you look at the subscription options - you’ll notice there is the base package and the ‘founders’ package. As you might remember, I like to create physical artifacts related to my sneaker world and trying to ‘sell’ those things has always felt…cheap. Truly, my products feel like personal works of art. So instead of selling those things, I’m just going to give them away - for free - to those that opt in for the ‘founder’ package. It’s not a big deal, either way, but I want to give this stuff the respect I feel it deserves.
Again, you’ll still see me on Instagram, but Substack is where the forethought begins, IG will be the afterthought.
This is the long way around.