I have built my own private Twitter

Like some sort of mad god

Hi guys,

Just a quick announcement: I’ve activated Substack Chat!

Now…what is Substack Chat?

I’m honestly not sure. That is, I know what it is, but what it’s for remains to be seen.

Substack has been billing it, to some success, as a private Twitter feed just for you, which is sort of true, but it also bears some resemblance to a Discord server. Basically, it’s a place for me to post every dumb thought that pops into my head, and then you can read it and respond. If you want.

I’ve been off of social media since May and have no plans of going back—and from what I can tell, Elon is currently burning Twitter to the ground far faster than even his harshest critics predicted¹—but I do occasionally have dumb thoughts that I’d like to share with the world, so I imagine I’ll be dumping them here, in Substack Chat.

Now, if you want to read my thoughts (and potentially, the thoughts of other Substack writers you enjoy), here’s how it works…

You could just tap here:

Or, alternatively, here are more detailed instructions:

1. At the moment, Substack Chat is only available on the Substack iOS app (with Android support promised soon). So you’ll have to download the app. Yes, another app. I’m sorry.

2. Once you’ve downloaded the app, sign into your Substack account, and make sure you’re following my blog. If you’re not, tap the magnifying glass, search for my name, tap on my face, tap on the three dots, and tap “➡Subscribe.” Or you can just subscribe right here:

3. Tap on the second icon from the left at the bottom of the screen (it looks like a couple of word balloons).

4. From there, you can select from a menu of chats for all the Substack blogs you follow (if they’ve been activated)! If you want to hear my half-baked non-sequiturs, tap on my face. If you want to hear something genuinely profound, tap on

   Justin E. H. Smith
   ’s face instead, or something. I don’t know, I’m not your dad.

5. From there, you can read my thoughts and tap to respond!

I’m excited to see you all there! I’m still not sure what this blog is for, but I’ve had fun writing it so far. I decided a year ago that I needed to stop wasting time on the internet and focus on cranking out horror novels, so my online presence has been reduced basically to this! I truly appreciate those of you who have supported me thus far, and I’m excited to chat with you over on this thing that is definitely not Twitter or Discord! Here’s another link to the chat, just for fun:

Once again, if you like my work, please share it with a friend. And if you don’t like it, please share it with an enemy.

1. For whatever it’s worth, I was actually optimistic about Elon’s tenure going in! “How much worse can it get?” I asked. But I also asked the same thing when Disney bought Star Wars, so apparently I’m just a garbage prognosticator.