The Resurgence of Text Media

Text is having a moment...so why are we still hesitant to jump on it?

You have to be a devoted cultural heretic to deny that something is happening with text. 032c is preaching the decline of the image, Interview and New York Magazine are driving the daily culture discourse and literally hand-making this generation’s up-and-coming pop stars, and overwhelmed by the visual social media feeds, people are flocking to text-based projects, print, and newsletters. Some of the most prominent independent projects dominating “the scene” — like Cake Zine, Perfectly Imperfect, Screen Slate, Byline, and So Young Magazine — are primarily text-based. And even the industries that are visual by nature, like art and fashion, can’t get enough of text-heavy content.

Mia Khalifa and Lil Uzi Vert are working the register at Climax Books — a curator, seller, and publisher of rare magazines and books, while a buzzy writer Ottessa Moshfegh is posing for a Miu Miu-sponsored piece in Harper’s Bazaar, and Roxane Gay and Isle McElroy are telling unlikely love stories in a zine produced by a dating app. Some of the most impactful companies of the past decade that started out as online blogs — Highsnobiety, Glossier, and Violet Gray — in some way or another, are revamping their text media efforts after putting them on the back burner for a few years. And inspired by the early 2000s skate, surf, and streetwear magazines, younger brands, like On and Satisfy, have kicked off robust in-house editorial projects in a brilliant attempt to reimagine those for running and create a similarly strong subculture and community around their core sport.

We buy text, we read text, we talk about text, and love creating it…and yet, we aren’t quite ready to say “text is having a moment” with our chests.

“I used to assume the audience was smart,” writes Dianna Cohen, the founder of a beauty brand Crown Affair. “But the truth is, even the smart ones (hi, I see you), no longer have the attention span.” And this is just scratching the surface of why jumping into text-based projects is still terrifying both as a creative and a brand despite our intuition pushing us away from quick bite-sized content we feel so jaded by. We say, print is up…but what if it’s only up among a certain downtown demographic? Barnes and Noble is having a great year…but how much of those sales are made up by authors other than Colleen Hoover and Sarah J. Maas? Newsletters are growing…but can they make real money? It feels like their quality is declining too…this is exactly what happened to blogging. And it definitely doesn’t help that every other newspaper and magazine you used to love have shut down and laid off their entire staff in the past few years.

This text media report is my best attempt at figuring out a couple of things for myself: what’s the line between monetizing your work and running a successful text media project and selling out? Hasn’t being a writer always been cool? How effective are in-house editorial projects really? Can words move culture and create business impact at the same time? The media business is weak, and it feels like a good opportunity for brands to move in and make something cool. But from the consumer pov, is that a win for us culturally? Can brand editorial ever be more than a marketing exercise? How long do we have until platforms like Substack make text overwhelming? Or is there something about text creation and consumption that's different from image and video that will keep things in check? 

Lucky for me, some of the most interesting culture thinkers, writers, and researchers I know gracefully agreed to tackle this project with me: an independent cultural strategist

Alexi Gunner

, a youth culture researcher

Casey Lewis

, a brand marketing expert

Grace Gordon

, a founder of the Seen Library reader community

jordan santos

, a creative technologist Sean Thielen-Esparza, and the writers of the

Language Arts

newsletter Layla Halabian and Sophia June. Together, we discuss the text projects they had the pleasure to work on, their observations about the changing landscape of media production and consumption, their concerns about the longevity and quality of the popular text media, and more.

CHAPTER ONE: THE RESHUFFLE OF THE FORMATS

If you scroll through the Substack Notes feed on any given day, odds are you will run into at least a couple of posts from the people who just joined the platform that read something like “have been spending a lot more time on Substack than IG and TikTok, and my brain hasn’t felt this good in years.” Coming off the cheap dopamine supplied by the endless stream of visual content on other social media apps, they are experiencing, if not a new, than a forgotten feeling that comes with engaging with a flat and static form of media that demands their active participation. Overwhelmed by the loud and dynamic feeds designed to occupy their attention by the tech giants, professional creators, and brands, they are finding refuge in the quiet, thoughtful, and slow content produced by writers, curators, and researchers. 

“The image is on the decline,” states Phillip Pyle in the opening of his 032c essay preaching the rise of text. But even to someone like me, who runs a text-based project, this still sounds like a bold take. Processing visual content is much faster and easier than engaging with text for consumers which means there is more consumption to squeeze out of it and more money to be made. So, why are culture researches, artists, and creative agencies forecasting a mass rise of interest in text-based content in the world that still very much runs on TikTok and IG? 

