Skibidi Toilet video essay / going paid

channel announcements

Dear readers,

This post is here to announce, first, that my Skibidi Toilet video essay is done and posted on YouTube. I am hoping to make more YouTube video essays. This one has been a long time coming — you can see my previous Skibidi work here, here, and here on Substack. You can watch it here:

I also want to tell you I am transitioning to paid subscriptions, and beginning a new chapter in this project. If you’re interested in supporting me and this work, consider signing up — I would be very grateful. My plan is as follows:

• for free subscribers, I will continue to do one post per week (three or four per month). These will include audio versions and possibly some video down the road. Nothing will change for you.

• for paid subscribers, I will do two additional posts per month and these will be a little more conjectural and work-in-progress oriented. I’m also going to put some of my older posts behind the paywall. It is $5 per month for a paid subscriptions or $50 a year.

There are two reasons I’m doing this. First, I would like income to support my work, and make up for the revenue I may lose if/when TikTok falls or the algorithm becomes mercurial and ceases to favor me.

Secondly, I am a large enough creator now (one thousand subscribers on this platform, nearly 70,000 on TikTok) that I feel eyes on me when I’m thinking out loud. I am happy to reach more people, but I also want to post and converse in a more intimate setting, where I can try out ideas and get feedback. A paid community might be a good way to do this.

If all goes according to plan, the free posts will start to mirror work I’m also doing on TikTok and YouTube — they’ll be a bit deeper and different, since this is a written medium and I usually begin a draft here, make a video, and then refine the draft based on comments I receive on the video. Working on the same ideas across mediums has been very helpful to me, and I want to refine my process.

Many of you have only subscribed recently, so to give you an idea of what’s coming in the next few weeks, here is some planned programming for the next month (it’s possible my plans will change):

• Comparative Brainrot Studies, pt. 1 (possibly paywall) — I’ve been doing a series on TikTok where I discuss forms of brainrot from around the world and their similarities and differences. So far, I’ve covered some French, Arabic, and German brainrot. Gonna write a post summing up some of what I’ve learned.

• NPC memes — I would like to write a specific history of the NPC Wojak meme and how it is used in contemporary political discourse, comparing it to the “high agency” meme that’s become a big deal on tech/rightwing social media

• Lore as literary genre, part two — I want to expand my thinking about meme lores from a little while back, and discuss how it ties into some stuff written by other researchers, as well as some literary and narrative theory

• Wojak Index (possibly paywall) — while at Know Your Meme, I worked on an index of all Wojak memes. I want to discuss this work a little further and talk about the different traditions within Wojaklore and how they’re structured (this ties into the lore project). I also want to think critically about methods in meme studies and what I’ve learned in the time since I worked on this project.

• Technofeudalism — I want to do a proper review of Varoufakis, Zuboff, and other thinkers of the particular political economy of this moment and how it ties into internet culture.

• Memes as Tests of Generative AI — I’ve wanted to write about the AI Presidents Gaming meme for a while. This post would look back at that 2023 moment, right when generative AI became mainstream, and evaluate how memes became (and still are) a sort of testing-ground where people learned what AI can and can’t do.

If you’d like to support this research agenda, please consider chipping in a few dollars. The paid posts will focus on longer-term projects, more experimental stuff, things I’m not making videos about — or they’ll be things I’m not done thinking about and would like some feedback on before I hear what the TikTok rabble thinks of it (yes, I have a higher opinion of my Substack subscribers than my TikTok followers, don’t tell anyone this, however). In the two paid posts, which I’d be making for a smaller circle of people, I can open up my process a little further, think out loud, and get things wrong on the way to getting them right.

It has been really helpful over the past year to receive feedback, DMs, and comments from former strangers who have since become friends and professional contacts through the internet. I used to feel very alone researching memes, and now I don’t. I also want to help out others who are studying or posting about memes — if that’s you, please reach out!

In general, I’m very thankful for your attention. When I started this newsletter, it was a way of shouting into the void, but now you are here and I prefer that very much to how it was before. Thanks for your attention, you interest, and your time — it means a lot to me. Going forward, I will redouble my efforts to provide detailed, relevant, and empathetic reads on internet culture which honor the time you spend reading them and give you something fun to think about. Thank you for the chance to do this.

Best,

Aidan.

P.S. there will be a normal post in a few days. And sorry — audio is a little different since my normal mic is not available at the moment and my allergies are bad.