This is such a helpful framing. I agree that economics and infrastructure are upstream of what kind of art and criticism can exist. But I keep wondering about a second upstream variable: the formation of taste. Even with better funding models, we still need publics who have the habits to seek out difficult work, reread, tolerate ambiguity, and reward risk. Otherwise new money just amplifies the same attention incentives. So yes to the two fronts you name, and I would add a third: rebuilding the conditions where attention and discernment are actually cultivated.
Thank you for reading! I agree and I think you're right to propose it as a third front (it's also the front that W. David Marx persuasively argues for in Blank Space!)…having a cultivated audience is really important, and it might mean that attention and money can then flow to the most 'deserving' works, which is to say—the most innovative, ambitious works.
So much to ponder, but here is a thought off the top of my head about resolving the dilemma between "information wants to be free" and "writers deserve to be paid":
Something heartening I've seen here at Substack and in other parts of the internet are the writers who are making a making a full-time income, or a decent side income, thanks to the patronage model. Of course, this isn't the most stable model and it requires a lot of work upfront if it's ever to succeed (hence why you rarely see it recommended as a viable path in the creator economy). BUT. It's a real thing. There are people out there (including me) who are spending more money each year on supporting creators they care about than they do on Netflix. I guess that's unusual, but unusual is okay: the Pareto principle, or some form of it, seems to be the norm when it comes to source of income. A few generous donors, and a slightly larger amount of mini-donors/fans, can make all the difference and allow everyone else to read for free and help the writer grow by word of mouth. You probably won't be rich if you follow this path, but you'll have your basic needs met, which is what matters most to most of us writers.
PS. Of course, it's easy to argue that we don't see a lot of examples of the patronage model and therefore it's not truly viable etc., but the fact that we _do_ see it means that it's possible. And with things constantly changing and evolving and finding their footing, I like to stay hopeful.
Thank you for this thoughtful comment! It's so interesting you bring up the Substack subscriptions–versus–Netflix thing…many people frame this as, oh, it's so irrational for people to pay $50/month for 10 different Substacks when Netflix gives you way more! Or: it's irrational to do that when a New Yorker or Atlantic subscription gives you way more!
But I think this kind of calculation totally misunderstands the relationship between Substack writer and reader…it's much more intimate, direct, and invested than a relationship between a magazine and reader.
Precisely! When I give my money to a small publication or writer, it's not just because I love their writing but also b/c I know I'm making a difference to them and there is real satisfaction in that. That's an aspect of buyer psychology, I think, that gets overlooked.
The problem Substack (or someone else) needs to solve I think, is how do you build an ecosystem where brand new writers can rise enough to make a full time living.
As of now, my impression is most Substackers who make enough to live off of their writing alone either have a big following on social media, or were already successful journalists/writers.
I would actually LOVE for Substack (or some other creator economy analyst…firm…etc) to look into who's made a living off of Substack by converting an existing audience, vs who has essentially created a just-from-Substack audience.
I think the latter group is bigger than we think; Emily Sundberg (https://www.readfeedme.com/) is probably the most visible example, and Henrik Karlsson for a specific sector of in-the-know tech people (https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/), but there must be others.
Footnotes and Tangents is another great example; https://footnotesandtangents.substack.com/. Haisell recently was able to go full-time; he did a lovely interview with Sarah Fay about it.
I agree it's probably a bigger group than we think, and I suspect the biggest reason for that is "non-business" writers, by definition, aren't focused on talking about their income. They're too busy writing about the things that made us love them in the first place.
Agree that there's hope for readers supporting writers they care about and information that is useful to them. It's helped me make a living off of Substack, writing for American readers while living in India.
Want to add something here, though – purchasing power parity didn't matter when blogging was free, but it does matter when monetization enters the picture. A "reasonable" price for an American reader can be wildly expensive for Indians, even if the subject matter could be equally appealing. Over time, this shapes incentives – writers could start biasing their content for paying audiences. Maybe we need features to price differently for different regions of the world... or come up with some other way to encourage global patronage.
This might be one of my favorite articles of yours. It felt like a walk down a lane that I was exploring last year, because I stumbled upon the Esquire article and the NYT Gen X article as well, while trying to find an answer to: how to "make it" as a writer while having a day job as a ghostwriter. "Become independently wealthy, and then make your art" and "Become an outlier" were the paths that appealed to me the most, but after years of working on the verge of burnout, I'm taking a step back to chill out and reassess what I really want from writing. But this post also got me thinking about the institutions and incentive structures in the art world.
