My Internet: Scott Lapatine
The Stereogum founder is subscribed to hundreds of RSS feeds.
Embedded is your essential guide to what’s good on the internet, written by Kate Lindsay and edited by Nick Catucci.
Every other week we quiz a “very online” person for their essential guide to what’s good on the internet.
Today we welcome Scott Lapatine, who recently relaunched the beloved music blog Stereogum, which he founded on LiveJournal in 2002. Scott subscribes to Bandcamp feeds of cool labels that don’t have publicists, buys vintage band shirts from Malaysian resellers on Instagram, and cannot seem to convince his dad that Quora emails are spam. —Nick
EMBEDDED: What’s a recent meme or post that made you laugh?
SCOTT LAPATINE:
EMBEDDED: Do you tweet? Why?
SCOTT LAPATINE: I tweeted infrequently for 15 years. Then I deleted all of my tweets and now I do not tweet. But my account is still up and says I was born in 1896.
EMBEDDED: Do you post on Bluesky, Threads, or Substack’s Notes? Why?
SCOTT LAPATINE: I post on Stereogum’s Bluesky every day and on a personal account occasionally. I tried Threads last year and didn’t get any engagement despite being able to import Instagram followers, so I abandoned those accounts in January. I have never posted anything with Substack.
EMBEDDED: What do you use Instagram for?
SCOTT LAPATINE: I run Stereogum’s Instagram account and spend too long trying to make the graphics look decent. I follow almost 7,500 musicians there (I’ve learned 7,500 is the maximum Instagram allows) and that’s useful for finding death announcements and very specific photos of Christopher Cross. On my personal account, my daughter is now old enough to bar me from posting photos of her, so I mostly post concert videos and photos of vintage band t-shirts. And I use Instagram to buy those vintage band shirts from Malaysian resellers I’m gatekeeping.
EMBEDDED: What types of videos do you watch on YouTube?
SCOTT LAPATINE: I really only use YouTube to find fan videos from whatever concert happened the night before, but increasingly there are better ones on TikTok. I watch the cut-for-time SNL sketches because my worst quality is that I have strong opinions about SNL.
EMBEDDED: What do you like about TikTok? What do you dislike?
SCOTT LAPATINE: I’m always recommending TikTok to people who are skeptical. Like every other platform it’s become essential for work, but my burner algo also serves me important viral pets and PopUp Bagels cream cheese flavor announcements. I started Stereogum’s TikTok recently, a few years late, and follow only one random artist account at a time. Right now it’s Fine Young Cannibals and I dislike how much Fine Young Cannibals content I’m now seeing, so I will update that.
EMBEDDED: Where do you tend to get your news?
SCOTT LAPATINE: While I don’t post on X anymore, I spent so many years curating a timeline of useful accounts that are still active, so it’s still the first app I use in the morning. So… Pop Crave. I also follow hundreds of feeds in RSS. I still use RSS! And I subscribe to New York Times, New York, etc.
EMBEDDED: How do you keep up with the online discourse? How important is it to you to do this?
SCOTT LAPATINE: When I wanna punish myself, toggling X to For You mode. My coworkers are better about finding discourse. I don’t look for it and I don’t participate in it, but I’m somehow always aware of it.
EMBEDDED: How do you think Substack has changed media, if at all?
SCOTT LAPATINE: I’m thrilled journalists have tools to make a living outside of corporate media. Since I started Stereogum on LiveJournal in 2002, it’s been a long journey of cumbersome content management systems. Substack wasn’t right for us, but now there are a bunch of alternatives that are Substack-like, which is a good thing.
EMBEDDED: What’s one positive media trend? What’s one negative trend?
SCOTT LAPATINE: AI slop is a negative thing obviously, but social media platforms encouraging it makes it worse.
EMBEDDED: Do you have a take on the “manosphere”? Do you think personalities like Joe Rogan, Lex Fridman, and Theo Von have shaped young men’s political leanings?
SCOTT LAPATINE: I am old enough to know Joe Rogan and Theo Von from NewsRadio and Road Rules. I find it hard to believe that they are considered comedians, let alone political influencers.
EMBEDDED: Do you have any advice for people who use sports betting apps or prediction markets?
SCOTT LAPATINE: I’m not interested in sports, so I have never used betting apps. But a wise woman once said, “Everyone needs to get addicted to one thing at least once in their life to prove to themselves that they can break an addiction.” (I follow discourse!)
EMBEDDED: Is the AI bubble about to burst?
SCOTT LAPATINE: Yeah.
EMBEDDED: Do you believe that the “artificial general intelligence” and “superintelligence” that many AI boosters have warned of actually pose a risk to humanity?
SCOTT LAPATINE: This questionnaire is sort of depressing.
EMBEDDED: Are smartphones bad for us? Where do you fall on the Jonathan Haidt-Taylor Lorenz divide?
SCOTT LAPATINE: I like that I can respond to emails in line at CVS and scroll TikTok while I’m brushing my teeth. I haven’t been bored in like 20 years. They’re probably bad for us?
EMBEDDED: Do you try to limit your phone use? If so, what methods have been helpful for this?
SCOTT LAPATINE: I am always on my phone because I’m always working. If you are looking to force yourself offline you can go to Mt Tremper, NY where I recently found myself without cell service and had a hard time.
EMBEDDED: What’s something that you have observed about the online behavior of Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, and/or Boomers?
SCOTT LAPATINE: My Boomer parents treat everything in their feeds like it’s equally important. My dad somehow got signed up for daily Quora emails; I tried to convince him that they’re spam, but he likes them. My mom texts me photos of her screen instead of sending a link. I think she could learn how to send a link if she tried. Meanwhile my Gen Z daughter says I use emojis wrong? I don’t use emojis wrong, I’m pretty sure.
EMBEDDED: How do you find recommendations for what to watch, read, and listen to?
SCOTT LAPATINE: I subscribe to Bandcamp feeds of cool labels that don’t have publicists. And I discover niche releases from Stereogum’s genre columnists. For TV and movies, I seem to become aware of everything I wanna be aware of, I’m not sure how. But I do check the Rotten Tomatoes score before watching a movie.
EMBEDDED: Have you had posts go viral? What is that experience like?
SCOTT LAPATINE: I think only on the Stereogum accounts, but I have pretty much all app notifications shut off so I find out late. As a publisher I find it discouraging that you can have a viral post that doesn’t generate any traffic. People don’t click on links!
EMBEDDED: Who’s the coolest person who follows you?
SCOTT LAPATINE: A lot of musicians follow Stereogum and some of them follow my personals for whatever reason. MC Zohran Mamdani started following us on Instagram after the election because I posted his 2017 email to Stereogum about his rap song release. (I didn’t see it until this month; someone tipped me off.) Unfortunately I cannot follow him back because I have a self-imposed rule about following only musicians on our Instagram. I also realize popular mayors-elect and musicians do not run their own accounts.
EMBEDDED: Who’s someone more people should follow?
SCOTT LAPATINE: The best musicians to follow on X are the ones who rarely post. So, Kate Bush? In between merch updates, there are occasional links to her short essays of gratitude. Also Mac DeMarco is not on social media, but his record label posts unhinged videos of him in IG Stories that I appreciate.
EMBEDDED: Are you into any podcasts right now? How and when do you usually listen?
SCOTT LAPATINE: I listen to one to three hours of murder stories every night before I fall asleep. Crime Junkie is the best—straightforward and well researched, no chit chat between the hosts. I also like Generation Why, Dark Downeast, Park Predators, Morbid (though too much chit chat). When there is no murder, I will listen to American History Tellers, hosted by a man named Lindsay Graham (not the Senator) who breaks up his narration about Teapot Dome or whatever by acting out period scenes of ordinary people impacted by the episode topic. It’s so corny, I love it. I think he composes the music for it too. I like The Daily when Adam Liptak recounts Supreme Court arguments.
