Just here for to post some appreciation for your writing. I really loved this line, "It was never an all-you-can-eat-buffet that left you nauseous; it was an excellent, satisfying meal." (the nausea is real)
This notion really took me back to a time and habits I had forgotten. I also had a list of sites and blogs bookmarked (many in the piece) that I'd go to and check, maybe scan my RSS reader, and look for stuff that was interesting. I'd read that stuff or save for later. And then...uh, I'd be done. If I was really bored, maybe I'd try to think of a publication I haven't checked in on in a while. But there was no algorithm or infinite scroll throwing the NEXT THING at me which is, of course, a big shot of dopamine (or not one, which actually makes you want one more). Now there's always something else, INFINITE something else, and it's on me to decide that I'm done. If I do stop, it feels bad because I'm depriving myself of potentially finding something interesting in the NEXT THING. If I don't stop, I feel bad because I know I can't stop and put the phone down.
I'm sure it's way too easy to romanticize this time, it's fascinating that this was very digital, yet before the newsfeed/algorithmic stuff really took over. Before we were filled with the feeling that we were never done.
Everything you said. I remember back in those days being left hungry for more content and desperately trying to think what other publications I could read. I miss that feeling. I spent a lot of time on salon.com. I would much prefer to be left wanting more than bloated from my consumption.
At the risk of sounding like the teacher’s pet, this is a big reason I read Culture Study! It’s my only paid Substack subscription. Between AHP’s writing, interviews, recommended links, and the comment section, I generally get that 2010ish internet vibe. I almost never seek out my own internet content anymore. Substack is my only social platform, which has been refreshing. I don’t have a traditional desk job & I commute by car or bike, so my limited internet time is more efficient because I rely on other people to curate links for me.
I love the idea of only getting recommended links from curated lists in newsletters! That reminds me of old blogging days, too; it was so common for bloggers to do regular round ups. We lost that to SEO mongers for a while, but Substackers are bringing it back. Such a delightful way to build community 💖
I do this too, through Culture Study as well as a few other niche/geography-specific newsletters. I bet I miss out on a lot of good content, but also, if it's really that good, I figure it will find a way to me. There will always be more good quality content than I could ever have time to read, and I'm making peace with that!
This is me too! Culture Study, Burnt Roast, and Sarah Bessey's Field Notes alongside my local news daily rundowns. I usually read them first thing when I sit down at my desk for the day and often will save the email for later. Often later is Saturday morning in bed. My partner now knows that as my "letters" time
Same - I also rely on Ann Friedman’s weekly newsletter! Roxane Gay’s round-ups are amazing, but she reads a truly unimaginable amount. Ann curates a short and doable reading list that makes me feel smart and well read when I get through a few of them.
Love this concept! As a fellow former Pocket power user, I'd strongly recommend Reader by Readwise. It's a premium app but worth it to me - the main Readwise app doesn't really float my boat but Reader does everything Pocket did, plus handling PDFs and videos well, and integrating RSS. I also migrated over my Pocket old library and have been using it as a chance to resurface stuff I saved many years ago and either never got around to, or forgot about. Link rot notwithstanding, it's been a fascinating way to see how the internet, and my own interests have evolved (or not) over time
Lemme know what you think if you decide to give it a try! I was a lifer at Pocket, now working at Readwise. Also a fellow WA islander, literally writing this while waiting for the Coupeville ferry 😂
Curious what the culture is like there as an employee. I took a call at one point but found the self-improvement-bro vibe kinda offputting. Has the audience shifted at all over time? (I realize you can likely only say so much in a public forum)
The culture we built at Pocket will forever be a career-highlight for me. The Readwise audience def leans more self-improvement than Pocket, but the team is really wonderful. Everyone is kind, smart, and the work itself has honestly been fun. Been pretty happy with the setup there
This is great intel! I never knew Pocket but was into Instapaper for a while and deeply miss Google Reader. I tried Feedly but it didn’t cut it. Psyched to try Readwise!
here to also recommend Reader by Readwise which is a lovely app to use. I also use the original Readwise app to review Kindle highlights and once I started using Reader, I could see all my highlights from Kindle and articles I read through Readwise. I’m a big fan of both apps.
Oh my goodness, thank you! I've been grieving Pocket (which I learned about from AHP ♥️🙏 and love using) for the past few weeks and felt completely lost when it comes to alternatives. I just installed Reader and it offered me the option to migrate Pocket content when I was signing up and it took 2 minutes and worked, what a lifesaver! Thanks so much :-)
Ok, this question is slightly déclassé but does reader save articles behind paywalls? I see that Instapaper does not (fair enough) but this was a key feature of Pocket for me. I subscribe to lots of publications but sometimes you want to read something behind a paywall and Pocket was great for that. If Reader does that as well it might be worth $120/yr but if not, probably not.
I imagine this depends on the paywall - I have found that it does, but I don't have a ton of paid subs so YMMV. The app is quite new, so they're adding features all the time, and I'm sure sophisticated management of paywalled content is on their radar, if not already implemented
I’m also a big fan of Reader by Readwise. In addition to migrating all my old Pocket links there, I also send over all my email newsletters to read there. It’s not quite Google Reader, but it does give me that satisfaction of reading the Internet as I work through my feed.