I ran across a video featuring David Markovits recently – he's a professor who talks about the myth of meritocracy. He says that success has three ingredients: ability, effort, and training. While "ability" is randomly distributed and most successful people emphasize the value of "effort", the role of training is usually downplayed. But training is important. Training depends on access to resources, time, and even building an awareness that you can aspire to live a certain way – yes, anyone can learn to hit a curve ball, but a baseball pro's son who starts learning when he's three years old has a way bigger head start. Anybody can technically take a risk and "start a business," but an entrepreneur/billionaire's kid grows up with an intuitive sense of risk-taking and a safety net that most other kids would lack. Agency and the "you can just do things" ideology might work, but it's a trained skill. So yes, there's effort, but the institutions and structures that back the "training" give some folks an unfair advantage.
Reading your article, I feel like this gap could have accelerated in the artistic world over the last however many years – both on the consumption and creation side. People who develop a familiarity with the institutions of the art world – the networks, the aesthetics, what's hot and what's not, etc. – have a better chance of both appreciating art and creating art that's appreciated (Naomi Kanakia's article on what having an MFA means for your writing career taught me a lot about this). So there's a possibility that this world becomes an isolated bubble of its own, with a few people rising to the top in the bubble and the others reading them. I'm going on a limb here, but I'm saying the artistic world is becoming less democratic, and with the rewards not being proportional to the risk, fewer people have the safety net or fanatical passion required to stay in this world. Maybe there were a lot more people willing to take the risk of being Herman Melville/Charles Bukowski and there was a way bigger discerning readership back then – now the reward structure hasn't improved, but the risk has continued to grow.
"By limiting the number of people who can go to live in cities…we may also be missing out on the new ideas that drive society forward." Spot on. Unless there are institutions – like the London Review's underwriter – to support newcomers, the consumption and creation of art feels like an ideological battle in some sense.
And yet, it's worth doing. In some sense, this piece feels like a companion piece to your earlier piece – writing is an inherently dignified human activity – in which you talk about why art is worth making despite all the odds stacked against it. One uplifting thing about following your Substack is that I read pieces here and think they're so involved and deep that there must hardly be a handful of people who would be interested in this sort of thing – and then I see there are 30+ thoughtful comments and 200+ likes, which are insane numbers on Substack. There's still hope!
Very interesting take on "Nostalgia is not a strategy." "People who would have never made it into the inner sanctum of American culture — even at a defiantly countercultural publication like the Voice — can now, for the first time in history, publish from anywhere and reach an audience everywhere": This part reminded me of Ratatouille, which is one of my favorite movies.
RIP Aaron Swartz. One of my heroes. Also found Biggar very inspiring. Thanks for writing this.
Thank you for this incredibly thoughtful reply! I almost feel it deserves to be a post of its own, tbh…not hidden in the comments where fear not many will read it!
Your and Markovits's point about training is so crucial—I do think that ability must be refined and channeled in a specific way to achieve excellence, and often that requires training, and the best teachers and learning environments tend to involve a lot of institutional filters. A contemporary artist who does a Yale MFA is probably much better-equipped (and better-connected) than if they hadn't gone to Yale. And so much worldly success hinges on how people can strategically make their work and socialize their work…it's one thing to make something really amazing; it's another to put it in front of people who are tastemakers, who can start treating you like the next new talent, who can introduce you to other people and help you become an acclaimed mid-career artist someday.
This is very succinctly and excellently worded: 'the reward structure hasn't improved, but the risk has continued to grow' in pursuing an artistic/literary career.
I do think there is something profoundly rewarding about writing these newsletters and coming into contact with so many brilliant, generous, thoughtful people—it is something the internet excels at, and it's why I'm not particularly nostalgic about the past. There IS an intellectual life and a life of the mind available to us in 2026…we just need some of the supporting structures too!!
Yes, it's really sad. I was reading Sarah Schulman's The Gentrification of the Mind last summer, as part of my research for this essay (I ended up not quoting her directly, but the ideas in it definitely shaped me), and her description of the pre–AIDS crisis West Village culture, and what happened afterwards, is quite depressing
I would like to have been a writer but I've also loved reading and always come away from this with more to be excited about exploring. Also I really really liked Zhuangzi.
I've been so enamoured by Zhuangzi but I am also intimidated by the prospect of writing about it…I barely Get It though I am diverted and entertained…but very eager to hear what other people love about Zhuangzi!!
Love this essay. As a writer, I feel it. As a former magazine editor, I can see the difference in pay. It happened during my time working as a magazine editor. As the host of a podcast about magazines, well....there's hope. But no money. My podcast, The Full Bleed, is about "the future of magazines and the magazines of the future." Another podcast by our producers, Print Is Dead, is about "the golden age." The two could not be more different. One has discussions about expense accounts but also about the time and energy they would spend to "get it right." The other is about the hustle of creating a media in a post-ad supported age and the steep learning curve when it comes to distribution. I think The Full Bleed is far more inspiring. Because, you know, nostalgia ain't a strategy.
