My Internet: Shawn McCreesh
The New York magazine writer’s printer gets a lot of action.
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 Shawn McCreesh, a features writer at New York, where he has profiled Walter Isaacson, asked Anthony Weiner about George Santos, and caught up with Lizzie Grubman. Shawn prints out old magazine pieces that people recommend to him, uses Google Docs to keep a list of movies he wants to watch, and once went viral when BuzzFeed retweeted his photo of a realistic statue of a zebra on 56th street. —Nick
EMBEDDED: What’s a recent meme or post that made you laugh?
SHAWN MCCREESH: Something terribly inappropriate.
EMBEDDED: What shows up on your TikTok For You page?
SHAWN MCCREESH: I don’t have TikTok!
EMBEDDED: Do you still tweet? Why?
SHAWN MCCREESH: Hardly. A lot of my time as a reporter is spent begging, charming, cajoling and wheedling people into talking to me, sometimes against their own self-interests. I guess I feel like I don’t want to give anyone a reason to not return my call, and I imagine that any snarky or politically-inflected tweet could be the very thing to turn off or spook someone who might otherwise ring me back. Why reveal anything about what you really think, you know?
EMBEDDED: Have you found any good alternatives to Twitter?
SHAWN MCCREESH: I don’t believe there is an alternative to Twitter. Remember how, after Trump was kicked off, rightwingers screeched that they’d abandon Twitter for Truth Social? Of course they didn’t. Nor did the liberals who squawked, after Elon bought Twitter, about going to “Blue Sky” or “Post” or whatever else. The ones who claim always to be on the verge of decamping are the ones who can’t ever leave. God bless them.
EMBEDDED: What do you use Instagram for?
SHAWN MCCREESH: To appear cooler and more successful than I am. What are the other ways to use it?
EMBEDDED: What types of videos do you watch on YouTube?
SHAWN MCCREESH: Any video where a hiker encounters a mountain lion. I watched this one like six times.
EMBEDDED: Where do you tend to get your news?
SHAWN MCCREESH: I’m a big InfoWars guy….
Just kidding. I get the WSJ and NYT in print on weekends; I try to read the Saturday FT most weekends, too. New York Post home delivery seven days a week. Can’t live without it. I have always subscribed to New York magazine in print, since long before I worked there. It’s the most pleasurable magazine to roll up, stash in your jacket pocket and take to a bar to flip through over a cocktail. I love opening Air Mail bleary-eyed on Saturday morning. I skim Politico Playbook every morning, and the Reliable Sources newsletter at night. I refresh the NYT app almost compulsively. I never miss Bill Maher, and I often keep Fox News humming angrily in the background of my apartment throughout the workday.
The media beat is a crowded one, so I keep literal tabs on the competition. I check their bylines regularly and shake my fists at the sky.
EMBEDDED: How do you keep up with the online discourse? How important is it to you to do this?
SHAWN MCCREESH: I don’t think it’s as important as some would have us believe. It’s reality that’s the important thing!
EMBEDDED: Where do you usually discover or learn about online trends?
SHAWN MCCREESH: My cool 22-year-old-sister who is a hairdresser outside of Philly teaches me. I show her the old school stuff and she shows me the new school stuff. Example: She’d never seen The Shining. I said she had to know it. We sat down to watch. Five minutes into the movie she says, “Oh, that’s Shelley Duvall? She’s big on TikTok.” I thought it was a joke. It was not. Apparently these kids are posting videos of themselves getting ready and showing off their favorite outfits to the soundtrack of an old audio clip of Shelley Duvall introducing herself — “Hello, I’m Shelley Duvall. Hello, I’m Shelley Duvall” — on a loop. I was totally delighted by this. She’d never seen The Shining but knew of Shelley Duvall from TikTok. Now, whenever I see my little sister, I greet her by saying, “Hey, I’m Shelley Duvall.”
EMBEDDED: How do you find recommendations for what to watch, read, and listen to?
SHAWN MCCREESH: After all these years, I still don’t feel the algorithm really knows who I am. It just doesn’t get me!
So I do it the analog way: I constantly ask smart and interesting people in my orbit what they’re reading and watching. I maintain a google doc with movie recommendations. There are probably 150 titles in there by now; I’ve seen about half. I also keep a pile of old magazine pieces that have been recommended to me to read, printed and stacked at the end of my desk. The last one I picked up from the pile was “He Knew He Was Right,” a masterful profile of Christopher Hitchens by Ian Parker in The New Yorker from 2006. Just last week, someone with excellent taste told me about an old VF piece from 2011, so now that’s at the top of the pile.
My printer gets a lot of action.
EMBEDDED: If you could create your own social media platform, what would it be like?
SHAWN MCCREESH: I would create a bar, which is the original social media platform. I’ve always thought that if I flame out of journalism, I’ll open a dive and call it “Kill Fee.” Like Twitter, it will be a total free-for-all.
EMBEDDED: What are your favorite Substack or other independent newsletters?
