There's a huge difference between buying books and reading them.
I suspect the ratio between the number of books Americans buy per year and the number of those books that were actually *read* is more depressing than anyone can possibly imagine.
You suspect wrong. I read quite a lot, but it's primarily rereading books I already own. And I already own quite a lot of books. What few new books I buy every year now are almost wholly in another language, and are intended to help strengthen my skills in that language.
And yes, Freddie, I do read them.
Always nice to take digs at your subscribers though, Freddie (?)
Freddie last week: "Man, my blog isn't gaining paid subscribers, just as I've added a huge amount of cost to my life ... wife, kid, medical stuff, house ..."
Freddie this week: "Let's snark on the paid subscribers to show whose blog this really is"
OK, man.
Incidentally, Freddie - I support writers I read. Even when I disagree with them. I bought, and read, "Cult of Smart" because I was halfway worried you'd starve to death if it flopped.
Glad you're doing so well now you can give me a middle finger on your blog. Great stuff.
You said `I'll be that guy' and then choose to act affronted?
More books on more shelves seems like a good thing to me. They'll get read by someone---maybe, hopefully---eventually. But without them being there it's far less likely that they'll be read, that someone will develop the interest to read, or that people will continue writing them.
But, hey, I buy far more books per year than I read.
"I, personally, don't read (all? most? any?) of the books that I buy, but I *might* read them years from now" doesn't undercut my point in quite the way I think you may think it does.
The point is that the volume of books sold is not really the killer KPI of the future of reading itself that people might think it is.
To be fair to this point, there is a trend in printing multiple versions and special editions of high selling books (e.g., romantasy) so that you can collect all the cover art. Some book genres are trending toward the comic book aesthetic of collecting editions and maintaining pristine copies, and I do wonder what the market is for that.
Old people, which now, horrifyingly, includes Gen X'ers like me. My library includes the originals and Penguin translations of stuff I took while I was grinding out Latin proficiency, an embarrassing amount of epic poetry, a whole lot of history, and some "junk" reading (books about Black Sabbath and the NBA, mainly).
Some fiction, but mostly from the 20th century. Nikos Kazantzakis, anyone?
Mathematicians own books. Mathematicians are bibliophiles. Math books are ipso facto obscure and forbidding and so typographically florid that it's fun just to riffle through the pages admiring all the Greek letters and integral signs. There are YouTube videos that consist entirely of math book enthusiasts oohing and aahing over tables of contents and chapter headings. One grows familiar with endearing quirks: the gradual evolution of predicate calculus notation over the 20th century, old Dover reprints that use a capital "I" for the letter 1, messy criss-crossed triangles dating back to the days of Euclid, and bright fire-engine yellow Springer hardback covers that strike fear into even the sturdiest of souls. For learning math, being online has many advantages (and 3blue1brown is hands-down the best site on the internet), but there is a visual and tactile joy peculiar to holding a book full of equations.
It's odd to see book ownership as some sign of intellectual prowess, when---in fact---all that is measured by book ownership is wealth. And yet, for some reason, people who would never openly flaunt the number of extra rooms they enjoy at home will expound endlessly, as we are seeing here, on how very very many books they have.
Books take up massive amounts of living space, with the accompanying square footage and utility usage connected to that space. They an obviously not-green form of media, requiring not only the requisite (climate-controlled) space but ample light for reading. And, of course, while they go unread for years on somebody's shelf they do so at the cost of being duplicated on a nearby library's shelf.
I am not immune to romanticizing the sights and smells associated with tree-based media; still, surely we can see these impulses for what they aren't---intellectual---but rather what they are. The types of feelings bibliophiles so proudly announce toward paper monographs are, on closer inspection, really rather carnal and base.
In short, give all but five of your books to a library. Get an e-reader. Downsize or house a bum (Cisneros style) in the extra space.
Or, continue to enjoy your paper fetish, and consider keeping your fetishes to yourself.
I haven’t read nearly every book there is. Why would I re-read a book, rather than read a new one? Only if it was truly, truly, truly important to me. So I keep very few, they go to friends or op shop. Bookshelf is nothing to show off tho.
"I don’t, in fact, think calling people ugly on the internet constitutes resistance, and ex-Gawker Media people’s habit of retconning the place into a social justice factory is laughable"
I was a mild fan of Gawker and its spawn when they still existed, and sad to see them go after the Hulk Hogan thing. But every time one of the ex-Gawker people rhapsodizes about their brave, beautiful, dead baby, and how much worse off we all are now because they're no longer defaming people, for justice, it makes me retroactively hate that whole scene a little more.
