[upbeat music] Welcome back to Tasteland. I am your co-host, Francis Zehrer. And I'm Daisy Alioto. And Daisy, who are we speaking with today? Today we're speaking with Achuko Aikpovovwo.
She's the creator of the popular culture and marketing newsletter, As Seen On, um, which I read every time it hits my inbox, and she has an amazing lens on culture, um, that isn't American-centric, which I really appreciate.
Mm-hmm. And I'm really excited to speak with her today. She's Nigerian. She was recently living in Germany. I'm not sure really where she is now. But, uh, she also, I...
As I was preparing for this, she went to the same college as me, uh, which is, which was a funny surprise. Oh, I knew that she had ties to Portland, so that'll be a fun- Mm-hmm... conversation point. Yeah.
You know who else I recently found was an alum of the illustrious Lewis & Clark College was Quinn Slobodian, who I first heard about when we had Josh Citarella on around this time last year. Mm.
Uh, he has written a few books that are, like, core to the canon of, of what Josh does. This one, let me see the full title. The one that Josh recommended. Like, Covering the Political Right? Um, a, a bit of that, yes.
Uh, th- okay, what's this one called? Yeah. Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism. Mm. Uh, but he also, he had one out this year, Hayek's Bastards: The Neoliberal Roots of the Populists.
Uh, I think he's, he's a teacher at, it might be Boston College. I might have that wrong. Mm-hmm. But, um,
yeah, I have to admit, I, I, I bought the book, Globalists, after Josh recommended it to us, but I've, I've yet to read it. Interesting.
What I did just finish reading over the Thanksgiving break, uh, is a book that came to me through another friend of the pod, former Tasteland guest, uh, of, which is Charlie Baker of The Fence. One of my favorites.
Mm-hmm. I read an excerpt, um, in The Fence of Uncommon Ground by Patrick Galbraith. Mm. And I bought it a couple months ago. The excerpt was really good. The excerpt was about, like, this...
It's, it's like first-person journalism.
Um, the book is about, like, land access right to roam in the UK, and the excerpt was, he goes with his friend to an illegal rave in, in, like, on a mountain in Wales, and it's- Mm...
it's hard for him to get there, and it's this whole rigmarole to do.
But that, it's from a chapter in the book that's about, like, how people transgress on land and about people doing that or going to pick magic mushrooms or
walking around, um, in the nude, which they're not called nudists there. They're called naturists. That's classic British- Anyways... intro idea. I, I really enjoyed the book. It w- I, I'd recommend it.
I kind of, I bought it, and then it sat. I, 'cause the writing's really, it's highly readable. It's really fun- Mm... the voice.
But I felt, it sat on my shelf for a while because I felt it was too indulgent to read a 300-some page book about land access rights in the UK. Well, I think you should indulge. I just read- I did...
a new Ben Lerner book. Oh, okay. And it was a quick read. Uh, it's almost like novella length. Mm-hmm. Um, it surprised me. You know, I've never read Mr. Lerner. I'm unlearned. You would like his stuff. Mm-hmm.
I don't know where to start, where I would start with him. I guess I've read his stuff in, in order, 'cause Leaving the Atocha Station is the first thing I read. But- Mm...
I would actually be really interested in your perspective on his work, so. On Mr. Lerner? Yeah. Yeah. Perhaps I'll read it. Uh, one, one other thing. Also, maybe we should have Patrick on.
I think, um, author of Uncommon Ground, I think it could be a fun one.
But one other thing I want to bring up about it before we move on, uh, I was googling it to send, like, a link to a friend of, "Hey, you should check this out," and I found...
So there's Right to Roam, which is, like- Mm... an activist organization, and
the book kind of starts with him, not repudiating their cause, but basically providing nuance, the kind of thing of like, oh, it's not necessarily that we lack the, the, the right to access all this land.
It's more about we need to engage with it better. There needs to be education. E- if we just open this land up, it'll be bad for conservation, et cetera. Mm-hmm.
Anyways, um, he, you know, the whole point is that he tries to offer a nuanced take, and it's not just, like, pure on the side of the activists.
But on the Right to Roam website, they have this page, Falsity, Misrepresentation, and Breaches of Privacy, Privacy, it's British, and Trust in Uncommon Ground by Patrick Galbraith, and it's this very long- Oh my God...
like, a couple thousand words maybe. They did a clap back. Yeah, a clap back. Uh, you know- Wow...
as they say, "Having reviewed the contents of this book, we have identified many factual inaccuracies, misrepresentations, and breaches of privacy and confidence.
These apply not just to Right to Roam campaigners," ba, ba, ba, ba, ba. Um- Hmm... anyways, I like the drama. It's a good book, recommend it. That was my Thanksgiving break reading.
I listened to, um, friend of the pod, W. David Marx, on How Long Gone. Mm. Mm-hmm. That was a good half episode. Learned a lot about Japanese denim, as one does. [laughs] Uh-huh.
So- Like, okay, well, let's test that knowledge, Daisy. Name a brand. Uh, yeah. [laughs] So that's where we- Okay, so you... Okay, come on... that's where we start to fall off. [laughs] Oh, God.
It wasn't as much about brands. It was more, like, breaking, breaking them in strategies. Oh. Mm-hmm. So... Like wearing them in the bathtub and such? Yeah, put them in the freezer. I've never done that. Mm-hmm.
[upbeat music] Where are you calling us from right now? I know that you could be in Portland, no longer in Germany. Where are you? Uh, the amount of meetings that I start, that start with that question- [laughs]...
is just, like, hilarious. Okay, well- I'm in Portland. Everything's fine right now... I'll, I'll, uh, I'm sorry. I'll show myself out. [laughs] No, no, you're good, you're good, you're good. It's completely valid.
Um, I went to, like, a party recently, and they were asking, like, fun facts about yourself.And I was like, "I am technically, like, legally not a resident of any country right now."
Like, I am a citizen of a country- Hmm... but I haven't lived there in 10 years. I'm not a resident.
I don't live in the US, don't live in Germany anymore, and so let me tell you, taxes this year are gonna be fun, very fun. How do you even- So [laughs] yeah...
do, do, do you get, like, one accountant who can, like, handle every country for you? Theoretically. That's what I'm working on doing right now, but it's a nightmare. It really, truly is. I need to get my life sorted.
And I'm, like, I don't know, in this weird long distance marriage. It's- Mm-hmm... it's fun. Fun times, so. LDM. Yeah. [laughs] Yeah. The old long distance marriage. The old LDM.
[laughs] Also, Chika, last time we talked you had, like, thrown out everything in your wardrobe, so I'm interested- Yes... how your re-wardrobing journey is going. Okay. It's going really, really well.
Um, okay, so for context, I moved to Germany three years ago. Um, when I graduated from college, started working at a data center immediately. Mm. Threw money for the first time in my life.
Went crazy on Zara, literally crazy. There was one summer in particular, God, it was so bad.
[laughs] Um, when I moved to Germany, hated all my clothes, um, over time, and so when I was leaving, I just donated everything. Hmm. There are these, like, massive steel boxes on the streets in Nuremberg. Mm-hmm.
