[rock music] Honey. It tastes just like it costs Okay. This episode of Caseland is coming to you a day late, and it's my fault.
Um, and I have to fess up. I am not here- That's not your fault. It's... Well, it's not my fault. It's, you know, could have been avoided with careful or planning and research, but I'm on the road this week.
I'm in Tucson, um, and my Airbnb's Wi-Fi went out while we were recording yesterday. So this episode is coming to you a day late. So sorry to let you thousands of loyal Caseland residents down.
Um, but we're back, one day late. So we're talking about magazines today. Um, more so the inevitable reinvention of the magazine from cycle to cycle, tech cycle to tech cycle. Uh, but first,
let's talk a little bit about our personal magazine purchasing habits.
So I used to be a big like, you know, stop in at Iconic Magazines or whatever bookstore and buy like Apartmento or like, you know, the, the Travel Almanac, or like years ago, like Purple.
And then I would buy these magazines for $50 and then read one or two articles and then put them on my bookshelf.
So I am actually subscribed to one magazine right now, though, which is unsurprisingly to regular listens, listeners of this podcast, a soccer magazine- Mm...
uh, called Mundial, which the last, the latest issue came right before I shipped out to Tucson. It's one of those things where I just like to... It was, it was 50 bucks for, for a year, right?
Um, and it's just like, it's just fun to pick up. It's fun to... I don't know. Uh, enough about me, though. What... So what... Are, are you buying magazines these days? Are you subscribed?
Are you picking them up in store? I very rarely pick them up in store. Mm-hmm. Um, and this doesn't happen in a while, unless I've written for something and I have to go find it.
And I think it's because for years- They don't send them to you? Uh, sometimes they do. Yeah. For years, I never paid for magazines. I, um, my roommate worked for New York Magazine.
My last roommate before I lived alone worked for New York Magazine- Mm-hmm... so I would always get that for free through her. When I worked at Time Inc., they would put out the latest issue of every Time Inc.
publication, um, on the floor. I've never... I'm a big New York Mag like online reader. I've never picked, never held even a physical issue starting now. Isn't that interesting? Yeah.
No, I think it's part of the conversation. Um, yeah, they would just put them out on the floor that that magazine operated off of. Mm-hmm. So if you wanted to get...
Like you could just go to floor to floor and get every new issue. And actually, um, I have still saved from this very specific period in time. It was when, um, David Bowie, Prince, and I think Muhammad Ali died. Mm.
You know how they're like celebrity deaths come in three? Yeah. Yeah. Those three were very, uh, memorable. And so, and that was the time period I was working at Time Inc.
So I have saved the Time cover and the People cover, um- Of each death... and Sports Illustrated commemorating those deaths. Mm. And, um, they're like still under my bed somewhere. Mm.
But because I was always getting them for free, I don't think I cultivated a habit of buying them. Mm. Um, I believe that my husband...
Well, I know my husband subscribes to The New Yorker, so we get The New Yorker- Mm... to our house. And I think that I am subscribed to Paris Review, unless I let it lapse, which I might have.
My girlfriend was a subscriber too. Yeah. And that is, um- I love what they did with like, with the rebrand. That was like a year ago, two years ago now, where now it's like a book. Yes.
And it's, uh, the artwork's always incredible. Mm-hmm. Um, and beautifully designed. I usually leave it out. And I do, I do read it. Um- Yeah. I, I just literally read the first short story and the latest one last night.
Who is that by? I, I could not tell you. I do not remember, but I could tell you what it was about- Okay... but I don't need to. Well, no, we don't need to do that right now. Yeah. Um, so yeah.
Well, I'm glad you said Apartmento, though, because I, um, I do follow the Instagram. I think it's a beautiful magazine, and I don't... It's surprising that I've ever, never actually picked one up.
I actually, with tho- those sometimes... I haven't bought one in a little while because like the last two I'd bought, I didn't read much of, but the two before that I did read cover to cover because it's...
I love interviews. I am a sucker for like- Yeah... the interview in any medium. It is like a looking at pictures thing, though, too. It is. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
It's like, like I wish my- It's a looking at pictures magazine... house looked like that. Um, but I have a lot of childhood memories of like my parents,
uh, like on a half day, I would walk to the public library so my mom wouldn't have to leave work to pick me up, and then I would just go straight to dance class, and I would just sit there for hours and read Seventeen, um, Cosmo,
Teen Vogue. Mm-hmm. Um, and it was such a visceral experience. The way the paper feels, the way that they smell. Mm.
That feeling of cracking a magazine like has really never left me, and I think most people who have that feeling try to, or a lot of people who try to enter magazines as a career do so- Yeah...
because they have that strong emotional resonance with the actual object. Mm-hmm. Um, and so like we've talked about this before. It's like, how do you create, recreate that experience in a digital environment?
And I think what makes it so hard is the experience is mediated by the platforms themselves. Yeah. Even in a system of direct distribution, so like an email newsletter- Such as Dirt... such as Dirt- Mm...
um, you could be using a service that sees itself as more than just the infrastructure- Mm-hmm... which I think kind of goes back to our conversation about Substack with Casey Lewis. Yeah.
Um, but when I kind of pitched this episode to you, I, um-You know, because we weren't gonna have a guest, I was thinking about an article, um, or I guess a blog post- Mm-hmm...
from a site called Background Noise called The End of Advertising. Up around the same time that I saw this article, uh, I saw a big social media, splashy social media announcement for a new startup.
I don't remember the name. I'm not concealing the name out of propriety. [laughs] I don't remember, but
basic concept is any influencer who has, like, a bunch of inbound to do product commercials basically to their audience, um, can create an AI-generated commercial using their own image- Uh-huh...
to basically, like, increase their own productivity and bandwidth, like personal bandwidth to show products. So you're no longer, like, I mean at a philosophical level, you're no...
Your productivity is no longer tied to your embodied image. Yeah. To time. You're allowing your image to go out and do these commercials without you- [laughs] Like a shadow... basically.
