The lonely, plastic internet, factory settings on marriage and children, and how to gain power
This week’s digest is guest edited by Sundberg, who writes , a daily business publication on Substack. One of Emily’s most successful posts to date is “Five men start a ‘girls-only’ club in NYC,” investigating a dubious invite-only sublet startup. If you’re into Emily’s curated edition today, be sure to subscribe to her Substack for a regular roundup of internet subcultures revealed through how they spend money.
The most common question I get from readers, investors, and friends is how I get up and write Feed Me every day. The answer is complicated, but a big part of it is discovering really interesting stories from different corners of the internet—often written by Substack writers.
I have a fairly intimate relationship with my (tens of thousands of) readers and, over the years, I’ve developed a pretty solid barometer reading of what they want in their inbox every morning. My newsletter is about culture through the lens of business—I think you can tell a lot about society by the way people are spending money. My favorite writers are honest, unfiltered, and say things that aren’t a re-work of what everyone else on the internet is saying. These are a few of my favorites from the past week.
TECHNOLOGY
I found my YouTube channel from 2013
“I met Arden and a bunch of her college friends a few months ago—they asked me to grab lunch to talk about Substack and life, and we’ve talked almost daily since. I love reading what really smart young people write from their campus bedrooms. It seems like a world away, but we’re all staring at the same internet. She recently wrote about growing up online (something I think about constantly) after finding her childhood YouTube channel”
—
in
The internet now can feel like a lonely, plastic place. The twelve-year-olds have managers. I can’t watch anything without being pushed a new product or habit or trend that will improve my life. Collectively, we made Charli D’Amelio, a regular girl from Connecticut, into the most famous person in the world. We watched her pull her family members into her spotlight, and now we passively track (if you are still paying attention at all) her slow descent. I feel bad for her, having uprooted her high school life to live in a stark-white L.A. condo and launch a dozen random businesses, because her moment was so fleeting (how could she have known?). But maybe it’s also a blessing. She’s only nineteen and can still go to college if she wants to.
RELATIONSHIPS
An adjustment to my factory settings on marriage and children
“I first became acquainted with David’s newsletter when I saw his name in my comments section, often contributing thoughtful additions to conversations there. I later found out that I know his son through past work lives. I was struck by the vulnerability in a recent post about parenthood and marriage as cultural constructs, especially with his impressive background in a finance career”
—
in
I’ve discovered that on many subjects, including marriage and children, I’ve needed to adjust my settings, sometimes with a violent shove, as some of them have been there so long they’ve rusted in place. These settings are what logicians would call my “priors,” my ingrained views of the world.
BUSINESS
Power, and ways to (practically) get more
“I met Troy about a month ago, over a pot of coffee at the Crosby Street Hotel (where all life-changing meetings occur). He was introduced to me by a mutual friend (who I think he alludes to here), and he’s made me feel better about my addiction to work and ridiculously high standards. I was recently on his podcast! I really liked this letter about power, the media industry, and efficiency”
—
in
We used to think of business founders as the domain of a rarefied entrepreneurial class. You either had it or you didn’t. This is nonsense. The owner pool is much bigger than we thought, particularly when we define it broadly as independent control of a revenue stream and the means of making it flow. At some point in your career, especially now that company loyalty no longer really exists, you may need to become an owner. The asset is you. Ownership is ultimate power.
FOOD
Lemon pepper pasta with browned butter
“Being an internet-famous person is weird. You can get stopped by people on the street in the city you live in, but there can be entire states that have no idea you exist. Alison wrote honestly about personal evolution as a public person in her last letter, and I found it refreshing. She puts language to life (not only cooking!) in such a clear way”
—
in
While creative and personal evolution is necessary, it is difficult to evolve in real time, especially publicly. People notoriously hate change! I personally crave it, generally feel invigorated by it. Change is growth, change is brave, change is scary, change is exhilarating. So I am changing! We are changing—figuring it out in a new space, sort of in real time. What this version of Home Movies looks like, feels like, sounds like.