Um, and you could just chuck stuff in there. They're like huge, huge, like, donation steel boxes. And so I just chucked all my clothes. I put the rest of my furnit- put my furniture in storage.
I moved here, and when I came in the summer, my husband was like, "Well, you don't have any clothes though, Chika. Like, what's happening?"
But I had developed this, like, anxiety about shopping 'cause I hadn't done it in a really long time, and so Daisy and I talked about it. But I have clothes now.
I'm doing a partnership with Sézane, and they've been thankful to send me a bunch of stuff. So I have that stuff, and now I've been spoiled.
I'm being one of those, like, obnoxious, but, I mean, you know, they're on the right path, people where I'm like, "Well, I'm only buying quality clothes now." Mm-hmm. And so- Mm...
like, I'm a, I'm a bit of a Zara snob, but it's going well. I feel like- It's going really well... this would've been a great...
I mean, it sounds like it, it, it is, was, is, uh, a great opportunity to partner with a brand of, you know, I threw out, I threw out my entire wardrobe- Yes... and now- Exactly... with Uniqlo, I'm, I'm re-clothing.
Exactly. We were talking about- Amazing narrative... teeing that up. Yeah, maybe y- you know, a little for the brands, a little for yourself, I think is the best way to put it. That's, that's just life.
One for them, one for me. [laughs] What is it? You guys had a recent episode, um, I don't know if it was recent, on like the concept of, like, the sellout. Mm. Mm.
Um, I was talking about it with my husband 'cause he is, um, he hates the word creative, but he, he does, like, music, jazz. He's a jazz musician, but now he's doing more videography- Hmm... 'cause, you know, money.
Yeah. Much of my influence. I was like, "Babe, do you wanna marry me?"
[laughs] Um, but we were talking recently about the concept of being a sellout, and, you know, I listened to a pod- another podcast where someone was saying, um, Millennials, like, killed that idea.
Like, everyone is a sellout and everyone is so proud of it. And I looked at him and said, "I'm such a professional sellout. Like, I don't care." [laughs] Yeah. Like, I don't sell anything, so. That's the natural mode.
Yeah. Exactly. Big on that. Okay. I, I have to address very briefly, I don't know how interesting this will be for our listeners, but the fact that we both went to Lewis & Clark. I, uh, I was- You went to Lewis & Clark?
I, I [laughs] went to Lewis & Clark as well. I, you know- She was so shocked, her AirPod fell out. [laughs] Listener- Yeah. [laughs] Listener, if only, if only you could see.
There was a physical, there was a physical gag. Little comedy gag. Do you know how random that is? When people ask me- I do... where I go, I don't even say Lewis & Clark. Nobody know- nobody's, nobody's ever heard of it.
It's, you know- Yeah... what is it? I only think- The 178th best college in America or something. It doesn't really exist. [laughs] Yes.
Anyways, yeah, we don't have to linger on the Lewis & Clark thing, but I, I was shocked to open up your, your LinkedIn or wherever I had found it. Um, I, I, I, I, yeah, I, I didn't know people studied there.
It is shocking. We're out here. Oh my God, I'm so proud of us. [laughs] Mm-hmm. The, the Portland podcast pipeline. Yes.
Well, Chika, I wanted to ask because this month is, like, end of year lists month, especially for books, and you're a prolific reader.
I remember talking with you about Lonely Crowds when that came out, and then I always pay attention to the stuff that you say about books and, um, always, like, also trying to think of books I could recommend to you.
Um, but I'm curious, like, what you read this year that really stuck with you, um, and any books that you're trying to kind of get in under the wire for the end of the year. Um,
I'm sort of at the point where I'm like, "Will I read another book this year?" Yeah. Maybe I'm done. [laughs] I'm at that point too. Well, I actually had an interesting year in books. Um, I wrote an essay.
Do you guys know Pandora Sykes? I do the Two Girls, One Book chat with her. Yes. Yes. Um, so early in the summer I published an essay with her that went, like, semi-viral.
It was a nice personal essay about how basically the reason I read so much was because Germany was so boring and I had nothing else to do, and how I was kind of ashamed of how much I was reading 'cause I felt like it signaled some, like, loser shit- [laughs]...
'cause I was reading, like, almost 200 books in a year. Basically that's what the essay is about. That is a lot of books. Yeah, it's, it's a lot of... Who does that? God.
Um, I then wrote an essay for her, um, about a month ago about how I had been delivered. I had a life now. I'm no longer in Germany, and therefore I don't read [laughs] anymore.
[laughs] I haven't been reading, and how it's, like, causing this existential crisis. I went through, like, two months of just, like, not reading books.
Um, but I forced myself in the last month-ish to get back on it, and it's been pretty nice. But this is the first year in a while that I would read less than 100 books in a year, which is confronting. I don't know.
That- It might not sound like a thing, but it's- I mean-... a thing to me... I don't- And I don't know... I've read maybeMaybe 30. May- Yeah... but some of them are really short, so 100 is, like, insane to me. Yeah. No.
Yeah. I mean, you have a life. I didn't, so [laughs] um, yeah. But to, I guess, like, to answer your question more directly, I recently read The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver.
Um, it's the one about, like, this, um, priest going to the Congo with his four daughters, um, because he's like... I don't know, not a priest, a pastor. He's a missionary, and how it's just, like, horrible.
He's in, like, the forest in Congo and everything. It was a really good book. It was cloying. I read it on the plane here to Portland. It was cloying, and it was horrible.
And I have this weird thing where I don't like to read books about Africa by white people. I think that's- And I don't know why... extremely valid. [laughs] Yeah. Um, but this- Is the Barbara Kingsolver white?
Yeah, she's a white lady. Mm-hmm. But it's fine. It's a good book. I'm glad she wrote it. Um, but it was really interesting how... So I went into Goodreads, right?
To see what people were saying about, and a lot of people were saying, you know, "This white woman, you know, doing, like, this horrible, writing this horrible depic-depiction of Africa. It's so one-dimensional."
I was like, "Actually, no, it's exactly like that." [laughs] It's horrible. Like [laughs] it's in the jungle. It's like... It was horrible.
And so that was, like, a really, really, really powerful, good book I think I would recommend to everyone. It's a great book. Um, I loved it.
But yeah, it's been a pretty good year in reading, and I did put out a book gift guide recently that did really well. Um, there were, like, I don't know, more than 50 book recommendations.
I did it with another Substack bookish person, so that was fun. It, it was a big list. I would describe the way it was structured, I mean, I guess a lot of gift guides are structured like this. Yeah.
But I, I would describe it as sort of infatuation style categorization, um, which, you know, when I think, when I say that, I mean like, oh, the restaurant to go to with your mom for happy hour before you go to a play.
What, you know- Yeah... this very specific categorization, um, that you did well there. Which I have to make a- That's really smart... year one. Mm-hmm. Yeah. We'll make it an annual thing, I think. Do you think...
Well, so I'm curious, we don't have to go so much into the living in Germany thing, um, but this boredom, is it unique to Nuremberg? Like, when you went to other cities in Germany, did you feel like there was more to do?