Also here to recommend Reader by Readwise! I switched from pocket to this long ago, and am totally willing to pay because it means it'll stick around. I definitely get my money's worth! I read all my substack newsletters in it because you get an email that you can have emails sent to the app.
I have been looking for a relatively easy way to put keeping up with newsletters into a more structured reading routine. They pile up in my email's newsletters folder now. Looking forward to trying this out.
Piling on the love for Reader by Readwise! The ability to highlight is so helpful for engaging more deeply and challenging yourself to identify what's new/challenging/important.
Plus, you can review and export your highlights afterwards if you're a nerd who likes to synthesize your takeaways :)
+1 on the video-handling. If you import from YouTube you can then view/highlight the transcript (for which Reader has a nice “clean up” feature so you get punctuation added). Still waiting on better podcast transcript integration but this is a workaround if the creator posts the pod on YouTube.
It's exciting to see this endorsement because I have been hesitating to drop the dosh on it, but I need something! And I am not very attracted to the way Readwise is marketed, it looks like a commonplace book for techies. Reader however looks like what I need.
As an alternative, Cory Doctorow recommends Newsblur.
LOVE LOVE LOVE Readwise Reader. Been a heavy user of it for about three years. In addition to being a save-it-later app, you can have all your email newsletters sent to it and it's also an RSS reader. It can hold epubs, pdfs, YouTubes with auto transcription, and so much more. It's everything I always wanted in an online reading platform. I've been reading online since 2000 - used Google Reader back in the day, then Pocket, then finally exported all my Pocket articles over to Readwise Reader and am finally content. Well worth the yearly fee.
Curious how the Pocket migration went. I have been considering it for a while — know a few people working there — but the announcement of Picket going away immediately made me think “well, seems like I might be ending up at Readwise after all.”
It’s seamless. I moved when it was still in beta and even then it was just a couple of clicks. It handled my migration of 10k+ saved articles no problem. I didn't make much use of the highlighting and tagging features in Pocket, but from what I can tell it preserved the tags too. I think former Pocket users are a big part of their user base, so they make a big effort to make the transition as easy as possible
I never used Pocket, but your mention of Gawker Media made me realize how much time I used to spend on Gawker, Jezebel, Deadspin, i09, and even… Jalopnik. Peter Thiel can get fucked.
Because I subscribe to so many newsletters, I use readbetter.io - it’s a paid subscription, but you can forward any email or website (using the extension) to your kindle paperwhite. So these long form pieces that I love (CS, Garrett Bucks, Burnt Toast, etc etc etc) show up, magazine-style in my kindle. And I can read them at my leisure, like I would a book, rather than being tethered to my phone to consume it all. It has some glitches and isn’t perfect, but it’s been great in surfacing the best content for me in a manageable way that gets me off my phone.
OMG this is exactly what I need. I was going to post a comment saying simply that as so much good writing (CS a prime example) has moved to Substack, my inbox (which I do keep as close to inbox-zero as possible) becomes my reading list. But then that comes to feel like a nagging to-do list because I like to clear things out --and I'm so often looking for a break from my phone or laptop to really savor a piece. I've sometimes even printed them out(!!) but that is wasteful, too. All that to say THANK YOU OMG I AM GOING TO TRY THIS!
Power to the printer 🔥 I also started to print out my to read articles this year (currently have 290 open tabs which is too much pressure and chaos), can recommend. My focus improved, and it’s also a nice throwback to reading magazines in my bed as a teen. I print longform articles in a little booklet, by now I have my own little collection of booklets to share with my husband and friends. Would love to have a longform offline bookclub where I share articles by mail (in the post) with my friends. Maybe a project for 2026.
I'm glad to hear this was helpful! It definitely took me a little bit of time to figure it out so it's not annoying and not just turning my Kindle into the same as my inbox (I use the "Weekly Magazine" feature, so once a week, I get one big download of all my newsletters for the week and I can peruse them easily). The person who created the app is also very responsive to requests for feature updates or bug problems.
Thank you so much for this rec, I just signed up for a free account to see if I like it. I actually was thinking last week that I wish I could read some of my Substacks like a book. This is great!
I like to call those days “when the internet was fun.” And it really is a feeling of nostalgia. Jezebel, The Hairpin, and The Toast were honestly formative for me at that tender, exploratory time of your early 20s! I love that I still see many of those writers, largely in prestige publications or on substack these days — Edith Zimmerman in particular truly seems responsible for launching a lot of amazing careers — but I miss reading the blogs and the feeling of community, exploration, novelty, and excitement that came with them. Also I’ve never laughed so hard.
Does anyone else remember the Hillary Clinton post on the last day of the Toast? I sobbed. Should have known then the fun was over 🫠
Anne, if you ever want to take a trip down nostalgia lane and write a deep reminiscence of that time, or publish an oral history, I would read that so hard…
Actual advice — I do like Cup of Jo and Kottke for finding things on the internet and for the experience of actually navigating to a home page!
Also — if anyone else can find me the link of the hairpin or toast post (I can’t remember) that is like a script of the song Call Your Girlfriend, I’ve been trying to dig it up for ages and simply cannot find it and I want to reread it very much 😂
I do remember distinctly the day Hillary posted in the Toast. That whole summer summer I was riding a high of believing the time had come for the Hermiones of the world to take over. Alas, now it turns out even Hermione’s creator is awful.