Gawker was funny in the way Spy Magazine & that brilliant National Lampoon cover—"Buy this magazine or we'll shoot this dog!"—was funny. That's why I liked it. It was obvious satire. HUMOR monetizes (although not as much as FOMO & sex), and online cruelty is in the eye of the beholder. Didn't approve of Gawker? It was pretty easy to avoid. You didn't even have to turn off your computer. You just had to resist the temptation to log on to its site. It never achieved the status of Must Read Internet.
Cruel humor can be hilarious if done right. Spy did it really well, as did National Lampoon sometimes.
There was also an obscure student newspaper/online comic called "Space Moose" published by a guy who was a student at a university in Alberta that specialized in cruel humor, and it was often hilarious.
Provided your tastes can include the mere possibility that cruel humor can even be funny in the first place, that is. At some point, western civilization swung hard towards "you can't laugh about that".
“…where the jokes land but don’t seek out vulnerability for its own sake, where pop culture is treated seriously without being worshipped, and where writers are allowed to be both critics and fans without being reduced to brand ambassadors. A site that still believes in making enemies when necessary, but doesn’t mistake bitterness for integrity. A site that knows how to say something true and still be fun.”
I feel like this describes what Vice used to be in the 2000’s, with a dash of lewd provocation mixed in.
Really love these writing media essays. I was a Bill Simmons reader from the Page 2 era, and while I still listen to the podcast, no one has done more to popularize the bastardization of Art with a capital A than him. He didn’t invent the term ‘content’ to describe any and all media, but he’s definitely been the number 1 contributor to its popularity.
This essay was so brilliant I subscribed. I appreciate your work because you have a bit of that ideal hybrid you describe at the end.
I hope Rob Harvilla reads this. I adore his podcast, but I want him to stop joking about how he used to be rude and start being rude again. Just a lil rude. I do think he takes pop seriously without worshipping it, but projects an appearance of worshipping it.
Thanks for pointing out the Ringer's core flaws (Spotify and gambling revenue) and for pointing out that a few of their writers are worth reading.
If you are trying to use the Ringer to illustrate major challenges within the media ecosystem perhaps more useful to compare it with Grantland and the Athletic. With Grantland Simmons provided a platform to a lot more good writers, and provided much better coverage of the overall sports world combined with reasonable pop culture stuff. The Ringer seemed to be a deliberate attempt to cuts costs by narrowing the sports focus to NBA fanatics, NFL gamblers and the pop culture stuff under 30s care about (and related to the latter the podcast emphasis you mentioned). For anyone who cares about quality sportswriting the Athletic is 100X better than what the Ringer offers, and allows you to easily focus on the sports/teams/issues you care most about. But the result was a clear demonstration that appealing to an older demographic that appreciated good writing and in-depth coverage was financially hopeless. Alas
Grantland always seemed to me like the 2010s personified - it was supposed to be Big and Important but not too serious with a decided internet sensibility.
Gawker was more like the personification of the 2000s: snarky and knowing, and hipsterish.
It's hard for me to think about Gawker and the 2010s without considering Drew Magary, who seemed distinctive even from his corner at Deadspin (I think he had some crossover episodes at some point?)
Everything else about that institution is tears in rain, for me.
Under every single sentence of that are the words, "It should have been me instead". I've got a free subscription to Tunison's Sunstack and it is an increasingly disturbing read. He's going to waste his entire life bitter that he's 1)Not working in an industry which doesn't exist anymore or 2)Not a podcast bro shilling for gambling companies.
Deadspin obviously had a more narrow beat (even in rarely sticking to its nominal beat) but tonally it feels like during its heyday it found a happy medium between Gawker and The Ringer.
It intended to be as mean about sports as Gawker was about the New York media scene, but there's always just something inescapably good-natured about their sort of sports bro, it's the wrong breed for a guard dog.
It wasn't perfect, and apparently something something cancelled (I was distracted by the precipitous collapse of democracy), but Deadspin had its moments, I think, fairly unquestionably.
Well. I don't think I've ever read something unkind written by you. You're so earnest and careful about being precise - but never mean. If you criticize it's because you genuinely believe something is wrong. I have an mental image of you stuffing your foot into a shoe that's a little bit too small just because you put someone else into it and feel obligated to treat yourself the same way.
Gawker alumni Choire Sicha, who I recall being mostly decent, and Emily Gould, who, well, hmm.. both of them ended up at New York Magazine (he quite awhile ago, she recently) . FWIW.
I mostly *loved* reading Gawker. The Ringer doesn't ring any bells to me. Not positive I've ever consumed any Ringer content at all.
