How Everything Became Gambling
The New York Times Magazine Filed
We are living through a kind of postpandemic gamified speculative-trading apocalypse of which traditional gambling is only one horseman.
SHELF No. 06
Media shifts
Structural changes in media, platforms, and attention.
PREVIOUSLY FILED
What's Coming After Social Media
Informational Democracy Sent
“A television that programmes each viewer separately.”
The Golden Age of Marketing
BRXND Dispatch Sent
“The best hedge against the uncertainty of agentic commerce is a brand that shoppers actively seek out or tell their agents to seek out.”
The Connection Economy Barbell
The Rebooting Sent
Our website may become something that is more of a service to agentic audiences rather than where you have the majority of human traffic.
Time Isn't Money
The Mediator Sent
In media, the relationship between time spent and value has been weakening for a long time — and AI will make it worse.
China debuts first AI-generated longform TV series
ChinAI Newsletter Sent
The first-ever fully AI-generated entertainment to hit mainstream provincial satellite prime time.
It's the screens, stupid! (It's not)
Substack (Alexander Thompson) Sent
“What the hell will it take to admit some readers are more sophisticated than others?”
In Search of Mainstream — YouTube Culture & Trends Report
YouTube Sent
Mainstream culture is alive but transformed, driven by niche fan communities, superfan passion, and platform-fuelled crossover moments.
The Nonfiction Book Market is Collapsing
Dear Head of Mine Sent
“Not overnight, but slowly, the money is flowing to fiction and away from nonfiction.”
What Do Booksellers Make Of "The End Of Reading"?
Defector Sent
“I've been a bookseller at the same building since 2014 here in Austin, and I have no reason to feel hopeless.”
How and Why to Fight Back Against Social Media Bans
User Mag Sent
“These laws deny young people their rights, threaten online anonymity for everyone, expose our sensitive personal data to breach and abuse, and replace parental decision-making with state authority.”
Inside YouTube's War to Fend Off Netflix
Like & Subscribe Sent
“Why YouTube is sweating the talent competition despite its streaming dominance”
Getting Off with the Luddites
n+1 Sent
“He seemed seized by the computational needs of fascist systems, which require people classified before they can rank, target, exclude, deport, or disappear them.”
The Seven Deadly Sins of Tech
8Ball Sent
“If the public doesn’t trust your intentions, it will be hard for them to believe your claims.”
GTA VI Reveal Hints at Netflix's Gaming Strategy
SuperJoost Playlist Sent
It may not know so well how to make hits, but it is expert at putting hits in front of hundreds of millions of people.
A Philosopher's One-Word Theory to Explain Why the World Feels So Weird
Derek Thompson (Substack) Sent
“The question, "what should I pay attention to?” is not a function of anything about my local environment.”
The Sad Unusability of Video Game Reviews
The Bottom Feeder (Substack) Filed
“It’s like a scale to measure which tastes better, a dream or gravity.”
How Refillables Filled Up Our Feeds
Creatorama Sent
Perhaps the only way to get the kind of reach [celebrities] used to get appearing on a few late night talk shows
The New Brand Folklore
BRXND Dispatch Sent
“Today, a brand is far less what it says about itself, and far more about what a wide ecosystem of third parties, both human and non-human, can find, trust, rank, recommend, and sell.”
Terminal Surrender
ABS Digital Art Sent
Every social media user is a day trader looking for God in the Like economy.
The Culture Recession with Kyle Raymond Fitzpatrick
Curious Attitude: Marketing and Culture in the Age of AI Sent
It's like every person has to be a creator slash actor, whatever, just to get a normal job. And so that means everything is overwhelming.
Please let me phone my podcasts app
Interconnected Filed
My perfect podcast app would be a long phone call in which I listen to the show and can also talk back to remember things.
What just happened to TheNumbers.com should worry us all
Stephen Follows Filed
“In case you haven’t guessed it yet, it’s linked to prediction markets.”
Obsessed
obsessed.ai Sent
Basically an AI-powered google alerts feed for topics you're obsessed with (waitlist)
On AI Search with Tom Critchlow
BRXND Dispatch Sent
“For example, I’ve worked with a brand that used to rank number one for all of their commercial terms on Google — drove a ton of traffic and revenue for years. They’re cited very heavily in AI search now, but often cited as, “by the way, don’t buy from these people.”
i drink wine, i don't count my sleep score, i never use AI, i cancelled my amazon AND I AM HAPPIER THAN YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The Trend Report Sent
“Everyone jumping off the bridge to feel the wind in their hair.”
