I sometimes wonder what we lost when we democratized writing. Everything seemingly has tenderized for mass appeal. But I don’t think we’re facing a lack of talent so much as a crisis of taste, a symptom of platforms designed to nurse our most base instincts. Content creators have replaced journalists. Prestige television has flattened into Netflix... See more

A few years ago, there was a panic over the rise of the “internet novel,” in which the “reference novel” finds tradition. Web 2.0–informed writing “is dystopic in its moral vision,” author and frequent tweeter Brandon Taylor wrote in a “Substack post.” “‘Internet novels’ have succeeded too entirely, which is to say that they are too exactly like... See more

It’s possible that the idea of an “important” work of popular art, like the idea of movie stardom, simply can’t survive the transition to the digital era. The journalist and novelist Ross Barkan has done interesting writing on this theme, borrowing from Bret Easton Ellis’s concepts of “Empire” and “Post-Empire” to describe a shift from the... See more