But I, I sent it to my friend Maya, who's also my investor, and I said, "This is hilarious because they're speed running the acceleration of the death of digital advertising, and they're going to have to reinvent magazines as a result."
Mm-hmm. Like, this is coming in and saying, "We're disrupting digital advertising."
They're gonna kill digital advertising, because it's not even just the reputational thing of, like, how does a consumer then perceive or distrust the stuff that they're seeing. Mm-hmm. It's that the
infrastructure of platforms where you encounter a digital ad right now are not designed to support that volume of advertising.
And in fact, like, with the introduction of TikTok Shop and changes in the Instagram algorithm, people already feel like they're at capacity with the amount of ads they see and can pay attention to. Mm-hmm.
Now, you could say the corollary pie-in-the-sky crazy VC corollary is, um, the contrarian view allow consumers to license their attention through a digital avatar that will then fulfill that, um, you know, it'll be the corollary to- AI consuming AI.
Yeah, AI consuming AI. Yeah. Again, though, in an environment... If we're, if you believe we're in the taste economy- Yeah... AI consuming AI projects, companies, startups have no value. No.
Because there's nowhere for that value to accrue other than potentially the deep tech, and we can get into that a little bit later. Well, this is like, this, this is like, like there are- Yeah...
those things where it's, like, buy... I can't think of any examples, but, like, I know there's apps where it's like you get points by consuming and interacting.
I mean, this is different, but kind of like when we were talking to Ty Haney about, um, Try Your Best the other day. Mm-hmm.
Little different than that, but, like, there are these things where, like, you get paid in, like, little points or coins- Mm-hmm... like, to, to keep clicking or to, like, watch these videos or whatever.
So, like, there, like, that can create value, right? Like, I mean, not greatly, but people are gamifying these kinds of things. Well, and people are gamifying them by setting up bots that ultimately- Mm-hmm. Yeah...
accrue back to the bot master. But there's also a lot of instances, very sad instances, of, um, people basically farming out the high volume gamification of platforms to people in third world countries- Yeah, yeah...
where they can ultimately make a ton of revenue off of, like, having people do all of these, like, tedious clicking, and, um, it inflates the value of companies where, um, they just show traffic or on chain activity.
Yeah. Which is not really a new problem. It's actually easier to detect that in a blockchain environment than it was to detect in, um, inflated, like, SEO metrics for- Mm-hmm... certain companies.
Like- Well, this is, this is like- I, I worked at one. Yeah. International Business Times. It's... You would consider it, like, an SEO farm basically. Mm-hmm. Um, but
most of, like, what made it, like, a gray area was most of the people coming in from Google to this clickbait were real people. Mm-hmm. But there were ways to tell when it was- it wasn't real people. Yeah, click and ads.
And that becomes a legal issue if you're selling advertisers a certain number of impressions. So- Yes. Yes... when I... I don't wanna misremember.
I'm not gonna say which publication I was working at because the details are a little fuzzy. I remember coming in and being the first person to audit Google Analytics in a while. Mm-hmm.
And I was like, "Hey, guys, um, we're getting significant traffic from such and such third world country." Yeah. Like, just not the audience demographic for this publication. And there was, like, an immediate response.
Like, "This is a problem. We gotta shut whatever this down. Like, if somebody set this up, somewhere within the company, we have to shut it down because that's how publications get sued by advertisers." Yeah.
This was, this was a, a strange thing actually just, just the other day on Creative Spotlight. I was like... I'd gotten, um, like six replies to, like, the welcome email we send out- Mm-hmm... from all...
It was all the same name. Mm-hmm. Um, but I went and I was like, how did this one person sign up the same, like, with the same name, like, six times replying?
And I checked, and over the course of two days, the same name had signed up 11 times, but- Mm-hmm... uh, with the same email address except, like, the, the domain at the end was, like,.support or.xyz- Oh. Mm-hmm...
or.com. Like, all these... And I'm, I'm actually still not sure what was happening there and, like- Mm-hmm... what they were doing, what they were trying to get out of this. But, like, exactly, like, how do I...
I don't know how to tell if this is, like, a valuable subscri- Like, maybe I track them. Maybe I just, you know, unsubscribe them. I don't know. But, like, do I track them and make sure that they're opening it?
But then a bot could be opening it. I don't know. It gets... My point is just that, yeah, it's fraught. Yeah. It is fraught. Um, but I wanted to get back to this blog post. So after I see- Yeah, the end of advertising...
this startup and I jokingly tell Maya-People are investing in this. You know, they might get their bag before this completely kills digital advertising. Mm-hmm.
But the problems, the problems are inherent in the business model. Anyone can see down the road to say what's gonna happen. Um, it basically, like, you can't create something like that without also...
Basically, like, if that company succeeds, they will put themselves out of business- [laughs] Yeah... type thing. Um,
so in this blog post, The End of Advertising, it mentions, it uses the phrase "revealed preferences" early on, which made me really happy- Mm-hmm... 'cause I say that on this podcast a lot. You do.
Basically- The nautical term of this pod... the author's saying, um, people say they don't like ads, but their revealed preference shows otherwise. Yeah.
Because they prefer free content, and they would rather give up their attention than pay money for content. Mm.
So I was like, yes, I mean, it, it's sounds pretty obvious, but I think it's an important thing to acknowledge that, like, this has been the case for a while. It's still kind of the case.
Um, could it change if we're giving up our attention to, uh, in a way that's, like, doesn't feel tenable or with any plausible, um, idea that, like, the ad that's being fed has touched human hands at any point?
Like, yes, of course it could change. Um, and then I highlighted this quote.
Um, yeah, so basically, without ads, we'd have to pay for content with our hard-earned dollars, but with ads, we pay with our attention, and we perceive- Mm-hmm... the cost of the content as free. As free.
The article then goes on to talk about slop filler, whatever you wanna call it, in the same way that, um- Max Read and- You know-... Garbage Dave and, uh, and us...