There's nothing to watch on YouTube anymore
Garbage Day Sent
“They want videos to feel like a friend with perfect media training casually FaceTiming them from a professional newsroom.”
Gen Z doesn't want to live in public anymore
Yahoo Lifestyle Sent
“Only 5% said they wanted to be digital creators or influencers”
TASTESLOP
Nemesis Memos Sent
“The biggest thing people are missing about taste across the board is that it is relative, contextual, and social.”
Gen Z Cancels Streaming Subs for One Show, Don't Buy Full-Price Games
Variety Sent
“Platform loyalty is effectively dead.”
The Year the Monoculture Died
The Hollywood Reporter Sent
“No one knew it at the time, but 2014 — more precisely, Ellen DeGeneres' star-studded selfie moment — marked the peak of a monoculture that no longer exists.”
Mario and the New Fandom Flywheel
The Ankler Sent
“Two-thirds of Gen Zs spend more time with fan-created content than with the official titles”
Only 5% of Gen Zers said they’re cutting back on YouTube
Minda Smiley Sent
“Social media teams are going to have to get more serious about YouTube this year.”
YouTube Face Has Infected the Internet
The Ringer Sent
“Appleby didn’t know it at the time, but he was supercharging an entire visual genre of the internet—an undeniably effective and contagious one, but also one that would progressively become more loathed. He was the J. Robert Oppenheimer of YouTube Face.”
Young people are turning to old-school hobbies to get off their phones
Associated Press Sent
“It just really does allow you to shut off the rest of the world.”
The Obscure Media Theory That Explains '99% of Everything'
Derek Thompson Sent
“I’m very interested in a phenomenon that I call the antisocial century, the idea that for a variety of reasons, we are spending much more time alone. And that is having a bunch of second and third order effects.”
The Obscure Media Theory That Explains '99% of Everything'
Derek Thompson Sent
“I’m very interested in a phenomenon that I call the antisocial century, the idea that for a variety of reasons, we are spending much more time alone. And that is having a bunch of second and third order effects.”
The New Creator Economy Is Monetizing Your AI Brain
Rafat Ali Sent
“What if you could subscribe to a domain expert's AI brain the way you subscribe to their newsletter?”
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How Many Men Does It Take to Get a Man to Pick Up a Book?
Cultured Magazine Filed
“The most recent NEA survey found that, over the course of a year, a paltry quarter of men picked up a book of fiction.”
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What I've been working on all year
YouTube Filed
A creator pulls back the curtain on a year-long project, finally ready to share it.
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Kids too young for social media are secretly hanging out in NPR podcast comment sections on Spotify.
TikTok Sent
Aw ok mh,” “Gilgamesh quit and I’m crying,” and “Last Friday, I broke up with my GF.
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SLOPHUNTERS | The History of "That's Not Real Art"
YouTube Sent
Painters vs. photographers, musicians vs. talkies, model makers vs. CGI. This is funny, but it's worth remembering to separate critiques of process vs. critiques of volume and quality. There will always be more of everything (e.g., photos, writing, gen art), so a refinement of judgment will always follow an increase in output.
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The Lost Civic Life of Movie Rental Stores
The MIT Press Reader Sent
“In its early years, the video store became a third place where customers, retailers, and clerks met, talked, and shared a common experience of movies on videocassette.”
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This Is Why Every Video On YouTube Looks The Same
Adam Westbrook Sent
This is not how creativity works. Artists are usually fascinated by a whole range of different interests, but on YouTube we're being forced to pick one and commit.
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I don't like computer anymore
TikTok Sent
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This Cannes Film Cost $500,000 to Make. $400,000 Was AI Compute Costs
The Wall Street Journal Sent
“The individual prompts were, on average, 3,000 words each.”
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The Feed Is Fake
Vulture Sent
We’ve locked ourselves in the stupidest possible version of Plato’s cave, where what looks like the spontaneous consensus of the hive mind is often just shadows on the wall.
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Why Fashion Suddenly Loves Older Women
The New York Times Sent
“what we’re really seeing is that brands are increasingly embracing models with visible signs of age, such as gray hair or wrinkles”
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The Veteran Podcasters Hanging Up Their Headphones
The Wall Street Journal Sent
“Podcasters who spent the best part of a decade honing their craft and growing audiences are in a curious position: Burnt out or cast aside by fresh demands of the now thriving industry.”
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Being an influencer has replaced everything
Jason Pargin Sent
“There's a reason why Timoth Chalamet is spamming your feeds with viral little moments. Even at his level, it is required if you want to have any chance at all.”
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The 'clippers' who make internet stars viral
NPR Sent
“This is advertising that looks like authentic organic fandom.”