As someone who doesn't know what either of these media companies are, I was rather entertained and even fascinated by your description of both. So thank you for that.
To throw my sort-of unbiased hat in the ring, I would say I would prefer the former (Gawker) over the latter. Mostly because it at least was not trying to be a bro to corporate hegemony over mass media. There's this line you wrote:
"...a world that’s structured to maximize friendliness and minimize friction."
Yup. I have to say it is unendingly exasperating to see this everywhere now. From every podcast carbon-copy intro pretending they are your old high school buddy ringing your doorbell just now, to the commercials that constantly and gaily encourage you to "be your best self" while opening your wallet for them. Even the legacy news station anchors act out this awkward "pal" performance, like they invite you to their backyard BBQ every weekend. It's so damn fake and performative and scripted, everyone smiling happily and giddily cajoling you to participate in their exuberant celebration of wellness...brought to you by Better Help. Yay!!!
[Hurl]...it's like they are all trying to emulate the characters in Brave New World, but with this huge corporate monetization apparatus on top instead of the state. No wonder more people are trying to move off the grid, if only to get away from the constant HappyFunTime vibe of modern media. It's gross. And I'd take the occasional asshole blogger over this any day.
Also, thanks for the Neil Postman reference. Never heard of him so I looked him up, fascinating guy.
Yeah, I'll be that guy:
There's a huge difference between buying books and reading them.
I suspect the ratio between the number of books Americans buy per year and the number of those books that were actually *read* is more depressing than anyone can possibly imagine.
And I suspect you say that because you don't read and you have status anxiety over it
You suspect wrong. I read quite a lot, but it's primarily rereading books I already own. And I already own quite a lot of books. What few new books I buy every year now are almost wholly in another language, and are intended to help strengthen my skills in that language.
And yes, Freddie, I do read them.
Always nice to take digs at your subscribers though, Freddie (?)
Cool but rude, as they say.
Freddie last week: "Man, my blog isn't gaining paid subscribers, just as I've added a huge amount of cost to my life ... wife, kid, medical stuff, house ..."
Freddie this week: "Let's snark on the paid subscribers to show whose blog this really is"
OK, man.
Incidentally, Freddie - I support writers I read. Even when I disagree with them. I bought, and read, "Cult of Smart" because I was halfway worried you'd starve to death if it flopped.
Glad you're doing so well now you can give me a middle finger on your blog. Great stuff.
You said `I'll be that guy' and then choose to act affronted?
More books on more shelves seems like a good thing to me. They'll get read by someone---maybe, hopefully---eventually. But without them being there it's far less likely that they'll be read, that someone will develop the interest to read, or that people will continue writing them.
But, hey, I buy far more books per year than I read.
"I, personally, don't read (all? most? any?) of the books that I buy, but I *might* read them years from now" doesn't undercut my point in quite the way I think you may think it does.
The point is that the volume of books sold is not really the killer KPI of the future of reading itself that people might think it is.
To be fair to this point, there is a trend in printing multiple versions and special editions of high selling books (e.g., romantasy) so that you can collect all the cover art. Some book genres are trending toward the comic book aesthetic of collecting editions and maintaining pristine copies, and I do wonder what the market is for that.
I just cut out of the middle of Bertrand's *History* to read seven *Murderbot*s and I believe this proves that the quantitative method may be flawed.
Also who owns books, that's weird
Old people, which now, horrifyingly, includes Gen X'ers like me. My library includes the originals and Penguin translations of stuff I took while I was grinding out Latin proficiency, an embarrassing amount of epic poetry, a whole lot of history, and some "junk" reading (books about Black Sabbath and the NBA, mainly).
Some fiction, but mostly from the 20th century. Nikos Kazantzakis, anyone?
I have copies of Zorba and his retelling of the Odyssey on the shelf, among a couple thousand other books.
Mathematicians own books. Mathematicians are bibliophiles. Math books are ipso facto obscure and forbidding and so typographically florid that it's fun just to riffle through the pages admiring all the Greek letters and integral signs. There are YouTube videos that consist entirely of math book enthusiasts oohing and aahing over tables of contents and chapter headings. One grows familiar with endearing quirks: the gradual evolution of predicate calculus notation over the 20th century, old Dover reprints that use a capital "I" for the letter 1, messy criss-crossed triangles dating back to the days of Euclid, and bright fire-engine yellow Springer hardback covers that strike fear into even the sturdiest of souls. For learning math, being online has many advantages (and 3blue1brown is hands-down the best site on the internet), but there is a visual and tactile joy peculiar to holding a book full of equations.