Yeah, Nuremberg is a very boring place. I mean, if you think about what you know about Nuremberg, you think about the- That's why they did the trials there... the trials. You had your own Nuremberg trial. Yeah.
No, literally. I... That's a good one. I had [laughs] my own Nuremberg trial. [laughs] Yeah, that was rough. No, Nuremberg is really boring- Mm-hmm... um, just in general. It's, like, known in Germany. It's just this.
So I worked at Adidas- Mm-hmm... and I got transferred to the global HQ, which happens to be in Nuremberg, because, you know, Adi Dassler is from Nuremberg. Yeah.
And so it was this really interesting thing where you have this company that's supposed to be a global cultural powerhouse. Yeah. Right? And then it's situated in just a place with just no culture in terms of- Mm-hmm...
like cool. It's a conversation we'd have in the office often about, like, how are people supposed to get inspiration? How are people- Mm-hmm...
supposed to, you know, interact, you know, just feel excited about their jobs when they're in Nuremberg? There was so much attrition, um, just in the role and the company in general that there was a whole...
It was a company of expats pretty much. Mm. They just brought a bunch of us in, and so...
But it was a whole thing that people would just spend two years or forever in Nuremberg, and the people who spent forever are people who got married. There was a huge thing of people would just marry each other.
If you meet someone at Adidas and you ask them, you know, they tell you they're married, you automatically assume their spouse works at Adidas or Puma, which is like- Right...
a couple, a couple- The, the, the brother company... down the street. Mm-hmm. Exactly. Mm. So it was very, you know... The company, it, it felt like being on campus. There were thousands of us.
We went to work, um, on bus shuttles because we lived in Herzogenaurach. I mean, no, Adidas was in Herzogenaurach. Nuremberg was, you know, about an hour away, like Beaverton, Portland. Mm-hmm. I don't know.
Just imagine. Which is the really... Yeah, I mean, for the listener, Beaverton is the town kind of... It's like a wealthy suburb of Portland you could say, but it's s-technically a separate town.
But that's where Nike headquarters is as well as the US Adidas headquarters. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. You know? So it was that kind of thing, but
it was fun in a way because the good part about living in Nuremberg, about living in Germany was that you could leave. Germany's pretty central when it comes to, like- Mm-hmm... European travel, right? Bus. Right, yeah.
And so we'd go to other cities. We'd do a bunch of stuff, and that was really fun. And it was cheap, and it was nice. Um, but yeah, I think Nuremberg is uniquely very slow, very boring, um, in Germany.
But honestly, I don't think I will live in Europe again. Well, okay. I don't think so, yeah. Re-really quick, kind of as, as, [clears throat] excuse me, as a side here.
So I understand that your newsletters and with your newsletter- Yeah. Yeah... you hadn't really identified as a writer ever before.
And you started writing this newsletter, but it came out of, of this exact boredom that you're talking about, right? Yeah.
I think the story I heard you tell is that your boss or, you know, somebody you worked with was like, "Well, we need to understand what the kids are into. Can you, like..."
You know, you're, you're in your early 20s at the time. "Can you, you know, make a newsletter compiling what's cool right now for, for internal circulation?"
And then that is the genesis of, of your very popular newsletter now as you know. Exactly, yeah. So I started doing that when I worked at Adidas in Portland, right? Okay.
And so I had a brand comms role for Adidas Originals. It was super cool. Best job of my life. I loved it. And then when I got transferred to Germany, I was in a very... You know, where you're just...
Those big companies, you're in a very horizontal role- I don't, to be honest [laughs]... where you're basically... Oh, okay. No, you don't. You don't, yeah. But it was a paper-pushing role in my opinion.
Like, my job was literally to communicate things specific, in specific ways to, like, different teams who will actually do the execution. Mm-hmm.
And I had this huge paranoia of being just, like, forgotten in Nuremberg and, you know, I wanted to create the newsletter as a living resume to people when I eventually went back to the US to say that, "Hey, I didn't go there and disappear.
This is what I'm doing. I have thoughts." And so that's how it started pretty much. Yeah, out of boredom and, like, a lot of fear of just being swallowed up into the averageness of where I was living.
Mm-hmm.Do you think all of the reading that you were doing also contributed to making you a more confident writer at the time that your newsletter was taking off? Completely.
I mean, it's one of those things that you don't think about it, like, "Oh, I'm gonna read to become a better writer," even though, yeah, that's what you're supposed to do. [chuckles] Um, [chuckles] but
once I-- I didn't start the newsletter for a very long time. Maybe, like, five months-ish I sat on it, because I was like, "I can't write. I have all these ideas. I have all these thoughts.
I'm always having dialogues to myself, sending my friends stuff, but I'm not a writer. I can't write."
Which is actually why the newsletter took the form of the short, of the, you know, paragraphs and the bullet point format. Mm-hmm. Because I was like, "Oh, I can't write long form, but this I can maybe get away with."
And it turns out that it, you know, worked perfectly, and now I do a little bit of both. Uh, but yeah, the reading helped completely, because you don't realize how it's just helping you synthesize thought a lot more.
It's giving you more voca- um, more words. It's giving you just more context to different stuff.
Because when you write, I-- when I write the newsletter, you know, you're talking about a bunch of different industries, right? And then how do you even have the verbiage to talk about those industries?
How do you have the context or the history? And so, yeah, like, just doing that kind of writing did help me a lot. Reading did- Mm... help me a lot with the writing.
Do you think there are emergent styles of writing that are native to Substack? Or, um, that people are sort of being engineered by the platform to communicate in a certain way?
Um, there's been a lot of thought about this. And so just for context, like, I'm 26. Like, this is, you know, there's been, like, the blog era and all of that. Mm-hmm.
But I would say I was very, like, young when that was happening, and I was not sort of, you know, tapped in. So I'm not gonna say this isn't new. I'm saying this is something that Substack is bringing back.
Substack this year is very different than it was even last year. I will say that this year, you know- Say more about that. I'm very-- This is very interesting to me.
So this year it's been obvious that Substack has been putting a lot of its energy behind those, like, really big players, right? Mm. And so when you joined Substack last year, it was just like the Wild West, you know.
It was very easy to be no one and become someone on Substack. It was very easy to go viral. It was very easy to do these things.
Substack this year, you know, I think every other week you get this announcement of, like, Charli XC has joined Substack, or Lizzo joined Substack, or, um, I don't know, some really big former jou- um, journalist from this, you know, big publication joined Substack.
That is where the narrative is going to right now. And to be fair, I guess, you know, that's where they're making their money from. Not from- Mm...
the, like, artists who are, you know, they don't put paywalls, but from those really big names. And so in a way, Substack is becoming more of an institution than it was. And so it's,
it is putting value on different type of work, and I will explain what I mean.
So when I joined last, when I joined Substack last year, and the year before when I was just, like, reading Substacks, if you were a young woman in her, you know, in her 20s, you were in New York, you had a certain type of job, and you wrote about life and your feelings and, you know, those kind of, like, bloggy diary entry kind of stuff, just, you know, ideas, thought, thought, or things that maybe were not the- [coughs]
... you know, just, you know what I'm talking about. Yes. That kind of stuff. Yes. You know, stuff that...
