Original Ordinary Gentleman Erik Kain starts Substack, as does Freddie deBoer

33 thoughts on “Original Ordinary Gentleman Erik Kain starts Substack, as does Freddie deBoer”

1. Also, an enjoyable thread on how Substack is bad:

   Substack is a dangerous direct threat to traditional news media. But more importantly? It is a threat to journalism.

   — Dr. Sarah T. Roberts (@ubiquity75) February 28, 2021

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   1. Taibbi had a response on his substack, which I find worthwhile.Report

      1. That’s a pretty good rant.Report

         1. eh. I was with him until he started talking about how the entire US media industry is actually a CIA front. Then I started wondering whether this was less a gem uncovered in the desert than it was the time lining up with a stopped clock’s hands.Report

2. This substack thing might just work…at recreating blogs from 15 years ago. But blogs were good then so gonna subscribe.Report

   1. A hell of a lot more monetizable than blogs 15 years ago, it seems (PUNCH THE MONKEY AND WIN A FREE IPOD).

      This lets you *EASILY* give $5 a month directly to Freddie (minus some overhead costs, of course) and you get to read posts that people who haven’t shelled out don’t get to read.Report

   2. The fact that they have added a RSS style reader in the past month or so is wonderful.Report

      1. I DIDN’T KNOW THAT

         Added to my favorites bar!Report

         1. Yeah, I randomly saw it when I went to the site last week. No fanfare or anything but makes it actually usable as an effective publisher.

            As one of my favorite financial writers (its Matt Levine, bloomberg) likes to gloss: FinTech is just tech rediscovering each step of finance, one decade at a time.

            Now it is tech just rediscovering tech from 15 years ago, and rebusiness modelling it.Report

      2. Google reader lives!!!!!! Okay that is to much to hope for.Report

      3. It’s funny how after twenty years we’ve basically gone back to the mid-2000s Internet, back when Paypal was really getting rolling and everyone had “virtual tip jars”…Report

3. Seems like the YOUNGER GENERATION of twitch and streaming are totally comfortable with paying for content. It’s just us Xer’s who are pushing back on the sellouts.

   See: chess streaming for IMs

   See: Sodoku solvers

   See: well you get the point.Report

   1. My only gripe is I wish you could do some subscription bundling. I subscribe to Taibbi and Andrew Sullivan and there are others I wouldn’t mind (Yglesias, Greenwald, probably Freddie) but it starts to add up a la carté.Report

      1. “The Sexism Bundle”
         “The Anti-Anti-Wrongthink Bundle”
         “The Shitty Outflanking Bundle”Report

         1. Ha! Stop projecting!

            I meant more like pick any 5 for the price of 4, 10 for the price of 8, something like that.Report

            1. I am sure substack is working hard in the background to do this. Just think, in 3 years they will have invented…literally…the paper.Report

         2. Holding out for “The Horseshoe Bundle”Report

      2. Amen, I shelled out for Sully and I’m going to have to seriously think about doing the same for our alumns but I’d love to also read Yglesias and Klein but I dunno if I can justify shelling out for all of them.

         That said I’m delighted Freddie was given such a nice offer by SS, I was starting to worry a bit for him.Report

         1. Yeah his situation is precarious. The problem for him is he tends to be a flame thrower who sees value in hyperbole. We don’t have a shortage of that. A lot of internet conflict is bad for him. Hope he has learned how to cope. He had previously said he couldn’t handle much public internet discourse.Report

            1. That’s my worry for him. He’s said writing this way isn’t good for him but a dude has to make a living.

               And God(dess?)damn can the guy write. I don’t know if I agree with even a quarter of what he writes but man oh man can he write!Report

         2. Likewise. And honestly with Sully, but for the podcast, I’d feel like I was getting a bit ripped off with only a single post a week.Report

            1. Agreed. I cannot STAND podcasts, so really I shelled out the cash just to get a faint taste of the old days of the Dish for one day a week. But I’m in my forties now and a momentary feeling of being in my late twenties and thirties is worth the dukats… for now at least.Report

               1. I am not normally a podcast person either but I’ve found his to be pretty good in that he manages to get people to come in and have a lively but civil debate. He needs to work on his hosting skills though. Too much talking over the guest, but it seems to be improving a little each week.

                  I’ve been listening to them during my weekly family down time when my son has his nap. Absent that standing appointment I’m not sure I’d get to it.Report

                  1. I for one have no desire to go back to the radio days. Eff podcasts.Report

                  2. I think that the point of them is that you don’t, you know, listen to a podcast period.

                     You listen to a podcast while you are doing something else. Driving to work? Podcast! Playing pinball on the computer with the sound turned down? Podcast! Shelving books? Podcast!

                     You don’t just sit down to listen to the radio.

                     But you do listen to the radio when you’re doing something that occupies your hands without fully occupying your mind.

                     5K? Podcast!Report

                  3. I think of corporate meetings as pod-casts…

                     Reading Substack? Corporate podcast!Report

                  4. My difficulty is that if I am interested in what they’re talking about then I sit still and listen to it while chafing at how slowly they’re talking and how garbled it is. Whereas if I’m not interested in what they’re talking about then I do whatever else I’m doing and hear -nothing- from the podcast at all until I hit a lull and go “why am I listening to this garbage music?”

                     I have the same problem with radio- which is why I read blogs. I really dislike podcasts.Report

                  5. When podcasts first came out — and I thought you needed an iPod to listen to them and I didn’t have an iPod — I was super annoyed that they never published transcripts of them so I could read them on the toilet…er… train.

                     Then I learned you could listen to podcasts all sorts of other ways. And I got mad that all articles weren’t converted to podcasts I could listen to them in the shower…errr.. the car.

                     And at some point I realized they’re just recorded versions of radio shows with more variance in the format. And I wonder why we ever called them podcasts to begin with.Report

      3. Ok Xer.Report

4. I don’t (or haven’t yet) paid for any substack-ish or paid blog content. But if Freddie would restore his old content from his deleted blogs starting from 2012 or so, I’d make an exception in a heartbeat. Shit was straight fire.Report

5. Geez, moderation again. Are we still doing Stupid WordPress Tricks?Report

   1. You’re free!Report

6. A couple of rants from Freddie.Report

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