“I love Deez because it lets me feel close to New York media (in-the-know! jaded and grumpy! the right kind of argumentative!) without having to live there. Best of both worlds.” —Ann Friedman
“Delia is a one-woman magazine, subscribe to her Substack before they make her editor of Vanity Fair.” —Ben Smith, Semafor
“Every aging millennial needs younger millennials to explain culture to them. I trust Delia's curation and enjoy her analysis, and in a post-Twitter world, Deez Links helps me figure out what's worth reading and talking about and having a take on.” —Jasper Wang, Defector
“Delia is one of the best in the business. We all need more intelligence, wit, kindness, bullshit-detection and delight in our lives. She flicks the wrist, hits send, and serves up all five.” —Jonah Weiner, Blackbird Spyplane
“Looking at Substack posts can feel like comparing sandpaper samples. Delia's newsletter is one of the few worth paying for: provocative and spunky, and always timely but never pandering.” —Rachel Tashjian, The Washington Post
“Delia Cai is as keen an observer we have of our ever-unfolding New York media doomsdays. Deez Links is a must-read for anyone surfing the daily wave of absurdities and indignities that come with the times. I can almost argue that Deez Links is the one Substack in my life that actually doesn’t need an editor. Even if the Hate Read people need to find Jesus or the right 12-step program or…something.” —Matt Lynch, Vanity Fair
“Delia thinks about things smarter and better than everyone else. I subscribe to way too many emails and many of them say versions of the same things. Not Deez! It has a unique point of view and it makes my day/brain better.” —Casey Lewis, After School
“I never wanted to read about the media again until I discovered Deez Links. This place fills me with nostalgia and optimism, but it is also darkly hilarious in a way that separates it from thousands of other newsletters. Feels like one of the only newsletters that will survive (and flourish) after everyone stops paying for newsletters in a year or two." —A.J. Daulerio, The Small Bow
“There are few people who talk about the media industry the way I want to talk about it -- with skepticism, recognizing the ridiculousness of so much of it, and pointing out the things nobody else wants to point out. Deez Links is a magnet for smart people with great senses of humor, and she throws a killer party. I'm not sure if Substack can fact-check this, but I'm pretty sure I've opened every one of her newsletters within three minutes of receiving them.” —Emily Sundberg, Feed Me
“If you’re more interested in having a human recommend stuff to you than an algorithm, you should subscribe too. $7/mo or $70/yr seems a small price for humanity” —Shea Serrano
Deez Links is the blueprint for the funny, intellectual, gossipy, cool-person newsletter that so many people (and brands) are emulating now, and as the knockoffs get weaker, Delia only grows stronger. More essential than ever.
—Nick Catucci, GQ
“I open Deez Links the second it arrives and I'm never disappointed. Delia Cai has great ideas, great taste, and a great sense of humor, and I'll read anything and everything she offers me.” —Heather Havrilesky, Ask Polly
Deez Links is literally the newsletter that inspired me to start Garbage Day. I had been reading Delia's stuff and was obsessed and very quickly realized she made publishing a newsletter look way easier than it turned out to be. Her voice and her point of view are so sharp and are what make Deez Links truly essential reading. It's what I imagine all the cool group chats I'm not invited into feel like. —Ryan Broderick, Garbage Day
Deez Links is a culture and online fixation report by yours truly, Delia Cai. You may have read about us* in The New York Times, New York magazine, Vanity Fair and ELLE, or perhaps you’ve been subjected to the tweeting. Welcome!
I started Deez Links in 2016, back when I was an intern at Atlantic Media, where I was always trawling Twitter and eavesdropping jealously on all the editorial interns who actually got to like, write. This was right after I’d graduated from journalism school, right before the 2020s newsletter renaissance: I’d spend countless billable hours the O.G.s like The Ann Friedman Weekly, Ruster Foster’s Today in Tabs, and Caitlin Dewey’s Links I Would Gchat You If We Were Friends, who became my personal guides to the media landscape and the internet at large. So Deez Links began as a self-induced, post-grad-esque project to scout out cool things and practice what the elders call “blogging;” along the way, it blossomed into IRL friendships, a beautiful community, a heavenly run at BuzzFeed, enough confidence to finally write and publish my debut novel, and even the dream job at Vanity Fair. We had tote bags! We threw a party at The Ludlow! We had a very nice classifieds section!
Alas, as I’d learned even back in those halcyon days when I tried to drink an extra salary’s worth of Sprite at the Watergate cafeteria, media is a lot like Antarctic glaciers: pretty to look at, yet constantly in meltdown. The layoff stork got slotted my way, which honestly coincided right with a sense of burnout from the constant chum of onlineness. Like, wait, what is all this crap for? WHAT IS IT ALL FOR? What are we doing here???? Is anyone having fun???????? yOu kNoW iT’S FUNNY THAT IT’S CALLED “CONTENT” WHEN REALLY WE ALL FEEL VERY DIS—---etc.
Deez Links 2.0 is an attempt to figure that out—it’s a return to shooting off spry, chaotic takes and links into the metaphorical group chat, of course. But it’s also a broadening from media criticism/gossip/the esteemed thoughts of a 22-year-old into a greater project for considering culture at large and the particular conditions of online-ified life—as reviewed from at least the lens of a much wiser and haggard but still precocious, I think 30-year-old writer and critic living in New York. The original premise is the same: I will send you cool and worthy links—links that make the daily dredge feel worth it—and we will observe the passage of time and art and algorithmic ridiculousness together.
*It’s just me, officiál lit it girl (lol) Delia Cai, but the royal “we” helped sell Classified Ads for a couple of years, and I’m not not into revisiting that…
