The Art of Asking 🤌

Your Subathon leaders (so far) are...

photo by jesse leon

blog.eighty-five // Like many of us, I struggle with asking for things.

Just talk to Vicky. She’ll tell you how difficult it is to buy me a gift around the holidays.

What I’ve learned over my last decade of creative work, though, is that we can’t just sit on our hands and wait for things to happen. Algorithms don’t care about your feelings. Interviews don’t take place unless you reach out, follow up, and follow up again.* Events lose momentum when you don’t text every attendee individually. People lead busy lives!

Out of all the quotes knocking around my head, this one stuck four years ago: Closed mouths don’t get fed. It came from the desk of Roc-A-Fella Records; I’ll let you decide whether Jay-Z was referring to his music career or prior occupation.

I’ve been thinking about that quote recently, as we’re now officially seven days into the inaugural Creator Mag Subathon. To celebrate the one-year anniversary of this newsletter, we set out with a goal: gain five thousand new subscribers in just thirty days.

That goal requires an ask. We’re asking you to refer your friends and family, to share our little pocket of the Internet—and invite more creative neighbors to move in.

There’s exclusive rewards to win if you do. Five referrals earns you a free pack of stickers. Twenty-five referrals, a poster. And one hundred, a comped flight to our next Block Party.**

Nevertheless, I don’t want to miss the forest for the tress here. Our mission has remained the same: Make The Internet Feel Smaller. More accessible, less omnipresent.

We act on this mission through the stories we tell and gatherings we host. Building depth with you, our readers, has been at the forefront of everything we do. In turn, by showing up, you’ve helped make this neighborhood so dang special.

That’s the real reason we challenged ourselves to make new videos every single day this month. We didn’t seek out views, or attention. We wanted to speak directly to you, to share the nuances of our belief system and a piece of our day-to-day lives.

Because we’re in this thing together. We aspire to create, to send out a beacon. More importantly, we aim to spark dialogue around digital spaces, and explore our relationship with them. It’s the Thought vs. the Slop, after all, and we know where we stand.

So if our message has meant something to you, consider dropping a referral link into your Discord server, or sharing it in a groupchat. Right now, readers Connor Blodgett and Will Wallace are tied for first place on the Subathon Leaderboard—but their lead is anything but insurmountable.

Once you’re done referring, scroll down for a special edition of Five Things I Think (I Think). Enjoy!

— NGL

P.S. Last blog, we reviewed a two-and-a-half-hour YouTube video that was two years in the making. You can read it here.

Day One :: I think constraints breed creativity. Don’t get me wrong—nothing excites me more than a wide-open Google Doc with no word count.

But the first video of this series was a unique challenge: Pack an abbreviated version of our story into just sixty seconds.

Day Two :: I think the print magazine is a ticket into our world. “It’s a piece of all of our stories,” Shua says, as he delivers a copy to a friend.

Day Three :: I think the best advice I got in journalism school is simple, yet powerful. I also teased our next Creator Mag cover star in this one…

Day Four :: I think we should do things that don’t scale. If we make our current readers happy, one day, we’ll have too many readers to do this for.

That right there would be a great problem to have.

Day Five :: I think we should lean into bits more. Lizard. Lizard. Lizard. Shout-out to a reader, Connor Blodgett, for sending this idea our way.

Day Six :: I think we should bring Lofi Stormy back. If you know, you know. More audiobooks-esque remasters coming to YouTube soon…

Day Seven :: I think the Internet is real life—but it doesn’t have to be. Adapted from my November blog of the same name, this video is about hope, trust, and how the growing importance of local institutions influences our approach.

Thanks for reading! Shoot us a reply, comment, or DM if anything resonated with you in particular—we respond to them all.

* Sometimes, you gotta just pull up to a location and hope the subject shows.

** Light spoilers: We’ll be hosting our October Block Party in Los Angeles!