I'm really glad to hear that the economic arguments resonated with you (as I've not really worked in the magazine industry at all…I'm essentially an outsider!)
Also thank you for mentioning your podcasts—I'll just link them in case others are interested!
The Full Bleed, which has recent interviews with editors at Viscose Journal (such a great fashion criticism mag), Rest of World (really good reportage outside of the US/Anglosphere more generally), Cake Zine (beloved by all!!!!) https://www.spd.org/the-full-bleed
i'm really sad that the micropayment approach brave (which is now apparently a crypto-oriented browser??) tried which you put in however much $$ you wanted to a month and it paid it out based on which websites you visited and spent time on
honestly a part of me is like…maybe I should go back to my one true love, Reeder (one of the best Mac OS apps ever designed) and read everything through there
re: micropayments and splitting money across the people you read…I can't find the reference now (writing this comment omw to work!) but in either the latest No Tags volume (a podcast/newsletter/occasional book series from Chal Ravens and Tom Lea https://notagspodcast.substack.com/) OR a collection of Shawn Reynaldo's writing on electronic music (https://velocitypress.uk/product/first-floor-volume-1/)
—there's are mentions of an alternative Spotify revenue model, where the $10 or whatever you pay per month gets properly, equitably split between the people you're actually listening to, and without the distorted percentages that major labels have negotiated for their artists (which disadvantages indie artists)
An interesting idea, but don't you think that might create the incentive for artists to go for quantity over quality to capture attention share? It's kind of like Medium's model vs Substack's model, and it looks like Substack created a healthier alternative for writers in the end because Medium shaped the system in a way that incentivized you to keep grinding out content.
> 8,000 francs in 1904, or about €3.5 million today
I think this conversion is wrong by a factor of 100, and it should say €35,000 today (a little under 37,000 according to the INSEE's converter, https://www.insee.fr/fr/information/2417794 ).
France replaced the old franc with the new franc in 1960, with one new franc equalling 100 old francs. The converter website you used appears use new francs regardless of year, with no sudden jump in 1960.
i feel like social media by creating a continuum series of impulses of fast satisfying reaction to our brains through the fast scrolling of algorithmic suggestions are leading people to abandon any form of intellectual that takes more time to realese dopamine on the reader. I’d argue also on the fact the social media offer free entertainment that requires no energy to find nor to acquire as it’s free. By that i would say that the verticalization of social media is a huge factor that both lead people to abandon reading and that de increase the chance of people spending money and paying for art.
definitely agree that the speed of social media…and the feeling that infinite content is available, essentially on tap, without having to pay for it (the quality of the content is another matter…but tbh there is still SO much good free content!) probably makes it FEEL very strange to pay for anything!
Regarding EA, I love to say that talking to an EA person makes perfect, even exceptionally clear sense for the first 20 minutes of conversation, but any longer than that begins to devolve. (The way they talk about environmental issues in particular is kind of crazymaking!)
I mean, I really agree that more affluent people should be redirecting their money to those who need it…and it is completely and horrifyingly shameful how many preventable diseases still afflict people in the world…
but I did come across one particular effective altruist's argument recently that we should just accelerate AI development in the hopes that it will solve political disagreement + climate change…these are social problems that require consensus building and culture change, not technical problems imo…it's hard for me to follow that argument!
Yes, they're not good at the cultural side of things, and they also make a ton of assumptions. You must know much more about this than me, since you’ve clearly reconciled both, and I’m sure opinions vary a lot, but using climate/environmental work as a litmus test, I have in-real-life argued with EA people about the following:
- That the sixth great extinction is nbd because animals in the wild are clearly suffering and it’s better off if they’re dead, and also, “we’ll just bring them back”
- That climate change is generally deprioritized in EA “because a lot of people are already working on it” (does that mean we’re actually figuring it out??) and because “it won’t actually make us extinct but AI will” (who cares if we’re not extinct if the planet sucks to live on?)
- That the usual line about fossil fuels—they are worth burning through because they catapult countries past industrialization—justifies their existence, since they allow more sentient creatures, and more sentient creatures =good
There are just so many assumptions behind each of these things—that suffering is ultimately quantifiable and the sole determinant of moral action, that more humans and more activity on a problem=problem getting solved (resting on assumptions nestled deep within ideals of linear progress), that quality of life doesn’t matter as much as extinction speculations, that tech can fix anything (including bringing animals back for our amusement, without an ecology to sustain them), that stadial history is correct, that the Industrial Revolution’s huge sacrifices of life and quality of life for vast quantities of people were worth it because we get to enjoy the benefits, etc.
I don’t even know where to begin with how wrong they are about all of it. A healthy relation to the environment is already extremely tough to theorize in Western philosophy, and they hit all the bullseyes of why. At least they do it openly?
