My Internet: Kate Lindsay

Twice a month, internet-culture publication Embedded logs on with someone extremely online and asks them nearly the same set of questions: What memes are making you laugh? Where do you get your news? Do you text people voice notes? The series is called My Internet, and it’s one of several recurring formats that founders kate lindsay and Nick Catucci have built since being laid off and starting their newsletter in 2021. Over the years, they’ve expanded it into a multi-vertical operation, with the free interview series drawing readers in and paid tiers that unlock essays, a Friday media gossip column, and a video series. Kate told us Embedded’s growth has been “a lesson in consistency”: nearly five years of publishing almost every week, building an audience entirely their own.

Kate has made her career in part out of naming what the internet is doing, contributing to our vernacular and comments sections phrases like “millennial pause” (first seen on Embedded) and “rawdogging.” She’s been cited as an expert by the BBC and CBC, and co-hosts ICYMI, Slate’s podcast about internet culture. Today we flip the script on one of the internet’s shrewdest observers, asking Kate to sit for her own Embedded Q&A and talk about the business she’s built around the format.

What’s been your best-performing newsletter post? Why do you think it hit?

It’s never the ones you expect, but this one is far and away Embedded’s most popular post, so much so that it was syndicated and translated into Dutch, and I still get notifications on it at least once a week. As for why it hit, I think you can’t overestimate the value of articulating a simple truth. I can sometimes hold myself back by not writing something purely because I assume it’s too simple or something people already know. But even if people already know something, it’s validating to see it in writing.

Embedded

You might just have to be bored

Embedded is your essential guide to what’s good on the internet, written by Kate Lindsay and edited by Nick Catucci…

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a year ago · 2273 likes · kate lindsay

You started Embedded on Substack in 2021 with no existing email list. What has kept you going?

When Nick and I got laid off, we decided to start a Substack to keep ourselves sane during another pandemic summer. We essentially treated Embedded like our full-time job while still receiving severance. It was exciting to finally have no rules and explore all types of content, and I think this freedom really fueled us those first few months. But I had also spent much of my early career fighting for success within traditional media without much growth, and ironically, once we went independent, that’s actually when those editors and publications found my work. It’s always been extremely affirming to carve my own path rather than fight for approval within the system.

What have been the biggest moments of growth for Embedded?

I will always remember that it was Rachel Karten who gave us our first shout-out in her newsletter, and I think we got 500-something subscribers from that alone. Other than that, Embedded has really been a lesson in consistency. We’ll have pieces that pop off here and there, but almost all of our growth came slow and steady from reliably publishing almost every single week for the past five years.

How has the newsletter fed into your other work?

I see Embedded and ICYMI as practically sisters at this point. Often, I’ll write something for Embedded and not even realize it helped me work out my thoughts for an adjacent episode. Sometimes I’ll write something for Embedded that I know could be extrapolated into an ICYMI episode, but want see how Embedded readers respond first. My piece about the phone social contract is an example of one that ended up doing really well, and so that told me it would likely resonate with the podcast audience as well.

While there’s definitely a lot of overlap in terms of the types of readers and listeners, Embedded will always be my rock. It’s the reason I feel even a marginal sense of safety in an unpredictable media landscape.

How do you and Nick decide what goes behind the paywall?

This is something I’ve never been able to get a read on. I can tell you what hasn’t worked: paywalling interviews, paywalling link roundups, and I don’t think paywalling video has either. But I’m having fun with it and I like the privacy of a smaller audience. Otherwise, the things that blow up in terms of paid conversations are almost never what I expected—except for the launch of media_gossip. That went exactly as I thought, because all of us are incurably nosy and self-interested.

How is building an audience on Substack different from other places on the internet? Do you have any advice?

Every day I am grateful to not be beholden to an algorithm that no one can explain and that changes its whims every other month. It means my advice for how to succeed on Substack isn’t sexy, but it’s real: Write for your readers, and if you don’t have any yet, write the newsletter you want to read. Write it consistently even on the weeks you don’t feel like it. And don’t use AI. If you’re using AI to write, I don’t understand why you’re here.

What’s a recent meme or post that made you laugh?

My friend Jehan and I have a shared language of Stuart Little memes. This is the most recent one to make me laugh, but nothing will ever beat this one: