Substack创始人Chris Best谈媒体未来

让我们稍微聊聊媒体的未来。人们会减少阅读吗？

Let's talk a little bit about the future of media. Are people going to be reading less?

优秀的写作、优质的媒体、以及伟大的文化本质上都具有不可替代的价值。我们已进入一个注意力成为稀缺资源的时代。

Great writing, great media, great culture in general is this inherently valuable thing. We've entered a world where attention is the scarce resource.

曾有一个平台挺身而出宣称要捍卫言论自由，那就是Substack。

There was one platform that stood up and said, hey, we are protecting free speech, and that was Substack.

这也是博客生态系统逐渐衰落的时期。对拯救互联网博客写作而言，这是个至关重要的时刻。

This was also an era where the blogging ecosystem was sort of dying. A really important moment to actually save blogging and writing on the Internet.

早期人们常以指责的语气对我说：Substack不过是加了商业模式的博客。而我觉得，这听起来挺不错。

In the early days, people would often say to me in an accusatory tone, Substack is just blogging with a business model. And I was like, that sounds pretty good.

我们一直在讨论颠覆媒体行业。这里有什么宏伟计划？

We've been talking a lot about disrupting media. What are the big plans here?

我期望Substack应用能成为这样的地方——当你回顾在上面花费的时间时会感叹：真庆幸我这么做了，这让我变得更好。

I aspire that the Substack app could be a place where you look back at the time you spend on it and think, damn, I'm glad I did that. That made me a better person.

如果媒体的未来不再由算法或传统机构掌控，而是由直接与受众建立联系的独立声音主导呢？本期播客我邀请了Substack联合创始人克里斯·贝斯特，以及16岁的凯瑟琳·博伊尔和安德鲁·陈。他们将追溯Substack的起源故事及其文化影响——从2020年动荡时期捍卫言论自由，到重塑独立媒体的商业模式。我们还将探讨博客的演变、媒体的重新整合，以及未来发展趋势。让我们开始吧。

What if the future of media isn't controlled by algorithms or legacy institutions but by independent voices building directly with their audiences? Today on the podcast, I'm joined by Chris Best, cofounder of Substack, along with a 16, Katherine Boyle and Andrew Chen. They trace the origin story of Substack and its cultural impact from standing up for free speech during a turbulent 2020 to reinventing the business model for independent media. We also get into the evolution of blogging, the rebundling of media, and what the future holds. Let's get into it.

凯瑟琳，我们多年来一直在谈论对Substack的喜爱，甚至在正式合作前就是如此。不如你先谈谈Substack哪些影响力让你觉得非凡或震撼？

Catherine, we've been talking for years about how much we love Substack even before we were formally affiliated with the company. Why don't you go first and talk about what you find so remarkable or striking about Substack's impact?

我认为这种影响力被严重低估了。过去几年我们国家、互联网乃至整个世界都发展得太快，以至于我们几乎忘记了2020、2021年的情景——特别是对媒体行业而言，2020年对思想领袖领域和媒体从业者来说有多么疯狂。让我们回溯到2020年：《纽约时报》观点版主编詹姆斯·贝内特因刊登一位现任参议员的专栏文章而被迫辞职——请注意，是仍在任期的现任参议员。

I think the impact is truly understated. And I think we've moved so fast as a country and as an Internet and as a world in the last few years that we've sort of memory hold what it was like in 2020, 2021, particularly for media, how crazy the 2020 moment was for anyone in the thought leadership space, anyone in the media space. So let me just go back to the 2020. James Bennett, was the editor of the op ed page at the New York Times, was forced to resign for publishing a sitting senator. An op ed by a sitting senator who was still in office.

2020年时，任何被视为异端邪说、提出质疑或不符合正统观念的言论都会引发疯狂反应，出现了大规模解雇现象。推特封禁了在任总统的账号，脸书也紧随其后。那是个非同寻常且令人恐惧的时期，许多人不敢表达真实想法。总有人私下进行无拘束对话的传闻，比如人们背着记者进行这些对话有多危险。

The craziness that was around writing anything that was seen as heretical or asking questions or something that was seen as unorthodox in 2020, there were mass firings. Twitter deplatformed a sitting president. Facebook as well. It was an extraordinary time, and I would say a fearful time, where very many people were afraid to say what they were thinking. There were always rumors of people having unfettered conversations, like how dangerous it was that people were having these conversations behind the backs of journalists.

当时只有一个平台挺身而出宣称要保护言论自由，那就是Substack。我觉得人们现在忘记了这点，因为大家觉得'哦，现在时代不同了'。要知道埃隆·马斯克在2022年11月收购了推特，奥弗顿之窗已经彻底打开。

There was one platform that stood up and said, Hey, we are protecting free speech. And that was Substack. And I think people forget that because it's just seen as, Oh, of course, we're in this new time. You know, Elon bought Twitter in November 2022. The Overton window has swung open.

人们终于能畅所欲言。但大家似乎忘了就在几年前，我们还身处绝望时期——有人因此失去生计，却没人敢说言论自由正遭受攻击。而唯一支持这些人的平台基础设施，就是克里斯创立的Substack，他们从未动摇。这就是它的文化影响力。

People can say what they thought. And I think people have forgotten that only a few years ago we were in desperate times where people were losing their livelihoods. No one was willing to say that freedom of speech was under attack. But the one platform, the infrastructure that was there to support those people, it was Chris, it was Substack, and they never wavered. And so I think that is the cultural impact.

如果没有Substack，我们绝不会有今天的局面。所以我非常激动，我是Substack的超级粉丝。2021年就入驻了这个平台，我为此深感自豪。

Like where we are today, we would not be where we are today without Substack. So I get very emotional. I'm like a super fan of Substack. I was on Substack in 2021. I'm very proud of that.

但我们必须记住：若非有人勇敢站出来捍卫言论自由的重要性，我们可能完全活在另一个时代、另一种文化氛围中。

But it's one of these things where I think we need to remember that we could have been living in a totally different time and a totally different culture had people not stood up and had the courage to say that freedom of speech matters.

没错。这比埃隆收购X平台早了多年，当时Substack就是言论自由的第一堡垒。克里斯，不如你谈谈是什么契机或发展过程让你们决定采取这种立场？即便会激怒重要作家、员工、投资者乃至整个生态圈。说说当时的考量吧。

Yeah. And this was years before Elon had bought X, and it was just the first bastion of free speech. Chris, why don't you talk about sort of when was the moment or what was the evolution for how you guys decided, hey. We're gonna take this stance even if it's gonna upset some of our most important writers, even if it's gonna upset some employees, some investors, their ecosystem. Talk about what that was

对我而言，言论自由始终是重要支柱，但并非Substack的核心使命。我们将Substack视为文化领域的新经济引擎——这个非党派非政治的理念认为：伟大的事物源自独立创作者，他们能践行信念、获得收益、享有编辑自由并与受众直接相连。

like for you. I've always seen the free speech thing as sort of an important pillar, but not the main pillar of what Substack is actually setting out to do. The way that we think of Substack is making a new economic engine for culture. And the idea and it's not a partisan idea, it's not a political idea directly. It's just this idea that great things are made by independent voices who can do the work they believe in, make money, have editorial freedom, have a direct connection with their audience.

创立Substack的背景是：互联网冲击了传统文化商业模式，催生出连接全球的巨型网络平台。这些现象级企业虽带来诸多益处，但据我们观察也使人陷入疯狂。Substack的核心是独立性理念——个体能够自由创作、表达信念，并获得受众支持，这是健康文化与自由社会的关键要素。而新闻自由与言论自由正是其必要前提。

Basically, the backdrop of starting Substack was just this idea that, hey, the internet came along and smashed a lot of the existing business models for culture. And what came in the wake of that was these massive internet scale networks that are phenomenal businesses and that connected everybody like never before and had a lot of amazing positive attributes, but in my estimation and our estimation were kind of driving us crazy. And the core of Substack is this idea of independence. This idea that the individual left to do the thing they believe, say the thing they believe, make the thing they believe, supported by an audience that's there for them, is this crucial ingredient in a healthy culture in a free society. And freedom of the press, freedom of speech, is one necessary precondition for that.