On the other hand, though, you’re correct that it clearly it effectively obligates people who should spend their money to spend it, and they have made more thoughtful and reasonable choices as a result. I have a friend whose sister donated her kidney due to EA, etc. And we should credit them with bringing the whole preventable disease thing to greater public consciousness.
Again, for a brief period, just to problem-solve your time and resources toward the human good, it’s great. If you think in terms of one human life can do, you aren’t going to run seriously afoul of a lot of these issues because they simply must be solved at higher scales, in most cases. Most people would probably be better off with talking to an EA life counselor for 20 minutes!
This analysis is brilliant. The part about day jobs shaping artistic output (not just funding it) landed hardfor me. I spent years in tech and the time constraints actually made my writing tighter, but there's a threshhold where it tips from complementary to extractive. We're losing cohorts of artists who burn out before finding that balance.
Yes, you put it so beautifully and succinctly! The time constraints CAN help—there are plenty of day-job-artists/writers who are incredibly productive, much more so than the people who have all the time in the world to…procrastinate.
But there are people who just can't make the balance work, and they can't put in the 5, 10, 15, however many years of morning/evening/weekend work to make their masterpieces. There must be so many great novels that have gone unwritten, because the people working on them eventually succumbed to the exigencies of daily life
Maciej has since indicated that there are parts of this essay that he wouldn't do the same way (which is not surprising; there are some rocky parts for sure), but "Dabblers and Blowhards" is a good reaction to Graham: https://idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm
And fwiw people were concerned about big tech and social media specifically well before 2016; facebook in particular was scrutinized well before the Cambridge analytica scandal and the Rohingya genocide came to light. Uber and other essentially unlawful operations, Amazon's labor practices, Palantir ffs, there was always plenty to criticize and there were always plenty of critics: valleywag launched in 2006 and Thiel's lawsuit came in 2013! I thought it was a scandal in 2011 when Josh Cohen joined up with Apple while still editing the Boston Review.
omg I totally forgot to include my pitch in this 🙈 I got distracted by all the OTHER content I wanted to put in this newsletter!
I worked with Clara Collier (I had SUCH a great experience with her and recommend her wholeheartedly to other writers! what she's doing with Asterisk is very cool and intellectually distinctive). My pitch to her was very informal, since we'd previously corresponded about ideas for the previous issue, but it wasn't the right idea/time:
I opened with 'I actually have a few new/forthcoming nonfiction books I'm reading right now,' mentioned the Marx book, and said:
'I'm still reading [it]…but I wonder if potential titles could be:
Is the Internet Making Culture Worse?
Is the Internet Making Your Taste Worse?
The argument that Marx is making…is that:
The internet facilitated an enormous explosion of cultural production (from more amateur creators who finally had the chance to share work online, iterate on it in front of an audience, develop a voice, connect to like-minded people and access knowledge/skills without being constrained by geography)
But other economic factors (risk aversion in many culture industries, mature companies +platforms incentivized to increase profits and attention/streaming even at the expense of greater diversity/innovation/experimentation) have created this paradox where we have greater access/ability to have a very diverse, heterogenous cultural landscape…but in practice everyone is complaining, all the time, about how homogenous and boring and safe things are.
I actually don't know if I have a conclusion yet on whether culture is actually blander in the 21st century compared to the 20th (Marx's belief)…will need to think about this more.
I do feel that many existing modes of discovering music, fashion, art etc tend to make things more generic—I've been thinking about the concept of "taste collapse" (similar to model collapse for AI models), where the more our taste is developed from algorithms versus more human/subcultural/curated influences, the more genericized that becomes…and have been trying to work it into an essay somewhere…
So it could be about how the internet/platforms/recommendation systems have shaped our taste, for better or worse…and how that affects our cultural production…I've seen so many versions of the taste essay going around, but it would be nice to ground it in specific books? And maybe also talk about the economic structures involved, not just "what does my algorithm look like today" vibes-based analysis?'
This is such a helpful framing. I agree that economics and infrastructure are upstream of what kind of art and criticism can exist. But I keep wondering about a second upstream variable: the formation of taste. Even with better funding models, we still need publics who have the habits to seek out difficult work, reread, tolerate ambiguity, and reward risk. Otherwise new money just amplifies the same attention incentives. So yes to the two fronts you name, and I would add a third: rebuilding the conditions where attention and discernment are actually cultivated.
Thank you for reading! I agree and I think you're right to propose it as a third front (it's also the front that W. David Marx persuasively argues for in Blank Space!)…having a cultivated audience is really important, and it might mean that attention and money can then flow to the most 'deserving' works, which is to say—the most innovative, ambitious works.
(To quote Fran Leibowitz: 'An audience with a high level of connoisseurship…is as important to the culture as artists.' https://youtu.be/WT3SdN0YVx8?start=126&end=134)
(updated my post with a quote from you, btw!)
