Tag: Substack
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Phase Transition
Welcome to 2025, where the music industry has achieved something genuinely unprecedented in the annals of human cultural production: it has successfully replaced its primary product with its own publicity apparatus. This is not hyperbole. This is not metaphor. This is the actual material condition of our present moment, and it’s magnificent in its sheer…
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The Great American Newsletter
Substack has become an anthropological study in creative calcification. Writers publicly transforming into content strategists, thinkers becoming take-generators, artists evolving into audience builders. It’s fascinating to watch in real time—the slow fossilization of creative ambition. Here’s how it happens: Someone starts a newsletter to share their work. Within months, they’re writing about writing newsletters. Within…
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Decline? Yes. Collapse? No.
Decline? Yes. Collapse? No. Collapse would mean CIA spooks scribbling op-eds on Substack and hawking $10-a-month subscriptions like two-bit grifters at a carnival sideshow. The agency boys in their ill-fitting suits, slumped in coffee shops from Langley to Lincoln, churning out think pieces titled “The Death of American Empire: A Personal Journey” or “How I…
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PAC Memo
Internal Memo To: PAC Strategy Committee From: Funding Allocation Team Subject: Maximizing Value from “Independent” Thinkers Team, In our ongoing mission to counter the dirtbag left’s narrative, it’s critical that we double down on funding independent thinkers like [Deleted Name] and [Deleted Name]. These two have perfected the delicate art of looking like they’re just…
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The Art of Writing
The Business of Being Read There’s a new breed of prose jockey out there, and they’re hell-bent on cornering the market on words. They’re not journalists, not novelists, not even the rugged, chain-smoking bloggers of yesteryear—no, they’re Substackers. These digital scribes have proclaimed themselves the saviors of the written word, promising to deliver insights, frameworks,…