We’ve all had that experience: you’re reading a post from a beloved author, enjoying the familiar cadence of ideas, then, all of a sudden, it hits you—everything’s a bit too familiar. Then, all of another sudden, it forcefully strikes you—you’ve already read this post before. Increasingly, this keeps happening more often. Yes, there were some original posts in the past. Who could forget The vegetables on VeggieTales are not Christian? Men Only Want One Thing? The Monks in the Casino? In My Zombie Era? Is Mike Wazowski Jewish or Polish? When I Worked in Big Tech and Everyone Fucking Hated Me? Granted. But did you know that, in numerous documented cases, two or more Substack posts have been written about the same topic? In my research, I was able to uncover multiple posts about being cancelled, multiple posts about the writing style of Continental philosophers, multiple posts about AI, multiple posts about feminism. There were even—I kid you not—multiple posts about how to become successful on Substack. I know. But this actually happened—for real. I’m sorry.1 This discovery was particularly distressing for me, since I love writing original pieces in precedent-shattering paradigms that no reader has ever experienced before, such as “reply to Joe Heath,” “elaboration on Joe Heath,” “further elaboration on Joe Heath,” and “AI.” But then, all of a sudden, it violently smote me—this can’t be a coincidence. And that’s how I stumbled on the following deductively sound argument, possibly lifted from The Simpsons, for the conclusion that all Substack posts in the future will be reposts. Think about it. Everybody wants to be the first to post about a hot new topic. So let’s say you’re planning to post something next week on a topic never before seen on Substack (like “AI”). All of a sudden, the entire Substack community has an overwhelming incentive to scoop you. You see, if they can just time their post one day, or even one minute, before yours, then they get all the credit,...