Default Wisdom

tl;dr:

This is something of an emotional and psychological scrapbook of digital life.

Keywords: internet history, internet culture, digital communities, millennial nostalgia, media ecology, fandom and fan studies

Free subscribers get…

• A weekly digest of tech nostalgia and internet culture stories

• The Computer Room, an Internet culture podcast

• A sporadic advice column with my friend, Delicious Tacos

• The occasional long-form essay

Paid subscribers get…

• A thriving community on Discord, plus monthly book talks and movie nights

• Early podcast releases

• The full advice column and podcast archive

• Text and audio too personal to possibly share for free

For real ones who want to RTFA:

Hi, I’m Default Friend, but you might also know me as Katherine Dee.

A hater once described me as “some bitch with a blog,” and I’ve always liked that description. It feels right. I’m also an internet culture reporter—I’m a contributing writer at Tablet Magazine, a columnist at the Washington Examiner, and a frequent contributor at publications like The Spectator and Unherd.

In the life just before this one, I was crazy Art Bell fan and hosted a humble tribute show called Post 2 Post AM. I’ve wanted to make a narrative feature about Bell since maybe 2010 and will desperately pitch anyone who asks for a movie idea. So far, only one person has asked, but here’s hoping. 🥂

Online, I’m best known for the manic, borderline incoherent series of predictions about a ‘coming wave of sex negativity,’ hosting the often too-confessional femcel podcast After the Orgy (RIP) alongside lawyer/literary critic/poet/screenwriter Ann Manov, where we interviewed everyone from Marc Andreessen to Tao Lin to Neil LaBute, and resurrecting Angela Nagle’s work on Tumblr.

It’s hard to say what this thing—the thing you’re reading—even is anymore. I’ve tried many different approaches with this Substack, but it’s just my blog, I think.

An emotional and psychological scrapbook of digital life in writing and in audio, an advice column with my friend Delicious Tacos, periodic fiction, and killed articles.

There are many imitators but few are as terminally online as I.

Below is a recent photo of me without the black and white filter and without color-saturating my nose off. Enjoy.

Want to contact me?

• Find me on Twitter @default_friend

• Email me at [email protected]

• Send me a message on Discord at default_friend#7482