Happy Anniversary. You Suck!

A free article about my humbling

(Psst…before I begin, you may qualify to fill out a CHH anonymous survey! Check out this one if you are a person of any orientation, gender or age and ever asked Reddit for relationship advice, or this one if you’re an American single person who mostly dates the opposite sex.)

This week, I wanted to write an article celebrating the one-year anniversary of this Substack, but got distracted by other ideas, notably writing about my fear of flying in light of recent plane incidents and publishing my job search guide. I’m getting around to it today, although I think I’m about a week late.

My husband got me this cake for my Substack anniversary- but why won’t he tell me who that couple is?

(Side note: although this article is free, most of my stuff is for paid subscribers only. I am doing a 20% off sale on annual subscriptions to celebrate this big milestone only for the next 5 days. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber to join the CHH community and read 5+ articles from me per week!)

Anyway, another thing actually derailed my plan to write about this Substack’s anniversary: earlier this week, I was published in Slate, for an adaptation of a previous article I wrote about how association with middle-aged moms makes political movements (in this case, liberalism) uncool for young people, especially young men. When I initially wrote this article, I just knew it would be a banger. I’ve written other stuff, such as The Great Coochie Wars of Reddit, where I was like, okay, I’m going to lose 50 subscribers but it might still be worth it. And when it came to my article about middle-aged women and liberalism, I was correct! It was actually my second-most successful article of 2025. Not everyone agreed with me, but even those who took issue with my stance didn’t have anything especially nasty to say. And yes, there were some people on Twitter who saw it, didn’t read it, and complained about stuff I never wrote. But overwhelmingly, the comments were positive.

At the time, I was feeling pretty good about my writing and about this Substack. Looking back on the past year, my life has completely changed, all because of this little orange-icon app. A year ago, I was struggling with a quasi-midlife crisis, miserably working in tech as a slightly below-average performer, and finding it unfathomable to keep doing that for ten or twenty more years. I felt awful about the time I spent away from my kids, even if I did everything in my power to prioritize them above my work. Given that I was writing, working full time and attempting to spend as much time with my kids as possible, I had zero energy left for my husband or myself.

When I started my Substack, I thought it would be a fun hobby to bring in some money that I could use to splurge on Self-Portrait knit co-ord sets or date nights, not an entire income (although having just paid my taxes, I’m realizing that income is far less than I previously thought- many such cases!) But you know how things turned out. After years of insisting that my dream of being a full-time writer was stupid and idealistic, I achieved it. I am now the #2 humor Substack! I have a solid orange checkmark, which Means Something. And reliably, whenever I publish an article, I get a plethora of extremely kind comments from the nicest people on Earth who pay to read my work almost every day. These people are even interested in reading full-length articles about my son’s plastic genie lamps. After years of begging close friends and family to read my work, I can’t believe that now, people I don’t even know are paying to read it.

Although I haven’t been living this life for that long, I kind of got used to it. Sure, I know I’ll always get criticized (especially on Twitter and BlueSky) but that was almost always by people who never read my work, and the criticism was usually over something dumb, unrelated to my actual writing, from people who didn’t read it. I could tell myself that my writing was indisputably Great because everyone who actually reads it loves it—not just my mom’s secret account, but lots of people I’ve never met!

And then I got published in legacy media.

Look, I obviously didn’t get published in Slate for the money. If you’re after money, freelancing is never a good way to do it—you’re genuinely better off playing Halsey songs by violin in Grand Central Station like you’re auditioning for a position for the Bridgerton soundtrack. I jumped at the chance to be published there because I welcome the opportunity to get my work in front of new people. Substack might be growing, but most people who read—or who pay to read things—aren’t here yet. What if I could bring some of them over—and of course, convert them into subscribers, free or paid?

But one thing about getting your work in front of new people is that a lot of them will actually…hate you?

I’m used to people telling me I suck. I hear it all the time on Twitter. But like I said, those aren’t people who actually read my stuff, because they generally don’t have paid subscriptions. My article in Slate was free (shortened and adapted from the paid article on which it was based) so generally, anyone who commented had at least attempted to read it. And it was in front of people who, for better or worse, weren’t familiar with my whole “vibe.” For one, a couple people mentioned the fact that I cited Matt Yglesias as “all they needed to know.”