That’s really kind, thank you! I’m glad it was useful, and I appreciate you weaving it in.
So much to ponder, but here is a thought off the top of my head about resolving the dilemma between "information wants to be free" and "writers deserve to be paid":
Something heartening I've seen here at Substack and in other parts of the internet are the writers who are making a making a full-time income, or a decent side income, thanks to the patronage model. Of course, this isn't the most stable model and it requires a lot of work upfront if it's ever to succeed (hence why you rarely see it recommended as a viable path in the creator economy). BUT. It's a real thing. There are people out there (including me) who are spending more money each year on supporting creators they care about than they do on Netflix. I guess that's unusual, but unusual is okay: the Pareto principle, or some form of it, seems to be the norm when it comes to source of income. A few generous donors, and a slightly larger amount of mini-donors/fans, can make all the difference and allow everyone else to read for free and help the writer grow by word of mouth. You probably won't be rich if you follow this path, but you'll have your basic needs met, which is what matters most to most of us writers.
PS. Of course, it's easy to argue that we don't see a lot of examples of the patronage model and therefore it's not truly viable etc., but the fact that we _do_ see it means that it's possible. And with things constantly changing and evolving and finding their footing, I like to stay hopeful.
Thank you for this thoughtful comment! It's so interesting you bring up the Substack subscriptions–versus–Netflix thing…many people frame this as, oh, it's so irrational for people to pay $50/month for 10 different Substacks when Netflix gives you way more! Or: it's irrational to do that when a New Yorker or Atlantic subscription gives you way more!
But I think this kind of calculation totally misunderstands the relationship between Substack writer and reader…it's much more intimate, direct, and invested than a relationship between a magazine and reader.
Precisely! When I give my money to a small publication or writer, it's not just because I love their writing but also b/c I know I'm making a difference to them and there is real satisfaction in that. That's an aspect of buyer psychology, I think, that gets overlooked.
The problem Substack (or someone else) needs to solve I think, is how do you build an ecosystem where brand new writers can rise enough to make a full time living.
As of now, my impression is most Substackers who make enough to live off of their writing alone either have a big following on social media, or were already successful journalists/writers.
I would actually LOVE for Substack (or some other creator economy analyst…firm…etc) to look into who's made a living off of Substack by converting an existing audience, vs who has essentially created a just-from-Substack audience.
I think the latter group is bigger than we think; Emily Sundberg (https://www.readfeedme.com/) is probably the most visible example, and Henrik Karlsson for a specific sector of in-the-know tech people (https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/), but there must be others.
Footnotes and Tangents is another great example; https://footnotesandtangents.substack.com/. Haisell recently was able to go full-time; he did a lovely interview with Sarah Fay about it.
I agree it's probably a bigger group than we think, and I suspect the biggest reason for that is "non-business" writers, by definition, aren't focused on talking about their income. They're too busy writing about the things that made us love them in the first place.
Agree that there's hope for readers supporting writers they care about and information that is useful to them. It's helped me make a living off of Substack, writing for American readers while living in India.
Want to add something here, though – purchasing power parity didn't matter when blogging was free, but it does matter when monetization enters the picture. A "reasonable" price for an American reader can be wildly expensive for Indians, even if the subject matter could be equally appealing. Over time, this shapes incentives – writers could start biasing their content for paying audiences. Maybe we need features to price differently for different regions of the world... or come up with some other way to encourage global patronage.
This might be one of my favorite articles of yours. It felt like a walk down a lane that I was exploring last year, because I stumbled upon the Esquire article and the NYT Gen X article as well, while trying to find an answer to: how to "make it" as a writer while having a day job as a ghostwriter. "Become independently wealthy, and then make your art" and "Become an outlier" were the paths that appealed to me the most, but after years of working on the verge of burnout, I'm taking a step back to chill out and reassess what I really want from writing. But this post also got me thinking about the institutions and incentive structures in the art world.
I ran across a video featuring David Markovits recently – he's a professor who talks about the myth of meritocracy. He says that success has three ingredients: ability, effort, and training. While "ability" is randomly distributed and most successful people emphasize the value of "effort", the role of training is usually downplayed. But training is important. Training depends on access to resources, time, and even building an awareness that you can aspire to live a certain way – yes, anyone can learn to hit a curve ball, but a baseball pro's son who starts learning when he's three years old has a way bigger head start. Anybody can technically take a risk and "start a business," but an entrepreneur/billionaire's kid grows up with an intuitive sense of risk-taking and a safety net that most other kids would lack. Agency and the "you can just do things" ideology might work, but it's a trained skill. So yes, there's effort, but the institutions and structures that back the "training" give some folks an unfair advantage.
