My Internet: Katherine Dee
My Internet: Katherine Dee
The Default Wisdom writer sends 1,000 or more texts per day.
Embedded is your essential guide to what’s good on the internet, written by Kate Lindsay and edited by Nick Catucci.
Most weeks, we quiz a “very online” person for their essential guide to what’s good on the internet.
Today we welcome Katherine Dee, who writes the newsletter
, makes the Internet history podcast The Computer Room, and cohosts a podcast about e-romance, we met online., with Naama Kates. Katherine texts people while she is on the phone with them, finds herself gravitating to Muslim self-help podcasts, and once asked a group chat if it is unhinged to get jealous of your alt account on Twitter when your partner replies to it more than your main one. —Nick
EMBEDDED: What’s a recent meme or other post that made you laugh?
KATHERINE DEE: Okay, not a meme, but technically a post: TOUGH call between Rocco the Comic’s TikToks and Jesus Nalgas’ TikToks. I’ve been waiting in the wings for an opportunity to plug both of these guys. Rocco the Comic might be a little “inside baseball” if you’re not Sicilian, but his TikToks make me CTFU every single time.
If you have straight-from-Sicily parents or grandparents, every single one of his videos is your lived experience, but I hope non-Sicilians like him too. This one in particular, where his dad, off-screen, finds out he wasn’t invited to a party is such a familiar cultural conflict. I learned the hard way that not every culture values the courtesy invite as much as we do.
Tiktok failed to load.Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser
EMBEDDED: What shows up on your TikTok For You page?
KATHERINE DEE: Lately, black cat/orange cat meme slideshows and Modern Family clips. The black cat/orange cat thing is so cute. This one made me cry for mysterious reasons.
EMBEDDED: Has your Twitter experience changed since Elon Musk took over? What would it take for you to quit?
KATHERINE DEE: YES. He really messed with the algorithm, one. Two, I don’t love that he throttled Substack links. I’m also a firm believer that the old Bluecheck system added important structure to the site—a la the late, great humdog’s conception of “invisible and unspoken” rules in gaming—even if Bluechecks were a(n unfairly) hated class. I have such a love/hate relationship with Twitter. As for what would get me to quit for good, I’d hate to give anyone any ideas …
EMBEDDED: Have you found any good alternatives to Twitter?
KATHERINE DEE: I don’t think a one-for-one Twitter replacement is possible. Every platform has its own vibe and purpose. Twitter really is the writer’s platform—particularly when it comes to promotion. I definitely prefer TikTok to Twitter, but I’m more of a consumer than a creator there.
EMBEDDED: What do you use Instagram for?
KATHERINE DEE: Saving pictures of my immediate environment, close-ups of my eyes, random photos that interest me for whatever reason. I have a very intimate, albeit somewhat unhinged, Insta presence.
EMBEDDED: What types of videos do you watch on YouTube?
KATHERINE DEE: I love YouTube. One thing that it’s great for is digging into the evolution of Internet subcultures by watching how its YouTube presence has changed over time. Or particular personalities—a good trick if you’re going to interview someone is to watch as many of their interviews as feasible in chronological order. Even if they’re working from a script, it gives you a lot of insight in how they’ve grown.
I also think the best Internet historians exist on YouTube—a lot of those rabbit hole-style videos are quite good and are excellent starting places if you want to learn about … well, basically anything that’s happened online.
EMBEDDED: Have you had posts go viral? What is that experience like?
KATHERINE DEE: Yes, but it’s never anything good. Any post I make about gentrification in Texas is an instant viral tweet, for some reason. If you want to go viral for the sake of going viral, stuff like “communism is bad,” or alternatively, “communism is good,” seems to be a sure-fire bet after a certain follower threshold.
EMBEDDED: Who’s the coolest person who follows you?
KATHERINE DEE: There’s a 61-follower locked account that follows me on my alt and main Twitter account, who I absolutely love. He reached out to me when I was getting dog-piled for a dumb reason a couple of years ago, and he’s one of the funniest, most insightful people I’ve ever met. A lot of cool people have followed me over the years—playwrights I admire, indie directors, you know, the usual suspects—but bar none, this guy has brought me the most joy of any internet friend I have ever made, and likely ever will make.
EMBEDDED: Who’s someone more people should follow?
KATHERINE DEE: Anyone affiliated with 2d cloud. They’re an indie comic publisher and their stuff is just beautiful. Raighne, the guy who runs it, is a real artist—I’m reminded of what it’s like to care about art when we hang out, which is something that feels so fleeting in this day in age.
EMBEDDED: Which big celebrity has your favorite internet presence, and why?
KATHERINE DEE: You know … I don’t think I have an answer for this one! My knee-jerk response is so mind-numbingly embarrassing that I started “PLEASE DON’T HATE ME” and a long-winded excuse for why I was going to say for what I was about to say. I’m in such a terminally online bubble that I don’t follow any Big Celebrities—we can leave it at that, LOL.
EMBEDDED: Where do you tend to get your news?