Television Without Pity is the corner of the internet that I continue to mourn. I spent countless hours reading their content - before we even called it content! I followed more tv shows through TWoP than I could ever have actually watched. In 2001, Television Without Pity was in peak form and was a lifeline for me, 22 years old, just graduated college, newly married to a servicemember and living 3000 miles from friends and family. I spent countless hours reading recaps, forums (I was mostly a lurker. I know the heavy-handed moderation was controversial, but I appreciated it. So many conversations these days - online and off - that devolve into some version of "talking about the boards on the boards" and it is tedious, unproductive and boring!) and the constellation of associated blogs from their contributors was the best part of most days. I had a job that paid minimum wage and thankfully required less than minimum time and effort giving me plenty of time to read the internet. My boss must have thought I had some respiratory disease for how often I tried to cover my laughter with a coughing fit!
I too miss TWoP so much! I was also 22 in 2001. It was such a blast, even reading descriptions of shows I’d never watched. RIP, TWoP! You were a real one.
OMG I forgot about TWP. I am not sure if this was part of the TWP universe but does anyone remember the "Hey who's that guy" articles all about character actors who would randomly show up in all kinds of TV and movies. God I love this internet age.
TWOP was still very big for me in 2013 when my law school friends moved away after graduation and I was newly living with my now husband. I have loved listening to Tara Aranio and Sarah D. Bunting on Again with This podcast recapping Dawson’s Creek again, they just got to Season 4 in the last couple weeks.
Thank you from a fellow 2001 college grad. I still miss TWoP. So many of their recaps were masterclasses of cultural criticism often while making me snort with laughter.
TWoP is still accessible through some Internet Archive finagling! I loved digging out the Band of Brothers recaps to read alongside my initial watch earlier this year.
I migrated my Google Reader blog roll over to The Old Reader, but I've noticed how few blogs are still active now. It makes me so sad. Some are to be expected: the craft-focused blogs I imagine were really difficult for individuals to keep up, especially when Instagram seems much more in line with the visual nature of the content.
I have no practical advice, just some reflection on the topic. My relationship to internet reading was probably at its healthiest when I was in college in the late aughts and didn’t have internet at my off-campus house. I’d bike to the college, go to one of the computer labs, and fire up a public computer. I would read The Awl and some of my other favorite blogs, catch up on webcomics, do some LIGHT Facebook scrolling (this was back in the days of the “[name] is _____” status updates). And then I would leave.
I also find myself skimming and scrolling these days, and somehow I hate how there’s no defined end point for phone-reading, so now I’m nostalgic for that time.
My husband recently went to a high school reunion and that school is essentially creating this for high school students. They only gain access to their phones for a small amount of time each week and the rest of the time it’s school computers only (with no social media). This is a boarding school so it’s a little easier to make it happen but the staff seem to think the kids have better mental health than some counterparts….
I miss when I used to get to the end of my instagram feed. That's all I want: the content from the people I follow, and that's it. And now there's no way to get that.
There is! Click the Instagram logo at the top left of your feed, then select “Following.” This gives you your timeline in chronological order, no ads or suggested posts. You have to select it each time you open the app, and it‘s only for Feed posts (no Stories).
INSTAPAPER! Based on how you described "Pocket" it's basically the same thing, browser extension included. It sends a plain text version of whatever the site/article/page is to an app on your phone, and once the piece is downloaded (when you open the app with cell service) you can read it in any setting—see: commuting underground on a train in a busy city. Highly recommend.
It saves photos but they don't look . . . great? Like they might show up in odd places compared to the original source. Same goes for ads and any sort of "popout" box. But it's an annoyance I'm willing to put up with because otherwise I will simply never read half of this stuff (the Culture Study newsletter included!).
This is so weird to think about, because it really has changed. 15 years ago I still used the Internet primarily on a computer where a homepage was a thing, and I'd bookmark my favorites in my Firefox browser to check every morning and lunch and maybe at home after dinner but only if I was home alone and truly bored (and that seemed "extremely online" at the time lol). Today it's almost entirely the slot machine scrolling experience of mobile web browsing, although I guess Substack is my main haunt of late and that's an app so perhaps I am actually not on 'the web's as much as I think, other than specific queries or using websites to accomplish things I once did in person (filling out paperwork for the doctor visit, downloading library books, buying socks). I rely on the writers I follow to curate/connect me to links or pull them into their feeds; the shitification of 90% of the web makes it so hard to find anything organically! And when I do use Google search I am paranoid that 90% of what it's taking me to is AI produced, which leaves me infuriated and frustrated because I DO remember when it wasn't like this!!! I also find that I avoid "committing " to new apps or sites because I feel like nothing lasts more than a few years max now, and I resent paying app subscriptions because again, I remember when I didn't have to, I remember when the Internet was something I looked at, not something mining me for data.
I periodically think about how much I miss exactly this ritual. Spending a small part each day opening a browser on a big screen instead of the little one (I am absolutely a millennial) to read the internet. All the sites you mentioned, I loved an essay, I loved a longform piece when I didn't feel like there was so much competition for my attention by absolute garbage that nevertheless I needed to see.