Reading your article, I feel like this gap could have accelerated in the artistic world over the last however many years – both on the consumption and creation side. People who develop a familiarity with the institutions of the art world – the networks, the aesthetics, what's hot and what's not, etc. – have a better chance of both appreciating art and creating art that's appreciated (Naomi Kanakia's article on what having an MFA means for your writing career taught me a lot about this). So there's a possibility that this world becomes an isolated bubble of its own, with a few people rising to the top in the bubble and the others reading them. I'm going on a limb here, but I'm saying the artistic world is becoming less democratic, and with the rewards not being proportional to the risk, fewer people have the safety net or fanatical passion required to stay in this world. Maybe there were a lot more people willing to take the risk of being Herman Melville/Charles Bukowski and there was a way bigger discerning readership back then – now the reward structure hasn't improved, but the risk has continued to grow.
"By limiting the number of people who can go to live in cities…we may also be missing out on the new ideas that drive society forward." Spot on. Unless there are institutions – like the London Review's underwriter – to support newcomers, the consumption and creation of art feels like an ideological battle in some sense.
And yet, it's worth doing. In some sense, this piece feels like a companion piece to your earlier piece – writing is an inherently dignified human activity – in which you talk about why art is worth making despite all the odds stacked against it. One uplifting thing about following your Substack is that I read pieces here and think they're so involved and deep that there must hardly be a handful of people who would be interested in this sort of thing – and then I see there are 30+ thoughtful comments and 200+ likes, which are insane numbers on Substack. There's still hope!
Very interesting take on "Nostalgia is not a strategy." "People who would have never made it into the inner sanctum of American culture — even at a defiantly countercultural publication like the Voice — can now, for the first time in history, publish from anywhere and reach an audience everywhere": This part reminded me of Ratatouille, which is one of my favorite movies.
RIP Aaron Swartz. One of my heroes. Also found Biggar very inspiring. Thanks for writing this.
Thank you for this incredibly thoughtful reply! I almost feel it deserves to be a post of its own, tbh…not hidden in the comments where fear not many will read it!
Your and Markovits's point about training is so crucial—I do think that ability must be refined and channeled in a specific way to achieve excellence, and often that requires training, and the best teachers and learning environments tend to involve a lot of institutional filters. A contemporary artist who does a Yale MFA is probably much better-equipped (and better-connected) than if they hadn't gone to Yale. And so much worldly success hinges on how people can strategically make their work and socialize their work…it's one thing to make something really amazing; it's another to put it in front of people who are tastemakers, who can start treating you like the next new talent, who can introduce you to other people and help you become an acclaimed mid-career artist someday.
This is very succinctly and excellently worded: 'the reward structure hasn't improved, but the risk has continued to grow' in pursuing an artistic/literary career.
I do think there is something profoundly rewarding about writing these newsletters and coming into contact with so many brilliant, generous, thoughtful people—it is something the internet excels at, and it's why I'm not particularly nostalgic about the past. There IS an intellectual life and a life of the mind available to us in 2026…we just need some of the supporting structures too!!
This is why NYC can never be what it once was -- creative artists can no longer afford to live there.
Yes, it's really sad. I was reading Sarah Schulman's The Gentrification of the Mind last summer, as part of my research for this essay (I ended up not quoting her directly, but the ideas in it definitely shaped me), and her description of the pre–AIDS crisis West Village culture, and what happened afterwards, is quite depressing
I would like to have been a writer but I've also loved reading and always come away from this with more to be excited about exploring. Also I really really liked Zhuangzi.
thanks for reading (and leaving a comment!)
I've been so enamoured by Zhuangzi but I am also intimidated by the prospect of writing about it…I barely Get It though I am diverted and entertained…but very eager to hear what other people love about Zhuangzi!!
Love this essay. As a writer, I feel it. As a former magazine editor, I can see the difference in pay. It happened during my time working as a magazine editor. As the host of a podcast about magazines, well....there's hope. But no money. My podcast, The Full Bleed, is about "the future of magazines and the magazines of the future." Another podcast by our producers, Print Is Dead, is about "the golden age." The two could not be more different. One has discussions about expense accounts but also about the time and energy they would spend to "get it right." The other is about the hustle of creating a media in a post-ad supported age and the steep learning curve when it comes to distribution. I think The Full Bleed is far more inspiring. Because, you know, nostalgia ain't a strategy.
I'm really glad to hear that the economic arguments resonated with you (as I've not really worked in the magazine industry at all…I'm essentially an outsider!)
Also thank you for mentioning your podcasts—I'll just link them in case others are interested!