'Cause how you would go viral on Substack would be people, you know, taking a line or two of what you've written- Mm-hmm... and then, you know, restacking it. And they restack it, restack it.
It goes on the notes feed, and then it blows up. Or people sharing it, like, "Oh, this essay really resonated with me," on TikTok, right?
And so that kind of stuff where it's just, like, that one line that is so poetic, hits, kind of fits everyone's situation sort of. Though, that kind of work will get viral, will go viral a lot.
And I think there was a lot of pushback on that last year, and a lot of, you know, people saying this is, you know, "Substack isn't rewarding good writing. It's not serious."
You know, a lot of listicles, a lot of, you know, personal girly girl essays, that kind of thing. There was a lot of pushback. Well, I was gonna say- And so I think-...
I mean, Emily Sundberg and you both wrote two very popular- Yeah... [clears throat] two very popular pieces- Exactly... about this. About that. Uh, actually- Exactly... uh, allow me to quote you here for a second.
Quote me, quote me. Hold up your, "The Worst Thing To Be On- Oh, I love this... Substack Is A Substacker" essay. So, uh, I'm gonna read, like, a paragraph from this. This is from October 2024.
"Now read carefully, because I want you to understand what I'm trying to explain here. On Substack you have the creators, the writers, and you have people like me who don't identify as either of those things.
I'd argue that this category makes up the majority of the platform.
I work in sports, and one of the most interesting things I've heard about the running market is that the biggest chunk of it doesn't even consider themselves runners.
Millions of people go on runs pretty regularly and buy running shoes maybe once or twice a year. Only a small segment of those millions self-identify as runners.
Most people writing on Substack don't even identify as writers. Instead, they identify as Substackers, definitely non-derogatory, a term that carries its own baggage and implications."
And then the final bit here, "Substackers write across various categories but are united by the fact that while they don't have established writing careers, writing is the medium they love to create and engage with.
Being a Substacker rather than a writer is less about writing itself and more about self-identification, which has everything to do with confidence and some to do with gatekeeping."
And so what I'm hearing from you now is that, like, what you're seeing is just a continuation of this, where that [clears throat] category is maybe, I don't know if dying or pushed out is the word, but, like, I mean, obviously the way Substack makes money is by taking a cut rate from, or by taking a cut of paid subscriptions.
Yeah. And so these people, in as much as they are not writers and do not, if they aren't building writing products that people wanna pay for, they're not a priority, 'cause why would they be? Exactly. Completely.
Completely. Um, these people are, you know, the, the long tail of a platform. They're not generating a lot of income from Substack.
And so if you think about it, and, you know, they might put out all these essays, you know, that I know is checked with their PR team and stuff about, you know, being, like, you know, the future of media and whatever, but they're, they're, they're a company.
They wanna make money. If you follow how they've raised, they need to make a lot of money, and they need to get really creative about how they're doing that, right?
And so from that perspective, I understand why-You're putting focus on who you're putting focus on. And I will say, you know, I haven't read that essay in a long time.
Even looking back on that a year ago when I wrote that, I would've been completely fine with identifying as a sub stacker. Now I wouldn't be. I didn't realize this until this very conversation, but
that isn't a thing in the sub stack realm to be proud of anymore.
There is so much n- now more than ever, and I think this is by and large a good thing, there's a lot of emphasis on, you know, skill of, like, deep knowledge of actually providing value to your paying readers.
Um, right now I'm working on a rebrand next year that's gonna be very, you know, design-focused, right? Starting first comes- I need... You know, yeah. [laughs] I need to get a logo. I need to get stuff in order.
I need less typos, that kind of thing, because- Did you do a mini rebrand though? 'Cause I remember you sent me some color options. Yeah, but I didn't put that into effect. I was like, "No- Oh, husband...
we need, we need, we need better." Yeah. Okay. [laughs] So [laughs] Okay. Yeah. I will come back to you on that, but, you know, expect something in January. But there is a lot of that, right?
A lot of sitting down and being like, okay, you know, every other day there's a... someone putting out a note, I'm like, "I can't pay for all these sub stacks," you know? And I'm the same way.
Like, I can't pay for all these sub stacks, and I'm a huge supporter of all the sub stacks, right? Well, wait, really quickly- Yeah... if you don't mind- Yeah...
you don't have to tell us exactly how many people pay for yours, but I know it was- Yeah... I think about a year ago, maybe a little more, that you turned on a paywall. Yeah.
And now it's like every, I don't know if it's every third or so is, like, half paywalled. Um- Yes... are you doing a brisk trade in subscriptions there? No, no. [laughs] So most of my...
So right now I have a bit below, like, about 900 paid subscribers- Huh... right? And I put it on in January. That's pretty good. Most of my income comes from- Partnerships... partnerships. Yeah.
Like, the vast majority of my income comes from partnership. That's what makes, makes me able to do the newsletter full-time, you know? So a lot of my energy goes towards that. This year has been so
important in terms of, like, learning, like, how to manage my time, how to schedule stuff in, you know, how to work with PR people versus how to work with, you know, paid sponsors, you know, what to make free, what to paywall.
I was struggling finding a balance between, you know, if people are paying $8 a month for this, and I put out three newsletters a week, you know, give and take, why should only one be paywall? Shouldn't two be paywall?
But then if I have this partnership, um, if I have a lot of partnerships, then I have to make all of them not paywall. Mm-hmm.
It's just, like, this whole fun thing that you have to figure out that I didn't think about at all. And so this year- Well, wait, wait... was- Are you...
So if you're, if you no longer call yourself a sub stacker- Yeah... do you, are you calling yourself a writer, a creator, an entrepreneur, an operator? Like, is there some word that you identify with?
I call myself, I call myself a writer. Although, if you've noticed on my LinkedIn, I haven't changed. [laughs] I stopped working at Adidas in November, but- I know, it says you still work there...
yeah, I haven't changed it because, God, like, I don't know how to communicate what I do in a way that makes it sound serious. I, I know- Mm...
it's such a, like, random thing, but even when I meet people now, I used to just be able to say, "Yeah, like, I work in brand at Adidas," and that was that, and people had a picture of you.
You know, there wasn't need to explain much. I found that, especially maybe because I work in Portland and not somewhere like New York where people do a bunch of, you know,
whatever that could mean stuff, [laughs] you know? Um- The multi-hyphenate. Exactly. Mm.
I, when I tell people I'm a writer, which honestly I don't, I tell them, "Oh, I write a business newsletter," or, "I do consulting." That's what I tell people- Mm...
um, when I just, like, meet them randomly, like if I go to a party with my husband or something like that.
But I do find that I'm having a bit of friction in my mind owning that and being like, "This is what I do now" just because, ah, I don't know. I would have to, like, really dig into my brain for what that is.
But I told myself that by the end of the year I will change, you know, I will change my LinkedIn thing and announce to the world.