My article, for those of you who haven’t read it yet, was noticing the fact that association with middle-aged moms tends to make political movements seem uncool. I underscored that being a “resist lib” is seen as painfully corny, and often synonymous with “wine moms.” I wasn’t saying that this association makes liberalism bad, nor was I worrying about whether a fifteen-year-old named Declan with a broccoli haircut thinks I’m “based.” I certainly never said that Kamala Harris lost because of such women. My main point was to contrast the fact that liberal politics were considered cool and edgy by my teenage peers in the 2000s, and they’re not anymore. End of story! If you want to draw moralistic conclusions, or conjure up strategies for changing liberalism’s image, that’s great—but it’s not what I wrote about.

Of course, the comments on my article didn’t reflect this. Someone asked if I had “sociological data” to back up my crackpot theory that pink pussy hats weren’t cool. Multiple other people told me to go fuck myself because middle-aged women were cool, actually. I was told that I was needlessly blaming myself and sexistly blaming other women for Harris’ loss. One person said they felt my article was too long, meandering and pointless, despite “trying to be funny.” Another commenter replied to that person, incredulous that my article was even intended to be funny. Someone else said that it was pointless for me to opine about politics at all, because my energy should be conserved for updating my passport and fleeing the country. Overwhelmingly, I was accused of “caring what idiots think.” And actually, that last part is pretty true, judging by how much time I spent reading these comments.

And yes, I know, I should never read the comments! I figured I’d take one peek at them not obsess over it all day, which to my credit, I did, but mostly because they were extremely mean and hurt my feelings. I pay much more attention to my comments on Substack, especially because they come from subscribers who, at this point, have gotten to know each other (and me, and…The Elder) and have spirited discussions with thoughtful content. But also, they’re nicer.

Even after I stopped reading the Slate comments, my husband notified me that I was being “ripped apart” and it was “actually getting a bit mean.” He then pretended to read a comment, saying, “I would say that CHH’s work is a pile of shit, but that’s doing a disservice to the importance that excrement plays in fertilizing our soil.” It turns out he made that one up as a prank, but he really captured the “indignant and verbose asshole” vibe that I was seeing. Luckily, I found that too entertaining to be offended.

But here’s something you might find surprising: I don’t regret publishing in Slate. In fact, I probably needed it. I would do it again, even if I knew I would get equally mean comments! While I wouldn’t say I’ve been arrogant about my work, I am surrounded by people who pay to read it, and therefore, I live in a bubble of praise. I obviously enjoy such a bubble. But sometimes, the fact that I write for a relatively smallish group of subscribers means that I forget what someone outside of Substack might think upon discovering me. Over the past year, I started developing…not a big head, but a moderately inflated forehead, at least. It was jarring—but probably necessary—for me to see how my work appears to people who have no idea who I am. The answer: in many cases, they believe it sucks!

While the comments were bad enough that I was only able to handle reading them once, and while I’m not taking most of them seriously, it was still a helpful experience, and surprisingly, it gave me hope. Because if this many people have no idea who I am, and think I suck, it means I have room to grow. Sometimes, I worry that this is the furthest I’ll ever go—everyone who could subscribe already has, I won’t grow any more, and my best bet is clinging to my existing subscribers, begging them not to leave (despite losing at least twenty per day.) I go entire weeks where my Substack following doesn’t grow whatsoever, and I worry I’m about to start declining, ultimately fading into obscurity. The Omarosa of Substack.

But being ripped apart in the Slate comments section taught me that my subscribers are actually not that big a group of people, even if they are the best people int he world—there are so many readers I haven’t yet reached. And those people are joining Substack every day. Granted, a lot of them might still think I’m a terrible writer, but I have hope that if they were more familiar with me, they’d understand the point of my article and not be so incensed by it. And worse comes to worse—maybe if they were on Substack, they’d share my article with rage, putting it in front of someone who might actually like it. Wouldn’t that be terrible? As they say:

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