从历史长河看，这理应不算争议观点——它本是很美国式的理念。但在当时特殊环境下，这种思想可谓严重不合时宜。2020年最令我惊讶的是，受冲击最严重的并非保守派或共和党人，而是自由派媒体人士。

And I kind of think that in the long arc of history, that's not hopefully that controversial of an idea. I think it's a very American idea. But at the time, because of the world was as it was, it was kind of out of vogue, shall we say, quite severely. And I think in 2020, the thing that surprised me, the people that felt the brunt of that were not conservatives, were not Republicans necessarily. It was the people in the liberal media.

在我看来，那些最优秀最有洞见的创作者正被系统性驱逐。而我们打造的这个赋予独立性的文化经济引擎，恰逢全球最有趣的作家们被长期效力的机构草率抛弃——从商业角度看堪称天时地利，文化层面虽充满争议，但这就是我们的使命。

In my telling, would say, selectively the best and most interesting people that were getting just thrown from the ramparts. And the fact that this thing that we were creating, this new economic engine for culture that gives you this independence, happened to be there at a time where a bunch of the most interesting writers in the world were getting summarily tossed from their longtime institutions that lined up really well for us from a business perspective. It was spicy from a cultural perspective, but that's the gig.

简单补充一下，你知道，我本来想说，从博客生态的另一面来看，变化之大令人惊叹。我们经历了LiveJournal、Zynga和Blogger的时代，还有已故的Google Reader，然后基本上进入了一个阶段。克里斯，当我初次见到你的联合创始人哈米什时，公司只有三个人，那也是一个博客生态逐渐衰落的时期。虽然有开放的WordPress博客生态，但没有经济模式。最终导致大量垃圾信息和黑客攻击，那些维护不善的PHP网站。

Just quickly add, you know, I I was gonna say that it's amazing to see on the other side of the coin with just the blogging ecosystem, how much that's changed. We've gone through kind of LiveJournal and Zynga and Blogger, and we had Google Reader, RIP, and then you had kind of basically a phase. Chris, when I met your co founder, Hamish, initially, and the company was three people, this was also an era where the blogging ecosystem was sort of dying. And you had sort of the open WordPress powered blogging ecosystem, but there was no economic model. You ended up with a lot of spam, a lot of people hacking, like, these poorly maintained PHP websites.

因此我认为这实际上也是拯救博客和网络写作的重要时刻，真正创建了一个长期被忽视的模式。过去人们只想着插入XYZ亚马逊图书链接赚取联盟佣金，或者在博客上铺满Google AdSense。这是唯一能创造经济效益的方式。对我们这些科技从业者来说，看到Strathecory的本·汤普森证明可能存在另一种模式很酷。但这几乎总像是一种新奇事物，实际构建起来却很烦人。你得搭建自己的博客。

And so I think this was also a really important moment to actually save blogging, really, and writing on the internet to actually create a model that for a long time people just thought, oh, well, I'm just gonna plug XYZ Amazon book and get affiliate fees, or I'm gonna put Google AdSense all over my blog. It was the only way to create any sort of economic thing. And for all of us that are in tech, you know, it was cool to see that you had Ben Thompson from Strathecory really show that, oh, there's maybe an alternate model. But it was almost, like, always, like, a curiosity and something that was, like, annoying to actually build. You know, you'd to have set up your blog.

你得设置支付系统，处理各种杂务。所以我认为Substack从互联网媒体领域崛起也是个重要时刻，它真正简化了这一切，让构建经济引擎变得容易。

You'd have to set up your payments. You'd have to do all these other things. And so I think also a really important moment for Substack to kind of emerge from the Internet media side to actually clean that all up and actually make it easy to actually put together something that became the big economic engine.

早期人们常以指责的语气对我说：Substack不过是加了商业模式的博客。我觉得这听起来很棒。如果仅此而已，那也很酷。但事实证明它不止于此——它还是播客平台。

In the early days, people would often say to me in an accusatory tone, Substack is just blogging with a business model. And I was like, that sounds pretty good. If that's all it was, that would be pretty cool. And it turns out it's more. It's podcasting.

它是一个完整的网络。虽然我不确定，但感觉很不错。

It's a whole network. But I don't know. It seems good.

是的。它真正实现了触达受众的梦想——如果你有10万推特粉丝却无法有效互动，依赖平台远不如拥有自己的邮件订阅用户来得激动人心。我最欣赏你们的做法是敢于冒险：我们会把用户邮箱交还给他们，允许随时离开，而非困在平台上。但我们将打造如此 compelling 的服务，让作家们自愿留下。

Yeah. And it really achieves the dream of sort of reaching your audience in the sense of if you have a 100,000 Twitter followers, but you can't really engage them and you're dependent on the platform, and that's not as thrilling as owning your own email audience. And what I love about what you guys did is you took the risk that, hey. We're gonna give people their emails, and they can choose to leave if they want to as opposed to being trapped to the platform. But we're just going to build such a compelling offering that writers are gonna wanna stay.

多年后看到绝大多数顶级作家仍留在平台上，这令人惊叹。

And it's amazing years later to see a large majority, if not all of the biggest writers, stay on the platform.

比用户留在平台更好的情况是：他们离开后利用导出功能，随后又张开双臂回归。我们称他们为'回旋镖'，这也让我们欣喜。退出权非常重要。人们曾认为这很愚蠢，他们说：如果允许客户离开，他们不就真走了吗？

There's only one thing that's better than people staying on the platform, which is when people leave the platform, take advantage of the export features, and then subsequently return to open arms and come back. We call them boomerangs, and we love to see that too. I think the right to exit is really important. People thought that was very dumb. They said, well, if you just let your customers leave, won't they just leave?

短期看或许如此。但长期来看，这为我们创造了正确的结构。这意味着我们必须（且仍在）构建一个价值足够的网络，即使可以离开，你也不愿离开。即便离开，仍可能选择回归。这让我们始终把正确之事放在首位。

And I think in the short run, that might be true. But in the long run, that created the right structure for us. It meant that we have to and still have to build a network that has enough value that even though you can leave, you don't want to. And even if you do leave, you might choose to come back. And I think that has caused us to keep the right thing at the forefront of our minds.

但我觉得直接连接有更重要的意义：不仅在于可以离开，而在于订阅的本质是赋予他人轻拍你肩膀的权利。这意味着：你不必经常给我发邮件，但如果你想发送邮件、推送通知或出现在我收件箱顶部，我赋予了你这个权利。作为创作者，这让你能够承担创作风险。

But I would say there's I think there's something even more important about the direct connection, which is it's not just that I can leave. It's that in my mind, what a subscription is is the option to give someone to, like, reach out and tap you on the shoulder. It's to say, you don't have to send me an email all the time if you don't want to. But if you want to send me an email, if you want to send me a push notification, if you want to show up at the top of my inbox, I kind of like give you that right. And something that that lets you do as a writer or as a creator is to take creative risk.

我常听到YouTuber们说，那些在YouTube上非常成功、拥有庞大粉丝群体的人会说：我有个创作想法，我知道它会很棒，也知道有观众会喜欢，但我不能按自己想要的方式去做。因为如果那样做，没人会看到，它不符合算法喜好。因此，直接连接不仅是带观众同行的方式，更是赋予人类超越算法权力的途径，让我们能说：嘿。

Something that I hear a lot from YouTubers is people who are very good at YouTube, people who have massive followings, are very successful, who say, I have this idea for a thing that I could make. And I know that it would be great. And I know there's an audience out there who would like it, but I can't make it. Because if I made it the way that I want to make it, no one's going to see it because it doesn't please the algorithm. And so the direct connection, in addition to being this way, you can bring your audience with you, is a way to give humans the power to override the algorithm and say, hey.