Ryan Broderick, yeah, Max Read and Ryan Broderick has, have recently talked about, and comes to the conclusion that we've talked about on this podcast before, that this, uh, the value will now accrue to media companies that essentially create containers, where within that container, and you could think of a magazine as, like, one of the kinda oldest forms of containers.
Mm-hmm. Um, within that container, you know what you're paying for and experiencing is, uh, worth your attention- Yeah... in exchange. Uh, worth, worth, not only worth your attention, but worth your money- Okay, wait...
in exchange. This, this attention thing, this... So when w- yesterday, when we tried to record this podcast and then my Wi-Fi failed, this was actually the kind of point I was getting to that is worth- Okay...
bringing up briefly here.
So this idea of, like, what responsibility does a creator have to their audience, to themselves, um, to their advertisers, to their platforms, uh, I, I, I was thinking about it a lot, um, as I've been working on this essay yesterday after we tried to record.
And I think my most cynical view is that, like, the only responsibility the creator has that is shared, um, that the responsibility they have to themselves, to their audience, and to their advertisers and/or the platforms that they're using to distribute the content, the only shared responsibility maybe is, um, making the content, making the content hold attention.
And because, like, the responsibility to themselves is, you know, attention is how you monetize, um, so the responsibility to their advertiser is, again, attention is how you monetize, and the responsibility to the audience is producing something that can hold their attention, whether that's, you know, just a, like, really highly edited Instagram Reel that you can't scroll away from, or it's a essay or article that's, like, really engaging.
Like, I don't know, this, maybe it's not so profound, but that was, like... It felt...
I don't know if it felt, like, dark or if it just felt, like, neutrally true that, like, that's the only responsibility in the creator economy is to produce something that con- that holds attention.
So okay, this is interesting. I, this question of, okay, well, obviously selling out attention- Mm-hmm... I think can only lead to this extreme logical conclusion, which is, like, bots watching bot- [laughs]...
consumers watching bot ads. And somebody might say, like, "So what?" Like, somebody could make money off that theoretically. Mm-hmm. Um- I'm sure thousands of dollars are being made off of that while we speak here.
Absolutely. Well, and more, maybe more than thousands. Um- Mm-hmm... that's fine. Like, p- somebody being ma- able to make money off of that does not, um,
is not mutually exclusive with the conclusion that the end of advertising comes to, which is, like, basically media becomes a luxury product. Mm-hmm. It's the end of the sort of free and open internet.
That was not the, that was not the end state of the internet. It actually was just a blip, um, sort of like the blip in the economy that we talked about with Joe last week. Mm-hmm. Yep.
That, like, there is a window of time where there's a certain confluence of platforms funding, you know, legal, uh, you know, politics, whatever, where, like, most content on the internet was free.
That was not, we're now realizing that was not going to last forever because each of these containers being created technically represents an enclosure of the commons.
Also, if you're following, like, what's going on with Internet Archive. Mm, yeah. Um, Internet Archive is now sort of, um, you know, under threat. So that,
these, um, these containers where people are paying for content, media is seen as, like, almost a luxury bespoke product, things that I've talked about doing with Dirt and have heard other smart people talk about- Mm-hmm...
could be a much smaller percentage of the internet. But even if the volume of pixels, money, capital made off of bots watching bots
dwarfs this other kind of enclosed bespoke internet, the, the slop will never have status. Yeah. And without status, there's no power.
Like, as we're sitting here, I just Googled, like, as an example in a different industry, what is the annual revenue of Shein versus- Yeah... the annual revenue of LVMH.
Shein, according to a quick Google, could be wrong, we don't trust Google anymore. [laughs] No. Well, we don't trust Shein anyway, so. Um, do you wanna guess? Uh, the total revenueFor like last year? Shein. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Um, I'm gonna guess [sighs] 7.3 billion. So it's 30 billion. [laughs] LVMH is 130 billion. Oh my God. Um- Selling so much less volume. So much less volume, but with a lot more care. Yeah, yeah.
And a lot more spending, f- probably along that supply chain- Mm... to get there. Now, somebody might say, "$30 billion sounds great to me." [laughs] "And all I have to do is operate a bot farm." Yeah.
Your 130 billion, like, that... You're actually the sucker. Mm-hmm. Because look how much effort you're putting in. But that's why I think when status comes into play and you say, like, um,
it's not just about where capital is going to accrue, it's where status is going to accrue. Yeah.
Because power can only come from environments that have status, and that's what creates influence and, um, this also came up with Joe. Power and like roots and leverage really. Yeah.
We were talking about this with Joe, where, um, the media, [sighs] the media ecosystem is impoverished compared to Silicon Valley. Mm-hmm.
But people still wanna be in The New York Times, people still wanna be in The New Yorker, people still care, you know, what's on CNN. Yeah.
And like you could say, well, you know, top, four out of five of, you know, Spotify's top podcasts are right-leaning podcasters. Sure. Yeah. But these institutions still have power and influence. And, um, [smacks lips]
Joe Rogan, like God bless him- Yeah... I don't know that we would say that he has status. Yeah. He's still outsider, no matter how big he is. Yeah. Okay. Wait. Really quickly, so
how do you define magazine in the way that we kind of started this conversation? 'Cause in my mind- Mm-hmm... I wanna, I wanna s- make sure we're on the same page.
Like in my mind, it's like a, a container, a contained media product that is made up of more than one person. Like it has to be- Yes, I agree... at least an editor and one writer, like at the very least.
A container for taste that embodies an editorial point of view that is not- Yeah... the point of view of one individual- Yes... but could be heavily influenced by- 100%... the point of view- Yeah... of one individual.
Mm-hmm. And if you use that definition- Like Graydon Carter, Daisy Buchanan... Graydon Carter, please. [laughs] Anna Wintour. Uh-huh. Uh, Edward Enninful, like- Yes.
But, but the point being that like a Joe Rogan then doesn't have that. Like the magazine comes- Mm-hmm...
with some like cachet of taste because like it's predicated on this like, this kind of, um, y- yes, the one person's taste, but also like multiple tastes coming together.
