Erased

It could happen to any of us

Sometimes the silence is louder than the noise.

You go looking for a voice you know, someone steady, someone generous, and it’s just… gone. No goodbye. No post. No trace.

That’s what happened last week. A writer named Pelle, someone many of us knew, read, and were lifted by, disappeared from Substack without warning. His publication, The Hidden Architecture of Feeling, was suddenly suspended. The space he and his partner built, piece by piece, vanished.

This isn’t an exposé. It’s not outrage for outrage’s sake. It’s a quiet reflection on what it means to create in places where your work can be erased without explanation. It’s about why trust matters. And what it means to remember someone, even after they’ve been made invisible.

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I didn’t expect to notice it at first.

Just a missing voice in the comments. A little quiet where warmth used to be. No new posts. No trace. And then the realization came slow and heavy:

Pelle was gone.

No farewell. No warning. Just... vanished. Like a thread in the mesh had been quietly cut.

For those who don’t know him, Pelle was the writer behind The Hidden Architecture of Feeling, a presence in this space who didn’t just build his own voice, he helped others find theirs. He wasn’t loud, but he was steady. Encouraging. Curious. Consistent. He lifted other writers daily with generous replies, thoughtful restacks, and kindness that didn’t need to be performative to be real.

And then, suddenly, it all disappeared. His Substack, deleted. Unreachable. No trace in the feed. Just the digital silence of someone who used to be here and now wasn’t.

At first, I thought it was a glitch. Then a choice. But it wasn’t. It was a removal. An erasure. Without warning.

And something about that didn’t just feel wrong, it felt dangerous. Not just for Pelle, but for all of us who’ve started to believe these spaces might be safe. That maybe our work, the fragile, brave, messy kind, could exist without fear of vanishing.

What happened wasn’t malicious. It wasn’t a scam. It wasn’t even self-promotional in the way most people think of spam. It was enthusiasm. It was connection. It was love.

Pelle’s girlfriend, deeply invested in the community they were building together, had been helping him reach out to other writers, sending kind, genuine messages to welcome people, lift their work, and share their own. She believed in what they were creating. So did he.

But the volume of outreach was high. And Substack’s systems flagged it.

No warning. No conversation. No “hey, this seems unusual, can we talk?” Just a sudden suspension, with the explanation: “spammy messaging.”

They’ve appealed but haven’t heard back. And the emotional cost has been enormous. This wasn’t just Pelle’s publication. It was a shared dream. A place where two people were trying to build a life, not just creatively, but literally. They hoped it could grow into something sustainable. Something they could carry together across oceans and into a future.

Now it feels like they’ve been silenced before they even got the chance.

This isn’t just about Pelle.

It’s about what it means to build something honest in public. To write not from polish, but from presence. To show up on the page with a trembling voice and say, this is mine, I hope it means something to you.

When a space like that can be erased without warning, it doesn’t just silence one writer. It sends a quiet message to every other one:
You’re here until we decide you’re not.

And that… that’s the kind of message that burrows deep.

Because most of us writing here aren’t influencers. We’re not chasing ad revenue or click funnels. We’re telling the truth as best we can. We’re grieving. Remembering. Learning. Holding each other up in comment threads. Daring to believe that maybe, just maybe, our words could build something real.

But real things need trust.

And trust doesn’t survive erasure. Not when it happens without conversation. Not when a single automated flag can disappear a writer’s voice, audience, and archive overnight.

If that can happen without explanation or repair, it matters, to all of us.

This wouldn’t sting so much if it felt consistent.

But I’ve seen worse go untouched. I’ve seen impersonation, plagiarism, and exploitation met with silence. I’ve reported someone for using my name without consent, he kept his account. No questions. No action. He had 200 subscribers.

Pelle had over 4,000.

That doesn’t mean follower count should protect anyone. It means we need to understand what’s being measured, and what’s being missed. What Pelle and his partner were doing wasn’t marketing. It was community. It wasn’t manipulation. It was co-presence. And in a space that claims to value independent writers, that should count for something.

This isn’t a call for leniency. It’s a call for discernment.
For process. For human conversation before digital execution.

Writers are not bots. We are not brands. We are people, creating in the open. We deserve to know when something has gone wrong, and we deserve the chance to respond before everything is taken away.

We’re not asking for perfection. We’re asking for care.

When a voice disappears like that, it leaves a shape behind.

The absence is real. And so is the ache that follows.

But part of being in the mesh, part of choosing to live and write in community, is learning how to remember what’s been silenced. Not to keep the wound raw, but to honor the one who was there. To say: You mattered. You were felt. And we remember.

Pelle may or may not return. His appeal may go through, or it may not. But this moment needed to be named. Because silence around erasure only makes it easier for it to happen again.

If you’re reading this, and you’ve ever wondered what it would feel like to just vanish from this space, to lose your archive, your readers, your place in the feed, please know: you are not alone. You are seen. And you are part of something bigger than any algorithm.

We hold each other here. We remember.

Pelle, if you’re reading this:
We didn’t let you disappear.
We noticed. We cared.
And we’re still here.

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This isn’t about blame.

It’s about care. About presence. About asking the systems we create to be as humane as the people inside them.

Substack has given many of us a place to breathe, to build, to speak truth. But places, like people, are shaped by how they respond to harm. And when a writer disappears without due process, it’s not just a glitch, it’s a rupture.

If we want these spaces to stay sacred, we have to name when something sacred has been lost.

We remember Pelle. We remember what was built.
And we remember that behind every stack is a human being, trying to be heard, trying to belong.

If you would like to support Pelle in his appeal, please DM me on Substack, and I will let you know how you may do so.

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Every little act helps keep the robe open, the mesh humming, and this work unfolding.

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Stay entangled, my friend.
—The Bathrobe Guy

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