Front page, who cares

Sup memelords,

We officially hit the front page of Inc this week.

I haven’t read it yet.

But the screenshots my friends tweeted are pretty solid.

Why haven’t I read a piece about myself?

I literally hung up on the journalist after 10 minutes because I thought he was writing another hit piece on me and I was in a Lyft on my way to meet a billionaire.

Not trying to flex, just explain the reality of the situation.

The fact that they posted it even after I called them retarded proves my point.

You shouldn’t read it.

Don’t waste your time.

The journalist was under-prepared. He asked stupid “gotcha” questions. I laughed in his face, screwed with him, said “no comment” repeatedly, and hung up after 10 minutes.

Yet they still posted it. 

Almost like they didn’t care about the story and just wanted the clicks.

But no, not our holy journalists???

They would never sacrifice their writing for clicks!!!

No never!

As a kid I used to dream of being featured in media outlets like Rolling Stone, Inc, Forbes, Business Insider, Fast Company, and The New Yorker.

I’ve been featured in every single one of them now.

And guess what.

It’s all meaningless. A fugazi. Fairy dust.

They’re all useless except for the SEO and making your parents happy.

While these brands meant everything to me as a kid, they mean nothing now.

Let me explain why.

No one reads the news anymore. They just look at memes. (That’s why a memelord makes the news)

History time.

In 1985, Neil Postman wrote a book called “Amusing Ourselves to Death”.

It was right after the start of the 24-hour news cycle.

Remember: there used to only be like 3 TV channels and the news wasn’t on 24/7. They only reported on “real breaking news”. Important shit.

But then the advertising business started booming so they added more slots.

And in 80s, Neil predicted that because the news was starting to go on 24/7, they’d have to fill slots with silly less-important stuff (ex. “firefighter rescues cat stuck in tree”).

How right he was.

The news is no longer 24/7. It is infinite. We all have the power to both watch and create “news” 24/7/365 in the pockets of our phones funded by endless advertising budgets.

The news is infinite jest.

We live in a world where a silly memelord like me can be on the front page of Inc, be featured in Rolling Stone, and written about in Politico. It’s why on Memelord’s site I wrote that “Journalists fear us, but marketers love us.”

We are all the media now.

The journalists don’t write real stories. They just report on tweets and memes by me and my users at memelord.com lol. (Many of my other users have had their memes featured in the “news”).

Sure, you think it's just Gen Z or Gen Alpha.

But here's a voicemail I got from my mom a few days ago and a Slack message from one of my employees.

The White House is posting memes.

JD Vance is even talking about sombrero memes.

The Memelord Killed The Journalism Star

I grew up reading GQ, Wired, and VICE.

I dreamed of working at one of those mags as a kid. I pitched them dozens of times throughout high school and college. I even wrote pieces for $75/post for the local paper. I would’ve done anything to get paid to write.

At University of Michigan, I became the New York Times official campus rep. I drove so many subscriptions I became the #1 salesperson in the country. I got promoted to managing 90 campus reps by 2nd semester freshman year. Ironic, I know. But this was before New York Times went insane..

And then I finally made it. I became a Staff Journalist at a finance newsletter.

I saw the bullshit within 6 months.

You’d be forced to write a piece per day on a subject you knew nothing about at breakfast. On Fridays, we’d sit around and compare who got the most clicks. I’d say these 2 sentences alone are pretty solid explanations of modern journalism.

No research. Pure clicks.

This isn’t the journalism you and your parents grew up on.

Realizing this, I quickly left to build my own business on social media and my newsletter. The smartest of us journalists did this. We left to go build on Substack or my platform of choice Beehiiv. The writing was on the wall.

It was so obvious to anyone with a brain.

Elon was right.

We’re all citizen journalists now.

My Twitter gets more views than Inc Magazine.

And that’s why the only journalists left in traditional media are low-agency, too lazy to research their subjects, incompetent, and retarded. They get paid $60-100k/year to write short meaningless bullshit because they’re too lazy to go build audiences and make millions writing for themselves.

The perfect example of this.

It’s almost a dichotomy too good to be true.

The same morning that Memelord.com was featured in Inc, I wrote a guest piece about our $3M Seed Round in my friend Tom’s newsletter. Tom is a random 27-year-old dude I met from Twitter who lives in Australia. His newsletter has 80,000 subscribers. He drove more sales than the Inc. piece.

Me and my friends and the Memelords are the media now.

Whether you like it or not.

The Memelords Saved Journalism

I have $3M in my business’s bank account now.

Unlike traditional media sites like Inc, New York Times, Vice, Rolling Stone, etc., Memelord Magazine is not reliant on selling ads. It’s reliant on selling subscriptions to our software memelord.com and we’re really fucking good at that.

This was from a random day last week.

Again, the point of this isn’t to flex.

It never is.

Ok only sometimes.

But, do you see what I’m getting at here?

We have full freedom of speech.

Memelord Magazine can publish whatever the fuck we want with no advertisers.

“Oh you have to impress your investors”

Bro my VCs gave me $3M to build Memelord.com with full awareness of what an unhinged and unfiltered son-of-a-bitch I am. Most are even more unhinged than I am.

We will deliver you the stories you crave about the internet. Unhinged and unfiltered. Why? Because we fucking can. And nobody else is doing it.

Memelord Magazine can write about whatever the fuck we want.

I’m gonna be the goddamn Hunter S. Thompson of the internet.

I’ve been spending my late nights reading Playboys.

Seriously.

They didn’t just show boobs, they wrote bangers.

They wrote thoughtful pieces about current events and politics. They interviewed billionaires, politicians, authors, celebrities, even the CIA. Well-researched, thoughtful pieces. Not 10-minute conversations where the subject hung up on them.

That’s the type of writing we do here.

The tits were just the gateway drug to their writing.

The memes are just the gateway drug to our writing.

I've written about partying with Peter Thiel and billionaires in Miami. I’ve written about sneaking into a defense conference in DC. I wrote about quitting my job and launching a startup and getting chlamydia in college (all in the same piece).

My VP of Memes Jovian wrote a GQ-level profile of a dude who makes 6 figures running a meme page about fridges (yes, really, he sells ads to beverage brands). Jovian wrote a Rolling Stone level profile of a dude who makes millions running parody accounts. He wrote a banger better than any New York Times bullshit of the last 20 years about a dude who went viral talking about a man who fucked a dolphin. This is what happens you take your silliness extremely seriously.

Don’t like our pieces? Fine, unsubscribe! We’ve got $3M in the bank and can get more subscribers. We don’t report numbers to advertisers. Try to cancel me? Bitch, they’ve already tried that. I’ve been preparing for this moment for years.

Memelord Magazine is about to get real fun.

Memelord is the next Playboy.

Tell your friends to subscribe.

Or don’t.

Like I said, we’re good either way 😉 

Thanks for reading nerds.

Create some cool shit this week.

Jason “The Memelord” Levin

Founder of Memelord.com