But yeah, there is some friction in my head about leaving that corporate title behind and what I think it represents. So I'll be, I'll be honest about that.
I, I think this is maybe the other side of the coin, but I was talking to a friend who is, um, works inside a large prestigious media company, and she was talking about honing her taste there to the point where she felt like she now has the confidence where she could have her own thing.
And I was like, "I support this 100%." The thing that you don't necessarily realize, being on the other side of it, is the amount of time and energy you would spend justifying the existence- Mm... of that thing. Yes.
Mm-hmm. Which is not something that you think about when you work inside an institution that already has credibility. And so she was sort of asking me, like, "Well, what is it like? You can kinda do whatever you want."
And I'm like, "Theoretically, I could do whatever I want," but most of the energy from that freedom is spent justifying the ongoing existence of something that, um, I didn't inherit
prestige or credibility or, you know, reputation.
So it's, it's a, a bit of a grass is greener on the other side thing, and I feel like you're sort of getting at that, which is the part of the work that is establishing and maintaining your credibility. Part of it is,
comes down to the language that you use to describe the project. At the same time, like, you can't will it into existence by just using that language over and over again. Um, and I think
I've seen people, people try to do that, and it doesn't... The way that they're describing their project doesn't match the reality. But you know what goes into it. You know the amount of preparation. Um,
so at a certain point you just have to, like, kind of step back and observe what you've created-From an objective standpoint, and then own the real description of everything that goes into it. Yeah. Completely.
I would... I, 'cause we've had a conversation about this, Daisy, in an interesting way, where we're talking about visibility and you yourself as the brand and being out there, and I wanna get your take on that.
Um, but just for some context on my side and where I am on that. So it's interesting, um, there's this newsletter I really love.
It's called Gift Bag Guide by Caitlin Phillips, um, I don't know if you guys- Oh, she's the best. Yeah. She's awesome.
Um, a while ago she wrote, like, a roundup of her favorite newsletters, and then she wrote, you know, she wrote about Asenath, she's like, "I don't know who this girl is.
Please update your, you know, update your About Me page or whatever." [laughs] Which is very, you know, Caitlin Phillips, which made me laugh.
But even if you look at my About page on Asenath, there's, like, nothing there. I know. Um, yeah. It's just the default. I looked at it yesterday. Yeah. It's, it's literally the default. There's nothing there at all.
And a friend of mine went to a party the other day, it was like a, you know, media people thing, and sh- and someone was asking me, like, "Have you met Ochika? Like, what is she like? Like, who is she?"
And this is not something that I've done intentionally, but I realize that I do have
a really big aversion to, like, defining things and defining myself, and just, like, you know, just being like, "This is who I am and this is what I do," and nothing has brought that to light more than having the Substack, you know?
Mm-hmm. Like, you know, why won't you, like, put this very clearly out there? It's also part of why I've struggled to even post about the Substack on LinkedIn. It's just, like, this whole thing that I didn't know.
When you start your own thing, it just, just kind of like being in a relationship. A lot of things that are inside you just, like, really comes out.
It's also part of why we've talked about this, Daisy, why, why I have such an aversion to the idea of moving to New York, where, um, Portland is nice because you can really keep everything you do church and state. Mm.
Like, I'm not gonna go anywhere in Portland where someone's gonna be like, "Oh, you write Asenath," or I'm not gonna... You know, if there's an event to go to, I'm like, "Yeah, I don't live in Portland.
I don't live in New Y- I can't come to this event." Because to me- Gotcha... I very much take comfort in just separating all that out. But it's, you know,
it's come to a point in the newsletter where it's being a detriment to the newsletter, and I have to- Well, wait, wait. Okay, I, I wanna ask about this for a second. Yeah. Yeah.
So with, with the newsletter, it's so voicey, right? Which is- Yeah... such a annoying word, but y- you have a very strong voice, and it, and it comes across very well. Mm-hmm.
Uh, but like you're saying, on LinkedIn you're not really broadcasting anything there. On your Instagram, I think it hasn't been updated in, like, most of a year. It's private. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, oh, it's private.
Well, I found one that's, that, that's not private. That's my book Instagram. Your book... Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, there's that one, which- That's her book Instagram, I guess. [laughs] O- Okay. Well, with the book.
But anyways, you got like 3,000 followers there. [laughs] There's nice shots of your apartment in Nuremberg and pictures of books and such. And so, but it, it, you know, it's lying fallow, basically.
And so I'm wondering, like, y- you're talking about this, but I'm wondering if you just, like, don't want to have to translate that voice into, you know, front-facing video or whatever it is.
It's much easier to translate bits of what you're doing in the newsletter to LinkedIn. Um, but I don't know, talking to you now too, you're charismatic. Like, you, you, you are very opinionated.
Clearly, if you translated a version of this newsletter onto Instagram into video, it would probably do well. Are you, are you, like, against doing that? Are you like, "Ah, it's a chore.
I've gotta ha- I'm gonna have to do it eventually, I know"? Say more. Yeah. Well, like I said, I didn't realize all this until pretty recently, but I have a very strong...
I, I resent how much you have to give to get where you want to go in this world that we live in. I know. Right? I just really, really- Try sometimes to get what you need. [laughs] Yeah.
[laughs] I really resent it, and I didn't realize that at first, you know? When I started the newsletter, I was like, yeah, I'm gonna make it...
When I was struggling with, you know, could I write or could I not write, my whole thing was just like, write the way you speak, write how you think. And that worked, right?
And so then I would get feedback from people of like, "Oh, well, you know, you should say more about yourself. You should, like, include tidbits about your life and, you know, you should open up your Insta.
You should do this, do that, come to New York more." And I started to, like, really resent it and be like, "Oh, why is this not enough? Why is... I'm coming here to give you information and context and analysis.
Why is it not enough?" Um, and yeah, I just, I really just don't... I do like that separation. I'm not enamored at all with the media world or with the- Uh, wait. This is, uh- Yeah...
I'm, this is a, I'm getting deja vu of a conversation- Yeah... we had about 11 months ago when we had Emily Sundberg on. Oh.
And it was about the time that she switched from doing a selfie, like a MacBook selfie at the top of every newsletter, to, you know, a, a year later it's much different and it feels much more like Feed Me the Media brand, and not like- Yeah...
Emily's newsletter, right? Still is, and it still has the DNA of that, and people still come to it for that.
But, like, she was wrestling with this idea of, you know, she'd become too vis- And being in New York, there was a specific story where she'd gone to dinner- Yeah...
and somebody had recognized her next to her, and she, she just didn't like it, right? And so y- what I'm hearing from you is, like, you don't even want to try to, to, to wade into that.
You don't want to put your selfie at the top of the newsletter. Not that you would have to do that, but you are just, like, you are
kind of opting out of that parasocial relationship building aspect of a creator-driven newsletter. You're opting out of it now. You don't wanna do it at all. Yeah, I don't wanna do it at all.
But I know that it's to a in- very... I'm one of those girls that just has my friends laugh at me sometimes, like, "Ochika has such great boundaries."
Like, I just don't wanna do things I do not want to do, especially if it doesn't have a justifiable reason in my head. Mm.
