The Future, Now and Then

Substack announced a new partnership with Polymarket earlier this week. I guess if Substack is the future of media (it isn’t), then the future of media is gambling. (That’s bad though. You see why that’s bad, right?).

The future of Substack is going to tilt toward writers with large audiences running completely unregulated pump-and-dump schemes through prediction markets. Buy low, tell your readers why X outcome is undervalued, sell high, pocket the difference. Not all Substack writers will make use of the Polymarket widget. But if you want the company to algorithmically promote your content, maybe you should try out this hot new gambling trend.

It is wildly awkward to treat this as a breaking point. A lot of writers I deeply respect have left the platform because it subsidizes and amplifies white nationalists. I stuck around through all that, and now draw the line at… Polymarket? (C’mon Dave. Really?!?)