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(ANNOUNCEMENT) To celebrate the coming four-month anniversary of the #2 Culture substack in the United States—and PROOF nearing 35,000 email-list subscribers and 6,000 full subscribers—I'm doing a thread to announce a major expansion of PROOF. I hope you'll read on and RETWEET.
1/ PROOF turns 4 months old on May 15. It's been an absolutely *wild* 110 days so far—as detailed in the history of the website, which already includes lawsuit threats from top Trump aides, an international tribunal, and much more. Seriously, check it out: https://sethabramson.substack.com/p/the-history-of-proof
2/ PROOF has always been about much more than January 6, though one of its chief goals remains to offer more extensive coverage of Trump's domestic insurgency than any other outlet. But Substack just made an announcement that'll bring big changes to PROOF. https://blog.substack.com/p/new-sections
3/ The redesigned and expanded PROOF now has *eight* sections of content:
January 6
Politics
The Media
Culture
The Law
The Podcast
Q&As and AMAs
Extras
All PROOF subscribers receive content from all sections—but you can adjust those settings as you like.
January 6 Politics The Media Culture The Law The Podcast Q&As and AMAs ExtrasAll PROOF subscribers receive content from all sections—but you can adjust those settings as you like.
4/ But to celebrate the expansion of PROOF, and its 4-month anniversary, and the fact that it's one of the 25 most-read substacks in the world—a fact for which I'm *immensely* thankful, but also in response to which I pledge to work *even harder*—I'm announcing even more changes.
5/ Q&As and AMAs: From now on all Q&As and AMAs will be visible to everyone—meaning all answers will be viewable to the public—though it will continue to be the case that only full subscribers will be able to comment or join the discussion. I've retroactively made this change.
Q&As and AMAs: From now on all Q&As and AMAs will be visible to everyone—meaning all answers will be viewable to the public—though it will continue to be the case that only full subscribers will be able to comment or join the discussion. I've retroactively made this change.
6/ If you click on the PROOF link below, it'll take you directly to the new "Q&As and AMAs" section of PROOF, where you can now read the hundreds of answers I gave—on innumerable topics, political and otherwise—in every Q&A and AMA over the last 110 days: https://sethabramson.substack.com/s/q-and-as-and-amas
7/ The only exception to this new Q&A/AMA rule will be for "video AMAs," which were recorded initially for Instagram and will remain subscriber-only. So far over sixteen hours—not a typo!—of such content is available to PROOF subscribers at the link below: https://sethabramson.substack.com/p/proof-ama-archive-episodes-1-to-13
8/ Culture: This section will shortly be dramatically expanded, as I spent much of the last decade working as a professional cultural critic in addition to teaching post-internet cultural theory at University of New Hampshire. I am really excited about the content coming here.
Culture: This section will shortly be dramatically expanded, as I spent much of the last decade working as a professional cultural critic in addition to teaching post-internet cultural theory at University of New Hampshire. I am really excited about the content coming here.
9/ The closure of the Press Play imprint of Indiewire a few years ago, and the recent acquisition of HuffPost by BuzzFeed News, has made many of the scores of articles I wrote about digital culture over the last 8 years unavailable. Substack's new "sections" UX will change that.
10/ Updated and adapted versions of viral articles I wrote on digital culture will appear in the Culture section of PROOF, along with—of course—new content focusing on viral metamodern multimedia, which if you haven't encountered it before is the most fun viral content out there.
11/ When I started writing about metamodern digital culture at HuffPost, it was the first column on metamodern art in the English-speaking world. When I started writing my paid "Metamericana" column for Indiewire, it became the *second* such column on metamodern art in the world.
12/ Unfortunately, HuffPost and Indiewire were—and are—crappy to their content creators, in many instances deleting/locking old content without notice or further communication.
Now, at PROOF, I get a chance to rescue content that in some cases many saw but in some cases few did.
Now, at PROOF, I get a chance to rescue content that in some cases many saw but in some cases few did.
13/ The Podcast: the pod that helped inspire PROOF—"Proof: a Preelection Podcast Special"—ran from September to November 2020 and hit the Top 10 Apple Podcasts in the Government category in 31 nations, including #2 in America. Now PROOF has its own internal, dedicated podcast.
The Podcast: the pod that helped inspire PROOF—"Proof: a Preelection Podcast Special"—ran from September to November 2020 and hit the Top 10 Apple Podcasts in the Government category in 31 nations, including #2 in America. Now PROOF has its own internal, dedicated podcast.
14/ Some Substack writers, like Matt Taibbi, put their pod in a *second* substack—requiring a second subscription fee. PROOF won't do that to its readers. A $5/mo subscription (or $50/yr, i.e. a 17% discount) *includes* the podcast. See below to subscribe: http://sethabramson.substack.com
15/ Now that Adventures in Metajournalism—the PROOF podcast—has its own dedicated Substack page (see below), it'll be even easier to find and search and follow, which I'm thrilled about. I plan to do the fourth episode soon, to celebrate 4 months of PROOF. https://sethabramson.substack.com/s/adventures-in-metajournalism-podcast
16/ More importantly for the purposes of *this* thread, I've now unlocked—made available to the public—the second, hour-long Adventures in Metajournalism episode, which focuses in exhaustive detail on Donald Trump's January 5, pre-insurrection war council. https://sethabramson.substack.com/p/adventures-in-metajournalism-episode-58b