KATHERINE DEE: Twitter, Signal, and Telegram. It’s been this way for a frighteningly long time. There are a few people I trust to curate the news for me—I use their commentary to guide me. The thing is, I don’t love that I do this, and I think it betrays a flaw in my own thinking, and it scares me that a lot of other people probably navigate the world like this too. Even if you add Substack to the mix, I still don’t think it’s a good thing.
EMBEDDED: What are your favorite Substack or other independent newsletters? KATHERINE DEE: There are so many, but one that I keep coming back to, and have for years, is
EMBEDDED: Do you have any favorite media company newsletters?
KATHERINE DEE: I love Galaxy Brain in The Atlantic, but I don’t think I’ve ever agreed with Charlie Warzel, even once. But I also love it and love his writing. So, it’s a weird relationship. I’ll pay for The Atlantic until I can’t afford it anymore, really.
EMBEDDED: What’s one positive media trend? What’s one negative trend?
KATHERINE DEE: Hard question for me to answer. I feel like we’re in a really weird spot with media right now. In the last few years, it feels like the media ecosystem bifurcated. There’s legacy media, and there’s the alt-media ecosystem, and it feels like they sell two totally different versions of reality. I trust neither version—everyone has an agenda and I’m often left feeling uneasy.
There are some individual journalists, like Chris Stokel-Walker, who I trust to do good reporting—so maybe that’s all I can say, LOL. No idea on trends, but there are still good and talented people with integrity (please check out his work, he rules), and that’s all that matters to me.
EMBEDDED: Are you into any podcasts right now? How and when do you usually listen?
KATHERINE DEE: I spend a lot of time alone—I’m pretty isolated—so podcasts are my window into the world. I use them as a way to get a glimpse into people and places I’d normally have no exposure to.
So, I try to cycle through different genres and make sure I hear a diversity of voices, communities, and viewpoints. Right now, I’m listening to a lot of Binchtopia and Female Dating Strategy, which are two groups of women which feel pretty opposed to one another. Earlier in the year, I was heavily into The Exploring Antinatalism Podcast and Your Muslim Girl.
It’s really all over the map and I switch it up often. They’re not always—in fact, they’re mostly not—people I agree with, it’s just a way for me to expose myself to different ways of thinking. Feels pretty out of left field, but I find myself gravitating towards Muslim self-help podcasts a lot—I’m not Muslim, but they have such a friendly, useful vibe to them that they enter the rotation pretty frequently.
EMBEDDED: How has using LinkedIn benefitted you, if at all?
KATHERINE DEE: It has! When I worked a “normie” job, I found LinkedIn to be really useful. I really liked the classes, networking on LinkedIn, looking at job listings, etc. When I switched to writing full-time, I deactivated my account.
EMBEDDED: Have you ever been heavily into Snapchat? Do you miss it?
KATHERINE DEE: Yes … ! I used to use it as a stand-in messenger app with my family—there was something quaint about the UI.
I recently went to Saudi Arabia, and learned that people use it the same way some people in the U.S. use Facebook Events, which I found fascinating. I sort of want to see if anyone in the States uses it that way here too, but I don’t want to download it and find out which one of my adult male friends still uses Snapchat. :x
EMBEDDED: When was the last time you browsed Pinterest? What for?
KATHERINE DEE: I’m on Pinterest all the time. I do these “story threads” on Twitter—they’re basically moodboards—and I pull vintage photos from Pinterest. It’s a better image search engine than Google these days.
EMBEDDED: Do you have an opinion about Tumblr?
KATHERINE DEE: Do I ever. Having opinions about Tumblr actually gave me a writing career, LOL. My thesis on it gets misrepresented a lot, so I’ll use this as an opportunity to give the tl;dr. Tumblr was sort of a breeding ground for a lot of really eccentric identities and subcultures, including microlabels like “demisexuality.” It peaked in popularity at a weird time, too—the same time when journalism was going digital, and budgets were being slashed. I remember it well, because that’s the same time I was trying to get my foot in the door.
Basically, what started happening was freelancers would scrape clickbait ideas from websites like Reddit and Tumblr, and exaggerate the influence of small communities, amplifying them, creating a) clickbait, and b) a feedback loop. So, it’s not that Tumblr invented any of these ideas or identities so much as it was a social laboratory where people were experimenting with them … and journalists blew up everyone’s spot. But, really, you should read my article about it, because I put it much more eloquently there.
EMBEDDED: Are you in any groups on Reddit, Discord, Slack, or Facebook? What’s the most useful or entertaining one?
KATHERINE DEE: Dozens and dozens and dozens. My favorite used to be Benebel Wen’s on Discord. If you’re into Tarot or anything Occult, Benebel Wen is the best teacher out there. Oh, and my own Discord server, of course.
EMBEDDED: Do you use Slack or another chat tool for work? What’s the best thing about that Slacking with your co-workers? What’s the worst thing?
KATHERINE DEE: When I had a traditional job, I really liked Slack—I’ve heard horror stories of it encouraging people to be too casual—but it always helped me bond with my colleagues. I’ve always been a fan of the intimacy that perpetual availability fosters—that might be the millennial in me. I know I’m supposed to think it’s bad as a critic of technology, but what can I say, I’m a sucker for mediated relationships.