Visual burnout

With the rise of social media, fast media – images and video – have become the most prominent form of communication, and the fast mass reproduction of trending editing styles, sayings, and concepts, turned into a rewarded behavior that only increased the value of the original content. Think meme images, or even shizoposting – what used to be an internet-native “iykyk” form of communication has been widely adopted as a marketing strategy by big corporate brands and even presidential candidates, and having shed layers of context, spit back out at us an edgy sales pitch. “We’ve reimagined and recontextualised images at such a rate that we’re starting to lose grip of their meaning,” writes Letty Cole in an essay about the changing hierarchy of formats. “Many of the images we create today mean so much, relate to so much, that they’ve lost their potency, or start to mean nothing at all. This runs in parallel to the flattening of culture we’ve been trapped in: we are culturally, and visually, burnt out.” 

Analogue nostalgia and the all-encompassing wish to slow down 

In a recent essay about the current state of merch, I quoted a viral tweet from a creative technologist Sean Thielen-Esparza about the mass move towards physical media, products, and experiences among the youth: “The kids are joining running clubs, buying “dumb” phones, woodworking, rocking Walkmans, joining supper clubs, etc because their lives have been swallowed by digital black boxes, and in this moment of uncertainty (tension re: war, AI, climate), they crave tangibility. It’s simple.” In the context of today’s visual-heavy media diet, text too feels analogue. 

“There’s a growing craving for digital slowness in my opinion,” Sean explained to me when I reached out to ask why despite the ease of the consumption of visual content, people seem to be increasingly flocking to reading. “Text is a great way to slow down, go deeper, and "work" for the value of the media (in some sense). One way that I might frame the decline of the image, is more so a growing awareness of the effects of cheap dopamine. Same reason why people are choosing to leave dating apps (for in-person dating), seek alternative consumer technology (vs downloading yet another iPhone app), and the rise of sobriety (rather than choosing alcohol as a social lubricant). All of these decisions are harder, in some sense, than the alternative path.”

The Rise of Generative AI

If consumers are already feeling burnt out by the speed of human reproduction of visual content, imagine the acceleration that generative AI can bring to the scene. In the same 032c essay, Pyle calls out this tweet from Paul Skallas reacting to the launch of Sora, an OpenAI model for generating videos: “Video and the "image" is entering its Faustian stage and will burn out. I'm long on text.” 

Strangely enough, AI isn’t discussed as a threat to text as a format nearly as much as it is discussed in relation to visual content, even though it is well-capable of generating both. I haven’t found any definite explanation for this, so my running theory is that the people who are interested in using AI to subsidize content…

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A CLOSER LOOK AT THE RESURGENCE OF TEXT MEDIA

“One way that I might frame the decline of the image, is more so a growing awareness of the effects of cheap dopamine. Same reason why people are choosing to leave dating apps (for in-person dating), seek alternative consumer technology (vs downloading yet another iPhone app), and the rise of sobriety (rather than choosing alcohol as a social lubricant). All of these decisions are harder, in some sense, than the alternative path,” Sean Thielen-Esparza.

“I think if we want to scrutinize efforts like branded editorial deeply for measurability or return, we need to have equal rigor for the quality of customers that brands attract through methods favored by more data-driven marketers: like paid social, tiktok shop, whatever else. How long do those customers stick around? How many of their friends or family do they convert? What is their lifetime value?” — Grace Gordon.

“You can have this amazing story or photo essay, but ultimately, if it lives on their social channels or on their website, where the vast majority of visitors just want to look at and buy shoes, rather than immerse themselves in a heartfelt story about a ultra-marathon runner, it doesn’t do that story justice. In print, the value of the content is instantly heightened, people pay more attention to the copy and visuals. They’ll read each issue from front to back,” Alexi Gunner.

“In today’s society, we wouldn’t begrudge any writer for getting paid, unless it was from a company with bad politics. We make so little money doing what we do. Selling out isn’t really a thing when we’re under the siege of late-stage capitalism,” Layla Halabian and Sophia June.

“When I was doing book exchanges with friends in 2015 to 2019, it felt really niche - there was little to no interest from most people (let alone brands!) and was something I just did with friends and family. When I started Seen Library (officially) in 2021, a couple brands began to express interest, which was surprising to me as it never occurred to me that something like a book exchange could be seen as marketable. Fast forward to 2024, it’s changed a lot. I’d say I get inquiries from brands about collaborations at least a couple times a month, compared to just two brands expressing interest in all of 2022,” — Jordan Santos.

It took me about four weeks to bring this project to life, so I really hope you enjoy it and share it with your culture-obsessed friends and colleagues. And most importantly — tell me where you stand on text media! Did you just make a zine with your friends? Have you recently gone to a book signing? Is your manager blocking a text project idea at a brand you are currently at? I want to know it all.