我与观众建立了信任关系。我想运用这种关系冒险尝试，说：嘿。我想调用这份信任，请你关注我认为好的内容。有时可能效果不佳导致你取消订阅，但也可能创造出伟大的作品——那种若仅靠取悦算法就永远无法诞生的杰作。

I've got this trust relationship with my audience. I want to exercise it and go out on a limb and say, hey. I want to call in that favor and have you pay attention to this thing that I'm saying is good. And sometimes it might be bad and you might unsubscribe. But sometimes it might be great and it might be something great that could not have existed if the only way to reach everyone was to please the algorithm every single time.

最初它是个带有商业模式的博客平台，正如我们刚才所说。如今愿景已扩展为更宏大的网络和多格式平台。请详细阐述Substack的宏伟愿景，并好奇这个愿景是否从2018、2019、2020年延续至今？请告诉我们这个可追溯其演变历程的愿景。

So in the beginning, it was a blogging platform with a business model, as we just said. And the vision has gotten bigger into more of a network, more of a platform across formats. Expand on what is the big vision for Substack. And I'm also curious how that's evolved, if that sort of the vision in 2018, 2019, 2020 is the same vision as it is now. So tell us the vision that we could, you know, trace the evolution of it.

可以说我们从最初就怀揣着极其雄心勃勃——甚至有人会说疯狂膨胀的愿景。背景是我们认为互联网彻底重塑了媒体的经济激励机制。公司起源与此相关：我在上家初创公司休假时，一直想成为作家。我是个狂热读者，坚信阅读内容的重要性。

I would say that we started from the very beginning with this think of very ambitious, some might say derangedly ambitious vision. Again, the backdrop was kind of we think that the Internet has massively reshaped the economic incentives for media. And, actually, the origin of the company, I'll just briefly tell this because it's germane here, was I was taking some time off in my last startup, and I'd always wanted to be a writer. I'd always been an avid reader. I've thought that what you read matters.

你消费的媒体不仅构成生活体验，更会改变你的本质。它重塑个人认知、世界观，进而影响文化社会。因此优秀的文字、媒体和文化本身具有不可替代的价值。

And so what you read, the media you consume is not just a way you spend your life. It changes who you are. It changes who you are as an individual. It changes how you see the world, and it changes cultures and societies. And so great writing, great media, great culture in general is this inherently valuable thing.

我的第一反应是：我应该参与创作。比如写篇散文能有多难？我会编程也会打字。

And my first instinct was, I should make some of that. Like, I could write an essay. How hard would that be? I know how to program. I know how to type.

于是我开始写一篇声讨互联网媒体经济的文章。最初是这样：抱怨网络既带来便利，又制造了让我们抓狂的模仿进化生态。这显然不是好兆头。

And I started writing what was supposed to be this essay or this blog post detailing my frustrations with the media economy on the Internet. So this is where it started. I'm like, wah wah wah. Look at all these great things the Internet has done, but it's also kind of like created these mimetic evolutionary landscapes that are driving us nuts. This is going nowhere good.

看文化如何变迁，巴拉巴拉。我把文章发给作家朋友哈米什，他委婉地泼冷水：'2017年还在写报业危机和Facebook非绝对正义？老兄，圈内人都知道。'

Look at how the culture is shifting. Wah, wah, wah. And I sent this essay to my friend Hamish, who's actually a writer, and he let me down very gently. He said, it's 2017, and your essay is about maybe the newspaper businesses are in trouble, and maybe Facebook is not an unalloyed good. Dude, we know.

关键问题是：假设你抱怨的都成立，你能做什么改变？我们为此争论不休。这或许符合A16Z的理念——技术乐观主义认为：历史不会倒退，新技术必然伴随利弊权衡和多种可能性。

Everybody knows that, or everybody who's in my industry knows that. But the better question is, let's say that all of those things you're complaining about are true, what could you do about it? How could that be different? And that we started arguing about that. And so we had this sort of I think maybe the this is an a 16 c relevant thing is this sort of techno optimist idea that it's like, look.

正确应对方式不是哀叹或幻想回到过去，而是主动利用这些技术为人类服务。我们应该构想新技术网络下最美好的未来图景，并积极推动更自由、更激动人心的版本到来。相当宏大的构想。

You're not gonna turn back the clock. If there's new powerful technologies that are changing how everything works, and those things come with trade offs, there's upsides and downsides, and there's contingencies, there's historical contingencies where the world could tip in one of many ways, The right way to address that is not to lament it or to wish, Hey, should go back. It's, Hey, we should put these things to use in service of people. We should imagine what the best version of this future is as these new networks take off, as these new technologies take off, and we should work proactively to help usher in the better, freer, more exciting version of that future. Heady stuff.

于是我们有了这个宏大的构想，这个宏伟的计划，然后我们找到了启动的核心方法。这个起点就是让创建付费电子邮件通讯变得极其简单。当时全球可能只有20个人真正极度渴望这个功能，但对他们来说这简直是天赐之物。这就是我们的核心理念。

So we had this big idea, this big grandiose thing, and then we just had the kernel of the way to start. And the way to start was we could make it dead simple to start a paid email newsletter. And that was a thing that there was probably like 20 people in the world that really, really wanted it, but they really wanted it. Like it was gonna be the best thing ever for them. And it was the kernel.

这就像是将那个更宏大构想的最小可行版本——即打造一个让独立声音能通过他们信仰的内容真正赚钱的新经济引擎。这实际上绕过了冷启动问题，因为像最早的Substack通讯那样，单个用户就能完全理解其价值。我们最初在脑海中构建了Substack的宏伟蓝图，甚至当时就将YouTube视为最接近这个概念的现存平台。

It was like the smallest possible instantiation of that much bigger idea where you were gonna create this new economic engine that lets any independent voice make the things they believe in, make real money doing it. I mean, it's a way around the cold start problem because you could have an individual person like the very first Substack newsletter made total sense. So we started with a very grandiose version of Substack firmly fixed in our minds. We'd always imagined even then, I think we looked at YouTube as something that was maybe the closest version to this thing that already existed.

详细说说你们是如何决定推出Notes功能的？从'我们已经建立了这个让众多作家赚大钱的商业引擎'之后，你们是如何规划下一步的？

Talk more about how you decided to launch Notes or go from, Okay, we've got this business engine where we've got all these writers making a lot of money. Where do we go from here?

让我先讲个前提背景——在Substack早期，我们坚持认为其独特之处在于全付费模式，因为这能统一激励机制。为保持理念纯粹，我们甚至禁止用户创建免费Substack或发送免费邮件。但这个原则在遇到第一位客户时就瓦解了，因为他表示'那我用Mailchimp做免费版，再把人引流过来'。

I'll tell one step before that because it went into my thinking. But very early on in the very early days of Substack, we were like, okay, the thing that's gonna be really different about Substack is it's all gonna be paid because that's the thing that aligns the incentives. That's the thing that makes this thing different. And so in order to be very pure to our vision, we're not gonna allow anybody to have a free substack or to, like, send emails to free people. And that evaporated with our first customer because he was like, oh, okay.

这种拼凑方案让我们意识到：要运营成功的付费Substack，你必须先有个免费版。为了让转化流程顺畅，我们应当直接支持这种模式——这不是对初衷的背叛，而是实现目标的必要路径。不久后我们更发现，Twitter等社交平台同样适用这个逻辑。

I'll then I'll just use Mailchimp for the free version, and then I'll yeah. I'll funnel the people here. And he created this stitched together thing, And it was like, oh, this is really dumb. Because if you want to be successful if you wanna make a successful paid Substack, you have to have a free Substack. And in order to make that experience good and have the conversions actually work, we should just support that.