One thing I've noticed that is I prefer to read your mid-week newsletters on a computer rather than my phone. In fact I would prefer to read all newsletters on a computer rather than my phone, but on the weekends, just the sight of my desk and computer makes me anxious because of how connected they are to work, so I am relegated to the small screen, and it's not the same!
I finally broke down and got a tablet specially to be able to read longer form content. I use it with Reader, mentioned by people above.
And I intentionally made the home screen just Reader, Kindle and Libby and turned off notifications so I don’t use it like a bigger phone. It’s my reading tablet! it comes with me to the coffee shop on a weekend morning much like a great magazine would!
I did the same thing - reading these comments on the iPad that I only ever use on the weekends, and mainly only for reading my Substack newsletters. I couldn’t bear to have my coffee in front of my laptop because that signaled “work time!’ to my brain, and didn’t want to get distracted by all my notifications and social apps that are on my phone (and intentionally not on my iPad).
I'm glad that works for you! I tried a tablet and there's something I hate about holding screens in my hand even if it's a bigger screen. I do an non-kindle e-ink reader that's a tablet with just Libby installed so that I can read my ebooks on that instead of my phone which is nice for books and helps with distractions. But there's just something about newsletters and essays...I'm too conditioned to want to sit at a desktop or large monitor that's at face height I think...
I literally cried when Google Reader died. Nothing I've ever tried has replaced what it was, but that's perhaps because the internet isn't that place anymore (probably because of the lack of Google Reader but I digress...)
I went to Feedly for awhile but hated it. Used Pocket in the early days. Tried Instapaper. Raindrop.io (which is still a great bookmarker, but not really for reading).
I'm a current Readwise Reader girlie. It functions like Google Reader for me, but for the internet as it is today. I was one of their beta testers back in 2021, and the Readwise team is still very responsive to feedback and user ideas. More than a few things it does are, in part, from feedback and suggestions I made.
It's paid, but that gives me reassurance it won't just suddenly be ripped away unceremoniously like Google Reader. It's the most used app on my phone and it's how I read Culture Study (and everything else).
I also cried!! I remember exactly where I was when it happened too (walking down the sidewalk under the cherry trees near my first apartment). gReader was really more of a social app for me, with the main joy being the shared posts from my friends and their friends within the app, and the comments we would all leave (much like the CS comment section!). I even made IRL friends through gReader, and it’s not an exaggeration to credit it with at least one marriage in my friend group. We used to text each other on the July 1 ‘deathaversary’ every year 😭
I share links with myself, via email, then put the email in a folder. Only the cream of the journalistic/essayistic crop is treated to this completely stupid way of doing things, but I do read and remember more, and I can always go back and access it.
Add me to the “the-next-best thing-to-rewriting-the-whole-article-on-paper” club. I copy and paste links to NOTES on my phone or if I’m really feeling extra old school, I copy and paste the actual text into my NOTES. And the sad thing is: I actually use(d) Pocket.
Thanks for this trip down memory lane. I used to spend hours in bed at night reading articles found on Longform. Once, to my initial delight, I discovered a decade-old Paris Review article about an old Southern professor and writer who lived near my grandparents’ summer mountain cottage in TN. I used to spend the night at his house in the summer sometimes when I was visiting my grandparents and his granddaughter was visiting him. Running across that article on Longform caused me to reconnect with my childhood summertime friend, who revealed that the publication of the Paris Review article had been very painful for her family (it suggested that her granddad engaged in predatory behavior toward his students, or at least one of them who rented an apartment in his home). I don’t really know how I find longform articles now—especially ones that aren’t paywalled—but a few years ago I was Googling the name of an old internet message board friend (who I had gone on a girls weekend with IRL) who had somewhat surprisingly to me become a massive SM influencer during Covid. To my surprise I found an Atlantic profile of her. The internet never ceases to amaze me!
Just here for to post some appreciation for your writing. I really loved this line, "It was never an all-you-can-eat-buffet that left you nauseous; it was an excellent, satisfying meal." (the nausea is real)
This notion really took me back to a time and habits I had forgotten. I also had a list of sites and blogs bookmarked (many in the piece) that I'd go to and check, maybe scan my RSS reader, and look for stuff that was interesting. I'd read that stuff or save for later. And then...uh, I'd be done. If I was really bored, maybe I'd try to think of a publication I haven't checked in on in a while. But there was no algorithm or infinite scroll throwing the NEXT THING at me which is, of course, a big shot of dopamine (or not one, which actually makes you want one more). Now there's always something else, INFINITE something else, and it's on me to decide that I'm done. If I do stop, it feels bad because I'm depriving myself of potentially finding something interesting in the NEXT THING. If I don't stop, I feel bad because I know I can't stop and put the phone down.
I'm sure it's way too easy to romanticize this time, it's fascinating that this was very digital, yet before the newsfeed/algorithmic stuff really took over. Before we were filled with the feeling that we were never done.
Everything you said. I remember back in those days being left hungry for more content and desperately trying to think what other publications I could read. I miss that feeling. I spent a lot of time on salon.com. I would much prefer to be left wanting more than bloated from my consumption.