CULTURE
Terror and mundanity in a makeup bag
“Jessica is one of the best beauty writers on Substack, which is a big deal because so much of beauty writing today is shaped by advertisers. She has been writing about beauty culture’s relationship to politics since she started on Substack, and it’s always thought-provoking. I learn a lot about people’s appetites by reading the debates in the comments section. This particular post generated a lot of buzz; I couldn’t stop seeing quoted notes about it in my feed”
—
in
It made me think of a scene from The Zone of Interest, a recent film about the Holocaust centered on Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss and his family. In the film, the commandant’s wife applies red lipstick looted from a Jewish home, admires herself in the mirror, smacks her lips. She later asks her husband to bring her more “goodies” from the Jewish women now living, and soon dying, in the concentration camps. The movie asks us to consider the mundanity that masks the terror around us.
ENTERTAINMENT
Readers recommend “apocalyptic systems thrillers”
“I first met Max wayyy back when we both worked at New York Magazine. And now we both write on Substack … look at that. I really like how he writes about the tech industry, and I trust both him and his readers—they know a lot more about the future than I do. In a recent post, he shared reader recs on what to watch and read”
—
in
I recently rewatched the 1989 film Road House, starring Patrick Swayze, in anticipation of the remake with Jake Gyllenhaal (currently streaming on Amazon Prime), and was reminded of what a stupidly wonderful movie it is.
STYLE
The J. Peterman edition
“Many of us know and love Why Is This Interesting?—it’s one of the best-run Substacks I’ve subscribed to, and I happen to adore the team behind it. This week they had Zachary Weiss, a menswear genius, write about the J. Peterman catalog. Menswear writing is often confusing or ego-driven to me, but Zach makes it fun. He makes me want to care more about what I put on my body, and what those choices signal to the rest of the world”
—Zachary Weiss in
Our journey begins, like all things do, on Instagram, where the brand touts a small but mighty 12,100 followers. The tagged photos don’t paint a clear picture of who the typical J.Peterman shopper might be, if one even exists, but it’s clear that most of their customers enjoy dressing up in ensembles that are just shy of character acting. Where a designer like Ralph Lauren may borrow from a tight selection of inspiration points season after season, J.Peterman is less stringent, borrowing from a hearty buffet of eras and geographies. There’s western wear, English boarding school uniforms, embroidered Moroccan finery, a flapper girl, and always, always a tuxedoed spy. Scrolling through those tagged photos, it becomes clear that if J.Peterman customers are united by anything, it’s their bold approach to dressing.
BRANDING
How brands exploit time to make money
“If there is a better business newsletter about branding than Ana’s, I haven’t found it yet. Her ability to translate big ideas into graphics and charts not only makes me smarter, but also helps me understand why the world (packaging, advertising, media) looks the way it does. I trust her taste implicitly and appreciate her wide range of advice for VCs, entrepreneurs, and consumers. This week she wrote about heritage, both authentic and manufactured”
—
in
Today, money is made in mining the past. 032c calls this “the heritage problem,” referring to the newly appointed creative director’s habit to look into the archive and redo their brand’s iconic heritage. Tiffany & Co. recently launched a creative double-header, a campaign titled With Love, Since 1837 and the Tiffany Wonder exhibition in Tokyo, both aimed at celebrating this brand’s storied past. Kim Jones has been doing something similar since joining Fendi. Gucci, building upon its original Vault idea, launched the story of its loafer, made iconic not only because it is unchanged in time but because it has been a prototype for the Gucci brand.
Recently launched
Coming soon
Congratulations to the following writers celebrating publication.
shares news of her debut poetry book:
Zoë Bakes Cookies! from
is available to pre-order before September 3:
Former guest editor
’s book Second Act: What Late Bloomers Can Tell You About Reinventing Your Life, is also available to pre-order: ’s debut novel, The Soulburn Talisman, will be published on May 31:
And
’s next book, Honor the Dead, will be published on April 16:Notes from our guest editor
Noteworthy
Inspired by the writers featured in Substack Reads? Writing on your own Substack is just a few clicks away:
Substack Reads is a weekly roundup of writing, ideas, art, and audio from the world of Substack. Posts are recommended by staff and readers, and this week’s edition was curated by Emily Sundberg and edited by Hannah Ray. Subscribe to
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 | A guest post by
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You guys should do a special about insane Substack projects with unrealistic goals. For example, I've been running A History of Mankind, with the aim of telling the entire history of mankind, all of it, post by post, for well over two years now (47k followers). There must be others like me, people who use Substack to tell long-term, perhaps never-ending stories, and I'd love to know them.
I ❤️ Emily