The Full Bleed, which has recent interviews with editors at Viscose Journal (such a great fashion criticism mag), Rest of World (really good reportage outside of the US/Anglosphere more generally), Cake Zine (beloved by all!!!!) https://www.spd.org/the-full-bleed
and Print is Dead, with the one and only Graydon Carter; an art director at the New Yorker; a designer for some of my favorite design magazines (Eye, Blueprint) https://www.spd.org/print-is-dead-long-live-print/category/podcast
Thanks for the links! Though the SPD links aren't complete. Here are the proper ones for The Full Bleed: https://magazeum.co/full-bleed
And for Print is Dead: https://magazeum.co/pidllp
And for Magazeum as a whole (all things magazines): https://magazeum.co/
bring back RSS feeds.
i'm really sad that the micropayment approach brave (which is now apparently a crypto-oriented browser??) tried which you put in however much $$ you wanted to a month and it paid it out based on which websites you visited and spent time on
honestly a part of me is like…maybe I should go back to my one true love, Reeder (one of the best Mac OS apps ever designed) and read everything through there
re: micropayments and splitting money across the people you read…I can't find the reference now (writing this comment omw to work!) but in either the latest No Tags volume (a podcast/newsletter/occasional book series from Chal Ravens and Tom Lea https://notagspodcast.substack.com/) OR a collection of Shawn Reynaldo's writing on electronic music (https://velocitypress.uk/product/first-floor-volume-1/)
—there's are mentions of an alternative Spotify revenue model, where the $10 or whatever you pay per month gets properly, equitably split between the people you're actually listening to, and without the distorted percentages that major labels have negotiated for their artists (which disadvantages indie artists)
A small part of me wants to spend free time on coding up the perfect RSS reader for myself.
An interesting idea, but don't you think that might create the incentive for artists to go for quantity over quality to capture attention share? It's kind of like Medium's model vs Substack's model, and it looks like Substack created a healthier alternative for writers in the end because Medium shaped the system in a way that incentivized you to keep grinding out content.
> 8,000 francs in 1904, or about €3.5 million today
I think this conversion is wrong by a factor of 100, and it should say €35,000 today (a little under 37,000 according to the INSEE's converter, https://www.insee.fr/fr/information/2417794 ).
France replaced the old franc with the new franc in 1960, with one new franc equalling 100 old francs. The converter website you used appears use new francs regardless of year, with no sudden jump in 1960.
great catch, thank you so much!! updated and added this to a footnote: https://www.personalcanon.com/p/weve-created-a-society-where-artists#footnote-4-178020629
Never realized Engels was Wupper class
Wuppertal is such a funny city…famous for:
the choreographer Pina Bausch's Tanztheater Wuppertal;
Open Ground, the best techno club in the world (according to Michael Lawson https://ra.co/features/4444);
the oldest suspension monorail in the world;
and being Engels's birthplace
You have a next-level knowledge of Wuppertal
thanks for this amazing essay 🙇🏻♂️🙇🏻♂️🙇🏻♂️
thank you for reading and commenting!! 💝
i feel like social media by creating a continuum series of impulses of fast satisfying reaction to our brains through the fast scrolling of algorithmic suggestions are leading people to abandon any form of intellectual that takes more time to realese dopamine on the reader. I’d argue also on the fact the social media offer free entertainment that requires no energy to find nor to acquire as it’s free. By that i would say that the verticalization of social media is a huge factor that both lead people to abandon reading and that de increase the chance of people spending money and paying for art.
Do you guys feel somehow the same or...?
definitely agree that the speed of social media…and the feeling that infinite content is available, essentially on tap, without having to pay for it (the quality of the content is another matter…but tbh there is still SO much good free content!) probably makes it FEEL very strange to pay for anything!
Regarding EA, I love to say that talking to an EA person makes perfect, even exceptionally clear sense for the first 20 minutes of conversation, but any longer than that begins to devolve. (The way they talk about environmental issues in particular is kind of crazymaking!)
I mean, I really agree that more affluent people should be redirecting their money to those who need it…and it is completely and horrifyingly shameful how many preventable diseases still afflict people in the world…
but I did come across one particular effective altruist's argument recently that we should just accelerate AI development in the hopes that it will solve political disagreement + climate change…these are social problems that require consensus building and culture change, not technical problems imo…it's hard for me to follow that argument!
Yes, they're not good at the cultural side of things, and they also make a ton of assumptions. You must know much more about this than me, since you’ve clearly reconciled both, and I’m sure opinions vary a lot, but using climate/environmental work as a litmus test, I have in-real-life argued with EA people about the following:
- That the sixth great extinction is nbd because animals in the wild are clearly suffering and it’s better off if they’re dead, and also, “we’ll just bring them back”
- That climate change is generally deprioritized in EA “because a lot of people are already working on it” (does that mean we’re actually figuring it out??) and because “it won’t actually make us extinct but AI will” (who cares if we’re not extinct if the planet sucks to live on?)