Omg salon! Yes!
I loved this part as well! Feeling so nauseous lately
At the risk of sounding like the teacher’s pet, this is a big reason I read Culture Study! It’s my only paid Substack subscription. Between AHP’s writing, interviews, recommended links, and the comment section, I generally get that 2010ish internet vibe. I almost never seek out my own internet content anymore. Substack is my only social platform, which has been refreshing. I don’t have a traditional desk job & I commute by car or bike, so my limited internet time is more efficient because I rely on other people to curate links for me.
I love the idea of only getting recommended links from curated lists in newsletters! That reminds me of old blogging days, too; it was so common for bloggers to do regular round ups. We lost that to SEO mongers for a while, but Substackers are bringing it back. Such a delightful way to build community 💖
100% rely on thoughtful writers or creators to curate wider internet links for me!
I do this too, through Culture Study as well as a few other niche/geography-specific newsletters. I bet I miss out on a lot of good content, but also, if it's really that good, I figure it will find a way to me. There will always be more good quality content than I could ever have time to read, and I'm making peace with that!
This is me too! Culture Study, Burnt Roast, and Sarah Bessey's Field Notes alongside my local news daily rundowns. I usually read them first thing when I sit down at my desk for the day and often will save the email for later. Often later is Saturday morning in bed. My partner now knows that as my "letters" time
Same - I also rely on Ann Friedman’s weekly newsletter! Roxane Gay’s round-ups are amazing, but she reads a truly unimaginable amount. Ann curates a short and doable reading list that makes me feel smart and well read when I get through a few of them.
Love this concept! As a fellow former Pocket power user, I'd strongly recommend Reader by Readwise. It's a premium app but worth it to me - the main Readwise app doesn't really float my boat but Reader does everything Pocket did, plus handling PDFs and videos well, and integrating RSS. I also migrated over my Pocket old library and have been using it as a chance to resurface stuff I saved many years ago and either never got around to, or forgot about. Link rot notwithstanding, it's been a fascinating way to see how the internet, and my own interests have evolved (or not) over time
This sounds like what I’ve been looking for - and am very willing to pay for, too. Thank you!
Lemme know what you think if you decide to give it a try! I was a lifer at Pocket, now working at Readwise. Also a fellow WA islander, literally writing this while waiting for the Coupeville ferry 😂
Curious what the culture is like there as an employee. I took a call at one point but found the self-improvement-bro vibe kinda offputting. Has the audience shifted at all over time? (I realize you can likely only say so much in a public forum)
The culture we built at Pocket will forever be a career-highlight for me. The Readwise audience def leans more self-improvement than Pocket, but the team is really wonderful. Everyone is kind, smart, and the work itself has honestly been fun. Been pretty happy with the setup there
This is great intel! I never knew Pocket but was into Instapaper for a while and deeply miss Google Reader. I tried Feedly but it didn’t cut it. Psyched to try Readwise!
here to also recommend Reader by Readwise which is a lovely app to use. I also use the original Readwise app to review Kindle highlights and once I started using Reader, I could see all my highlights from Kindle and articles I read through Readwise. I’m a big fan of both apps.
Oh my goodness, thank you! I've been grieving Pocket (which I learned about from AHP ♥️🙏 and love using) for the past few weeks and felt completely lost when it comes to alternatives. I just installed Reader and it offered me the option to migrate Pocket content when I was signing up and it took 2 minutes and worked, what a lifesaver! Thanks so much :-)
Ok, this question is slightly déclassé but does reader save articles behind paywalls? I see that Instapaper does not (fair enough) but this was a key feature of Pocket for me. I subscribe to lots of publications but sometimes you want to read something behind a paywall and Pocket was great for that. If Reader does that as well it might be worth $120/yr but if not, probably not.
I imagine this depends on the paywall - I have found that it does, but I don't have a ton of paid subs so YMMV. The app is quite new, so they're adding features all the time, and I'm sure sophisticated management of paywalled content is on their radar, if not already implemented
Yes... not Substack paid, but I read New Yorker, NYTimes and others for free by following the RSS in Readwise Reader
I’m also a big fan of Reader by Readwise. In addition to migrating all my old Pocket links there, I also send over all my email newsletters to read there. It’s not quite Google Reader, but it does give me that satisfaction of reading the Internet as I work through my feed.
Also here to recommend Reader by Readwise! I switched from pocket to this long ago, and am totally willing to pay because it means it'll stick around. I definitely get my money's worth! I read all my substack newsletters in it because you get an email that you can have emails sent to the app.
You can also follow Substacks in Readwise Reader by going to "Subscribe to RSS feed" and simply typing in the Substack URL
I have been looking for a relatively easy way to put keeping up with newsletters into a more structured reading routine. They pile up in my email's newsletters folder now. Looking forward to trying this out.
That's a cool feature! Now Reader or Substack needs to allow saving Substack notes - you can save newsletters in the app but not notes 🙄😢
Piling on the love for Reader by Readwise! The ability to highlight is so helpful for engaging more deeply and challenging yourself to identify what's new/challenging/important.
