The Digital Homelessness of Modern Creators

And what to do about it

Nov 19, 2025

My Medium friends can read this story over there as well.

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The modern creator doesn’t actually “live” anywhere on the internet.

Not in the way we used to. The way I used to when I started back in 2008. There’s no central hub, no obvious home base, no single place where our work reliably sits and grows.

Instead, we scatter across platforms, each one doing a specific job well, but none feeling like the place we fully belong.

Or is it just me?

Too many platforms, not enough structure

The internet used to be simple. I had a website or a blog and everything happened there. Publishing, updates, archives. One space, one identity. I loved this back in the day.

Now we creators publish across:

Substack
Medium
LinkedIn
YouTube
Instagram
TikTok
X
Gumroad
Beehiiv
Notion
WordPress
And probably a few dozen other places

Each platform has its own strengths. Each one offers something useful. And that’s the problem. They’re all good at something, but none of them are good at everything.

The result is that we creators don’t choose a home anymore. We move. Constantly.

The platform shift cycle

Every platform eventually pushes creators somewhere else.

A recommendation system changes.
A payout model dips.
A new format becomes popular.
A competitor launches with better incentives.
A platform removes a feature we rely on.

So creators move. Not because we want to, but because the environment changes faster than our strategy.

If our reach drops or our readers shift platforms, we respond.

But constant responding means constant adapting. And constant adapting leaves no space to build long-term stability.

Maybe the best creators are the best at adapting to this.

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Audiences now exist in fragments

A creator’s audience used to be one group, in one place. Or maybe two. Not anymore.

Now we have:

email subscribers
Substack app followers
Medium followers
social media followers
video viewers
product customers
community members
occasional readers
algorithmic passersby

Each group behaves differently. Each one sees a different slice of our work. Some people only read the newsletters. Some only follow on Medium. Some only show up through search. Some only buy products.

Most creators don’t have one audience. They have five small ones.

This makes it almost impossible to feel grounded in any specific place.

Creators don’t own distribution anymore

This is the core issue.

Creators don’t control:

who sees their work
how often it gets shown
how content gets recommended
how algorithms prioritize it
search ranking
visibility decay
platform stability

Platforms decide the terms. And the terms change constantly.

If visibility is unpredictable, the idea of a stable “digital home” becomes impossible.

The practical upside of being platform-nomadic

But let’s not go overboard here. There are a few upsides to this new digital creator life.

Being spread out means:

more exposure
more resilience
more places to experiment
less dependence on one system
more pathways for people to find the work

Creators today can reach audiences in ways that didn’t exist 20 years ago. Or even 10 years ago.

Publishing across platforms is efficient. It’s kind of smart (and necessary). It increases surface area.

But it still doesn’t create a sense of “this is where I live.”

And maybe that’s fine. I just really want a “home” in this sense.

Maybe that why Substack’s become so popular over the past years. Maybe it’s the closest thing to that “one home” in a long time.

What creators actually need instead of a home

No matter what. A few things make the difference:

A clear voice
A consistent point of view
A structure people can rely on
An archive that’s easy to navigate
A way to connect the dots between platforms
A system that doesn’t fall apart when a platform changes

If those things exist, our “home” can be portable.

If the work is consistent, the “home” becomes the body of work itself, not the platform it’s published on.

A better way to think about it

Creators today are less like residents and more like operators. We don’t move somewhere to “settle.” We move because the work moves. Because the audience moves. Because attention moves.

Stability comes from:

the writing
the ideas
the style
the habits
the readers who follow across platforms
even your name

The Bottom Line

Creators today publish across multiple platforms, without any single place feeling like a real home. I do.

The environment changes too quickly, audiences scatter across different apps, and platforms are unpredictable.

But the solution probably isn’t finding the perfect digital home. It’s building consistency, clarity, and identity so the work stays stable even when the platforms don’t.

At least, that’s how I operate.