Top all-time · #11389
Catherynne M. Valente
Personal blog · catvalente.substack.comwritingculturepolitics
Catherynne M. Valente writes Welcome to Garbagetown, a personal blog at catvalente.substack.com about writing, culture and politics. Since 2022, 7 different Hacker News readers have linked it 12 times, most often “Stop Talking to Each Other and Start Buying Things”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-09-21, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (3) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Catherynne M. Valente's Substack essays on internet culture and platform decay, such as 'Stop Talking to Each Other and Start Buying Things' and a nostalgic look at the joyful early internet.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 3 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Bestselling Science Fiction Author Cat Valente's Blatherings on the State of the World: Politics, Internet Culture, History, and Art. Click to read Welcome to Garbagetown, by Catherynne M. Valente,
Most-linked posts?
- Stop Talking to Each Other and Start Buying Things5 people · 10 mentions · first linked 2022-12-23
What Hacker News says?
https://catvalente.substack.com/p/stop-talking-to-each-other... >Stop Talking to Each Other and Start Buying Things: Three Decades of Survival in the Desert of Social Media
Comment linking /p/stop-talking-to-each-other-and-start
on “Reddit Threatens to Remove Moderators from Subreddits Continuing Blackouts”Submitted Mark F** Zuckerberg Is Not Your Friend as a story · 5 points
HN discussionObligatory share of Stop Talking To Each Other And Start Buying Things. https://catvalente.substack.com/p/stop-talking-to-each-other...
Comment linking /p/stop-talking-to-each-other-and-start
on “A nostalgic look back at when the Internet still felt joyful”Submitted The Great Replacement (Not That One, the Real One) as a story · 3 points
HN discussion> There's an interesting set of conflicting forces where people are tempted through selfish interests to be lazy interacting with humans and prefer to stay home connected while also craving intimate human interaction. Counterpoint: when genuine human interaction does start to happen online, there's often an incentive to monetize it. It's the monetization that turns it into junk food. Spam, clickbait, infinite algori…
Comment linking /p/stop-talking-to-each-other-and-start
on “The Apple Vision Pro is spectacular and sad”Submitted Stop Talking to Each Other and Start Buying Things as a story · 1 points
HN discussionOh yes, I have my eyes on the future. It ain't the cheery future described by Extremely Online (although even that book mentions the ugly but not enough, not by far). Not, it's the future of platform decay (to use a more polite word for enshittification) and Stop Talking to Each Other and Start Buying Things https://catvalente.substack.com/p/stop-talking-to-each-other... To be closer to topic , let me quote Paris Ma…
Comment linking /p/stop-talking-to-each-other-and-start
on “Apple Vision Pro review: Eyes on the future”#5 Hey stop talking and start buying things. Internet not supposed to make only some money. Internet supposed to make all money. It’s the rules. https://catvalente.substack.com/p/stop-talking-to-each-other... Better than #4 of the garbagetown list of social media trajectory.
Comment linking /p/stop-talking-to-each-other-and-start
on “Stop Trying to Make Social Networks Succeed”https://catvalente.substack.com/p/stop-talking-to-each-other... >Stop Talking to Each Other and Start Buying Things: Three Decades of Survival in the Desert of Social Media ... >Prodigy was upset that people were, by and large, using the free communication service they tossed on there just to have more content and not their weird Random Garbage You Don’t Need Storefront. And in many ways, that complaint has only got…
Comment linking /p/stop-talking-to-each-other-and-start
on “Stop Trying to Make Social Networks Succeed”It's not they are using the wrong platform exactly... FB for example started with the idea that people should talk to each other. But then it's worth a lot more money if they stop talking and start buying https://catvalente.substack.com/p/stop-talking-to-each-other...
Comment linking /p/stop-talking-to-each-other-and-start
on “Honestly, It's Probably the Phones”Stop talking to each other and start buying things.... https://catvalente.substack.com/p/stop-talking-to-each-other...
Comment linking /p/stop-talking-to-each-other-and-start
on “YouTube-Dl Hosting Ban Paves the Way to Privatized Censorship”https://catvalente.substack.com/p/stop-talking-to-each-other... >Stop Talking to Each Other and Start Buying Things: Three Decades of Survival in the Desert of Social Media Covers this effect pretty well.
Comment linking /p/stop-talking-to-each-other-and-start
on “Americans want to delete Instagram more than any other app”