But I'm coming to realize that, okay, Ochika, you do need to [laughs] you know, y- you should come to New York sometimes, you know? A lot of stakeholders, you know, are there.
You should, you know, I'm not gonna open up my Instagram or anything, but you should maybe, I don't know, like, do your freaking bio on your Asenath, you know? You should post on LinkedIn, you should do this.
So I'm gonna-A lot of what I'm trying to do next year is put my work out there more because last year just being on Substack was enough. You know, that whole engine was just enough. Now it's not enough anymore.
You know, it takes a different thing to go from zero to 100, then from 100 to the next 100, that kind of thing. You're around 25,000 subscribers now, right? Yeah, exactly.
You know, and so I need-- I'm gonna need something else to get the next 25,000 than I did to get. And I think a lot of that is being more visible in different ways, but I have to figure out what that looks like for me.
Obviously, it's not gonna look like a selfie on the newsletter. That's not what people are coming there from.
But maybe just a bunch of different things that I, I will need to do, and I've made, I've made my own peace, peace with that. But sometimes I, I just think of comments I see on people's newsletters, right?
Or when people-- readers demand things of you.
I don't know how to describe what I'm saying, but you know, there's this strange dynamic when you put something out there into the world where people have an assumed power dynamic, right?
So if someone comes to your comment and, you know, to your comment section and says something just like kind of stupid or rude or whatever, there's an assumed power dynamic where it's like, you know, you have to be kind of nice to them, or you owe them some sort of...
You know, because then if you're a bit mean to them or if you, you give them the same energy, it's sort of like, "Oh, Ochuko was mean to that person who pays for her work," or whatever, or mean to-- I have such an aversion for over-explaining myself to readers or over-explaining, you know, my thoughts or my opinions or where I stand on...
I don't know what it is. I just-- I'm like, "You don't know me." I just-- It's very anti-internet age, but I don't, I don't like it at all.
And so I think that subconsciously I've put in a lot of boundaries in my working and my writing where I hope people know that they just can't do that. [laughs] You know?
I just, yeah, it's a weird thing to confront, but I am confronting it, and I think next year you'll see a lot of changes in the newsletter because I hopefully worked through a little bit of that, how much you have to give to get what you want, so.
I have a very clear memory of the summer after college. I was the last person in my friend group to get a job. I had a internship at NPR in DC. I was sitting in my apartment in Silver Spring.
I was applying to so many jobs, and I was, I was really despairing 'cause I was like, "I can't go home. I can't go back to Massachusetts without a job."
And there was all these-- There's a whole lore about this and, um, part of it involves Madeleine Albright, which is a story for another day. [laughs] But, um,
I was watching this other thing play out online where this girl who's, like, much younger than me, she turned, um, her experience working in the Wiener campaign into this article, and then- [laughs]...
all of a sudden became a contributor. And that girl was Olivia Nucci. [laughs] Ooh. And I have such a clear memory of sitting on my laptop in Maryland being like, "Who is this girl? Why can't I--
How is this person breaking through? Why can't I break through? Why can't I get a job? I've done everything right." Now you know. And that followed me. Like- Me... I watched her whole arc.
And if you asked me if I would trade places with her today, I would say hell no. But it's very interesting to see, I think,
parasociality obviously super important, even on the level of people who write books and authors and the relationships to them and how important authors have become in marketing their own work.
Of course, of course, it's so important. But I'm very happy that I never branded myself as a hot girl because frankly I get less hot every day. [laughs] And also, like, I, I live in my head.
I, the, the experience of having dirt, and maybe you agree with this, is it's not about being perceived for me. It's very cerebral. Um, the things that I enjoy most about it are cerebral.
And so making the decision of how often to put yourself out there to be seen, to make an appearance, to kind of thrust your face out there, um, can be, like, really fraught.
Um, but I always remember [laughs] that Olivia Nucci thing. I actually feel like I'm only just now seeing the end of an arc that started when I-- in, in the summer of 2013, um, for me.
And it-it's like life is very long, careers are very long. Which isn't to say that, like, people can't-- that anyone who comes out burning really bright inevitably has to burn up. But many, many people do.
Um, and I'm grateful that, like, I-- it wasn't easy for me to break into media because that all contributed to the perspective that I have now. Absolutely.
Did you guys read, you know, speaking about Nucci, did you read that, um, I think it was an article. I don't know where it was. Well, it was an article.
I don't know where it was, but it was titled like, you know, Olivia Nucci something about that being everything wrong with media right now. Oh, yeah. Um- Was that on like Mediaite? Yes. Is that- That is what it was.
Yeah, that's what I'm thinking of. Yeah. Uh, I thought that was really interesting, just the idea of, you know, what the narrative we've been told in the last few years is that, you know, personality is everything.
You know, having lore is everything. You know, people wanting to read stuff from you is everything. And where does it go too far? You know, when is like, you know.
Yeah, I, I want to s- get you guys' take on that as people who've been in media for like, you know, or in media, who've been in media for longer. Just that idea of where do you see this all going?You know?
Because- Uh- Yeah... uh, yeah, I mean, I can tell you that one of my... part of my plans for next year with Creator Spotlight is to insert my voice into it more, maybe picture bylines.
Like, I know I wanna get engagement up in the newsletter, right? We've got 375,000 subscribers, but... and the open rate's quite good, but the click rate is relatively low, right? It's about 1%.
I know it could be higher, and I'm sure it could get higher if my voice was in it more.
Somebody connected w- with me on LinkedIn recently, and he was like, "Oh, I got this email from you guys, and I realized I have no idea who writes this newsletter, so I figured I'd, I'd look you up on LinkedIn, 'cause your name was there."
And I checked in the subscriber data, and he had been subscribed for, I don't know, like, four months, five months, and he'd opened, like, 20 out of the 60 emails he'd received.
So I would think this guy has read a few of these. He's liked them. He should know that it's me or my assistant editor, Natalia, writing this, right?
Um, and to me, that's a problem that he doesn't know that, because of, of, of what, of what this is. And it's different than Dirt, and it's different than As Seen On, right? It's twice a week.
One's like a profile of people. We don't really need to be the front of that one. The front of that one is the person we're profiling. But then we do these more, like,
articles and essays on Fridays, where they should know who it's coming from, and they, they should... there should be some kind of, like, thought leadership angle, right?
So I think, like, what you were saying, Daisy, about burning bright and burning up, like, I don't wanna burn up, but I know that I need to burn a little bit, right? It, which it comes back to...
Uh, what it comes back to is, is the reality of, like, the economic reality of, like, I need this newsletter to get more engagement to make it more attractive to advertisers to justify continuing to do it.
So it's like the economic need, not just that I... Like, I don't... Do I wanna be perceived? Like, no, not really. I'd be happy to, [clears throat] you know, just keep doing exactly what I'm doing and,
and it, and it would all be good. But I do... I need to... I... For business [chuckles] reasons, I need to be perceived a little more, you know? [chuckles] Yeah. For business reasons, I need to be perceived. I love it.