EMBEDDED: When was the last time you browsed Pinterest? What for?
SCOTT LAPATINE: I’ve never browsed Pinterest, but I have a board of saved tattoo ideas that I’ll never get.
EMBEDDED: How would you describe Tumblr’s legacy?
SCOTT LAPATINE: Only in recent years have I learned how influential it was for getting young women into the 1975.
EMBEDDED: Are you in any groups on Reddit, Discord, Slack, or Facebook? What’s the most useful or entertaining one?
SCOTT LAPATINE: Just the delightful Stereogum Discord.
EMBEDDED: Do you use Slack or Teams for work? What’s the best thing about Slacking with your co-workers? What’s the worst thing?
SCOTT LAPATINE: We do not have an office and we’re spread across two continents at the moment, so we communicate exclusively via Slack (and try to meet up at concerts and festivals). Stereogum has never had a meeting. I hate meetings. I worked at MTV Digital a long time ago and every meeting was very inefficient. I put things in Slack at all hours, but I don’t expect people to respond if they’re not working. I like that you can set up Slackbot responses for when people forget shared passwords.
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?
SCOTT LAPATINE: I’m really only active on a group chat with my oldest friends, and it does not have a name. When we were teens we debated everything and now we don’t. Most recently one of them texted that the actors who played the parents on Family Ties were born on the exact same day. No one responded.
EMBEDDED: What’s your go-to emoji, and what does it mean to you?
SCOTT LAPATINE: Maybe the salute emoji, only because people apparently consider the thumbs up a hate crime. I am also a big fan of putting an iOS sticker of one of my dogs on any photo someone in my family sends.
EMBEDDED: Do you text people voice notes? If not, how do you feel about getting them?
SCOTT LAPATINE: I have never sent or received a voice note thank god.
EMBEDDED: Do you pay for a music streaming service, and if so, which one? What’s a playlist, song, album, or style of music you’ve listened to a lot lately?
SCOTT LAPATINE: I currently pay for Spotify. I used to have Apple Music and I understand people consider it less problematic for various reasons. But a few years ago I accidentally deleted my entire library and playlists, which Apple offers no way to undo, so I switched to Spotify out of spite. The Stereogum staff just voted for our favorite songs and albums of 2025, and my votes count the same as everyone else’s, so I awarded this song a lot of points to help its chances: The Berries, “Angelus.” I also buy stuff on Bandcamp, but usually just import the audio files into Spotify because I want everything in one place.
EMBEDDED: If you could only keep one streaming service for TV and/or movies, which would it be, and why? What’s a show that you’re really into right now?
SCOTT LAPATINE: Based on this year’s best TV shows—The Chair Company, Task, The Rehearsal, The White Lotus, Hacks—HBO. And I’m gonna wanna watch Industry S04.
EMBEDDED: What’s your favorite non-social media app?
SCOTT LAPATINE: Smart Bird ID. I haven’t Shazamed any exotic birds yet, because I mostly use it in my backyard, but one day. Now that I think about it, it probably has some social media features I don’t use.
EMBEDDED: What’s the most basic internet thing that you love?
SCOTT LAPATINE: Wikipedia entries for terrible, short-lived ‘80s TV shows I’d never heard of.
EMBEDDED: Do you regularly use eBay, Depop, or other shopping platforms? What’s a recent thing you’ve bought or sold?
SCOTT LAPATINE: I made a Whatnot account when all the good vintage band shirt sellers started using it. I don’t sell there or even watch the Lives, because you can set advance bids like on eBay. I got a 100% Fun-era Matthew Sweet shirt there recently.
EMBEDDED: What’s the last thing that brought you joy online?
SCOTT LAPATINE: All the charming interviews from this Rosalía album rollout.
Thanks Scott! Subscribe to Stereogum and follow it on Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, and Twitter.
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Great interview, and it reminded me that I've been meaning to pony up for a paid sub to Stereogum and had not yet, so I just did. The system works!