- That the usual line about fossil fuels—they are worth burning through because they catapult countries past industrialization—justifies their existence, since they allow more sentient creatures, and more sentient creatures =good
There are just so many assumptions behind each of these things—that suffering is ultimately quantifiable and the sole determinant of moral action, that more humans and more activity on a problem=problem getting solved (resting on assumptions nestled deep within ideals of linear progress), that quality of life doesn’t matter as much as extinction speculations, that tech can fix anything (including bringing animals back for our amusement, without an ecology to sustain them), that stadial history is correct, that the Industrial Revolution’s huge sacrifices of life and quality of life for vast quantities of people were worth it because we get to enjoy the benefits, etc.
I don’t even know where to begin with how wrong they are about all of it. A healthy relation to the environment is already extremely tough to theorize in Western philosophy, and they hit all the bullseyes of why. At least they do it openly?
On the other hand, though, you’re correct that it clearly it effectively obligates people who should spend their money to spend it, and they have made more thoughtful and reasonable choices as a result. I have a friend whose sister donated her kidney due to EA, etc. And we should credit them with bringing the whole preventable disease thing to greater public consciousness.
Again, for a brief period, just to problem-solve your time and resources toward the human good, it’s great. If you think in terms of one human life can do, you aren’t going to run seriously afoul of a lot of these issues because they simply must be solved at higher scales, in most cases. Most people would probably be better off with talking to an EA life counselor for 20 minutes!
Sadly true
This analysis is brilliant. The part about day jobs shaping artistic output (not just funding it) landed hardfor me. I spent years in tech and the time constraints actually made my writing tighter, but there's a threshhold where it tips from complementary to extractive. We're losing cohorts of artists who burn out before finding that balance.
Yes, you put it so beautifully and succinctly! The time constraints CAN help—there are plenty of day-job-artists/writers who are incredibly productive, much more so than the people who have all the time in the world to…procrastinate.
But there are people who just can't make the balance work, and they can't put in the 5, 10, 15, however many years of morning/evening/weekend work to make their masterpieces. There must be so many great novels that have gone unwritten, because the people working on them eventually succumbed to the exigencies of daily life
classic me to take a succinct comment and reword it it in an EVEN LONGER and repetitive form…
So how did you pitch it?
Maciej has since indicated that there are parts of this essay that he wouldn't do the same way (which is not surprising; there are some rocky parts for sure), but "Dabblers and Blowhards" is a good reaction to Graham: https://idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm
And fwiw people were concerned about big tech and social media specifically well before 2016; facebook in particular was scrutinized well before the Cambridge analytica scandal and the Rohingya genocide came to light. Uber and other essentially unlawful operations, Amazon's labor practices, Palantir ffs, there was always plenty to criticize and there were always plenty of critics: valleywag launched in 2006 and Thiel's lawsuit came in 2013! I thought it was a scandal in 2011 when Josh Cohen joined up with Apple while still editing the Boston Review.
omg I totally forgot to include my pitch in this 🙈 I got distracted by all the OTHER content I wanted to put in this newsletter!
I worked with Clara Collier (I had SUCH a great experience with her and recommend her wholeheartedly to other writers! what she's doing with Asterisk is very cool and intellectually distinctive). My pitch to her was very informal, since we'd previously corresponded about ideas for the previous issue, but it wasn't the right idea/time:
I opened with 'I actually have a few new/forthcoming nonfiction books I'm reading right now,' mentioned the Marx book, and said:
'I'm still reading [it]…but I wonder if potential titles could be:
Is the Internet Making Culture Worse?
Is the Internet Making Your Taste Worse?
The argument that Marx is making…is that:
The internet facilitated an enormous explosion of cultural production (from more amateur creators who finally had the chance to share work online, iterate on it in front of an audience, develop a voice, connect to like-minded people and access knowledge/skills without being constrained by geography)
But other economic factors (risk aversion in many culture industries, mature companies +platforms incentivized to increase profits and attention/streaming even at the expense of greater diversity/innovation/experimentation) have created this paradox where we have greater access/ability to have a very diverse, heterogenous cultural landscape…but in practice everyone is complaining, all the time, about how homogenous and boring and safe things are.
I actually don't know if I have a conclusion yet on whether culture is actually blander in the 21st century compared to the 20th (Marx's belief)…will need to think about this more.
I do feel that many existing modes of discovering music, fashion, art etc tend to make things more generic—I've been thinking about the concept of "taste collapse" (similar to model collapse for AI models), where the more our taste is developed from algorithms versus more human/subcultural/curated influences, the more genericized that becomes…and have been trying to work it into an essay somewhere…
So it could be about how the internet/platforms/recommendation systems have shaped our taste, for better or worse…and how that affects our cultural production…I've seen so many versions of the taste essay going around, but it would be nice to ground it in specific books? And maybe also talk about the economic structures involved, not just "what does my algorithm look like today" vibes-based analysis?'
This has not changed since time immemorial.