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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!

We've spent the last two years building the business and thinking about sustainability. We started reprinting from the Bitch Media archives—resurfacing feminist media is important to us!—added an advice column, started running book excerpts, and took on cool freelance writers and artists.

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?"

We count on you to do this work, which is why we're running our 50% off sale, and I want to highlight the fact that we have a two-for-one option: Become a Resident of the Bog for $66 (the normal price of a solo one-year subscription!) and get TWO MEMBERSHIPS. www.theflytrapmedia.com/double-the-fun

Look, this economy sucks. When I passed the gas station earlier it was $6.09 for regular. And there are a lot of newsletters to subscribe to. We get it! But I DO think we offer something special: Feminist cultural criticism is so important, and there are very few spaces where you can find it.

Because here's the thing: High quality feminisms are how we get out of ~ this whole situation ~. Good feminist writing should be food for thought. It should piss you off! It should make you want to talk about it with someone. It should tip you off to a media you will love. We have all that and more.

When you power independent feminist cultural criticism with your hard-earned $$, NO AI EVER, you are voting for a world of critical thinking, reading, and engagement. You're voting for independent media. You're saying 'hell yeah, do this thing, Flyteam!' www.theflytrapmedia.com/no-slop

Running The Flytrap is expensive. There are a lot of technical things we need, like a distribution platform, and grownups, like our tax guy, and it's important to us to pay industry-standard rates to freelancers. So much so that we committed to doing that with the @nwu.org