Sublime

Patreon’s strongest pitch is that it’s independent from the major tech platforms. By now, every creator has been burned by the algorithmic feed or knows someone who has.

The trouble with the internet, Mr. Williams says, is that it rewards extremes. Say you’re driving down the road and see a car crash. Of course you look. Everyone looks. The internet interprets behavior like this to mean everyone is asking for car crashes, so it tries to supply them.

But again, this is a problem unique to Western social media design. In conflating the social graph and the interest graph, we've introduced a content matching problem that needn't exist. I don't get upset that my friends don't follow me on TikTok or Reddit or what I think of as purer interest and/or entertainment networks. It's very clear in those ... See more

To take the most famous example, the root of Facebook's churn issues began when their graph burgeoned to encompass everyone in one's life. As noted above, just because we are friends with someone doesn't mean we want to see everything they post about in our News Feed. In the other direction, having many more people from all spheres of our lives fol... See more

In a non-tokenized subscription world, I have no real incentive to help the media brand grow. As such, I may be perfectly happy to share my subscription with other people, set an auto-forward on the newsletter I pay for, and so on.

I decided I won’t sacrifice my health, my time, or social hours with friends and family to keep up with content. Over the last few years, I’ve accepted that this tidal wave of cultural content is passing me by, and will continue to do so as long as its pushed out at this breakneck speed and volume.