But then like The Joe Rogan podcast, even though it's like a, I don't know how many people work for it, probably dozens, right? But like it's still- Oh, maybe even more... just the Joe Rogan thing.
I mean, do you know how many people work for MrBeast? [laughs] Oh, yeah, it's like, isn't it like 700 actually? I don't know. I don't know, they're like making their own town. [laughs] I think it's 700, yeah.
Which is crazy. Yeah. And I think, but like that definition that we just came up with is not- Mm... mutually exclusive with something being digital.
Um, but I would say this definition would, uh, disqualify most Substacks. Yeah, which- Which we sort of got into in the Casey conversation. Yeah. So I mean, uh, yesterday, right? Taylor Lorenz announced that she's- Mm...
leaving The Washington Post and starting User Mag, User Magazine on Substack. Yeah. Uh, which she says will initially just be her, but she would like to add contributors over time and expand it to other mediums. Mm-hmm.
So I think this is a thing, I've done this too, with like just little like fun, just for myself newsletters I've like spun up- Mm-hmm... where I've called it like X Magazine. Um, so people...
The, the word here is maybe being used and abused. And like I believe that Taylor Lorenz will probably within months have like other people work...
Maybe there's already like editorial people she's working with, whatever, but not really a magazine until, until it's like she expands. And also, I think Substack itself is a magazine.
Well, I mean, they, they define themselves out of convenience- Yeah... based on where they're getting criticism. Mm-hmm. If they're getting criticism for being a,
a platform disruptor that doesn't really have a stake in the quality of what they publish, then they start to position themselves more as a publisher. Mm-hmm.
If in positioning themselves more as a publisher, they leave themselves open to criticism of the quality of what's on there and some of the more controversial opinions, then they position themselves more as the infrastructure.
But I will say, to go back to the magazine metaphor- Yeah... and I feel this very strongly, uh, and I have this in my list of things to talk about. I went out back and was reading about the history of Time Inc.
and Conde Nast. Some of, a lot of things I already do. There's some fun surprises in there. Wait, what do you mean you went out back? [laughs] Sorry. Did I say out back? [laughs] Yeah. I'm just like- I think I-...
picturing you like out on the ranch. [laughs] Sorry. I think I meant to say I went back and... You did. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I... Maybe I j- Maybe that's a slip in my, my own ear. Anyways. [laughs] No, I, I mis- I misspoke.
I'm sorry. Mm-hmm. Um- Forgiving. I, [laughs] uh, there's no point in the history of these companies where they were like, "Vogue by like X printing press that you've never fucking heard of." Yeah.
And since c- I never noticed this till Casey brought it up, but I've been thinking about it so much that like, yeah, there's now these like roundups on traditional sites like Vogue and Elle. It's just like the top,
"This is what fashion Substackers are buying." Yes. And if I was trying to run an independent media company off that platform, I would be livid- Yeah...
to have something that I consider infrastructure- 'Cause now your magazine has been eaten up by a larger one. Exactly. Exactly. Uh, that does not fit really...
I mean, to me, it does not fit the definition of-A magazine Mm-hmm Because there's no coherent point of view. Yeah. And when there's no coherent point of view, you cannot maintain an audience. You just can't.
You can maintain pockets of audience, but any media company has eventually failed, and most of the recent failures happened because of the pressures of traffic and scale.
They failed because they, uh, were tracing traffic to the extent that they no longer had a coherent point of view, and when you no longer have a coherent point of view, you no longer have an audience, you no longer have the attention of the audience that you've had up until that point.
I really believe that. So I think muddying these waters is not going to end well, and I think Substack can still succeed as a company, um, as a technology company.
But I do think people who are interested in taking a- advantage of this moment in editorial and the sort of, like, process that we're all seeing, which is like we have an opportunity to define our projects in...
as a counterpoint to filler and slop- Mm-hmm... that they're not going to be able to really enact that containment on a platform like Substack- Yeah... for these reasons.
Okay, something I wanna bring up quickly too from the, from the Taylor Lorenz conversation. Uh, I think this was from her post [laughs] on Substack introducing it.
She said, "I also firmly believe that the era of faux neutrality, the view from nowhere style of journalism, is over," which I think dovetails really well with what you're saying, where it's like...
Which is just about having a point of view, and a magazine is defined by it's having a point of view.
And maybe when she says, you know, "I firmly believe the era of faux neutrality is over," maybe that is more of, like, a newspaper rather than a magazine- Yeah... type of journalism. I don't know.
Um- I mean, there was a lot of intermixing between cultural and political journalism, like, definitely in the Obama era and probably- Yeah... earlier.
I think when you have this, like, really strong criticism that the media is too liberal, it seems like the way to counteract that is to, like, double down on neutrality.
But obviously neutrality is, like, a moving target. Mm-hmm. And I think another thing that figures into these cycles, um, and there have been cycles of neutrality to non-neutrality.
I mean, newspapers really became successful and generated revenue at the point, and we kinda talked about this with Village Voice and the back pages- Yeah... when they started [laughs] doing yellow journalism.
Yeah, yeah. Like, I think the nu- periods of time where that hasn't been the case are few and far between, and now seem like the aberration, just like the open internet was actually the aberration here.
Um, and I mean, new journalism, Norman Mailer, we've talked about- Mm-hmm... on this podcast before. Even David Foster Wallace, like, the period of time when magazines- Rest his soul... were really flush- Mm-hmm...
the benefit was send somebody with a voice and a perspective to cover the Republican convention. Um- Yeah... but that is a magazine thing. It's not a newspaper thing. Mm-hmm. Newspapers, I think,
always had their, um, their tabloid section, and then they would just have, like, this firewall. Um- Like separate... I think she's probably saying that firewall is a little bit of an illusion.
But what I want to say about bundling and unbundling is, like- Yes... it's cyclical in the same way that neutrality is cyclical, and, um,
the proliferation of these Substacks, I don't wanna keep calling out Substack, like Patreon. No, no, no. There's other- It's moving back. Yeah, yeah... platforms like this. I mean, you could include Beehiiv in this, so.
