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Ben Collins

👤 Person
279 total appearances

Appearances Over Time

Podcast Appearances

Decoder with Nilay Patel
How The Onion is saving itself from the digital media death spiral

And they have a bunch of shows that are really good. They're like game shows and all these other things. And they're like six bucks a month. Our, you know, people are developing parasocial relationships with our talent. They'll give us that.

Decoder with Nilay Patel
How The Onion is saving itself from the digital media death spiral

And they have a bunch of shows that are really good. They're like game shows and all these other things. And they're like six bucks a month. Our, you know, people are developing parasocial relationships with our talent. They'll give us that.

Decoder with Nilay Patel
How The Onion is saving itself from the digital media death spiral

And I think, you know, in a couple of years, they just leaned all the way into it, leaned all the way into, you know, big social moments that they do on like YouTube shorts and Instagram and stuff. Yeah. And now one of their shows has sold out two nights in a row at Madison Square Garden. They have like a million subs.

Decoder with Nilay Patel
How The Onion is saving itself from the digital media death spiral

And I think, you know, in a couple of years, they just leaned all the way into it, leaned all the way into, you know, big social moments that they do on like YouTube shorts and Instagram and stuff. Yeah. And now one of their shows has sold out two nights in a row at Madison Square Garden. They have like a million subs.

Decoder with Nilay Patel
How The Onion is saving itself from the digital media death spiral

And I think, you know, in a couple of years, they just leaned all the way into it, leaned all the way into, you know, big social moments that they do on like YouTube shorts and Instagram and stuff. Yeah. And now one of their shows has sold out two nights in a row at Madison Square Garden. They have like a million subs.

Decoder with Nilay Patel
How The Onion is saving itself from the digital media death spiral

And they've just leaned into the stuff that they like to do and their audience likes. Their audience has paid up for it and they're happy. They like to give them money because that's what it's about, right? That's what it was about before people got in their own heads about it.

Decoder with Nilay Patel
How The Onion is saving itself from the digital media death spiral

And they've just leaned into the stuff that they like to do and their audience likes. Their audience has paid up for it and they're happy. They like to give them money because that's what it's about, right? That's what it was about before people got in their own heads about it.

Decoder with Nilay Patel
How The Onion is saving itself from the digital media death spiral

And they've just leaned into the stuff that they like to do and their audience likes. Their audience has paid up for it and they're happy. They like to give them money because that's what it's about, right? That's what it was about before people got in their own heads about it.

Decoder with Nilay Patel
How The Onion is saving itself from the digital media death spiral

content on the internet in the last 10, 15 years, trying to play this like big arbitrage game and like basically gambling with content and stuff. And we can do that. Like, it's not just them, you know, it's Defector and Aftermath and 404 and these places that were progenitors to this model. Like we can do this stuff first.

Decoder with Nilay Patel
How The Onion is saving itself from the digital media death spiral

content on the internet in the last 10, 15 years, trying to play this like big arbitrage game and like basically gambling with content and stuff. And we can do that. Like, it's not just them, you know, it's Defector and Aftermath and 404 and these places that were progenitors to this model. Like we can do this stuff first.

Decoder with Nilay Patel
How The Onion is saving itself from the digital media death spiral

content on the internet in the last 10, 15 years, trying to play this like big arbitrage game and like basically gambling with content and stuff. And we can do that. Like, it's not just them, you know, it's Defector and Aftermath and 404 and these places that were progenitors to this model. Like we can do this stuff first.

Decoder with Nilay Patel
How The Onion is saving itself from the digital media death spiral

We can lean heavily on our subscribers and like try to make them really happy and give them something in the mail. Yeah. But we can do this other stuff too. We can make video. We can sell ads the old-fashioned way. That's what we decided to do is like stand up a company that's based on people genuinely liking our content and not like tricking people into clicking stuff all the time.

Decoder with Nilay Patel
How The Onion is saving itself from the digital media death spiral

We can lean heavily on our subscribers and like try to make them really happy and give them something in the mail. Yeah. But we can do this other stuff too. We can make video. We can sell ads the old-fashioned way. That's what we decided to do is like stand up a company that's based on people genuinely liking our content and not like tricking people into clicking stuff all the time.

Decoder with Nilay Patel
How The Onion is saving itself from the digital media death spiral

We can lean heavily on our subscribers and like try to make them really happy and give them something in the mail. Yeah. But we can do this other stuff too. We can make video. We can sell ads the old-fashioned way. That's what we decided to do is like stand up a company that's based on people genuinely liking our content and not like tricking people into clicking stuff all the time.

Decoder with Nilay Patel
How The Onion is saving itself from the digital media death spiral

And that's where we're at.

Decoder with Nilay Patel
How The Onion is saving itself from the digital media death spiral

And that's where we're at.

Decoder with Nilay Patel
How The Onion is saving itself from the digital media death spiral

And that's where we're at.

Decoder with Nilay Patel
How The Onion is saving itself from the digital media death spiral

You know, we've already made $500 billion.

Decoder with Nilay Patel
How The Onion is saving itself from the digital media death spiral

You know, we've already made $500 billion.

Decoder with Nilay Patel
How The Onion is saving itself from the digital media death spiral

You know, we've already made $500 billion.