It's odd to see book ownership as some sign of intellectual prowess, when---in fact---all that is measured by book ownership is wealth. And yet, for some reason, people who would never openly flaunt the number of extra rooms they enjoy at home will expound endlessly, as we are seeing here, on how very very many books they have.
Books take up massive amounts of living space, with the accompanying square footage and utility usage connected to that space. They an obviously not-green form of media, requiring not only the requisite (climate-controlled) space but ample light for reading. And, of course, while they go unread for years on somebody's shelf they do so at the cost of being duplicated on a nearby library's shelf.
I am not immune to romanticizing the sights and smells associated with tree-based media; still, surely we can see these impulses for what they aren't---intellectual---but rather what they are. The types of feelings bibliophiles so proudly announce toward paper monographs are, on closer inspection, really rather carnal and base.
In short, give all but five of your books to a library. Get an e-reader. Downsize or house a bum (Cisneros style) in the extra space.
Or, continue to enjoy your paper fetish, and consider keeping your fetishes to yourself.
I haven’t read nearly every book there is. Why would I re-read a book, rather than read a new one? Only if it was truly, truly, truly important to me. So I keep very few, they go to friends or op shop. Bookshelf is nothing to show off tho.
My God, this is one of the most anti-human comments I've seen yet on Substack. Please tell me you forgot the /s at the end.
Well, you can also look at library circulation.
These aren't purchased but borrowed.
https://www.overdrive.com/
My God, this:
"I don’t, in fact, think calling people ugly on the internet constitutes resistance, and ex-Gawker Media people’s habit of retconning the place into a social justice factory is laughable"
I was a mild fan of Gawker and its spawn when they still existed, and sad to see them go after the Hulk Hogan thing. But every time one of the ex-Gawker people rhapsodizes about their brave, beautiful, dead baby, and how much worse off we all are now because they're no longer defaming people, for justice, it makes me retroactively hate that whole scene a little more.
Gawker was funny in the way Spy Magazine & that brilliant National Lampoon cover—"Buy this magazine or we'll shoot this dog!"—was funny. That's why I liked it. It was obvious satire. HUMOR monetizes (although not as much as FOMO & sex), and online cruelty is in the eye of the beholder. Didn't approve of Gawker? It was pretty easy to avoid. You didn't even have to turn off your computer. You just had to resist the temptation to log on to its site. It never achieved the status of Must Read Internet.
Never heard of the Ringer.
Cruel humor can be hilarious if done right. Spy did it really well, as did National Lampoon sometimes.
There was also an obscure student newspaper/online comic called "Space Moose" published by a guy who was a student at a university in Alberta that specialized in cruel humor, and it was often hilarious.
Provided your tastes can include the mere possibility that cruel humor can even be funny in the first place, that is. At some point, western civilization swung hard towards "you can't laugh about that".
I mean, it was easy to avoid if they weren't publishing your location/sex tape/affair/outing you to the world. Somewhat harder if they were.
And a moment of silence for that beloved racist Hulk Hogan!
Do you have the complete list of People Who Aren't Entitled To Privacy to hand, or is it an off-the-cuff thing?
Anyone who pays money to a publicist.
So, if someone tries to make anything at all public, they don't have the right to any privacy whatsoever?
More like anyone who pays to get info about themselves into the media doesn't get to choose which info or what media.
(I did think Gawker should have kept hands off Peter Thiel)
“…where the jokes land but don’t seek out vulnerability for its own sake, where pop culture is treated seriously without being worshipped, and where writers are allowed to be both critics and fans without being reduced to brand ambassadors. A site that still believes in making enemies when necessary, but doesn’t mistake bitterness for integrity. A site that knows how to say something true and still be fun.”
I feel like this describes what Vice used to be in the 2000’s, with a dash of lewd provocation mixed in.
Really love these writing media essays. I was a Bill Simmons reader from the Page 2 era, and while I still listen to the podcast, no one has done more to popularize the bastardization of Art with a capital A than him. He didn’t invent the term ‘content’ to describe any and all media, but he’s definitely been the number 1 contributor to its popularity.
This essay was so brilliant I subscribed. I appreciate your work because you have a bit of that ideal hybrid you describe at the end.
I hope Rob Harvilla reads this. I adore his podcast, but I want him to stop joking about how he used to be rude and start being rude again. Just a lil rude. I do think he takes pop seriously without worshipping it, but projects an appearance of worshipping it.
Thanks for pointing out the Ringer's core flaws (Spotify and gambling revenue) and for pointing out that a few of their writers are worth reading.