You can absolutely. The key- Yeah... any of these things that are, like, ugh, well, uh, I mean, like, with Beehiiv specifically- But Beehiiv's not going out and saying- That there's this... Beehiiv creator- Yeah.
Our, yeah, our Beehiivs... such and such. Like- Yeah. But there is, like, there is, like, you know, a... It's a, it's a m- let's say it's a more customizable platform than Substack in how you can- Mm-hmm...
like, make your emails appear and such. Mm-hmm. But, like, it's still, there's still a, like, definable style, you know, within the limits. So maybe that's part of it. I think, I don't know. But then, like,
it is less defined, less walled in than Substack. But let's move on. Yeah, let's move on from the, the, the Substack conversation. I think what you're getting- Oh, you're getting a little sweaty? No.
Uh, so what I wanted to say though actually is, um, you know, now we're seeing people being like, "Oh, these Substacks should just bundle and offer- Yeah... like, a joint subscription."
Um, you're seeing projects like Flaming Hydra that are sort of doing that with a bunch of- Mm-hmm... different writers under one, um, title. Obviously- No, they did their bag and somebody else bundled theirs recently.
I forget who it was. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Dirt's obviously doing that. Mm-hmm. Um, but with, you know, as an independent- Yeah... company, and, like, I consider us...
Like, I would like to be a platform ourselves, um, to the extent that we're also a technology company. Um, but this, like, bundling thing is, like, old, right? Like- Yeah. You're saying it's a pendulum. Yeah.
So, like, in 2008, this is what I learned when I didn't go out back, but when I went back and [laughs] read about the history of Time Inc., that in 2008 they launched something called Maghound, which was an- Never heard of it...
internet-based magazine membership service that featured approximately 300 magazine titles from both Time Inc. brands and ex- and external publishing companies. This playbook, by the way, got ran...
They ran this playbook again around, like, Apple News and iPad stuff. Yeah. I don't know if you remember that. Maghound only lasted until 2012. Four years. Um- Do you think that's a matter of timing?
Like, do you think that something like it would work better now? Partially. Yeah, partially. Mm-hmm. Um, yeah, 'cause it's recession, and it was kicked off by the recession. Oh, people don't wanna pay. Mm. Yeah.
You know, what's the first thing that you cancel when you lose your job? We don't need three different magazine subscriptions. So they were trying to do, like, a Netflix thing. Mm.
Which, by the way, gets suggested all the time now as a solution to the amount of subscriptions people are paying for through the creator economy, and not just media subscriptions, like streamers as well.
Um- You know what? I wanna keep coming back to you on this. Yes. Do you know the term Carsonization?I usually hear it as balkanification Bal- yeah Balkanization. Is this the same thing? This is like the opposite.
No, no, no. This is- Oh, really? Okay... these are per- no, but that's what perfect 'cause these are opposites. So car- It's like carving something up versus- Yeah. Yes. No, no. Yeah, exactly.
So this is, this is one of those words that's like such like a Reddit word I feel like in a, in an annoying way. But it's, um, it's the... Okay, where's the definition?
It's an example, Carsonization is an example of a phenomenon called convergent evolution, which is when different groups independently involve the same traits. So the example that- Mm...
I was introduced by it from is like the, the form of a crab was evolved in so many separate ways, where it's like the crab shape and like the crab exos- exoskeleton, whatever, like this is like a logical evolutionary form that just kept happening because it was the solution to so many problems.
Mm-hmm. And I think... And so yeah, and then so the balkanization is kind of in, in a way, [laughs] in a weird way the, um, the opposite of that, the devolution I guess. But mag- A lot of animals are crabs. Yes.
Magazines being like the, the inevitable crab of media. Bugs are crabs. Bugs are bug... Well, yes. Shrimps is bugs- Shrimps is bugs too... and bugs is crabs. And Shrimp Jesus on Facebook. Right. So by the- Yeah...
transitive property, shrimps is crabs. [laughs] This is the most millennial thing that we've ever- I, we, we, Tom- That was disgusting. Sorry, guys... I want Tom to delete this, but he's not going to. He's not going to.
It's because we didn't speak to him. Tom, can you please [laughs] Oh, no. Uh, please, sir, may you delete... Uh, okay, let's stop this. Wow. Um- All right. Microaggression... okay. But- Um-...
no, but we had, we had a good, we had a good point going, and I think- Okay...
the Carsonization thing, um, you know, beyond the over- perhaps overindulgent, um, detour there, I think is relevant to what you're talking about, how like- Mm... all the... Like, it keeps, you know...
It's almost too, like, maybe like with the creator world it's like you want to go out and be a creator and, you know, make your own money, have your own power, et cetera. Mm-hmm.
Uh, but then maybe it gets too cold and you run out of resources, so you have to go back into the bundled world, right? The bucket of crabs. The bucket of crabs. [laughs] No, that's not what that term really means.
But I, the other thing I wanted to highlight, this is maybe not relevant, but interesting power that, uh, publishing was able to exert, Conde Nast, this is around kind of the mid-century. Mm-hmm.
Um, they went to the postal service. This was at the time they had pretty Republican, um, leadership in, within the publishing house. Yeah.
They went to the postal service and were like, "Our, we are delivering our magazines more efficiently than you are delivering the mail because we zone, we break things down into zones in- Yeah... New York City."
And this led to the invention of the ZIP code. That's insane. Yeah. I know. So the media invented the ZIP code. Time Magazine invented the ZIP code because they had their own delivery system, they weren't using USPS.
I mean, fact-check me if you need to. I did not cross reference this- It's hard for me to fact-check you... with the page for ZIP code. But yeah, the timeline adds up. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Basically, they negged the postal service [laughs] into introducing the ZIP code. Mm-hmm. Um, although I think people had probably been proposing something similarly for a while. Yeah.
