Post

OKAY INTERNET, this is s.e., knee-deep in baking for my equinox dessert party, and I'd like to see if we can get TEN subscribers this hour. Get one year of feminist cultural criticism in your inbox three days a week for $39! YOWZAS!!! www.theflytrapmedia.com/no-slop

While I have a few minutes before I have to turn the temperature down on this cheesecake for the second half of the bake, a bit about why The Flytrap is so important to me, and how members like YOU (that inbox better have a notification when I refresh!!) make it possible.

Our fearless leader @andreagrimes.com reached out to me in December of 2023 about "an unnamed bloggy project" and asked if I would be interested in reviving the 2000s heyday of feminist blogging. It was a wild time! A heck of a lot of cool people were writing great stuff and having amazing convos.

It was also COMPLETELY UNSUSTAINABLE. Running a blog is a LOT of work, especially a group blog—and all the best feminist blogs were groups of diverse people bringing their own perspectives to the table. Wrangling the collective. Guest posters. The blogroll. MODERATING COMMENTS.

Some feminist bloggers made the transition to other media formats. Many quietly faded away. A lot of those blogs disappeared, eaten by link rot, platforms closing, failing to renew hosting, etc. That was a huge cultural loss. Andrea wanted to see if we could do that, but better.

We knew that reviving this tradition and preserving this heritage was important, so we turned to the internet and said "hey, will you help us launch this?" A cavalcade of Kickstarter supporters said YES. In two days. We got fully funded in two days! There was a lot of screaming in Slack.

Our first official edition was on Election Day (we don't want to talk about it): This absolute beaut from @katelynburns.com about how the election cycle is TOO DAMN LONG!

Thread break to deal with cheesecake, but if you're INTRIGUED by our villain origin story, why not subscribe while you wait for the next post in the thread?! www.theflytrapmedia.com/no-slop

The newsletter landscape is VERY crowded right now—we were just talking about this fantastic piece from @roxanegay.bsky.social on newsletterification, media, and the struggle to keep independent publications alive.

As we boldly plunge into our next year of operations, we're thinking about some important things like: "Hey, we didn't get paid our first year, that sucked" and "we want to create more opportunities for freelancers" and "how do we support our fellow independent publications?"