Plus, you can review and export your highlights afterwards if you're a nerd who likes to synthesize your takeaways :)
+1 on the video-handling. If you import from YouTube you can then view/highlight the transcript (for which Reader has a nice “clean up” feature so you get punctuation added). Still waiting on better podcast transcript integration but this is a workaround if the creator posts the pod on YouTube.
It's exciting to see this endorsement because I have been hesitating to drop the dosh on it, but I need something! And I am not very attracted to the way Readwise is marketed, it looks like a commonplace book for techies. Reader however looks like what I need.
As an alternative, Cory Doctorow recommends Newsblur.
LOVE LOVE LOVE Readwise Reader. Been a heavy user of it for about three years. In addition to being a save-it-later app, you can have all your email newsletters sent to it and it's also an RSS reader. It can hold epubs, pdfs, YouTubes with auto transcription, and so much more. It's everything I always wanted in an online reading platform. I've been reading online since 2000 - used Google Reader back in the day, then Pocket, then finally exported all my Pocket articles over to Readwise Reader and am finally content. Well worth the yearly fee.
Curious how the Pocket migration went. I have been considering it for a while — know a few people working there — but the announcement of Picket going away immediately made me think “well, seems like I might be ending up at Readwise after all.”
It’s seamless. I moved when it was still in beta and even then it was just a couple of clicks. It handled my migration of 10k+ saved articles no problem. I didn't make much use of the highlighting and tagging features in Pocket, but from what I can tell it preserved the tags too. I think former Pocket users are a big part of their user base, so they make a big effort to make the transition as easy as possible
Oh, this new-to-me rec is the highlight of my day so far! Thanks.
I never used Pocket, but your mention of Gawker Media made me realize how much time I used to spend on Gawker, Jezebel, Deadspin, i09, and even… Jalopnik. Peter Thiel can get fucked.
God I miss 2010s era Jezebel
Because I subscribe to so many newsletters, I use readbetter.io - it’s a paid subscription, but you can forward any email or website (using the extension) to your kindle paperwhite. So these long form pieces that I love (CS, Garrett Bucks, Burnt Toast, etc etc etc) show up, magazine-style in my kindle. And I can read them at my leisure, like I would a book, rather than being tethered to my phone to consume it all. It has some glitches and isn’t perfect, but it’s been great in surfacing the best content for me in a manageable way that gets me off my phone.
OMG this is exactly what I need. I was going to post a comment saying simply that as so much good writing (CS a prime example) has moved to Substack, my inbox (which I do keep as close to inbox-zero as possible) becomes my reading list. But then that comes to feel like a nagging to-do list because I like to clear things out --and I'm so often looking for a break from my phone or laptop to really savor a piece. I've sometimes even printed them out(!!) but that is wasteful, too. All that to say THANK YOU OMG I AM GOING TO TRY THIS!
I feel exactly the same way. Thanks for the rec!
Power to the printer 🔥 I also started to print out my to read articles this year (currently have 290 open tabs which is too much pressure and chaos), can recommend. My focus improved, and it’s also a nice throwback to reading magazines in my bed as a teen. I print longform articles in a little booklet, by now I have my own little collection of booklets to share with my husband and friends. Would love to have a longform offline bookclub where I share articles by mail (in the post) with my friends. Maybe a project for 2026.
I'm glad to hear this was helpful! It definitely took me a little bit of time to figure it out so it's not annoying and not just turning my Kindle into the same as my inbox (I use the "Weekly Magazine" feature, so once a week, I get one big download of all my newsletters for the week and I can peruse them easily). The person who created the app is also very responsive to requests for feature updates or bug problems.
Thank you so much for this rec, I just signed up for a free account to see if I like it. I actually was thinking last week that I wish I could read some of my Substacks like a book. This is great!
I like to call those days “when the internet was fun.” And it really is a feeling of nostalgia. Jezebel, The Hairpin, and The Toast were honestly formative for me at that tender, exploratory time of your early 20s! I love that I still see many of those writers, largely in prestige publications or on substack these days — Edith Zimmerman in particular truly seems responsible for launching a lot of amazing careers — but I miss reading the blogs and the feeling of community, exploration, novelty, and excitement that came with them. Also I’ve never laughed so hard.
Does anyone else remember the Hillary Clinton post on the last day of the Toast? I sobbed. Should have known then the fun was over 🫠
Anne, if you ever want to take a trip down nostalgia lane and write a deep reminiscence of that time, or publish an oral history, I would read that so hard…
Actual advice — I do like Cup of Jo and Kottke for finding things on the internet and for the experience of actually navigating to a home page!
Also — if anyone else can find me the link of the hairpin or toast post (I can’t remember) that is like a script of the song Call Your Girlfriend, I’ve been trying to dig it up for ages and simply cannot find it and I want to reread it very much 😂
I do remember distinctly the day Hillary posted in the Toast. That whole summer summer I was riding a high of believing the time had come for the Hermiones of the world to take over. Alas, now it turns out even Hermione’s creator is awful.
Arghlll that's aweful but so true
I miss The Hairpin and The Toast so so much!! Also would looooove to read an oral history or something about that time and those writers 😍🥰💗
I would read that so hard too ...
Television Without Pity is the corner of the internet that I continue to mourn. I spent countless hours reading their content - before we even called it content! I followed more tv shows through TWoP than I could ever have actually watched. In 2001, Television Without Pity was in peak form and was a lifeline for me, 22 years old, just graduated college, newly married to a servicemember and living 3000 miles from friends and family. I spent countless hours reading recaps, forums (I was mostly a lurker. I know the heavy-handed moderation was controversial, but I appreciated it. So many conversations these days - online and off - that devolve into some version of "talking about the boards on the boards" and it is tedious, unproductive and boring!) and the constellation of associated blogs from their contributors was the best part of most days. I had a job that paid minimum wage and thankfully required less than minimum time and effort giving me plenty of time to read the internet. My boss must have thought I had some respiratory disease for how often I tried to cover my laughter with a coughing fit!
The recaps of Battlestar Galactica were works of art.
I too miss TWoP so much! I was also 22 in 2001. It was such a blast, even reading descriptions of shows I’d never watched. RIP, TWoP! You were a real one.
OMG I forgot about TWP. I am not sure if this was part of the TWP universe but does anyone remember the "Hey who's that guy" articles all about character actors who would randomly show up in all kinds of TV and movies. God I love this internet age.
I think Hey Its That Guy was a Fametracker feature. Such good stuff! I feel sorry for people who didn't get to experience those times on the internet!
TWOP was still very big for me in 2013 when my law school friends moved away after graduation and I was newly living with my now husband. I have loved listening to Tara Aranio and Sarah D. Bunting on Again with This podcast recapping Dawson’s Creek again, they just got to Season 4 in the last couple weeks.
Thank you from a fellow 2001 college grad. I still miss TWoP. So many of their recaps were masterclasses of cultural criticism often while making me snort with laughter.
TWoP is still accessible through some Internet Archive finagling! I loved digging out the Band of Brothers recaps to read alongside my initial watch earlier this year.
I did the same when we were watching some classic Amazing Race seasons with our kids a while back. Still laugh-out-loud funny.
Autostraddle does some very good TV recaps!
Came here just to mention TWoP!
I miss Google Reader all the time. Also, the comment section of the Hairpin was such an amazing community (similar vibes to this one, I've found.)
highest compliment!
I migrated my Google Reader blog roll over to The Old Reader, but I've noticed how few blogs are still active now. It makes me so sad. Some are to be expected: the craft-focused blogs I imagine were really difficult for individuals to keep up, especially when Instagram seems much more in line with the visual nature of the content.
Readwise Reader is everything Google Reader was and much more. I've been an "online reader" for decades and highly recommend: https://readwise.io/read
I have no practical advice, just some reflection on the topic. My relationship to internet reading was probably at its healthiest when I was in college in the late aughts and didn’t have internet at my off-campus house. I’d bike to the college, go to one of the computer labs, and fire up a public computer. I would read The Awl and some of my other favorite blogs, catch up on webcomics, do some LIGHT Facebook scrolling (this was back in the days of the “[name] is _____” status updates). And then I would leave.
I also find myself skimming and scrolling these days, and somehow I hate how there’s no defined end point for phone-reading, so now I’m nostalgic for that time.
My husband recently went to a high school reunion and that school is essentially creating this for high school students. They only gain access to their phones for a small amount of time each week and the rest of the time it’s school computers only (with no social media). This is a boarding school so it’s a little easier to make it happen but the staff seem to think the kids have better mental health than some counterparts….
That’s rad!
I miss when I used to get to the end of my instagram feed. That's all I want: the content from the people I follow, and that's it. And now there's no way to get that.
There is! Click the Instagram logo at the top left of your feed, then select “Following.” This gives you your timeline in chronological order, no ads or suggested posts. You have to select it each time you open the app, and it‘s only for Feed posts (no Stories).
Omg thank you!!!
INSTAPAPER! Based on how you described "Pocket" it's basically the same thing, browser extension included. It sends a plain text version of whatever the site/article/page is to an app on your phone, and once the piece is downloaded (when you open the app with cell service) you can read it in any setting—see: commuting underground on a train in a busy city. Highly recommend.
Agree! I am a big Instapaper fan too
I used to use Instapaper but left it for Pocket... but I guess I'm going back! Thanks for the reminder that it exists! :)
I read a lot of articles that have photos. Does Instapaper not save those with the article like Pocket did?
It saves photos but they don't look . . . great? Like they might show up in odd places compared to the original source. Same goes for ads and any sort of "popout" box. But it's an annoyance I'm willing to put up with because otherwise I will simply never read half of this stuff (the Culture Study newsletter included!).
I miss u The Toast
However I do have a whole goodreads shelf of books that the article writers went on to publish!
Missing The Toast forever and always 😭
This is so weird to think about, because it really has changed. 15 years ago I still used the Internet primarily on a computer where a homepage was a thing, and I'd bookmark my favorites in my Firefox browser to check every morning and lunch and maybe at home after dinner but only if I was home alone and truly bored (and that seemed "extremely online" at the time lol). Today it's almost entirely the slot machine scrolling experience of mobile web browsing, although I guess Substack is my main haunt of late and that's an app so perhaps I am actually not on 'the web's as much as I think, other than specific queries or using websites to accomplish things I once did in person (filling out paperwork for the doctor visit, downloading library books, buying socks). I rely on the writers I follow to curate/connect me to links or pull them into their feeds; the shitification of 90% of the web makes it so hard to find anything organically! And when I do use Google search I am paranoid that 90% of what it's taking me to is AI produced, which leaves me infuriated and frustrated because I DO remember when it wasn't like this!!! I also find that I avoid "committing " to new apps or sites because I feel like nothing lasts more than a few years max now, and I resent paying app subscriptions because again, I remember when I didn't have to, I remember when the Internet was something I looked at, not something mining me for data.