So it's like- Push it over the edge... I mean, a little bit of a crab thing really. Yeah. Little bit, little bit of a crab thing. You're gonna be hearing that often- Um... on this podcast. Yeah, wow.
A new phrase just dropped. [laughs] Um, okay, here's, okay, here's another thing that I think is really, um, emblematic of cycles, and especially like things that feel disruptive at the time that eventually just become
integrated into the media industry. Into the norm. Yeah...
and so like in the short term, um, yeah, put people out of work and create a lot of changes, but then lead to some other cycle that requires the, the magazine to, for lack of a better term, be reinvented. Yeah.
And that's, um, the introduction of photography on the covers of the magazine. So up until 1932, Vogue was, uh, covering the magazine with fashion drawings and illustrations. Mm-hmm.
Um, then in 1932 they did their first photo cover, and you can imagine like at the time it was like, okay, if you can take a picture of anything, why have drawings and illustrations at all, right?
But there was a similar shift around the time when they went from doing, um, photographs of models to photographs of celebrities on the cover, and that was another kind of existential moment.
Obviously, photography did not kill the illustration, illustrated image- The video star... the art image. Mm-hmm. But I think the way we view illustration now is, um,
more bespoke than functional. Well- And photography is like functional. Yeah. But now you're just making me think of AI and two recent magazine covers.
I don't know if they were the first to be done with AI, but, uh, one was, I think it was The Atlantic cover with like- That was ass. Yeah. Is that the one that had like no text on it?
Uh, yeah, no text, and it's like Trump writing like- Yeah, an elephant... yeah. I was like, yeah. Yeah. Um, but no text is not like- But then there wa- there was another one... no text or d- text is not the issue here.
The, the issue is it looks like doo-doo ass. It looks like dog shit. It looks like elephant shit. [laughs] Um, well, but then the other one was like a week or two ago, uh, the London Standard, which is a weekly- Oh...
had a Keir Starmer AI cover, and it's like, again, like just, you know, i- in the, uh, in the aesthetic that these things always have, it has something of this like '50s masculinity to his face where he's like- Mm...
made to be, and there's like a British flag in the background. There's Big Ben.
It's this like patriotism-Um, just that, you know, I don't even know if it's another side of the same coin as the Trump one or just the same side of the same coin Yeah. I mean,
I had flagged another sort of pivotal moment in Condé Nast history, which was, like, when they had to start treating their staff as influencers as a counterpoint- Mm-hmm...
to the rise of independent influencers, but- Because a journalist has to be an influencer to succeed? But an influencer- Would you say? Well... This is...
Okay, I have one- Yeah, I- This is like the last quote I have from, from Taylor Lorenz, where she was saying, um, in her Substack post, "I've always operated in a weird liminal space, often labeled as an influencer or content creator as much as a journalist, and I am and have always been both.
But the legacy media is not set up for people like me. The truth is that in today's media environment, these distinctions are meaningless. We are all part of the same media ecosystem. We can all have a voice online.
These artificial lines were demolished years ago" I would say The Washington Post has an outdated code of ethics that does not allow somebody like Taylor Lorenz to succeed. Mm-hmm.
At the same time, a lot of influencers or people who aspire to be influencers do not have a functional enough code of ethics to- Yes...
actually succeed in a post-AI universe, and I think that's what you're getting at with your question of, like, what do you think you owe your audience. Yes, exactly.
Some of them have thought through it, like, really well and they do well- Mm-hmm... and some of them have not. And I think those distinctions will become clearer and clearer.
Um- I say, well, one thing I'll say on that is, like, so when you usually want to ask people, only like, I would say, a minority of the people I've asked have had like a really clear and quick answer. Mm-hmm.
And one of the best ones that springs to mind is Rachel Karten, when I asked her, who writes Link in Bio, um, excellent newsletter. Uh, and, and she makes...
She wouldn't disclose, but she probably makes like a couple hundred thousand through subscriptions and ad revenue. She's doing great, and I think- Mm-hmm...
the reason that she had such a clear answer to this is part of why her business is thriving. Um, she immediately was like, "I absolutely think about this. I think about this all the time."
Um, and she said something about how, you know, she feels like that whole like, oh, social media intern attitude is still so prevalent.
She's like, "I want to advocate for people who work in social media and like further this profession." So- Yeah... she had a really strong, clear answer. But then there's another person who
I, I won't name, but h- who was more of like an Instagram focused person and was kind of struggling to... She had a lot of, a ton of Instagram followers, but was struggling to, like, turn this into a business.
And she was like, "I don't necessarily know that I have, like, a specific responsibility to my audience other than to, like, be transparent about advertiser relationships." Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
And I don't think it was a coincidence that she was struggling to turn it into a business, whereas Rachel- Well-... who had such a clear answer was not... in startups you have two types of founders.
You have missionaries and mercenaries. Missionaries- Mm-hmm... are mission driven.
They know why they're doing what they're doing and who it's for, and they're solving the problem because that's the problem that they're interested in solving. Yeah.
Mercenaries are founders in search of a problem to solve. Both could be very effective, but I think where the mercenary model falls apart is when things become too easy in a certain sector.
And if AI tooling makes it very easy for anyone to do the creative work that influencers have made up until this point, then- Then the price of a mercenary just drops.
Mm-hmm, and that brings us really, really well to this other, um, tweet that you and I wanted to highlight as part of this conversation, which is Nate O'Brien saying, "Hot take, the concept of an influencer/creator will peak in the mid 2020s."
This is a hot take indeed. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, and then goes on to say, in quotes, "Major platforms like YouTube and TikTok only care about creators today because they are the current producers of content.
Big tech's number one priority is the consumer, not the creator. If consumers will watch AI generated content, the platforms will happily serve it to them." I think this is a vision of the future in a certain pocket.
This is like the Shein. Mm. This is what's gonna be happening in, like, Shein world of the internet. Yes, Sloptown. It doesn't explain what's going to be happening in magazine world of the internet.
Like Sloptown, yes, yep. Yeah. Here, shout out to The Atlantic. Hey, guys, next time you do an AI cover, can we get like a Richard Scarry style, like Sloptown, Busytown- [laughs] That would be good... thing?
That would be good. Where we can see in real time, like, where everyone's gonna be hanging out. Um- You should have the Dirt Discord collaborate on one of these and publish it.
Um, we've thought actually about doing- Yeah... a collaborative zine. We've done certain things around that. It's funny that you bring it up. Um, I wish I had more bandwidth to do- Oh, don't we all... stuff like that.
Well, you could if you had an AI agent creating, running Dirt for you. I know. Um, okay, anyways. I'm really working hard, not smart. But, um, I think- That's the only way... actually
this same hot take is an adjacent hot take to an essay, which I would not consider a hot take- Yeah...
uh, but the culmination of deep thinking that went viral and then I interviewed, um, Anu Atleru, who wrote it- Mm-hmm... for Dirt.
I was actually in the middle of interviewing her already about her tweets because I think they're very, um, enjoyable. Mm-hmm. Um- I do love an enjoyable tweet. [laughs] I do love...
Do you love an enjoyable tweet in the morning? [laughs] Okay, well- Uh, so- But yes, Nate O'Brien... the essay's called The Taste is Eating Silicon Valley. Yes.
And basically saying that, um, you know, startups will have to have a certain taste level to succeed.
It is, it, it is similar thinking or it comes from the same line of thinking that I've expressed around the taste economy. Yeah.
I think- Taste- You know, there were, there were a couple- Interesting too that taste separates the missionary from the mercenary Not always. Oh, okay. Actually, I think it's passion. I actually think...
No, I think what separates the missionary from the mercenary is closer to, uh, my friend Reggie James' definition of taste.
He wrote a response where he says- YeahTaste, he says taste is personalization Mm-hmm And, um, taste and technology- It's a point of view...
is utilizing the lineage of a practice that you have personalized towards some line of progress Mm-hmm So
if your definition of taste is UX, UI, branding, and marketing, there's a lot of companies in Silicon Valley that are not deep tech companies that will, um, kind of be competing on that level Yeah, yeah Reggie, as a believer more in deep tech and, um, trying to argue that like, actually,
um, this definition of taste doesn't really account for people who are doing new things with code, um, says that it's, it's not just that, like branding- Mm-hmm...
it's this personalization, this moment of personalization that moves things towards some sort of progress, which- And to the roots of the silo... in my mind is, is mission-driven Yeah, that makes sense...
but could, could be enacted by a mercenary. It could start off under the tutelage of somebody like Steve Jobs and become the successor, and then also be maintained by the successor- It can move both ways, yeah... person.
Yeah. Um, there's also a good response, um, by, uh, my friend Holland, who says that all that matters i-in software is exceptional product. So
the reason, like, I did not feel a need to do a response other than, like, I respect all of these people and I respect all of those point of views- Yeah...
and I actually don't think they're all mutually exclusive, is because my theory of the taste economy always accounted for this. Like, I basically say there's three tracks. Mm-hmm. There is the deep tech track.
That is not disrupted by the taste economy. Like, deep tech will always have a moat. Yes. Supply chain advantage will always have a moat. Big T tech was, like, essay- Mm-hmm, mm-hmm...
we talked about a, a couple years ago The third thing is the companies that fall outside of that, that's who's getting eaten, consumed. That's, that's the people in the taste playing fields. Mm-hmm Um, whether...
And that could be operating at the branding level or it could be operating at the personalization level, which is more like Reggie's thesis.
But I was like, "Okay, I'm actually reading this response and I'm reading the clap backs", and I feel like I already... My personal theory, I feel like I've accounted...
It has enough flexibility that I've kind of accounted for this, which is like, yeah, actually, if you're not doing... If you're doing deep tech, this isn't relevant to you. Mm-hmm.
If you're doing American dynamism and you're making drones, um, and you're the only person with a government contract to do them, this isn't relevant to you. But if you're not, then this is probably relevant to you.
And- Yeah... people are also like, "Well, how can you make this argument and not define taste at any point?" But it's not about, it's, it's not about a, a definition of taste or- Mm-hmm...
whether taste is subjective or not. It's really a theory of distribution and value accrual. Mm-hmm. Because I'm saying anyone who falls out of the capital T tech camp or infrastructure camp, um,
they have to operate as a media company. Yeah. And I think that that's sort of a nuance that, um, if we're only saying Silicon Valley and where taste is going to operate in Silicon Valley maybe has been missed.
I'm like, Silicon Valley, yes, but also the wider culture- Yeah... and world of cultural production Yeah... which is what we talk about on Taste Lands. Yeah.
I, I can- Um, so this is really, like, well-suited for our interests. Yeah. This is maybe gauche of me to say, but when you were saying falling out, I, I, my mind went to the coconut tree.
[laughs] Um, and I think part of what you're talking about is that, like, what taste is about is existing in the context of all that came before you, not only like more writ large, like, you know, like the, the space you're operating in, et cetera.
I can't believe you're doing this right now. [laughs] But also your personal history. But also [laughs] I'm so sorry. But no, but I think that... I mean, okay, it was a terrible transition maybe.
No, no, I, like- But I think that's what it's about, right? You're right. Yeah.
It's like, but it's like on both the, like, large and cultural, market level- You have to be able to remember back to the zip code [laughs]... and a personal level. Yes. Yes.
You have to be able to remember back to the zip code. Um- Yeah. [laughs] I... Oh, God. Okay. I mean, there is one other thing that I flagged that- Let's, let's do it... has to do with- I wanna talk about it...
print, media, and attention, but is more, um, in the camp of publishing than, um- Mm-hmm. We're back to magazines now, folks... book publishing, actually. Yeah.
Well- But some of these comp- a lot of these companies do both. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Um, I mean, look, if you look at the Wikipedia page for Time Inc. or Conde Nast, it's really a record of mergers [laughs] and- Yeah. True.
