2024 Newsletter Retro: Changing Gears, Storytelling, and Touching Grass
It’s the final newsletter of 2024 and I’m taking a look back at the newsletter and how I might approach it in 2025. The two biggest scenes for me in 2024 was storytelling and crypto. The rest covered AI, urbanism, and general commentary on art/media.
Gearing Down
After the US elections, I decided to gear down this newsletter and not force myself to have to write a tentpole article each week. If it arrives, great, if it doesn’t, no worries. It’s definitely improved my mood and attitude towards this weekly newsletter. Filling me with slightly less dread of figuring when I’ll have time to write. And now, when I do write a tentpole article, it’s because I have something much stronger to say and as a result, it’s also much quicker to write. Made me much happier.
It also meant that I don’t have to necessarily write that much on weekends or interrupt the time spent on my second novel (which has taken longer than I’d hoped).
The bonus section have actually become my favourite part, because ultimately, I started this newsletter as way to *not* post that much on socials, but rather condense it into a newsletter. So, sharing what I’m reading, playing, watching, is actually fun and feels more like old school social media.
Some Stats
~1,640 subscribers. 10 paid patrons (thank you!). Since I was practically writing essays/articles, I decided to add my old newsletter list into this weekly one.
I barely touched the old newsletter list, and so there was understandably some churn in the latter half of the year as people wanted to opt out of this new format. And for the most part, much of the earlier people who subscribed to my work were mostly interested in my crypto writing and that’s now only a part of what I’m writing about.
Top 3 Posts
Truth be told, unsure why this is number 1. I suspect it has SEO juice. But Substack doesn’t give you that deep referral information.
Number two post is about Act 2’s in storytelling.
Top story #3 is about how we relate to media in 2024. It’s always been a vessel to communicate, but it’s increasingly the case as media becomes more abundant.
Scene #1: Storytelling
Storytelling is undoubtedly still the number 1 topic that’s been on my mind this year as I continue to work on my second novel. There was a good bunch of writing on storytelling I’m quite proud of. The primary focus on a lot of these was trying to understand storytelling on a more fundamental level. I found a lot of common writing advice to miss the mark a bit (eg, conflict being important when conflict’s power is about being able to readily map a context/theme). In addition, I think mega-IP and the broader media landscape misunderstand how fandoms interact and treat their media.
A Framework for Good, Great, and Timeless Stories
Determining Story Length with the Bag of Stakes
Act 2 is about Context, not Conflict
Scene #2: Crypto (and Art)
An equally fascinating intersection of interest in crypto, economics, and art remains something that I can’t look away from. A big trend this year was that memecoins finally took centerplace using innovations I pioneered in 2016/2017 (using bonding curves). I think pandora’s box has been finally opened and the real struggle right now is how to navigate the benefits while trying to avoid other social costs related to it. Speculation and betting on the future isn’t a bad thing, but we have to ensure it retains pro-social benefit.
On Speculation and Optimism's Recent $100m Retroactive Public Goods Grants
On Hardness and The Social Institutions of Crypto
Memecoins and Crypto's Moral Compass
A Checkpoint on Generative Art (in NFTs)
What is Programmable IP Licensing Good For?
Zoning Your Layer 2: Scaling your Blockchain with Lessons from Urbanism
Owning the Memes of Production
Nouns, Delivery At Dawn, and Collectible Media
From Social LLM Agents with Wallets to Self-Owning Forest Deodands
2025?
In all honesty, I still wonder what the best format for this newsletter is. The fact that I combined essays alongside weekly updates doesn’t feel optimal. But, I’m actually also tired of having to think of whether something is optimal or not. So, for now, I’m probably just going to continue how I’ve been doing it and see where it takes me. I’m enjoying it, and that’s enough. There’s also a belief that increasingly, content that grabs people’s attention is going to be more incomprehensible and illegible as a counterpoint to mass-produced smooth-brained SEO AI slop.
Then, due to some personal life changes, 2025 suddenly opened up. There’s thus a chance I might consider going on a hiatus somewhere in 2025 as I want to go do some extended walking trips. I’ve been struggling with threading the needle in wanting to touch grass while enjoying being online. If I go on a multi-week walking trip, do I post weekly about it? Do I do a Craig Mod and do a pop-up newsletter? Do I want to? Or should I instead just opt to stay present? I have such a strong desire to create, to share, but I also want to not feel like I have to. I want to continue exploring this tension.
Another thing I want to explore and write about is to attend a pop-up city or two in 2025 (maybe Edge Esmerelda?) It combines my interest in urbanism alongside meeting more crypto-adjacent/protocol/art people. :)
Thank you for reading. I appreciate you all following along with all the scenes I’m interested in. I’m going to keep exploring and hope you come along for it! :)
May you have a wonderful, blessed, and amazing 2025.
My favourite sunset this year was from the west coast of California, capturing the comet C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS in the distance.
See you in the new year. Hope you enjoy the last few sunsets!
Simon