On Posting: A newsletter about bad posts and the people who make them.

My name is Luke Winkie. I have been a freelance journalist for six years, and a chronic poster for far longer than that. My ailments are chronic and vast. I have spent hours deep-scrolling through surreptitious “Likes” tabs to uncover the root of intra-publication beef, I have broken down quote-tweet animosity like it’s Super Bowl tape, and I am tragically aware of the tense relationships between different leftist podcasts, and their respective Reddit coteries.

These are not the habits of a normal brain, but unfortunately, every conversation I’ve had with someone else who works in the media reveals these exact same tics. It is nice to feel seen that way — to know that I am not the only one anatomizing bad Matt Yglesias tweets — but it still confirms that we are a population of doomed weirdos. Like it or not, so much of our professional lives are routed through posting, and that is why it is a miraculous feeling to converse with someone who has lost their mind in the same way you have. A healthy life ought to stock better thrills than gossip, but that doesn’t make it any less euphoric.

My hope is that this newsletter will replicate some of those conversations between friends and lovers — the people who always know what you’re talking about, when the latest salty Andrew Sullivan missive trickles through the timeline. In that sense, I imagine that On Posting will be outrageously insular, but frankly, there is no tradition in the media more time-honored than pretending its controversies are worthy of the front page news. Thank you for being here, at the end of all things.

-Luke