Mm-hmm, yeah... unmergers and blocked mergers. Mm-hmm. So I mean, maybe the nonfiction book- Or balkanization and Carsonization. [laughs] Yeah.
I mean, maybe the nonfiction book of the moment is not to be written about taste, but to be written about the power of merger, [laughs] mergers- Mm-hmm... in driving culture and attention.
But, um- Well, that's kind of what that Triumph of the Yuppies book that I keep talking about on this podcast is about. Oh, really? Yeah. Oh. Yeah, you have mentioned that.
I mentioned it like on five ep- [laughs] So is that they're merger yuppies? Yeah. I read it a while ago.
Um, anyways, we're, I don't, I don't even They're yuppies that acquire, acquired power and status by working in the mergers and acquisitions.
Well, no, no, it, it's just in, that it's talking about like, um, junk bonds and Mike Milken and, like, hostile takeovers and it's, it's not like a merger and acquiring, but- Oh, that's right... yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Anyways. Okay. That's, uh, yeah, maybe we'll do a merger episode or- Mm-hmm... um, anyway, so- We should merge with another pod- Okay. Yeah. Anyways Uh- Of the elite college students who can't read books.
This is this book we were reading. Elite college students that can't read books. Um, so, okay, yeah. So basically what's happening is kids are getting to college.
They are saying, allegedly according to most of the sources in this book, that like they can't, um, they don't have the focus or the ability to read multiple books in the curriculum during the timeframe that they're assigned, and a lot of them are used to reading shorter form-...
things or excerpts. And one of the explanations that's offered is basically like, um- Disgusting... these are people who, who came up... Yeah.
Well, these are people who came up during a curriculum that was geared towards test-taking, and there's not really any sort of test that can really, in a standardized way, like assess your ability to engage with a text like- Yeah...
Crime and Punishment, other than reading comprehension.
But the whole point of a standardized test is because it's standardized, um, they can only test you on your comprehension of text that can be contained within the test- Mm-hmm... itself. Yeah.
Um, and I think, and I do buy that exclaim- [laughs] explanation. Um,
you know, I saw an interesting tweet last night that I bookmarked, and basically said these sort of technology gimmicks and, like, everyone getting a tablet and- Mm...
testing out different styles of curriculum and teaching, they're doing this, they're ex- doing these experiments on, like, public school students, basically. Yeah, yeah.
It's the poor students that are basically the guinea pigs for new types of testing, means testing- Whose futures are being played with... curriculums. Mm-hmm. Exactly. Um, it is not kids in elite private schools. Yeah.
And I think that they probably could have broken this out even further to kids that are arriving at elite colleges from public schools, and kids that are arriving at elite colleges from other- From elite schools...
oh, from elite private schools. Yeah. And I mean, I, my husband was privately educated. I was not up until college. Mm-hmm. Same. Um, so I have an actual comparison within my relationship.
Um, plus, uh, his father worked for the school, so I know how, um, like what the philosophy and approach of faculty is at a private school to preparing kids for college and- Mm-hmm...
and, and placing them in certain colleges through their relationship with the admissions. Yeah. But if you don't have access to that, um, even in schools that are like, um, testing optional,
uh, which some elite schools have become SAT optional- Yeah... like, if you are sort of on the border of being accepted and you're not at a private school where you feel like, um,
you just know seven kids from this class are gonna get into Brown- Mm-hmm... um, you kinda need to score well. Like, you still need to score well on the SATs- Yeah... I think as like a,
uh, it becomes like a s- attestation of your intelligence. Yeah. It's like a baseline you have to hit. Yeah, whether it's optional or not, because...
And I think this is like, this was an interesting argument that was made around a lot of the like, um, affirmative action stuff that, like, if you remove race from admissions, they'll just use something else as an avatar.
Yeah. There's always something. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. And that could make it even worse. [laughs] Yeah.
Um, if you remove standardized tests, somebody could make the argument that they'll use something else as an avatar that's even worse- Yeah... and less meritocratic, and that avatar could be,
did this person get the same grades as somebody who went to a private school? Are you going to take the public school kid or the private school kid, and who can pay full price even?
This- Some are not, some are not need blind, some are need informed. Yeah.
This has taken me back to the quote I brought up, uh, yesterday when we first tried to record this podcast, the Arthur Miller quote, "The history of man is his blundering attempt to form a society in which it pays to be good."
You're not gonna be able to do it, whether it's standardized test or race or, like, whatever, any of these things, it's never gonna be a pure,
you know, good what- I don't know if a meritocracy is inherently good, but it never will be. That doesn't exist. The other thing I want to bring up, and I think this is a perfect thing to end the episode on- Mm-hmm...
is, um, the literary reference that Eric Tao makes in his, like, rousing speech is from- Yeah... a Denis Johnson short story. He says the name of the short story in the episode, which is The Largesse of the Sea Maiden.
And as you might recall, the last episode of the series is called Infinite Largesse- Mm-hmm... which I thought was a very interesting tie-in.
Um, but I don't know that he says, I don't know if they say Denis Johnson or not. Um, but- I don't think they did. Yeah... yeah, so it's written, uh, it's written by Denis Johnson.
And would you believe where it was originally published? In Time Magazine? The New Yorker. [laughs] Oh. The New Yorker. So, all right, this is like, this is, uh, magazine supremacy again. Yeah.
Um, I went back and read it in The New Yorker- Oh, nice... after the episode. I'd never read it before. Yeah. I haven't read any Denis Johnson. I- Train Dreams has been on my list for a long time.
I have it on my bookshelf. I bought it recently, but I haven't read it. Okay. Well maybe we'll do it, we'll both read Train Dreams, and we'll do a- That's a great idea... Train Dreams episode. For sure. Yes.
Um, but I thought that was a fun, that could be a fun note to end on because it all comes back to the magazine in the end. That's perfect. This has been The Largesse of, uh, Tasteland, so thank you for listening.
[laughs] There's our title. Thank you for listening. See you next week. [upbeat outro music] It tastes just like it costs. [singing]