[chuckles] So 2025. Well, so that tweet about Substack having its...
like, Substack writing having its own sort of specific form came from my friend James, who we wrote about in Blank, 'cause he has a bookstore called Recluse Books, but also works in publishing for, um, some small houses that specialize in translation and other sorts of books.
So, you know, he said that, and then our friend Amelia, Amanda Killian, who did all of the artwork for our Blanksgiving package that we ran last week, responded and basically said, like, people...
sort of what you were saying, Achiko, like, people have been saying this since Thought Catalog, and it's more of a, a product of writing online.
And then she pulled up this piece that had run in The Awl that was meant to be a parody of the sort of like, um, platonic Thought Catalog piece.
And if you read it, it was kinda like, yeah, this could really kinda functionally be a, a parody of a, of a poorly edited, braided Substack essay. And then she's like, "Let's... I looked up the person who wrote it.
I wonder what they think about it now." And I looked up the person who wrote it- And it was Olivia Nucci. No. [chuckles] Uh, it was- Oh... another writer who now works at LinkedIn. Mm.
[chuckles] So I was like, "Okay, we're getting into, like, some different layers now," because the person who wrote the Thought Catalog parody at The Awl, which no longer exists anymore, and could just as easily be a parody of Substack, um,
it has a day job at LinkedIn. Like, I'm a... I'm like, "Maybe that's the story." [chuckles] Like, that is kind of increasingly the story. Uh, but it's really good. Um, I did write a couple things for Thought Catalog.
Please don't look them up. Um- [chuckles]... but I don't know where I was going with this. Maybe just the full arc of, um, writers especially, we have different priorities at different times in our lives.
And it's, if you look at, like, the Gawker era, you know, you could have been the hottest shit at Gawker, but if Gawker gets sued into oblivion and you don't have the skills or the confidence to reinvent yourself,
you peaked, basically. Mm. Um, and I think there's danger when one personality becomes the face of a publication. I also think there's danger as an individual to allow one publication to become your identity.
Um, so it really does, like, go both ways. Like, it's kinda like the boundaries thing that you were talking about.
Part of maintaining boundaries is so that you do not end up in a position where you can't decouple yourself from your project. Mm-hmm.
But I will say, though, that it's, you know, it's really interesting that there seems to be this through line with people who are doing this at the highest level, that that decoupling does not happen, you know?
That this is, you know, you're thinking... That's, I guess, going back to the resentment of, I guess, you know, in a larger, broader idea, just, like,
the demands of success, you know, what it takes to be, like, really good at it.
And, like, you know, for me, growing up and realizing, you know, taking stock throughout this year for me of, you know, what this will all take and what it demands of you and what you're willing to, you know, give and let go, you know, how fast you want that success to come, you know, what path you, you wanted to go in, talking to a lot of my friends and grappling with it.
And honestly being really sorry for...
You know, I, I remember when I was in college, it was, the whole thing was, you know, if you wanna get a job out of college, you should make a personal website and have all your things.
That, that is, like, you know, the nice, snazzy thing to do. You know, resumes, everyone does resumes. Now you need to do this. And-Last weekend, I went out with an international student, you know, went to get coffee.
She's at Lewis & Clark. And when I graduated, there were so many hurdles as an international student that you need to jump through, you know? You need to get a c- a big enough company to employ you immediately.
It has to be in your major specifically, you know? You can't just dilly-dally, work at a coffee shop.
And then you need them to like you enough to sponsor you, and then when they sponsor you, it's a lottery system, so you may or you may not get it. And so it's kind of like, it's just a lot.
And, you know, she was talking to me how things are different and far more demanding under this administration, what it means when, you know, you're confronted with like AI, where people are not hiring.
Like, you know, it just seems... I just felt so bad for her because she was like, "What would you do? What should I do?" And I had nothing to tell her. I don't know what you do, you know?
I know that you need to do a lot more than I did when I graduated four years ago, you know?
You need to maybe start a s- a, you know, start a Substack now, start a TikTok, you know, become a thought leader, whatever, you know? And she was like, "But I don't know enough yet." And I'm like, "Well"- Mm...
damn, like, I don't know. I actually did not know what to tell her. And so I go between this whole, you know, I... this whole thing of like, "Oh, we're young, it sucks," you know, "It's so hard." And, you know,
I'm- I feel, because of where I'm coming from, you know, I feel lucky to be able to do what I'm doing, you know, make a, make a living from that. But I do feel within like myself, um,
and within just like my peers and people younger than me, this mounting resentment and pressure of how much you need to do to get to where you want to go, and the rewards are not even what they seem to be.
And I take this idea to just like different things I do, just, you know, this conversation about media that we're talking about or, you know, starting a family and all of that.
And just being, sitting with yourself and asking yourself, "Are you willing to play this game?" You know, "What are you willing to invest?" And all of that.
And I think for me, this has been just one long year of asking myself that question over and over again. Are you willing to play the game, you know?
Are you willing to be out there and, you know, just, I guess, mourning the things that you would rather not do. And I'm not just talking about, you know, just working hard, you know?
W- we're all working hard, [laughs] that kind of thing, and doing the thing. Um, but yeah, just so much of everything now is perception.
You know, when you hear, when people tell you that, "Oh, no one's looking at resumes anymore. You actually need to know the person. You need to connect on LinkedIn. You need to get a coffee with this person.
You need to say you're interested in this specific job." And you think to a young person, like, how many times are they going to do that?
What do they need to do in order to get someone to be interested enough in them to accept that LinkedIn invite and to give three minutes of their time, you know, for a coffee chat or whatever?
Um, so yeah, it's just like all these thoughts, and I, I fear that we might, we may just all need to be okay being perceived at this point, and, you know, that might be just the ultimate currency.
Um, attention, perception, all of that, and just, I guess, mourning that and making peace with that and deciding just how you wanna pull the levers on that, you know? Mm-hmm. And just making peace with that as well.
I guess that's where my head's at right now. Well, speaking of making a personality the story, what did you think of the Club Chalamet profile in Wall Street Journal yesterday? Oh, I have not read it- [laughs]...
but I put it on my list to write about tomorrow. Um- Yeah... so you will see- Okay. Okay... my thoughts in the newsletter. But I wanna hear your thoughts. I wanna, I wanna hear this.
Thank- I only know who she is because of Hunter Harris. She writes about her all the time. And so- Yeah... I'm like, this is, this is fun. Are you n- Yeah... are you not on Twitter? No, I'm not on Twitter. Never been.
'Cause to me she's just like a Twitter character. Never been on Twitter. Yeah. Never been. Mm. I told you I hate perception. What? [laughs] Word's out there? Never. It's sad. Yeah. You don't lurk?
I'm more of a lurker on Twitter still. I know. I don't lurk. I hate notes, and I realize- Mm... the reason I hate notes is because I hate... I just never liked Twitter.
I don't want people's random street thoughts- It's a feed... away from me. Mm. Yeah. Well, okay, the Club... I saw it. I'm not gonna...
I didn't read this Wall Street Journal profile of Club Chalamet, but I, I did, [laughs] I, I did read the headline. Um, and [laughs]
what I thought was funny about it is just like how she has become this character and, you know, I think she's like a 59-year-old woman. She started it in 2019 allegedly to like, you know, she liked this young actor.
She wanted to give him more visibility, campaign for him or whatever.
Um, but, you know, she becomes the story because she is this very opinionated person, and I, I don't know how long it took for people to figure out her identity, um, but the identity doesn't really matter.
I don't remember her name. I'm not gonna remem- remember her name. I'm just gonna remember that she's Club Chalamet, and she is very opinionated.
Um, and that, you know, it's, now she's being profiled in The Wall Street Journal for caring so much about Timothée Chalamet. Um,
but yeah, I mean, that's just like, that's, it's, it's, it's, [laughs] I guess it's much different than something like, you know, the Oliven- the Olivia Newton-John story because it's not this weird sex scandal, but it is this person like going out there and being opinionated and like caring a lot about this one thing and posting about it, right?
And just like making themselves visible. Um, I don't know. Well, there's actually a version of this. This is now, this is like kinda coming to me secondhand. I think this was a TikTok thread.
There's a woman who is basically the closest you could get to being an influencer for The Row. Chuko, maybe you know who I'm talking about. I know this story. Mm-hmm. Yes, yes, yes. Mm-hmm. Yes. I don't know this. Yes.
So she was supposed to be profiled, I think also in The Wall Street Journal, about her relationship to the brand.
But because The Row, despite the fact that they've done a lot of stuff recently that kinda goes against their whole quiet luxury, if you know, you know, ethos, like, um, doing sales and stuff like that.
Like, they allegedly killed-The story and basically threw their weight around and were like, "We don't, we don't wanna comment on the story.
We, in fact, we don't want you to do the story," and, you know, we- Oh, I didn't know that part of it, that they killed the story. Yeah, like- Yeah. Yeah, I mean, that's what... That was my perception.
Again, I'm getting this, like, kinda secondhand. It was sort of like, well,
you know, y- we as a brand that buys advertising will be angry with you if you kind of, like, elevate this person as an influencer of our brand because they're just not, like, an authorized spokesperson.
And so people were sort of debating, like, is this, um, you know, is that petty on the part of The Row?
Are they, like, getting in their own way because they're so concerned with their brand perception when, like, that ship has kinda sailed? Um, and it made me think about
parasoci- parasociality where it's like, I don't think Timothée Chalamet is losing sleep over Club Chalamet changing the perception of him as a human. Um- Well, no, good.
Well, that's also 'cause he's out there, he's out there shaping... He's, he does so much. He's the king of promotion. Yeah. Maybe I'm just getting to the point you're gonna make. I'm sorry. But- No... yeah, sorry.
[laughs] Go ahead. No, I think it's like, uh, uh... but also, like, for The Row, it's like, is your, is your perception as a sort of
non-public brand, not a flashy brand so delicate that somebody else building a brand around their relationship to your brand is a threat?
Um, 'cause I would say, like, that's still very, very far off from, you know, going the way of, like, Louis Vuitton or, um, Von Dutch or whatever, where you're just so out there and totally co-opted by everyone.
Um, but it kind of made it seem like there's really no in between. I think the fact that for that to be cool and for that to be important, there needs to be a perception of effortlessness, right? Mm-hmm.
And I think what this has shown is that there is a lot of effort that's being put into that. And, you know, I don't blame them for wanting to keep their brand as what it was. Like, I mean, I don't care. It is what it is.
You know, that's so out of my think or bracket, but I just don't care what happens to that brand very much. [laughs] Um, but I do think that as someone on the outside looking in,
I don't like that I know that they had to do all of that, you know? Mm-hmm. I don't like that I know that they cared so much about that one influencer.
I don't like that I know that they had to do all that behind the scenes to, like, get that profile scratched. I don't like that. I think it shows a certain...
It's sort of like when, when I'm reading a book and I can see the author's, you know, mind- Mm-hmm... like, you know, working. I can see sort of, like, the threads and like, you know, whatever they're building.
You know, you can see it, and it, it just, it loses the beauty of the thing.
And so I think in a weird way, I don't know, I can't say if it would've been better for that story to run, but I do actually think now it's a more interesting story than, that they were so averse to that than whatever she did in the first place, you know?
And so maybe that was a miscalculation on their part. I don't know. Yeah. I mean, I actually do think this relates to what we were talking about with making yourself the face of the project, that, like,
you can't control who collects you. You know, you can't control who becomes a collector of The Row and talks about it. Mm-hmm.
If you're a painter, in the beginning, yeah, you have some control, but later on you can't control, you know, your... The number one collector of your work could be somebody who is ideologically the opposite of you.
Yeah. And I think part of what we're talking about with boundaries is, [smacks lip] I can't control who reads Dirt or becomes a super fan of Dirt, but if people have the sense that they can collect me, that's a problem.
And I do think that there are people in the ecosystem who are collecting, including Substack itself, they are collecting, you know,
intellectuals, young intellectuals, especially females with their own brand, like infinity stones. Oh, that's fascinating. And I do not, I would never put myself in the position to be collected by somebody else.
Um, but I would... You know, your work, if your work is being collected, that means you have achieved a certain level of success. I just don't wanna be collected.
And I think, like, maybe that's something with Mary-Kate and Ashley, and, like, I don't wanna read too much into it, but just the trauma of being so public from the moment you were born, I totally understand why they would wanna architect something like The Row, which is like, [smacks lip]
you can't claim us. You can't collect us. You can't be an influencer- Mm-hmm... on the reputation of this brand, because they are so averse to the, the way that their image was collected throughout their childhood.
But it's like, you have to separate the art and the artist and give it up, and that's why those boundaries exist. I didn't think about that angle at all. It's pretty interesting.
I will say I, I, I think that it's a compelling story that they, that they got it killed, because to me The Row is about, like, it's about wealth, and it's about power, and it's about quiet, right?
So they can't stop somebody from posting on social media, but it's kind of a old school move to, to kill a story in The Wall Street Journal. I don't know. I, so I don't- I'm looking into it...
I don't have, I'm not able to find, like, right now the backup evidence of The Wall Street Journal thing, but I did find the open letter that she wrote to The Row breaking up with them. [laughs] I saw that as well. Okay.
So maybe somewhere in here we have some more of that context, but it's, it's out there enough that, like, again, like I said, kind of- Would you ever do something like that?
Like, would you ever- Write a letter to a brand that you're breaking up with them? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely not. Uh, I... Would I break up, would I publicly [laughs] break up with a brand?
Um- I don't think I'm that genuine of a person to, like, ever do that. [laughs] I just don't care enough. Yeah. I like, I like the, the earnest consumption.
I don't, I think nobody really comes across great in the whole thing, but it's interesting as a microcosm of, like, well, this is truly where we're at. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
And speaking of where we're at, we've arrived at the end of the episode. [laughs] So this has been Taste Land. Perfect. Thank you so much. Ajita, thank you for coming on. Thank you guys for having me. This is fun.
Oh my God. Love tasting. [upbeat music] Thank you, listener. We will see you next week.