SHAWN MCCREESH:
EMBEDDED: Are you into any podcasts right now? How and when do you usually listen?
SHAWN MCCREESH: I’m not such a podcast person. I do enjoy You Must Remember This, about old Hollywood. I’ll sporadically listen to The New Yorker Radio Hour, or an episode of The Daily. Monocle has a good one about niche print media called The Stack. BBC World History sometimes. Design Matters sometimes.
EMBEDDED: Have you had posts go viral? What is that experience like?
SHAWN MCCREESH: One day, when I was about 23, I was walking through Midtown to get lunch when I came across a moving truck being unloaded. The movers had just taken from the truck a very realistic looking statue of a zebra, placing it on the pavement. I snapped a picture and tweeted, “THERES A LITERAL ZEBRA WALKING EAST ON 56TH STREET RIGHT NOW.” I had very few followers, but somehow BuzzFeed saw this, retweeting it into oblivion. It quickly spread across the internet that there was a zebra on the loose in Manhattan, and local news reporters began contacting me. Many Madagascar jokes ensued. My fifteen minutes were up before I knew it…
EMBEDDED: Which big celebrity has your favorite internet presence, and why?
SHAWN MCCREESH: I miss when celebrities were mysterious and we only found out about their interior lives every couple of years when Rolling Stone or Vanity Fair sent some hot-shit writer out to spend a week at their side. The power that social media has afforded them to circumvent the press turned out not to be to their benefit. They no longer seem larger-than-life. Mostly they seem small, boring and stupid.
EMBEDDED: Have you ever been heavily into Snapchat? Do you miss it?
SHAWN MCCREESH: Never.
EMBEDDED: When was the last time you browsed Pinterest? What for?
SHAWN MCCREESH: Not a big Pinterest guy.
EMBEDDED: Do you have a take on Tumblr?
SHAWN MCCREESH: Nope.
EMBEDDED: Are you in any groups on Reddit, Discord, Slack, or Facebook? What’s the most useful or entertaining one?
SHAWN MCCREESH: Negatory.
EMBEDDED: How has using LinkedIn benefitted you, if at all?
SHAWN MCCREESH: I can’t say it has.
EMBEDDED: Do you use Slack or another chat tool for work? What’s the best thing about Slacking with your co-workers? What’s the worst thing?
SHAWN MCCREESH: I live in constant fear of one day being deposed, so I try not to put anything in writing.
EMBEDDED: What most excites you about AI chatbots and text and art generators? What most concerns you?
SHAWN MCCREESH: It’s tacky and I hate it!
EMBEDDED: Are you currently playing any console, computer, or phone games?
SHAWN MCCREESH: Nope.
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?
SHAWN MCCREESH: Too juvenile to admit.
EMBEDDED: What’s your go-to emoji, and what does it mean to you?
SHAWN MCCREESH: My three most used emojis: Wink, smirk, champagne bottle.
Do you text people voice notes? If not, how do you feel about getting them?
SHAWN MCCREESH: If it’s some really juicy gossip that necessitates a full-throated retelling, absolutely.
EMBEDDED: What’s a playlist, song, album, or style of music you’ve listened to a lot lately?
SHAWN MCCREESH: If I’m writing at home, I’ll play a lot of easy listening on my soundbar. It could be Bill Evans Trio, Charlie Parker, Lou Donaldson, or something vibier, such as The Dining Rooms, Tosca, St. Germain or even Thievery Corporation.
EMBEDDED: If you could only keep one streaming service for TV and/or movies, which would it be, and why? In general, do you prefer to get ads or pay more for ad-free tiers?
SHAWN MCCREESH: HBO Max. Nothing compares. I’d rather pay extra to skip the ads.
EMBEDDED: What’s your favorite non-social media app?
SHAWN MCCREESH: NYC Subway app. Got to see if the 6 train is delayed or what…
EMBEDDED: What’s the most basic internet thing that you love?
SHAWN MCCREESH: I actually love email. It’s my preferred form of communication.
EMBEDDED: Is there any content you want but can’t seem to find anywhere online?
SHAWN MCCREESH: I’m hardly the first person to point this out, but one downside of the streaming era is that we don’t actually own anything, so films and albums just… vanish. I’ve never been able to find Barbarians at the Gate streaming anywhere, and whole albums disappear from my Apple Music playlists. Snoop Dogg’s Doggystyle and the Kill Bill soundtracks and certain Van Halen singles keep coming off, seemingly at random, which is really frustrating. I guess it’s a licensing thing.
EMBEDDED: Do you regularly use eBay, Depop, or other shopping platforms? What’s a recent thing you’ve bought or sold?
SHAWN MCCREESH: I buy old magazines on eBay.
EMBEDDED: What’s the last thing that brought you joy online?
SHAWN MCCREESH: I don’t like to online-shop much, but I do go a bit wild with Mr. Porter. The website is so functional, I love the packaging, and there’s something about the way it calls me “MR MCCREESH” at the top of the homepage that always makes me want to spend more money. Go figure.
