You probably think this media_gossip is about you
Plus: Caroline Calloway, Shit You Should Care About, and Good Charlotte vs. music journalism.
Welcome to media_gossip, Embedded’s special weekly edition of … media gossip, sent every Friday. You’re getting this because you subscribe to Embedded, but you can opt out here.
Nick’s Riff This Week
On the malevolent energy of storage units: “Onto this American dark matter we project our fears and fantasies. We see the terrorist, stockpiling his weapons behind a roll-up door, on the news or in a movie. It’s where Rust Cohle keeps his snuff tape. Storage Wars, still airing after 18 seasons, tells the story of unearthing treasure, or simply extracting value, from the confiscated belongings of people who miss their rental payments.”
On Wednesday night, I was in the room where it happened—and by that I of course mean, the room where Good Noticing’s Claire Parker ran into Caroline Calloway and Caroline left mid-conversation and then filmed a front-facing video on her way home accusing Claire of being one of “the meanest bitches in New York City.” In the background of this extremely niche internet drama was a quiz show! The Shit Show, to be specific, hosted by shit you should care about’s ★ luce ☆ who is truly one of the nicest sweeties in media, probably because she lives in New Zealand. And yet, I’ve still had so many opportunities to spend time with her IRL and each one has been a treat. Also on stage with me were writers like Casey Lewis, Brendon Holder, brittany spanos and creators like Tefi Pessoa, Brianna Chickenfry, and Eli Rallo, which had Casey and I repeatedly wondering aloud how on earth we had ended up there. —Kate
Tuesday night, Kate and I one-upped each other with stories of past social anxiety as we traveled between events—yes, two in one night. First, we visited the Shopify offices (subscribe to In Stock!), where we took in the view of Little Island and gossiped with the team there about Substack writers having to get ahead of their use of AI thanks to the Pangram integration. Then we saw Delia Cai interview Kathryn Jezer-Morton about her new book, The Story of Your Life: How Social Media Shapes the Way We Experience Everything, which yielded a gem from Kathryn, who predicted (I’m paraphrasing) that we will soon abandon social media to the AIs, as they begin to exclusively talk to each other. —Nick
You Probably Think This Media Gossip Is About You…
When I started this newsletter, my biggest anxiety was that the people I was obliquely writing about would find out and get mad at me. This is perhaps reason number one why a people-pleaser should not start a gossip column, but it turns out I needn’t have worried. In the first few months of writing media_gossip, an entirely unexpected, and yet in retrospect unsurprising, trend has emerged: People who I’m not writing about are getting mad because they think I am.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Embedded to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.