EMBEDDED: Do you typically start searches on Google, Reddit, TikTok, or another source? Have you tried AI-powered search on Bing or elsewhere?
KATHERINE DEE: Reddit and Pinterest are the most reliable for me, still. TikTok I find is misleading—I have big problems with it.
EMBEDDED: What most excites you about AI text and art generators? What most concerns you?
KATHERINE DEE: I get a lot of mileage out of summaries—email summaries, conversation summaries, etc. Basically, all the “let’s optimize our life” second brain predictions.
Right now, my biggest concern is that it’ll encourage a lot of laziness. I think people don’t realize that just because AI can help trim the fat, it doesn’t mean we don’t need to wholesale stop learning how to do things—e.g. Language learning.
EMBEDDED: Do you have any predictions for cryptocurrency, the metaverse, and/or Web3?
KATHERINE DEE: I *should* be interested in web3, but I just can’t get into it. My ex was a big crypto guy and it kind of ruined it for me.
EMBEDDED: Are you currently playing any games on your computer or phone?
KATHERINE DEE: I tried to play FreeSO, which is a fan-made reboot of The Sims Online, but it was SO boring and it reinforced why the original went under. :-( Huge blackpill.
EMBEDDED: What’s your most-used messaging app?
KATHERINE DEE: iMessage, I’m old school. I think I send something like 1,000 messages a day, maybe more. I’m also someone who will text while I’m on the phone with someone. Like, I’ll call my mom and then text her while I’m on the phone with her. There’s just something about it.
EMBEDDED: Do any of your group chats have a name that you’re willing to share? What’s something that recently inspired debate in the chat?
KATHERINE DEE: You know, it’s funny—I always tell myself I’m not in any or am never invited to any, but I just counted and I’m in quite a few that I’ve just muted. I don’t know what they’re debating about, because I don’t really look at them. I’m more of a 1:1 texter. My favorite chat I’m in is simply called “The Gals” and it’s me and two unnecessarily controversial lady Twitter personalities. I’m dying to say who they are, but I won’t to respect their privacy, but they rule, and I love them so much.
Re: something that inspired debate … In another chat, I asked if it was unhinged to get jealous if your partner responded more to your alt account than your main account on Twitter. Like, getting jealous of the alt, even if it’s you. Pretty bananas …
EMBEDDED: What’s your go-to emoji, and what does it mean to you?
KATHERINE DEE: The disguised face 🥸← I can’t explain it but anyone who knows me who reads this interview will know exactly what I’m talking about and I hope they’ll smile :’)
EMBEDDED: Do you text people voice notes? If not, how do you feel about getting them?
KATHERINE DEE: YES. Me and my friend Alex send each other 14-minute voice memos on the daily. I absolutely love it. We always apologize for the podcasts, but I’d be so sad if I didn’t get my periodic Alex podcast.
EMBEDDED: What’s a playlist, song, album, or style of music you’ve listened to a lot lately?
KATHERINE DEE: I’m really into old country. I think I’ve listened to “Ballad of the Alamo” by Marty Robbins over 100 times in the last month.
EMBEDDED: Do you pay for a music streaming service, and if so, which one? When was the last time you bought a music download or vinyl record, CD, or tape?
KATHERINE DEE: I pay for Spotify—I have since I was in college. I don’t think I’ve paid for a CD since… 2019? I guess not that long ago. I listened to CDs 2014-2019.
EMBEDDED: If you could only keep one streaming service for TV and/or movies, which would it be, and why?
KATHERINE DEE: MUBI—it has the best stuff, by a long shot.
EMBEDDED: What’s your favorite non-social media app?
KATHERINE DEE: It’s hard, because I’m so dependent on so many. Like, we don’t ever think of Google Maps as an app, but I mean, what would I do without it, realistically? Or without SuperHuman, or without Calendar, or Spotify? Gun to my head, though? GoogleMaps, that one is non-negotiable.
EMBEDDED: What’s the most basic internet thing that you love?
KATHERINE DEE: SuperHuman.
EMBEDDED: Is there any content you want but can’t seem to find anywhere online?
KATHERINE DEE: I miss DressUpGames/KiSS dolls, and those kind of fell out of fashion.
EMBEDDED: Do you regularly use eBay, Depop, or other shopping platforms? What’s a recent thing you’ve bought or sold?
KATHERINE DEE: I buy WAY too many books, and sell absolutely nothing. Last thing I bought was I’m Very Into You which is a collection of correspondences between Mackenzie Wark and Kathy Acker. I love that stuff. I want to read more erotically charged emails between people. Please, publish them…
EMBEDDED: Have you recently read an article, book, or social media post about the internet that you’ve found particularly insightful?
KATHERINE DEE: Anything from Dirtyverse is really good, IMO. Or Nymphet Alumni. I don’t think I could pick just one from either.
EMBEDDED: What’s the last thing that brought you joy online?
KATHERINE DEE: This …
Thanks Katherine! Subscribe to her newsletter and listen to her podcast The Computer Room and we met online.