2018-2019年间，成功的Substack必须搭配活跃的Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn账号作为流量入口，就像传统媒体依赖Facebook或Google流量那样。即便作为独立创作者，你仍受制于这些平台——这不仅违背我们打造差异化激励机制的哲学，更存在现实问题：这些平台根本不在乎创作者能否盈利。

And it's not it's not an abrogation of our vision. It's actually like you need in order for the thing to work, you have to provide this other thing. And then the thing that we realized not too long after that was the same was actually true about Twitter and about the social networks, which was, you know, in 2018, 2019, if you wanted to have a successful substack, you had to also have a successful Twitter or a successful Facebook or a successful LinkedIn increase. Like like, you had to have some top of funnel place, you know, the same way that the the legacy media was struggling and said, like, you had to have Facebook traffic or you had to have Google traffic or you had to have something. There was always these other networks that were the source of your business.

扎克伯格可能某天因政治内容烦人就关闭相关推荐——如果你是靠Facebook谋生的政治类创作者，这将是灭顶之灾。这些平台的算法变幻莫测，本质上并不关心你如何培养受众或实现创作理想。

So even if you were this independent writer excuse me, independent creator, you were you were downstream of these other platforms. And that had both a philosophical consequence, which is we're trying to make this place that has these different incentives, but you're still at the whim of the, you know, the crazy the Thunderdome. Right? You still have to play the Twitter game or you still have to play the Facebook game. And it had this very practical problem of those networks don't give a shit about you as a creator that makes money.

因此我们意识到，长远来看，唯有自建基于不同物理定律的社交网络才能真正解决问题。我们要打造一个兼具社交网络优势，但采用不同商业模式和激励机制的新平台。它不会取代现有平台，但将成为互联网上唯一真正希望你成功的地方。

And, you know, Mark Zuckerberg can decide in a fit of pique that people are annoying him about politics, so he's gonna, like, turn off politics. And if you're a politics creator that depends on Facebook for your livelihood, you know, that's that's a existential event. And it's not even because it's like they're trying to do that. It's just like, hey. These networks twist and turn, and they don't really have any intrinsic interest in helping you build your audience and make the thing you believe.

在这里，系统会主动帮你发现值得深度阅读/观看的内容，引导你爱上某些创作直至愿意付费——这与那些只想让你盯着屏幕的平台截然不同。虽然我们理论上明白必须这么做，但也清楚建立新互联网级网络的难度，这需要多年时间...

And so we had this idea that in the long run, the only way we were gonna really make that work for people is to build one of these networks ourselves that was built on different laws of physics. And so we were gonna build a network, a place a destination, a place that you could go and experience the Internet and have all of those great things that you get from social networks, but with a different business model and with a different incentive structure. And it would be it's not gonna, like, replace them, but it'll live alongside them, and it'll be, the one place on the Internet where it actually does want you to succeed. It actually does want you to go and find something interesting and long form to read or long form to watch. It does want you to, like, find and fall in love with something enough that you might choose to pay for it.

（句子未完成）

And that's gonna create a very different feel from everywhere else that just wants to keep you glued to the screen. So we had sort of this, like, feel like, theoretical idea of why we had to do this thing, but we also knew that it was gonna be quite difficult. Like, it's very hard to start a new Internet scale network, and it took years. And then,

回到你之前关于算法的观点，观察所有主流平台都朝着‘为你推荐’的算法世界迈进确实很有趣。因为在这个世界里，创作者与观众的关系实际上变得更加疏远。对吧？就像，可能真的无关紧要了。这一切最初源于社交应用的一个普遍问题——用户需要关注足够多的人才能获得充足的内容推送。而解决方案之一就是，即使你没关注某人，平台也会主动推荐内容。

to to your earlier point on this on on the algorithm, it's so interesting to watch actually all of the major platforms move towards the algorithmic for you, you know, world because in that world, then actually the creator's relationship with their audience is even further away. Right? Like, it's literally like, it actually maybe doesn't matter. And this all originally started with, oh, well, you know, we have this problem of any, you know, social app where you need people to follow enough folks so that they get enough, you know, feed content. And, well, one way to solve that is even if you're not following somebody, maybe we'll just kind of suggest things.

结果证明算法如此高效，以至于整个信息流可能都应该由推荐内容构成。但这对创作者意味着什么？即使你拥有十万粉丝，他们也可能看不到你的任何内容，因为如今的算法越来越不重视关注关系图谱了。

And it turns out then the algorithms are so good that maybe that should be their entire feed is just suggested content. But then what does it mean as a creator to even build a following on one of these platforms if even if you have, you know, a 100,000 followers or whatever, maybe they'll see none of your content because the algorithm, like, doesn't doesn't doesn't care like, is caring less and less about the follower graph these days.

确实。我认为对此可以采取两种态度。很多人的第一反应是谴责算法，认为算法割裂人际关系、制造信息茧房、过度曝光无关内容——这些权衡确实存在，因此算法是糟糕的。

Definitely. And I think there's I mean, there's two and there's two tacks you could take with that. And And the one that I think a lot of people their first reaction is to say, oh, well, algorithms are bad. Right? Like, the algorithm is whatever.

但更有建设性的看法是：算法是强大的工具，其效果取决于我们设定的目标。如果设定更优的目标，就能获得更好的结果。我们在Substack经常讨论这个，因为许多用户最初认为平台优势恰恰在于没有算法，能直接连接读者。

It's severing our ties. It's putting us into bubbles. It's exposing us too much to people outside of like, whatever the thing is, you know, okay. So there's trade offs with algorithms. Therefore, algorithms are bad.

而我们的观点是：比这更好的方案是打造真正服务于用户的算法——用专业术语说就是优化目标函数。如果这个函数的核心是用户真实兴趣，而非广告销售，那将完全不同。

I think a more productive take is algorithms are powerful. And they're a tool that people use, and they serve the ends that we tell them. And if we tell them better ends, they'll help us get better results. And so this is something that we talked about a lot at Substack because I think people had this there's a lot of our users who felt like at the time, they're like, the good thing about Substack is there isn't an algorithm, And I just connect directly, and that's the thing that's actually good. And I think the take that we have is there's something that's much better than that, which is what if there was an algorithm that actually served you and that was actually trying to help you find the things that you deeply valued and actually had a the nerd term for this is an objective function.

如果算法的底层逻辑（用通俗语言说就是‘隐藏的指挥棒’）真正服务于用户自身兴趣，而非广告收益，情况就会完全不同。

If the objective function was actually closer to in in in words, the secret hidden master that the algorithm is serving is actually your own interest rather than, you know, trying to sell you more ads.

你们拥有高度成熟的作家群体，进而培养了高价值的读者群体。特别是在视频领域——由于Substack的创新，人们还不像接受付费文字那样习惯付费视频。你们未来会推出广告网络吗？还是认为这会危及核心价值？对此你们如何考量？

You you have a very sophisticated writer base and then by extension, a very sophisticated reader base, very high value audiences. And and now especially with with video and people aren't used to paying for video in the same way they're used to paying for writing, partially because of your Substack's innovation there. Will you also launch an ad network at some point or do you think that risks sort of the golden goose in some way? Or how do you think about that?

这类似于我们讨论算法时的立场，也适用于构建网络和AI（稍后应该会谈到）。赞助广告是强大的商业形式，但若照搬传统社交媒体的广告模式，将会摧毁Substack——那会引入平台与用户对立的激励机制。

I kind of take the same thing we talked about with an algorithm, the same thing about building a network. I'm going to say the same thing when we talk about AI, which I assume we will do. But I see sponsorships advertising is a powerful force. And I think there are definitely like, the thing that would would break Substack is if we just looked at the same way that the legacy social media things built advertising and said, oh, we're just gonna copy that. Like, that's gonna work.

实际上现在已有许多优秀Substack创作者通过赞助获利。我们相信存在一种既能扩大经济收益，又符合独立性与品质追求的模式。我们对此深感兴趣，但必须从第一性原理出发——不是简单插入广告，而是构想更优方案并实现它。

Because if we did that, the thing we would be doing is importing the incentive structure and the business model that puts the platform at odds with the people on the platform. On the other hand, there are a ton of substackers today. Some of them are, in my opinion, some of the very best substackers who are selling sponsorships. And I think there's a version of unlocking more economic opportunity, more more economic upside that is aligned with the idea of independence, the idea of having differentiated value and quality. And so we're very interested in doing that, but my belief is we have to take a sort of a first principles approach and not just stuff ads in a thing, but ask the question, what would the good version of this be and help build that?

是的。

Yeah.

我认为广告的熊市观点一直是将内容低俗化或制作面向大众的点击诱饵。牛市观点则是让小众作家能够变现，而无需向读者收取高额费用，或者不会像订阅模式那样陷入受众绑架的困境。这两种商业模式各有利弊，你们需要找到一种既能服务读者又能服务作者的整合方式。

I think the bear case for ads has been sort of dumb it down content or sort of click bait for the masses. Bull case has been sort of allows niche writers to monetize, without charging their their audience a a ton or it, you know, doesn't fall succumb, it doesn't succumb to audience capture in the same way that a subscription could. Basically, there pros and cons with both business models, you guys have to, you know, figure out how to integrate it in a way that works for the reader and the writer.

我认为这些正在上线的神奇AI技术也是如此。我们正在打造一款实时产品，感觉就像在进行FaceTime通话，然后神奇地转变成精心制作的播客、YouTube视频、一系列短视频和文字记录。很快，它还能支持任意语言。我们将生活在一个世界里，一方面可能出现大量让愚者不停点击的AI垃圾，另一方面也可能出现创造力杠杆大幅提升的未来——那些拥有独立声音的创作者能实现更多可能，做出更优质的作品，更完整地呈现他们的愿景。

I think the same is true of all of this magical AI technology that's coming online. I mean, we're building a live product that basically feels like you know, I do feels like doing a FaceTime call, and then magically turns into a highly produced podcast and a YouTube video and a series of short form clips and a transcript. And pretty soon, it's gonna be in whatever language you want. And we just we're gonna be live in a world where, you know, one thing you could have is you could have a bunch of, like, AI slop that kind of keeps dumb people clicking. The other thing you could have is you could have a future where there's way more creative leverage and where the people who are making this independent stuff, who have the independent voice, can do way more, can make something much better, can realize their vision much more fully.

因此在所有这些事情上，我认为技术本身并无好坏之分，它只是达成目标的强大工具。如果你选对了目标，运用这些技术会非常令人振奋。

And so in all these things, I'm kind of you know, I think you look at the technology not as good or bad. You look at it as powerful means to an end. And if you pick the right ends, then applying the technologies is very exciting.

这是你早就洞见的、如今正成为常识的观点——五年前并非如此——即每个人都能成为创作者，而我们其实缺乏优质内容。现在有种可怕的说法，认为播客已死、内容过剩、网络信息过载。

This is something I think you were so early to understand that is sort of common knowledge now or becoming more common knowledge, but wasn't five years ago, which is that everyone can be a creator and we don't have enough content. Like, I think there's there's this horrible meme. Like, we have we're podcasts are over. We have too much content. There's too much online.

但事实恰恰相反。看看任何推荐流，大部分已是AI生成的糟粕，这说明真正出色的内容极度匮乏。你对于专业作家的理解总是令我惊叹——仿佛钻进了我的大脑。写作最难的部分就是动笔，真正的作家遭遇创作瓶颈时，提笔简直难如登天。

And it's like, actually, it's the opposite. If you look at any of the for you feeds, I think most of it is now AI slot, which says that there's, like, there's just a dearth of extraordinary content. And what I always thought was so brilliant about what you understood about professional writers and having been a professional writer, it was almost like you were inside my psyche. The hardest part about writing is writing. Like, it's really, really hard to get started writing if you if you're, like, a true writer and you have writer's block.

因此任何能简化写作流程的措施，任何能构建创作飞轮的手段——比如让读者产生期待、人为设定截止期限、快速生成可转化为多种形态的内容以获得正向反馈循环——都至关重要。你从一开始就深刻理解创作者的艺术困境，这种挣扎存在于每个人心中。毕竟在座的日常工作都不是写作，但本质上我们都是这个播客的创作者。

And so everything you can do to make the production of that writing easier, everything you can do to sort of create the flywheel where your readers are expecting something, artificially creating deadlines, if you can create something very quickly that turns into a host of different products that then gives you the positive feedback loop that you need to keep doing it. Like there was something about from the very beginning, you really understood sort of the artist's way or the writer's drama of just how difficult it is to be a creator. And that exists within everyone. Right? Like, it's like none of us are, you know, none of us are our day jobs are not writing.

如果能大幅降低创作门槛，让有正职的人也能轻松创作，他们就能产出足以对抗那些梗工厂垃圾的精彩内容。你早期这一洞见正随着AI发展得到验证——未来将是创意者运用AI制作精美产品的混合时代，否则这些作品的创作门槛实在太高了。

Right? But all of us are writers. All of us are creators on this on this pod. And so there's something about if you can make people's lives much easier and make the the the creation loop easier, people who have day jobs will then do it and create magical, you know, great content, to rival the the kind of terrible content that now is being produced by these these, like, meme farms. Like, I think I think that's like a a very you had a very early insight, and you're you're seeing sort of AI pushes this direction where it's gonna be this hybrid of really creative people using AI to to make make beautiful products that otherwise it would be like the the barrier for entry is way too high to do that.

没错。

Yeah.

我当初创办整个公司就是为了逃避完成一篇文章，所以对此深有体会。你描述的现象用我的话说就是：我们已进入注意力成为稀缺资源的时代。这其实并非AI带来的新现象，我认为这要追溯到社交媒体革命时期——小时候我们还会感到无聊，会渴望有什么免费事物来分散注意力，而如今我们已打赢了对抗无聊的战争。

I started a whole company to procrastinate from finishing an essay, so I definitely know don't know that. But the way the way the thing you're describing and the way I I I would put it would have put it at the time and I would still put it is we we've entered a world where attention is the scarce resource. And that's actually not that's not new with AI. I date this to kind of the social media Internet revolution where it used to be like when I was a kid, you could get bored. You could be sitting around and you'd be like, dang.

当年社交媒体巨头崛起时，大家都在争夺注意力资源——那时人们有大量注意力无处安放。如今我们确实赢得了这场注意力争夺战。

I I wish I had something to pay attention to you right now. And if you could give me something free to distract me, that would be a really good deal. And that was, like, you know, that was the the situation where the original, like, you know, media like, social media network giants rose up was it's like there's this land grab for attention. Everybody has has so much attention to give and not enough things to distract them, and we have won that war. We have won the war on boredom.

没有人会遇到这样的问题：我有五分钟空闲，却找不到事情打发时间。但我的注意力并非无限的。如今我生活的世界里，内容从不稀缺，真正稀缺的是优质内容，是值得投入注意力的事物。Substack的根本洞见在于：作为只有一次生命的人，如果能花点钱获得更好的文化滋养、更优质的思想、更有趣的时光消遣，或是帮助我成为理想中的自己——这实在是笔超值的交易。

Nobody has the problem of, I have five minutes, I don't have anything to do to kill that time. But the amount of attention I have is not infinite. And so now I live in a world where there's no scarcity of content, but there's a huge scarcity of good content. There's a huge scarcity of things that are worth paying attention to. And this is the fundamental insight of Substack is, as somebody who has one life to live, if I could spend a little bit of money to get better culture, better ideas, more interesting use of my time, things that help me become more the person I want or aspire to be, that's actually a phenomenal deal.

如果我不愿花钱或花点精力寻找更好的选择，那才是疯了。人们开始意识到——文化也正逐渐跟上这个已存在十年的现实——当你选择消费什么媒体时，你其实是在选择如何度过自己的人生。

And it would be insane of me not to be willing to spend money or spend a bit of effort to to find that better thing. And people are starting the culture is starting to catch up now, I think, to this reality that's been true for a decade that, you know, you're don't you're spending your life when you choose what media to consume.

我认为你们的另一大贡献在于价格发现机制。事实证明，像Noah Smith这样的作者，其真实价值不是在彭博社拿8万美元年薪，而是现在独立写作获得的百万收入。要是这个模式早年在《华盛顿邮报》的Catherine当记者时就存在，她或许就不必...

I think another huge contribution that you guys have made is around price discovery, where it turns out that the true value for, let's say, Noah Smith isn't 80 k writing at Bloomberg. It's a million dollars or whatever it is that he makes now writing on his own. If only it had existed when Catherine was a reporter at the Washington Post, maybe she wouldn't have had to Wouldn't have had

在风投行业里煎熬了。

to suffer through this venture career.

在座至少有两位——可能三位——都是我们曾试图招募到Substack，最终却加入a16z的人。

There's two there's two yeah. Two people on this maybe three. All of you are actually people that we've tried to recruit to be sub stackers that wound up at a 16 z instead.

没错。看着你们将价值捕获与价值创造重新对齐的方式很迷人。现在不仅越来越多人选择独立，还出现了像Barry这样（Catherine担任董事的The Press）以Substack为核心的新型媒体公司。谈谈你对媒体行业解构与重组，以及未来媒体公司形态的看法吧。

Yeah. Exactly. And so it was just fascinating to see you guys align kind of value capture and value creation in a way that wasn't aligned beforehand. And we're starting to see not just people go independent, but also sort of the rebundling happen where people like Barry, where Catharine is on the on the board of of Repress, build sort of substack first, you know, media media companies and and and other people as well. Talk talk a little bit about sort of the unbundling and rebundling and and kind of the future of how you see media companies be be being built.

这让我想起Marc Andreessen最早对我说的话：'你们将对媒体行业做风投对科技公司做的事'。过去优秀的软件开发者只能听命于西装革履的管理层，而实际上创造价值的人被严重低估。但更妙的是，一旦打破这种结构，让创造者掌权——虽然并非每个程序员都能成为优秀创始人——但最优秀的创造者带来的成果，远比被软件公司中层管理时辉煌得多。科技界这种'让狂人掌管疯人院'的做法，本质上催生了一场复兴。

This actually reminds me of one of the first things Marc Andreessen ever said to me when we were talking about Substack. He said, You're going to do to media what the venture capital industry did to software companies or to tech, which was there used to be this time where if you were somebody who knew how to build great software, the way that you could do that would be to go get a job from somebody in a suit that would tell you what to do and pay you a salary. And the hidden reality of that situation was the people who actually could make the things were creating so much value that they were massively getting underpaid and under recognized compared to what they were doing. And obviously, but even more interestingly, once you could free them up from that structure and you actually put them in charge, put the people who are actually making the thing, make them the boss, it massively increased variance in this very positive way. Didn't always work.

文化产业同样可能发生这种变革。真正的创作者才是英雄，是他们将自己置于风险中。如果我们期待文化复兴，正是这些人将实现它。而Substack的使命就是为他们打造所需的工具和网络，给他们赢得成功的机会。我们正在这条路上前进。

Right? Not every software programmer is going to be a great founder, but the best founders who actually build the thing are so much better and the results are so much more interesting and extreme and wonderful than the world where they just got bossed around by whoever was the software company middle management, that the net effect of kind of like pulling the talent out and unleashing it and putting the lunatics in charge of the asylum in tech was this renaissance, basically. And I think the same thing is possible in the cultural industries. I think that the people who are actually making the stuff are the heroes. They're putting themselves on the line.

那些投资创作者的人——无论是投入时间、金钱还是参与其中——都将见证这场变革。

They are you know, if we're gonna have a renaissance and a new flourishing of culture, those are the people that are gonna make it and the people that are investing in them and, you know, investing their time and their money and participating. And the the ambition that I have and we have at Substack is to basically just, like, build what they need, build the tools they need, build the network they need to have a fighting chance to win. And I think we're on the way.

确实有趣。既有像Noah Smith这样的独立创作者，也有人构建起超越个人的更大平台。

Yeah. It's interesting. And even if you see there, there are sort of solo capitalists, sort of like the Noah Smith example, then there are also people who go on and build bigger platforms, sort of much bigger than their individual selves.

我认为他们是雄心勃勃的媒体创始人。我们在Substack有一个完整的团队，致力于这样一个原则：如果你是一位有抱负的媒体创始人，我们希望Substack成为实现你最大抱负的最佳平台。

I think of them as ambitious media founders. We have a whole team at Substack who's dedicated to the principle that if you're an ambitious media founder, we want Substack to be the best possible place to realize the biggest version of your ambition.

我们来谈谈媒体未来的发展趋势吧。要知道，一天只有24小时，人们花在内容消费上的时间有限，各种内容都在相互竞争。展望未来几年，你认为人们花在整体内容消费上的时间会增加吗？我好奇的是，如果视频内容显然会增加，人们是否会减少阅读？还是说所有形式的内容都会增长？你如何看待消费习惯随时间的变化？

Let's talk a little bit about the future of media in a sense of, you know, there's only twenty four hours in a day. There's only know, a portion of that people spend, you know, engaging in content, and it all competes with each other. You know, looking out a few years, do you see the the amount that people spend on just that overall content in general increasing? I I guess I'm curious, like, if video is obviously going to increase, are people going going to be reading less or is just more of everything? Or how do you how do you view consumption's habits changing over time?

我曾写过一篇题为《媒体的两种未来》的文章，其中我提出一个观点：当讨论这些问题时，难免会涉及一些哲学层面的思考。比如，媒体的目的是什么？我们在这里做什么？我认为媒体的目的之一是娱乐，产生某种即时影响——用极端说法就是人们像使用毒品一样消费媒体。我会坐在那里。

I wrote this piece called the two futures of media where I kind of argue I think I think inevitably when you ask these questions, you get into sort of, like, weird philosophical questions. Like, what is the purpose of media, and what are we doing here? And I think that one of the purposes of media is to entertain, to have some effect, like and people use the the extreme way to say this is people use media like a drug. Right? I'm gonna sit there.

不断滑动屏幕，观看内容，它会在当下对我产生某种影响，带来愉悦感。这正是我期望从媒体中获得的东西之一。

I'm gonna scroll this thing. I'm gonna watch this thing. It's gonna have some effect on me in the moment. That's gonna create a pleasant feeling. And that's, like, one of the things that I want from it.

我认为媒体的这一面将会被极度强化。我们现在拥有非常复杂的人工智能算法。这是好事吗？我不确定，但它正在发生。这种现象将渗透到所有领域——每个短视频，每个可能形成这种模式的内容。

And I think that that side of media is gonna get supercharged. We have very sophisticated AI goon bots now. Is that a good thing? I don't know, but it's it's happening. And we're gonna have that across, like, you know, everything, every short form video, every everything that could be like this.

这几乎接近科幻小说中的'导线刺激'概念——把电线插入大脑直接刺激愉悦中枢。我认为这个未来已经到来，而且正在加速发展。技术越强大，这种趋势就越明显。

You know? It's it's almost approaching wire heading, the science fiction idea of, like, you plug a wire into your brain and it stimulates the pleasure centers. I think that future is is we're well into it. It's only accelerating. The stronger the technology gets, the stronger that thing becomes.

坦白说，这对人们构成重大隐患。因为存在一种类似药物成瘾的媒体消费模式——它在当下极具吸引力，是你渴望甚至愿意付费（至少愿意花时间）的东西，却与你的长期利益相悖。记住，你消费的媒体不仅关乎时间分配，更塑造着你的身份认同，它会让你品味变得低俗，让你渴望更多无脑内容，不断将你拉向深渊。

And the stronger it's a hazard for people, quite frankly, because there's a mode of consuming media and culture that is like drug addiction, where it is compelling in the moment, where it is something you want, it is something even you'd be willing to pay for, at least spend your time on, but it pulls against your long term interest. Remember, the media you consume is not just how you spend your time, it's who you become, and so it degrades you. And so it it makes your tastes get more base. It makes you want more of the dumb thing. It it sort of pulls you in.

这种现象已然存在，并将持续发展。我认为这已是既定趋势。但娱乐并非媒体的唯一目的。

That that's already happening. It's gonna continue to happen. That's a big part of the future. I think that thing is baked in right now. But that's not the only purpose of media.

媒体的另一重目的是文化传承——让我们在社会中成长为理想中的自己，学会如何生活并影响世界，就像与他人共同构建的多人互动游戏。这也是人们真正渴望的。我认为那些强化前者的技术，同样可以强化后者。Substack能做的就是打造一个既有趣、优质又充满力量的平台——使用Substack不需要像苦行僧般克制。

The other purpose of media is culture. The other purpose of media is to live in a society and become the kind of person you want to become and to figure out how to live and act back on the world, like the intersubjective multiplayer game of building with other people. And that is something that people really, really want as well. And I think that the same technologies that are making the first thing much more compelling can make that second thing much more compelling as well. And the thing that I think we can do at Substack is to create a version of that thing that is also fun and is also good and is also empowering, and you don't have to kind of be like I don't wanna you have to be like a monk to use Substack.

你可能会想：'我可以刷TikTok，也可以去图书馆查缩微胶片'。确实如此，但没人真的会选后者。如果我们能把这种美好、有趣且文化底蕴深厚的媒体未来变得真正吸引人，让创作者因杰出作品获得收益，让用户意识到——当回顾在Substack上度过的时光时，你会感叹：'真值'。

You're like, well, I could scroll TikTok, or I could go to the library and flip through some microfiche. And it's like, yeah. You could do that, but nobody's actually gonna do that. And so if we can take kind of, like, the good and interesting and culture laden future of media and make it really good and make it really compelling and make have it people make money from it when they make something truly great and have people realize that you know? I I that the Substack app could be a place where you you look back at the time you spend on it and think, damn.

我很庆幸自己做了那些事。那让我成为了更好的人，也让我更有趣。我认为这是可能的，当世界发生巨变、技术重塑一切时，变化本身将不可避免。但具体发生哪种版本的变化，通往哪个未来，却是充满偶然性的。

I'm glad I did that. That made me a better person. That made me more interesting. And I think that that is possible and that if we when there are these massive changes, when the world changes, when technology reshapes everything, I think the fact that it's going there's going to be change can become inevitable. But which version of the change happens, which future you go to is contingent.

对吧？人们常问未来是注定的吗？伟人理论正确吗？历史究竟如何发生？我认为两者兼而有之。

Right? People often ask, like, is the is the future determined, or is is great man theory true? Is you know, how does history happen? And I think it's just both. Right?

有些变革无论如何都会发生。但在变革时刻，具体涌现哪个未来，取决于人们的选择、历史偶然和个体决策。我认为我们能做的，就是构建第二种媒体未来——让人们阅读启迪心智的内容，收听连接世界的对话，以他们珍视的方式参与文化创造。这不仅创造巨大经济价值，更成为文化的经济引擎，构建出极其宝贵的美好世界。这会成为所有人的归宿吗？当然不是。

There are these inexorable changes that are gonna happen no matter what. But then in the moments of change, which future emerges is contingent on the choices people make and the accidents of history and individual decisions. And so I think the thing that is possible for us to do is to build a version of that second future of media where people are reading things that make them smarter or listening to conversations that plug them into the world, in general, acting back on the culture and participating and engaging in ways that they value, and that that creates a ton of economic value and creates this is why it's an economic engine for culture, creates, like, a a whole world that is intensely valuable and great. Is it gonna be is that is that gonna be the world that everybody goes to? No.

有些人会沉迷AI生成的垃圾内容。但我们可以通过完善第二种未来来真正改变现状。顺着你关于文化的观点延伸——

Some people are gonna sit on the AI Goon bot. But I think we can we can make a real difference by making that second future as good as possible. Building upon your culture point,

我注意到一些学者也开始使用Substack。我们讨论了很多关于颠覆媒体的话题。我很好奇你是否也深入思考过学术界、出版业这些相邻领域？还是说这对你来说是种干扰，或者你并未刻意关注？

I've I've started to see some academics also on Substack. We've been talking a lot about disrupting media. I'm also curious if you think much about sort of academia or or or books or kind of these adjacent industries, or is that is is that a distraction or you're or or you don't think about it super deliberately?

我对学术界有相当偏激的看法——虽然可能不够深思熟虑，但我认为很多科学研究完全失效了。科学事业本身极其重要，是历史上最宝贵的财富，但当前学术实践和出版现状远非理想。甚至同行评审可能都是个重大错误，它并未真正奏效。我们本指望这个机制保证质量，结果却出现大量无人相信的伪科学。我对应用新媒体原则改造这个体系很感兴趣。

I'm I'm a total crank on the subject of academia, so it might be fun, This this is sort of, like, ill considered on my part, but I think a lot of science is totally broken. Yeah. I think that the like, I think that a lot of the and I think that the the scientific project is incredibly important and one of the most valuable things in history, but that the practice of science and the current situation in academia and especially in academic publishing is pretty far from good. And even to the point of, like, I think maybe peer review is a huge mistake and doesn't actually work and is you know, we've got this thing that's supposed to make everything good, and there's, like, this massive crisis of huge bodies of fake science that nobody believes because it's all lurping. And I'm very interested in the idea of, like, what if you apply some of these same principles?

做科研的另一种方式就是直接在网上发表成果。这其实非常激进且有趣，我已看到一些萌芽。这个话题让我兴奋，虽然目前还不是我们的核心工作重点。

One way you could do science, if you want to, is to go on the Internet and publish it. I think that's actually pretty radical and pretty interesting, and I see some early shoots of people doing that. It's a topic that I am excited about and think that there's more that we could do but hasn't been kind of, like, central to our efforts so far.

我想谈谈书籍。如今人们决定写书的动机本身就很有趣——这首先是个耗时数年的工程。我和哈珀柯林斯合作《冷启动问题》大约是三四年前的事。

I was just gonna say something about books. Right? Because I think I think it's it's the the the process of why people decide to write books today is in itself a really interesting decision because, like, first, you have to spend you know, it's a multiyear project to actually, you know, write a book. And I and I worked with Harper Collins to to do the cold start problem. I think it's, like, been three or four years ago.

但你知道，写本书实际要花三年左右。更惊人的是，如今只要预售达到1万册就能成为畅销书——这说明根本没人读书了。全美可能只剩一家实体书印刷厂，如果米歇尔·奥巴马和你同期出书，印刷档期会被直接占满。

But, know, it takes takes, like, three years or something like that to actually, you know, write a book. And then, you know, many of you guys know that if you if you literally just get enough preorders that you can get 10,000 units sold, that's, like, a bestseller. I mean, it's like people are not reading books right now, which is which is insane. There's literally, I think, like, one book printer left in The US. And so if if Michelle Obama decides to, you know, write a book around the same time as you, like, you they're like, oh, the the printer's booked for the next, you know, x months.

整个产业竟依赖单一印刷渠道，这太荒谬了。克里斯，比起这种模式，点击发布就能直达十万读者邮箱的体验简直是天壤之别。当然书籍承载着千年文化 prestige，就像当年戏剧家看待新兴电影艺术——虽受欢迎却不够高雅，但这种观念终将改变。

And, like, that's that that's just how that's it's all down to one one set of printers, which is which which is itself insane. And and so, Chris, when you when you compare that to, like, the amount of work involved in writing a book versus being able to, like, click the publish button and have that go to, you know, a 100,000, you know, people's inboxes each day, it's just like it's a completely different thing. Now it is fascinating that, like, you know, there there's there's certainly a cultural prestige in the fact that books have been around forever, but I have to imagine that it just changes over time. I imagine that, you know, it's like when when people were playwrights then, you know, and film gets created, they're like, oh, wow. People love film, but, like, it's not as prestigious as, you know, plays.

电视也是一样。人们会说，哦，虽然很多人看电视，但它不如电影有 prestige。接着我们又会陷入同样的争论，比如 YouTube 网红、游戏主播之类的。你懂我意思吧？

And then TV is the same. It's like, oh, but people are watching a lot of TV. It's not as prestigious as being in a film. And then we're gonna go down the same thing with, like, YouTube YouTube stars and, you know, streamers or, you know, whatever. So, like, of of you know?

所以我觉得这类认知明显滞后。现在你喝着咖啡随手写的东西就能触达数十万人——单从写书或运营 Substack 的投资回报率来看，这种影响力本身就非常惊人。当然它们并不互斥。如果重来一次，我可能会先在 Substack 上连载，再集结成书，而不是把自己关在度假酒店的房间里拼命赶稿，试图一次性完成大部头。

So I I think I think, like, a a lot of this stuff is obviously very much lagging. And the ability to just reach, you know, hundreds of thousands of people, you know, with with something that you write over over a cup of coffee is, like, itself, you know, just so powerful when when when you really think about it from an ROI basis of, like, writing a book or a Substack. And, of course, they're not mutually exclusive. Like, you know, if I were to redo have redone my whole thing again, I probably would have, like, written it all on Substack and then taken it and put it into a book as opposed to thinking about it like, oh, I'm gonna lock myself into into, you know, hotel rooms during my vacations and try to crank out all these pages and then kinda do it all all as one big thing.

确实。媒体界就经历过这种周期性道德恐慌——天啊！人们在网上写作居然没有编辑把关！

Yeah. No. I I I agree with that. I think there's there's this, like, cyclical moral panic that happens, and it certainly happened in media where it's like people are writing on the Internet without an editor. Oh my god.

互联网写作没人编辑怎么办？对吧？这就是媒体圈的版本。现在图书行业正在经历同样的恐慌。

Edit no one's editing the the writing on the internet. What are we going do? Right? Like that was like the media's version of this. It's the same thing happening with books.

人们确实在阅读，只是不读书——他们在网上阅读。但传统出版流程...（摇头）每次看到这种认知滞后我都觉得不可思议。传统行业总在反复发现：原来互联网真的存在，原来纸质书和报刊的内容可以直接搬到网上。

People are reading, but it's not in a book. Like they're reading things on the internet, but the book process is, you know, it's incredible to me. And it happens all the time. It's always like legacy industry is realizing that the internet actually is a thing, that it becomes easier to produce the same thing you were going to produce in a book format or the same thing you were going to write for a print paper. It can be put on the internet and it's the same content.

所以这种道德恐慌总在循环：人类变笨了/人们读书不够——但这是伪命题。人们只是阅读方式变了。当然，如果年轻人完全没读过当代之前的实体书，那是另一个问题。但对媒介本身的恐慌，从互联网诞生起就周期性发作。

So I think there's always these moral panics that we're somehow getting dumber or people aren't reading enough and that's a huge problem. And I just don't think people are looking at it holistically, that people are reading, they're reading in different ways. Yes, you could say something, there is a huge problem if young people grow up never having read an actual physical book that was written before the current times. That's a different discussion. But the moral panics about the actual medium, I think, are something that are very cyclical, have been happening since the birth of the internet.

互联网确实影响了言论自由和内容获取自由，但并未损害我们的阅读能力——甚至可以说也没削弱论证能力（虽然某些领域会争议这点）。本质上，这是传统行业面对变革时的适应性恐慌。

And it hasn't necessarily affected it's affected the freedom of what we can actually say and the freedom of what we can get our hands on. But it hasn't necessarily affected our ability to read. And certainly, would argue it actually hasn't affected our ability to make arguments either, which I know would be controversial in some domains. I think it's more the moral panic of industries realizing that things are changing and they have to adapt.

有意思的问题在于：当今思想文化的源头是什么？是主播？推特网红？教授还是记者？

Yeah. And it is an interesting question about where sort of what is the source of kind of intellectual culture these days? Is it more streamers? Is it more Twitter nones? Is it more professors, more journalists?

Alex Denko 提出过精彩论证：长文的价值不在于全民阅读，而在于关键人群阅读后，会以其他形式转译传播，最终大众接触的是衍生内容。理解这种供应链，能让我们更珍视长文作为思想源头的作用。

I think, you know, Alex Denko wrote this really interesting sort of, you know, case for for why it's long form writing. And and and one of the reasons he said was it's not that everyone reads the long form writing. It's that an important group of people reads it and then translates it or, transmits it in kind of a different format, and then the masses read or or sort of engage with that content. And I think just, having a more sophisticated understanding of the supply chain gives us a greater appreciation for for sort of long form writing as as a as a source.

Eric 说到点子了。传统印刷品的内容相比网络实时讨论存在巨大延迟。长文能孕育原创思想，而 meme 战争则是实时讨论的战场——两者缺一不可。

Yeah. And, Eric, to to your point there, it's like what what that means is, everything that you read in in in sort of, you know, printed out, you know, pieces of paper you know, in traditional press is, like, delayed by a huge amount compared to, you know, the actual discourse that's happening on on on on on the Internet. And and so and and long form, of course, is, like, you're actually able to generate really, really original thoughts. And then, of course, all the all the meme wars are are are where where the real discussion happens in real time. So you you kinda have both.

你知道，无论是生成内容还是随时间积累的文化知识，两者都像流水般持续涌动。

You know, both both both flows like generating, you know, cultural cultural, you know, knowledge over time.

克里斯，我们这次聚会部分是为了庆祝你完成的巨额融资。一亿美元对吗？

So Chris, we're here partially to celebrate your big round. Dollars 100,000,000? Is that right?

一亿美元

$100,000,000

没错。说说为什么要融资一亿美元？你们业务已经非常成功了，现金流也很充足。这次的大计划是什么？

yeah. So talk about why raise $100,000,000 You're already crushing it as a business. There's already a lot of cash. What are the big plans here? So I

我认为核心在于我们长期以来的愿景——构建Substack的拼图。我甚至在融资演示里放了这个梗图：握手表情包。一只手代表支持独立创作者的模式，另一只手代表互联网规模的网络。这正是Substack始终追求的本质——既要支持独立性，又要打造互联网上的一流平台，形成自我滋养的繁荣生态。

think the big story of this to me is we've had this long term ambition for what are the pieces of sub sec. I literally put this meme in my pitch deck, which was the handshake meme. And one hand is a model that supports independence. And the other hand is an Internet scale network. And to me, this is sort of like the core of what Substack has always meant to be is, hey.

经过多年努力，这个初生的网络已经成型并持续成长。下一阶段就是要全力推动这台机器运转，让它为创作者创造经济价值，为世界带来文化价值。这意味着公司需要全面升级来匹配这个规模与野心，而本轮融资正是开启这场变革的钥匙。

This model that supports independence, but also this, like, this place, this part of the Internet that's a first class destination that has this, like, thriving scene that that that feeds it. And I think after years and years and years of working to kinda make that into a reality, we have that fledgling network alive now and it's growing. And I see the next phase of Substack as kind of like feeding that machine and helping it sort of like grow and throw off all of this value and like, economic value for the creators and cultural value for the world. And it's kinda gonna mean rebuilding the company to match that scale and ambition. And this fundraise was really just a a way to unlock that kind of transformation.

现在我们正处在激动人心的重塑阶段——重新构想产品、公司以及未来的可能性。

And so we're sort of, like, in an exciting period of reimagining, you know, the product, the company, and what this thing can become now.

这个话题很适合作为结尾。克里斯，非常感谢你参加播客。

Well, that's a great place to to wrap. Chris, thanks so much for coming on the podcast. Thanks.

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