If you are trying to use the Ringer to illustrate major challenges within the media ecosystem perhaps more useful to compare it with Grantland and the Athletic. With Grantland Simmons provided a platform to a lot more good writers, and provided much better coverage of the overall sports world combined with reasonable pop culture stuff. The Ringer seemed to be a deliberate attempt to cuts costs by narrowing the sports focus to NBA fanatics, NFL gamblers and the pop culture stuff under 30s care about (and related to the latter the podcast emphasis you mentioned). For anyone who cares about quality sportswriting the Athletic is 100X better than what the Ringer offers, and allows you to easily focus on the sports/teams/issues you care most about. But the result was a clear demonstration that appealing to an older demographic that appreciated good writing and in-depth coverage was financially hopeless. Alas
Grantland always seemed to me like the 2010s personified - it was supposed to be Big and Important but not too serious with a decided internet sensibility.
Gawker was more like the personification of the 2000s: snarky and knowing, and hipsterish.
This is a great piece, but I wouldn't be true to my undying allegiance to cable TV over streaming if I didn't correct this:
"like how you turn on MTV and Comedy Central and E! and they’re all running the same Law & Order reruns. "
MTV, CC, and E! do not run L&O reruns. That honor goes to Sundance, WE, and BBC.
It's hard for me to think about Gawker and the 2010s without considering Drew Magary, who seemed distinctive even from his corner at Deadspin (I think he had some crossover episodes at some point?)
Everything else about that institution is tears in rain, for me.
I'm just gonna leave this here.
https://miketunison.substack.com/p/fun-with-drew-magary
Under every single sentence of that are the words, "It should have been me instead". I've got a free subscription to Tunison's Sunstack and it is an increasingly disturbing read. He's going to waste his entire life bitter that he's 1)Not working in an industry which doesn't exist anymore or 2)Not a podcast bro shilling for gambling companies.
Deadspin obviously had a more narrow beat (even in rarely sticking to its nominal beat) but tonally it feels like during its heyday it found a happy medium between Gawker and The Ringer.
It intended to be as mean about sports as Gawker was about the New York media scene, but there's always just something inescapably good-natured about their sort of sports bro, it's the wrong breed for a guard dog.
It wasn't perfect, and apparently something something cancelled (I was distracted by the precipitous collapse of democracy), but Deadspin had its moments, I think, fairly unquestionably.
Well. I don't think I've ever read something unkind written by you. You're so earnest and careful about being precise - but never mean. If you criticize it's because you genuinely believe something is wrong. I have an mental image of you stuffing your foot into a shoe that's a little bit too small just because you put someone else into it and feel obligated to treat yourself the same way.
I think you hit exactly on the why The Press Box is so weak: it's trying (and failing) to split the difference between Ringer and Gawker.
Well, if nothing else, thank you for so personally and quickly addressing my comment from "What Do You Guys Want This Thing to Be"
Luckly there're some of us willing to pay for something better. Like, for example, this substack.
Gawker alumni Choire Sicha, who I recall being mostly decent, and Emily Gould, who, well, hmm.. both of them ended up at New York Magazine (he quite awhile ago, she recently) . FWIW.
I mostly *loved* reading Gawker. The Ringer doesn't ring any bells to me. Not positive I've ever consumed any Ringer content at all.
As for books, my Kindle app is pretty much fired up every day. I'm always reading a book. Including yours soon, Freddie.
As someone who doesn't know what either of these media companies are, I was rather entertained and even fascinated by your description of both. So thank you for that.
To throw my sort-of unbiased hat in the ring, I would say I would prefer the former (Gawker) over the latter. Mostly because it at least was not trying to be a bro to corporate hegemony over mass media. There's this line you wrote:
"...a world that’s structured to maximize friendliness and minimize friction."
Yup. I have to say it is unendingly exasperating to see this everywhere now. From every podcast carbon-copy intro pretending they are your old high school buddy ringing your doorbell just now, to the commercials that constantly and gaily encourage you to "be your best self" while opening your wallet for them. Even the legacy news station anchors act out this awkward "pal" performance, like they invite you to their backyard BBQ every weekend. It's so damn fake and performative and scripted, everyone smiling happily and giddily cajoling you to participate in their exuberant celebration of wellness...brought to you by Better Help. Yay!!!
[Hurl]...it's like they are all trying to emulate the characters in Brave New World, but with this huge corporate monetization apparatus on top instead of the state. No wonder more people are trying to move off the grid, if only to get away from the constant HappyFunTime vibe of modern media. It's gross. And I'd take the occasional asshole blogger over this any day.
Also, thanks for the Neil Postman reference. Never heard of him so I looked him up, fascinating guy.