Weekly Scroll: I Guess We Have To Talk About Iran?
Plus! The fediverse, Substack strategies, and Gull Crime
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I Guess We Have To Talk About Iran
If I’m being honest, I don’t really want to spend a lot of time talking about Iran here. It doesn’t have much to do with the social internet, but it’s one of the most consequential news stories of the year so it also feels strange to just ignore it entirely.
Perhaps the most social-media relevant aspect of this is how Trump’s Truth Social account is now being used as the source of breaking military news (complete with bizarre Trumpisms like THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER, of course). Conservative social media is in a tizzy trying to figure out if this is based or betrayal, given how many people promoted Trump as the pro-peace candidate who wouldn’t drag us into war.
The based crowd includes people who’ve always been pro-bombing Iran, like Mark Levine and Holden Bloodfeast. The ‘betrayal’ crowd includes the devoted America First types who heavily lean into racism and Christ-Is-King tropes. Think Tim Pool, Mike Cernovich, Candace Owens and Chief Virgin of the Frog Avatars Nick Fuentes, who are all furious Trump did this. The more social-media-grifty side of MAGA - folks like Laura Loomer and Catturd who believe in sycophancy even more than they believe in racism - are busy jerking off over how amazing Trump is and how anyone doubting him is a traitor.
There’s also just a stunning quantity of hypocritical bullshit to sort through - people who previously said one thing but are now saying something entirely different. Charlie Kirk posted literally a week ago about how war with Iran would be stupid, but has since completely reversed course. Too many examples to list them all, but Nancy Mace has another good one:
Meanwhile, Elon:
I honestly think part of the confusion and contradictory mess in MAGA world is that Elon is no longer driving sentiment. He posted hundreds of times over the weekend about Robotaxi and not once about Iran, and because the guy on X with the biggest microphone isn’t taking a side there are a lot of people confused as to what they should be doing.
There’s also the issue of the administration itself not having a clear narrative: Pete Hegseth, Marco Rubio, and JD Vance all took turns denying that the strikes were about regime change, only to get put in the Emasculation Machine three hours later:
If I have any takeaway, it’s that I can’t believe there are still people in 2025 who are surprised that Trump will promise them the world and then stab them in the back. You’re shocked that Trump said one thing and then did another? Seriously? Are you a toddler who hasn’t yet developed object permanence? Are you also surprised when Mommy’s face returns from behind her hands during games of Peek-a-Boo? We have more than three years left of this, god help us all.
Derek Thompson joins Substack
Derek Thompson, author of Abundance, announced on Friday that he’s joining Substack. The move comes after more than 16 years at The Atlantic, where Thompson became one of the most insightful and buzziest writers in America.
Thompson’s announcement came just one day after NYMag published a piece titled Are you a $300,000 writer? about how The Atlantic is throwing out huge salary offers to poach writers from elite newspapers like the Washington Post. That’s incredible money for journalists in our current media environment, and it makes me wonder if Thompson is taking a short term salary hit in favor of long run ownership of his own income stream. This, along with the parade of new celebrities and brands joining Substack (see Pete Buttigieg and The Daily Mail, among others), is just another sign of how incredibly strong Substack’s economic engine and brand are right now
But this does raise questions - what is the role of traditional media here? Derek (and most other luminaries here) made their names in traditional media and migrated to Substack once already famous. Is traditional media then going to die because they do the hard work of building fame but then immediately lose their best talent once it gets that fame?
Substack founder Hamish McKenzie had an interesting note in response to Thompson’s move:
It seems like it would be fairly difficult to work out the details of this kind of arrangement, but McKenzie isn’t just posturing here. The Washington Post has apparently been in talks with Substack to host some of WaPo’s pieces on the platform.
I continue to be bullish on Substack’s momentum as a platform. I do think there are serious questions about how traditional media survives - Substack can’t just replace everything. And the ‘how many subscriptions’ problem is real, because as more and more talented people join the platform I get a bit of anxiety - how can I measure up to the best writers in America, how can I make sure this blog is worth a few dollars a month? But we’ve got a fun niche here, and the blog keeps growing, so something must be going right. I’m continually grateful for everyone who subscribes here for making the whole thing possible, so thanks for being along the ride.
Police Violence? In MY Roblox Server???
Per nikicaga on X - this is the most Taylor Lorenz post of all time:
The fact that Lorenz maintains active text chats with Roblox children honestly explains a lot of things.
The Fediverse Starts on Threads
Starting last week, Threads is now adding fediverse content to your Threads feed, making the dream of a federated social media a reality.
I’m torn about this. In an objective sense, it’s a very cool idea and I hope it becomes the future of social media. It would be amazing to have one universal feed where you can see posts from a variety of social media sites that all easily interconnect.
On the other hand, the fediverse as it actually exists is Threads, Mastodon, and a bunch of nonsense websites you’ve never heard of. It’s a fun cool implementation that combines two social media feeds with absolutely no value. I have no idea how the fediverse goes from Cool Concept to Actually Worthwhile Product when all the sites included are terrible.
Links
Here’s a fascinating study on how people value Facebook. Meta secretly kept a small group of Facebook users completely ad-free since 2013. It then compared them with regular users who see ads, asking both groups what you’d have to pay them to not use Facebook. It turns out, not seeing ads had no impact on the ‘give up Facebook’ price for users. Maybe most people aren’t actually bothered by ads? (at least on Meta?)
Ethan Klein/H3H3 is suing three other creators for stealing his ‘Content Nuke’ video. On the one hand, ‘react’ content is commonplace and considered to be allowed under fair use. On the other hand, all three creators explicitly said they were streaming Klein’s content so that people could watch it without giving Klein any views/money, which seems like a pretty open-and-shut case of copyright infringement.
Streaming has officially passed television - in May, Americans streamed more hours of content than they watched cable + network television combined.
Donald Trump granted another 90 day extension of the TikTok ban. Which he’s not legally allowed to do, to be clear, but nobody seems to care enough to stop him.
JD Vance joined BlueSky, which mattered not at all but spawned a million thinkpieces
From friend of the blog Cartoons Hate Her - Is the world ending, or are you just mentally ill?
> And the ‘how many subscriptions’ problem is real
I know you don't like this idea, Jeremiah, but Substack really needs to add a "buy a single issue" newsstand feature. It would let people try out other blogs easily, and give writers a new revenue stream of people who just want to read an article every six months.
I love how every single comment under the "one good threads post" is just attacking the OP for having a conservative white friend