Christopher F. Rufo  ⚔️

Perhaps obvious, but it strikes me that dollowers (dollar-weighted followers) are an important part of the future. Platforms like Substack, Patreon, Ghost, Locals allow writers to optimize their dollowers. Dollowing is a scarce and directly valuable behavior, unlike following.

There are subscribers (who are typically paid and quiet) and followers (who are unpaid commenters), but dollowers are paid and highly engaged. And they typically support individuals rather than institutions.

In the battle of ideas, dollowing is probably more important than most things you can do online. We should compile lists of intellectuals like SSC that deserve support, and organize mass buycotts of those creators. Meaning that everyone in a community supports those creators.

Yes, this is the rebundling phase. But it’s distinct from local newspapers in that communities would cluster by ideology rather than geography. And accountability would be at individual level, with “papers” as highly dynamic, configurable bundles. A layer on top of Substack?