“Sort by recency” is the Internet’s default setting. We’re stuck in an endless cycle of ephemeral content consumption. On the Internet, even though we’re just a click away from the greatest authors of all time, from Plato to Tolstoy, we
default to novelty instead of timelessness.
If this all sounds overly theoretical and not at all applicable to your lived experience, then fine. But how often have you gone back to read an old edition of your favorite newsletter? Why bother when you’ll have a new one tomorrow?
Applied Divinity Studies • [Guest post] How Substack Became Milquetoast
Maybe those were the last days when something could be truly obscure. Not in the basic sense that a style or song might be esoteric. But there was a precariousness to out-of-the-way knowledge, a sense that a misfiled book or forgotten magazine could easily be lost forever. Learning about something a few minutes before everyone else converted to a k
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