Severin Matusek

The co-opting of “community” into a sales strategy is insidious, not only because it reduces likeminded groups of people to consumer demographics, but because, in an era when we’re all encouraged to cultivate our own “personal brands,” it also reduces each of us to a salesperson , seeking out likeminded people in order to sell them things , whether... See more

Post-individuals have a desire to belong, to be seen and recognised beyond economic compensation or status. As an answer to the individualism of the creator economy, metalabels are a new paradigm where groups of people team up under a shared purpose to create public releases that manifest their point of view.

If you look at any one Substack newsletter in comparison to its peers, it does appear banal and repetitive. But they are not experienced as a landscape; they are experienced individually. Each one is its own tiny world.

But at least one thing has always felt clear to us: If you want to try and do something fun, strange and special on the internet, it helps to owe nothing to anyone but your readers.

In its most popular use, worldbuilding refers to a practice derived from fantasy or science fiction, where systems, characters, and mechanics assemble to satisfy the expectation that a fictional world should be convincing and complete. More broadly, it should be stated, worldbuilding is simply part of writing fiction: Sally Rooney does... See more

Walk into Lululemon’s new Chicago flagship and you might wonder if you’ve stumbled into a wellness resort.

The logic is simple enough. Amazon demolished traditional retail’s convenience advantage years ago. Physical stores had to find a new selling point or die trying. Their answer? Theatre. From Samsung’s product-testing playgrounds to Canada... See more

And yet brands and influencers alike still cling to follower count because the truth of the matter - the increasing randomness of reach - is just too hard to accept.

In fact, I’d like to propose something that sounds almost heretical in certain artistic circles: Prompt engineering, the act of crafting input to coax a desired output from an AI, may soon be regarded as a legitimate artistic medium. In the same way photography became an expressive form in its own right, so too might the process of collaborating... See more