I periodically think about how much I miss exactly this ritual. Spending a small part each day opening a browser on a big screen instead of the little one (I am absolutely a millennial) to read the internet. All the sites you mentioned, I loved an essay, I loved a longform piece when I didn't feel like there was so much competition for my attention by absolute garbage that nevertheless I needed to see.
One thing I've noticed that is I prefer to read your mid-week newsletters on a computer rather than my phone. In fact I would prefer to read all newsletters on a computer rather than my phone, but on the weekends, just the sight of my desk and computer makes me anxious because of how connected they are to work, so I am relegated to the small screen, and it's not the same!
I finally broke down and got a tablet specially to be able to read longer form content. I use it with Reader, mentioned by people above.
And I intentionally made the home screen just Reader, Kindle and Libby and turned off notifications so I don’t use it like a bigger phone. It’s my reading tablet! it comes with me to the coffee shop on a weekend morning much like a great magazine would!
I did the same thing - reading these comments on the iPad that I only ever use on the weekends, and mainly only for reading my Substack newsletters. I couldn’t bear to have my coffee in front of my laptop because that signaled “work time!’ to my brain, and didn’t want to get distracted by all my notifications and social apps that are on my phone (and intentionally not on my iPad).
I'm glad that works for you! I tried a tablet and there's something I hate about holding screens in my hand even if it's a bigger screen. I do an non-kindle e-ink reader that's a tablet with just Libby installed so that I can read my ebooks on that instead of my phone which is nice for books and helps with distractions. But there's just something about newsletters and essays...I'm too conditioned to want to sit at a desktop or large monitor that's at face height I think...
Agree, I still prefer to read my sub stack writers on a computer because the posts seem SO long on a phone and there are more distractions on it
I literally cried when Google Reader died. Nothing I've ever tried has replaced what it was, but that's perhaps because the internet isn't that place anymore (probably because of the lack of Google Reader but I digress...)
I went to Feedly for awhile but hated it. Used Pocket in the early days. Tried Instapaper. Raindrop.io (which is still a great bookmarker, but not really for reading).
I'm a current Readwise Reader girlie. It functions like Google Reader for me, but for the internet as it is today. I was one of their beta testers back in 2021, and the Readwise team is still very responsive to feedback and user ideas. More than a few things it does are, in part, from feedback and suggestions I made.
It's paid, but that gives me reassurance it won't just suddenly be ripped away unceremoniously like Google Reader. It's the most used app on my phone and it's how I read Culture Study (and everything else).
I also cried!! I remember exactly where I was when it happened too (walking down the sidewalk under the cherry trees near my first apartment). gReader was really more of a social app for me, with the main joy being the shared posts from my friends and their friends within the app, and the comments we would all leave (much like the CS comment section!). I even made IRL friends through gReader, and it’s not an exaggeration to credit it with at least one marriage in my friend group. We used to text each other on the July 1 ‘deathaversary’ every year 😭
RIP Feedly! I started on Feedly and then went to Reader and then Pocket! Oh how we can trace our lives through our apps
I share links with myself, via email, then put the email in a folder. Only the cream of the journalistic/essayistic crop is treated to this completely stupid way of doing things, but I do read and remember more, and I can always go back and access it.
Ha! Following to up my game a few decades.
Add me to the “the-next-best thing-to-rewriting-the-whole-article-on-paper” club. I copy and paste links to NOTES on my phone or if I’m really feeling extra old school, I copy and paste the actual text into my NOTES. And the sad thing is: I actually use(d) Pocket.
Oh my god! I do the same thing! With the title “to read”! Feels kind of dumb now that I learned pocket exist! Well, not anymore it seems… LOL
Thanks for this trip down memory lane. I used to spend hours in bed at night reading articles found on Longform. Once, to my initial delight, I discovered a decade-old Paris Review article about an old Southern professor and writer who lived near my grandparents’ summer mountain cottage in TN. I used to spend the night at his house in the summer sometimes when I was visiting my grandparents and his granddaughter was visiting him. Running across that article on Longform caused me to reconnect with my childhood summertime friend, who revealed that the publication of the Paris Review article had been very painful for her family (it suggested that her granddad engaged in predatory behavior toward his students, or at least one of them who rented an apartment in his home). I don’t really know how I find longform articles now—especially ones that aren’t paywalled—but a few years ago I was Googling the name of an old internet message board friend (who I had gone on a girls weekend with IRL) who had somewhat surprisingly to me become a massive SM influencer during Covid. To my surprise I found an Atlantic profile of her. The internet never ceases to amaze me!
I wonder if you’re talking about Mr. Lytle - an essay that had a profound effect on me as well.
Yes that’s correct. He seemed like such a sweet old man.