Just Some Goddamn Links
I am a disappointment to you and a disappointment to myself.
One week into this thing and already my dude mails one in. Shameful.
Actually, I’ve wanted to write about the weird and very welcome renaissance of blogging that has been taking place during [this thing], which I am corrupting with my own filthy, stinky newsletter.
It’s not just that people are home and have more time, though that’s pretty obviously catalyst #1. As layoffs have hit the media industry, as they seem to every quarter now, a lot of journalists and other online freaks have taken to blogging as a kind of shared motivational tool, or maybe the right analogy is survival measure. Most of these blogs live on substack, since nobody goes to “websites,” and most of them share visible obvious nostalgia for the golden age of Gawker - conversational in tone, dripping with dark comedy and righteous anger, and based on a presumption that no topic is more or less important than another.
In that category, I’d recommend the following newsletters:
Unnamed Temporary Sports Blog/UnDeadspin
At the start of the year, as Deadspin was collapsing, a bunch of alumni (Drew Magary, David Roth, Paul Blest, etc.) decided to do a shared blog for one week, which they called the Unnamed Temporary Sports Blog. They brought it back for another week in early quarantine, and dropped articles about pancakes, old quarterbacks, and eating glue sticks. It was glorious. Now, this twitter account just posts all articles that end up on the web by former deadspin writers. It’s like a directory for the best/dumbest blog posts. I love it.
Also basically Deadspin in that its run by Samantha Grosso, Blest, and Katherine Kruger. The topics vary a lot, but basically expect it to be commentary on what stories are trending in a given day.
On the other hand, I follow a number of newsletters that dive into very specific topics, such as:
A newsletter about memes and internet culture. I particularly enjoyed a recent deep dive into Cuddlecore, a microgenre of art that idealizes “netflix and chill type” modern romance.
A daily image and short profile of a saint. Look, I’m a lapsed Catholic I will never stop fetishizing the weird mythos and lore of my childhood NEVER.
There are a number of very good basketball podcasts, blogs, and newsletters that dive deep into the game and its players and stories, but if you just want to know exactly what happened yesterday in basketball, GMIB is what’s up. Tom Ziller always includes a brief digression at the top about the state of the game, the league, or the country that is always worth reading, then compiles all the links worth mentioning.
Finally, there is Mr. Boop:
On February 28th Alec Robbins, a television producer and artist in LA, began a comic strip about what it would be like to be married to Betty Boop. Today he posted his 100th strip. In between then, Mr. Boop (a literal stand-in for Robbins) has struggled with performance anxiety, had threesomes with a variety of cartoon characters, was shot by a sniper rifle wielded by Sonic the Hedgehog, and gone into a coma. It’s the drama we’re all living for.