Introduction

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/why-do-i-suck

I recently ran a subscriber-only AMA, and one of the most frequent questions was some version of "why do you suck?"

My commenters were very nice about it. They didn't use those exact words. It was more like "I loved your articles from about 2013 - 2016 so much! Why don't you write articles like that any more?" Or "Do you feel like you've shifted to less ambitious forms of writing with the new Substack? It feels like there was something in your old articles that isn't there now." There was a lot of similar discussion on this one year retrospective subreddit thread.

The evidence that I've gotten worse at blogging is mixed. I asked about it on a reader survey six months ago, and got this: