Sarcastic Fish Has Substack

and other thoughts on why I stopped writing

Oct 05, 2025

This feels—almost—like it should have been an obvious step.

By now I’m sure we’ve all seen Substack articles recommended on our TikTok feeds, ironically titled things such as “how to stop doom scrolling” or “how to be less addicted to your social media”. I’d got into a habit of screenshotting those, intending to read them in some mythical future where I am a better version of myself. A version of myself who has self-control. A version who doesn’t need to put screentime limits on her Tiktok, Instagram and YouTube. A version who certainly doesn’t pass her phone to her mother to fill in a screentime passcode, issuing express instructions that even if I badger her, under no circumstances is she to tell me the passcode. You know I actually guessed it once and mum had to change it?

Then a friend of a friend got Substack. I started reading her posts and I noticed something. While reading (and enjoying!) her writing there was also this strange secondary feeling. Is it jealously? Am I jealous? Jealous that someone else is doing the writing I think I should be doing? Or am I spying on her? Like I sort of know who she is, but we’ve not met, so am I creeping? Is this weird?

I sat with this for a bit. It wasn’t a bad feeling by any means, but it was something other and it was very familiar, so familiar infact that– ah, but of course, it’s our old friend nostalgia. Suddenly I’m fifteen again, reading a mutual’s blog post on Tumblr, or waiting patiently for my favourite Wattpad author to update their story that was absolutely, definitely, not a One Direction fan fic.

We hear all the time now that TikTok and social media are horrible for us, this not news, least of all to my elder-gen-z-not-quite-milennieal-almost-30 peers. We already spent our formative teenage years scrolling thought the internet. But there was one really key difference. We were on Tumblr and Twitter—before both platforms were ruined—(re)blogging on social justice, feminism and fandoms in equal measure.

I have no desire to be overly nostalgic about these platforms, particularly as someone who was exposed to an extremely alarming amount of pro-anorexia, self-harm and depression content. But what was so different about these platforms was that they were predominantly more text focused, with some photos or gifs, not an endless cascade of video/text/music amalgamations that are 10-20 seconds long. I read more, a heck of a lot more of my peers’ writing through these sites. Yes, I was of course still scrolling for hours, but I was reading for a lot of that time and then in turn writing too. I never felt like I was frying my synapses or having my dopamine reward system hijacked. I wasn’t being mentally numbed. I was thinking.

Joining Substack, starting to read on here and explore a bit, and especially sitting down to write, with the intention. of. posting. it?? Well it feels like I’m going back to the beginning, that I’ve finally come full circle. I’ve finally made it back somewhere to pick up a part of me that I hadn’t even noticed I’d left behind.

If you’re new to me, please allow me a moment to introduce myself. If you’re not new to me, then hey bestie whatcha doing here?!

My name is Emma and I’ve been creating content online since 2013. My first blog was called Fails of a Fashionista, and that same year I uploaded my first video to YouTube, appropriately named 'Hello YouTube'. My channel at the time was called ‘Emma the Sarcastic Fish’, now just Emma Angeline. ‘Sarcastic’ because it was the adjective I thought was most appropriate to describe me at 15, and ‘Fish’ because I mysteriously had the memory of a goldfish. (The ADHD diagnosis a decade later would go on to solve that particular mystery, but that’s a story for another time.) Sarcastic Fish Has Substack therefor feels more than fitting.

At this age all I did was write and write and write and write and write and write. Blog posts, YouTube videos, skits, journal entries, notebooks, poetry, more diaries, and the absolute holy grail—in my 15 year old self’s opinion—the thick, white, lined A4 paper with the four—yes four, not two—puncture holes in the margin which would get filled back and front and then filed in a specific ring binder I’d bought from the WHSmiths on the high street, jazzing it up to be befitting of my writing. No piece of paper was safe. No pen unused. No glue stick unmolested.

I was consumed utterly and entirely by that unbridled passion and unfettered ego that only teenagers seem capable of. I wrote, steadfast in my belief that every word and idea I put to paper was an act of revolution, capable of great change and naturally very funny and/or emotionally moving. As far as 15 year old me was concerned, at this rate I’d have a Man Booker Prize by 20 and the Nobel Prize in Literature by 25. Easy.

The little ego maniac in question:

And then, very slowly, the writing stopped. The notebooks stopped getting crammed full, some purchased never even started. For lack of a better phrase, the writing I did stopped being out loud. I can’t really tell you why. Maybe exams took over, maybe I decided it was a childish thing to do, maybe I got more self-conscious, maybe all of the above.

I will say that one thing I am very grateful for is that at least this never applied to my YouTube. I never stopped making videos or creating content during my teens, regardless of what people said about it, both to my face and behind my back. It’s been 12 years and I still upload to that channel. See mom, I told you it wasn’t a phase.

But what did fade into the background.was words as part of my creative output. Occasionally they would be sent out into the world in the form of an essay, submitted right up the butt crack of the deadline, a few thousands words at a time, vying for a good grade to prove I was indeed a smart student and a good ~~girl~~ writer.

The words had started to remain with me, residing on the notes app of my phone, in my various Notion pages. They stayed hidden as the scaffolding and structure containing my thoughts before they could be maletted into a video. The idea that I was—or had even been—a writer was something now only I (very secretly) believed about myself. But it was the writing that came first, before being a YouTuber, a booktuber, or a filmmaker.

All this to say, I never stopped writing, never entirely, but I did stop sharing it. I think it became too vulnerable, too open. Writing for a university essay is one thing, writing on an idea or theme you came up with yourself and you think it’s important and you want to have other people read it? Preposterous. It was easier to say things in videos, give you an opportunity to admire my oratory and not notice that I comma splice, or am partial to an egregiously long sentence with many many subclauses, or that I’ve left a participle dangling somewhere (mum I love you but I still have no idea what that means). After all, watching videos is more passive, I’ve already done the work for you, you just need to watch it. But daring to ask someone to READ. Horrendous. Truly.

Then why start again now?

Good question. My Notion and my notes app are veritable sarcophagi of good ideas—if I may say so myself. There are countless essays, short stories, scripts shoved in there like scraps in a desk draw. This writing is intended for the screen, both laptop and silver. Or at least it was. As I got older (smarter?) the ideas got too big, or too complicated, or too labour intensive to become videos. I pretend I’ll turn them into videos and do them justice when I have more time. I don’t. I won’t.

A lot of the videos I used to make are videos I wouldn’t make now, videos like ‘self-awareness’, ‘my thoughts on missing people’, or ‘are we sociopaths...’. It’s not that I think these videos are necessarily bad, but it’s that I think to do them properly now I need research, structure, footnotes, quotes and lots of space for ideas. When I do these videos they get really damn long. Now don’t get me wrong, I love uploading videos that are 45+ mins long. See below the feature length video I made ranking different editions of classics. The problem is these videos are hugely labour intensive and for a creator such as myself, who is a small YouTuber—we are SO close to 60k btw it’s taunting me—the time, energy and effort just isn’t justifiable.

Which brings me to Substack. We finally have a good platform for writing again, that hasn’t—yet—been overrun by pornography. Substack has figured out how to have a Twitter-esque highway that has centralised traditional blogging and honestly that’s pretty neat.

Now make no mistake, this is not a declaration that I am leaving YouTube for Substack, not at all. But I do propose that this platform could be the home for all the things that never became videos. It could also help me to cut myself some goddamn slack. I am terrible to myself about not turning certain ideas into videos. “If you’d just made that video like you said you would you’d have been more successful” “No don’t make that you’ll spend three weeks on it and no one will watch it” “It’s such a waste of time” “You never made that video like you said you would and now someone else has done it, and look their video is doing well, look at what you missed out on”. This goes on and on and on and then I just make nothing at all.

But I already wrote everything.

The hope is this: if it’s too big, off to Substack it can go. There’s another element to this too, the dreaded algorithm. Over the years I—somewhat accidentally—became a booktuber. Now if you know anything about YouTube you’ll know it runs off niches, and once the algorithm understands what you are, it sends out your work to the people who want to watch it. This is great…if you can stick to a niche. So maybe my Substack can be home to all the ‘off niche’ things I’ve been dying to talk about, but would do so terribly on my channel that I’ve just never bothered to make them.

I hate that at some point the algorithm got to me. It started to tell me what I could and couldn’t make. It decided for me what was and wasn’t worth making. I know Substack has an algorithm too, but goddamn does it feel good to write again.

Things I would like to do:

write like I’m 14 years old again, with fervent abandon
chat as much shit as possible, this a must
not let a fear of no one reading stop me from writing
not let a fear of someone reading stop me from writing
acknowledge perfect is the enemy of good.

It’s been a long time since I have written for the sake of the words. It’s nice to have that part of me back again. The friend of a friend I mentioned earlier is Mil with her blog A Little Cryptic.

In honour of my 2025 New Year’s resolution of “just bloody getting on with it", here we go, Emma has Substack and I pinky promise I will use it.

Thank you so much for you time & for reading.

All my love, Emma x

p.s. don’t you dare think I used chatgpt to write this just because I know how to use a fucking em dash. #JUSTICEFORTHEEMDASH

p.p.s Also if anyone one was wondering why I’m not at sarcasticfish it was already taken?? ( Alex I will pay you a whole £10GBP for this username and really really wish I was joking).

2000 words