A Culture Study Mirror
Best Ofs, Most Popular, Most Useful Threads, Plus Some Inside Baseball
Whenever I meet someone who reads the newsletter, they often feel the need to apologize for not reading everything. I start waving my hand in that “forget about it” motion before they even finish the sentence. No author — and certainly no newsletter author — puts their stuff into the world with the belief that a “good” reader must somehow read all of it. They just want some of their stuff to reach people. Not all of their stuff; not all people. Some is quite enough; indeed, some is cause for celebration.
I write and publish two newsletters a week, nearly every week of the year. Plus there’s the subscriber-only threads twice a week, and a podcast episode 50 weeks a year. That’s a lot. So this week, I’m highlighting what others have loved the most — and what I loved writing the most. You’ll also find a collection of the subscriber-only Just Trust Mes, plus some other inside baseball end-of-year stats, like what else you clicked on the most, the piece people message me about the most, the other newsletters with the most overlap, the books that come up over and over again in the “What Are You Reading” threads, the newsletter that brought in the most new subscribers, and the pieces with the most effective paywalls.
I hope you find something you missed - or rediscover something you loved. And thanks, as always, for reading - whatever that looks like. I mean it. I’m just so grateful you’re here, supporting this work as it goes in so many directions.
Most Popular Culture Study Essays:
1.) Taylor Swift and the Good Girl Trap
2.) The Whole Bama Confidential Series
3.) This is How Much America Still Hates Women
4.) White Celebrity and Rituals of Civility
5.) The Unraveling of a Royal Fairytale
What I Wrote This Year That Felt Most Akin to Bleeding on the Page:
Most Proud Of:
