Some news: Our paid launch, Caroline Calloway
On Snake Oil and sharing that bread.
Welcome to Embedded, your essential guide to what’s good on the internet, from Kate Lindsay and Nick Catucci. “Get Embedded” on Twitter and Instagram. 🧩
Upgrade now for a new weekly deep-dive into living better online! Then scroll down to read about Caroline Calloway pouring Snake Oil on Kate's face at a bar. —Nick and Kate
When Kate and I started this newsletter in late March, we were not about that grustle life. We had just lost our jobs running a news website we had built for a startup, and we saw a way—possibly—to eliminate the parts of those jobs that we didn't like, and keep the things that we did (other than the salaries, benefits, and budget).
Somehow, I'm grateful to say, we managed to do exactly that. And it has "resonated"! The word community is thrown around as often and with as little conviction as any concept hollowed out by the media and tech industries, but I don't know what else to call you, the little band of internet people who have welcomed and supported this newsletter in so many ways, reading and sharing it, recommending it to friends and followers, signing up and emailing us your thoughts.
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If you vibed with our stories about the new old Instagram and the gentle guy internet, or our interviews with the civilian who quit social media and the social media manager who quit posting, the Saturday posts are for you. They're also for anyone who's proudly online but also calls their main platform a "hellsite," is burning out doing what they love, or simply wondering why every platform has to have stories, newsletters, and live audio now.
The Saturday posts will be about the myriad ways many of us are grappling with getting more out of the internet than we put in (or, in some cases, have taken away). Here's what they won't be about: Optimizing your productivity, entering a creator-economy lottery hyped by "thought leaders" and venture capitalists, or holding yourself personally responsible for solving structural problems perpetuated by monopolies and oligarchs. (Fair warning, though: One will probably be devoted to using Pinterest.)
Your subscription dollars will "unlock" exclusive content and commenting privileges. But really, they're what's going to allow Kate and I to keep publishing Embedded for everyone. If on this Monday you're motivated to share that bread, thank you. But either way, we're grateful to you for reading. —Nick
Caroline Calloway poured Snake Oil on my face AMA
There’s no better way to get people from all corners of your life (or my life, at least) to text you than to end up on Caroline Calloway’s Instagram Story. I bumped into the creator-scammer—who I met once before, in 2019, for an interview—at a happy hour last week. Three hours (and three Whiskey Gingers) later, she was pouring her $75 “Snake Oil” on my face. Someone snapped a photo that appeared on Calloways’ Story and was texted to me multiple times the next morning with variations on “????”
Since this was not an official event, I’m not going to say too much about Calloway (whose career is sustained by the very people who tweet about how outraged they are by her career) or the Snake Oil (which I remember smelling nice, but recall little else about, because Whiskey Gingers).
Instead, this newsletter is about the particular joy of finally, a year and half into the pandemic, meeting internet friends IRL.
On the Fourth of July, I went to a large outdoor gathering where attendees wore clothes and styles I had only seen before on TikTok. They almost seemed out of place in the wild. This past weekend, I went to an actual TikTok meet-up in Central Park, where people from New Jersey, Yonkers, and Germany had come to make friends after a year of isolation. (I'll be writing more about this in Wednesday’s newsletter.) The internet and “real life” are often viewed in stark contrast, but really, they're in conversation. Neither is as exciting in a vacuum, and I’m remembering how much more joy there is in being online when it’s a facet of my life rather than a substitute for it, as it was during quarantine.
So it feels appropriate that today is a dawning of a new era in many ways for this newsletter. A whole new interpretation of online trends and experiences is unfolding as we bring the virtual experiences of these past years safely into our real lives. Isn’t the world much more exciting now that Caroline Calloway could be waiting inside any given bar, waiting to pour Snake Oil on your face? —Kate
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