welcome to the new york review of newsletter discourse

Plus: an underrated rom-com that says more about our fetishization of magazine careerism than most!

Welcome to the Substack Criticism Corner 

Last week, Emily Sundberg took aim at the Substack effect on internet writing, i.e., that the ease of charging a literal penny for one’s thoughts has led to a lot of bad writing online: “There are a lot of people trying to monetize noise.” 

I don’t disagree with that part—money’s always ruining art and all—but I’m curious if the frustration she articulated is more with the generally dissolving bounds between professionalism and amateurism online (like what we’ve seen happen with photographers, models, or any mode of cultural production that can now be done with accessible tools and digital platforms; now everyone’s a writer, yes, is that necessarily terrible even if a lot of it is meh to mine own senses), or if it’s more so about the rampant incoherent tastemaker inflation, how everyone is charging $7/month for their debatably useful link recs (can’t imagine who) and what that’s doing to the discourse.