Hate Read's Delia Cai tells all
"We have a good finale planned. I think it's the last untouchable subject on Twitter," Cai says.
Embedded is your essential guide to what’s good on the internet, written by Kate Lindsay and edited by Nick Catucci.
For the first time in a long time, there has been a spark of excitement in the air—and it’s not just the first burst of spring weather. It’s thanks to Hate Read, the pop-up newsletter from Deez Links writer
.
I’ve mentioned Delia in some recent newsletters, but that’s how good Hate Read has been. The project features daily dispatches from anonymous writers letting it all out about the things they hate, from Brooklyn raves to the state of menswear to the Oscar-winning American Fiction. Twitter has taken the hate-read bait almost every time. For three precious weeks, the internet has been fun again. (Full disclosure, I contributed a Hate Read—but only paid Embedded subscribers who read the Sunday Scroll know which one it was.)
Hate Read is causing just as much chaos in the home stretch as when it first started. Without it, I worry our timelines will return to the stagnant, stale state they’ve been in for the past year. The pop-up’s success speaks to what media is desperately missing right now, and why the personal essays on platforms like The Cut have been making a comeback: They’re fun (or they should be, at least).
In this interview, Delia and I talk about how the project came together, what it’s been like to see the gossip online, and what, if anything, is next.
Hate Read is being hailed as being a blast from the past, when blogs were fun. Was that what you had in mind when you started it?
At the beginning of this year, I was just thinking about, what do I wanna do with my life? Things in media are so uncertain. What is it that I actually wanna do with my wild, precious life? And I've increasingly become of a mind where the only thing that matters in life is making fun, stupid, funny stuff, either with your friends or to show your friends. Anytime I've done that in my life, it's been hugely rewarding, so much more so than any more conventional achievements. This was more fun than writing a book. I'm looking at all these really interesting indie projects coming up, like Byline and The Drift, all these zines on Instagram, Dream Baby Press, and they seem to be having so much fun.
That was the seed of the idea. And so I was tossing around some zine ideas with people earlier this year [and I thought] what about anonymous reviews? And I ended up bringing that up to a few people, including Heather Havrilesky. And she's the one who's like, “Sit down and think about how to do this, 'cause that is funny.” And I'm so glad she said that, 'cause that's when I started taking it seriously. And so then I was just like, “How are we actually gonna do this? Who can you ask for a favor for free writing?” So that's where the impulse came from. And the hate part was just sort of like—I mean, that's all me and my group chats really talk about. We love to like critique or pick something apart that isn't to our taste. And we're like, well, we should just do this on a slightly bigger format.
Whenever I come home from hanging out with my friends, I'll debrief with my boyfriend, talking about how we complained about this and that, how this was wrong, etc. And he'll be like, “Oh, sorry you had a bad time.” And I'm like, “No, we had a great time.” We love to go to places and hate them.
Like, fun hate. If you hate something, it means you really care. That's what everyone says, but there's a passion with it. Like when you get really into talking about something that just drives you crazy. I think that's such an interesting emotion more so than just, “I guess Barbie was okay.” What can you do with that? But whether someone agrees or not with your take on something, it's like, now we're cooking, now we're having a conversation and we're engaging with a piece of work or a piece of our culture and we're not just resorting to calling each other the woke police.
Was there any thought to the order in which things came out? Are you saving up for a big grand finale?
It started off really random, honestly. Part of this project was I wanted to see what it was like to actually edit and put together stuff. And so I was like, “I'll take what I can get, whatever people want to write about.” But we got to have a little fun, where we did an astrology thing on the eclipse and then the Berlin thing just happened to come out on the day of Lauren Oyler discourse. That was just perfect timing. We have a good finale planned. I think it's the last untouchable subject on Twitter, and we have a good takedown of it.
When is the last one?
Right now it's planned for Monday the 22nd. Unless I get a really good last-minute thing from someone, 'cause a lot of people have said that they've wanted to do it and that they are working on it.
Do you have a sense of which ones were the most popular or divisive?
It was definitely the menswear and the media parties ones. At least so far. I honestly think half the reason was like, those are two really well-written amazing pieces, but I also just think that it was pouring rain that week. We're all inside mad. I think that definitely added to it. Now the weather's nice and there's a fraction of the comments.
People literally just needed to get outside .
Literally. It was Monday and Wednesday, the grossest New York has ever been, and I was just like, this can't be a coincidence. [EDITOR’S NOTE: This theory was disproved by the DJs and raves Hate Read. People spent one of the first nice days in New York mad online about Nowadays]
So I only know, from those who have volunteered the information, a few of the people who have written stuff. It was so interesting to know who wrote something, and see the discourse around it. I saw people saying snarky things about people I know they're actually friendly with. What has it been like for you to watch the discourse with this knowledge?
This must be what the Illuminati feels like. Because you know the truth. And I think in a few of those instances, too, I'm talking to the writer and then [they say], “I'm just gonna tell them who it is” and then you'll see that tweet mysteriously be deleted. Which I think proves the whole point that you can't say shit in this industry online without doing social jujutsu to figure out: Who am I gonna offend? Who's gonna see this?
I'm surprised so many people were using their real identities to dunk on an anonymous writer who could be anyone in media.
The anonymity is actually really funny because it's protecting people in some ways. It's protecting the writer, sure, but I also think the end result is it injects just a little bit of paranoia, like a healthy amount of paranoia, into all of us. I think we should walk around being like, “Maybe my best friend wrote that thing.”
It was so exhilarating to see people sarcastically saying things like, “This person sounds fun at parties.” I'm like, you've been at parties with this person!
You've been at the party with them and you had a really nice time.
I noticed a footnote now is “stop trying to google these names.” Was that happening?
I think some of the pen names are a bit like, you have to get the reference. People were sort of like, “Oh my God, this writer, whatever pen name, they don't know what they're talking about.” And I'm like, guys, it's not real. Reliable Sources was like, “Oh, Delia Cai hates media parties.” And I was like, oh my God, guys, you didn't get the concept. It's not me.
That's not a reliable source.
Not reliable.
Is there one that's gone up that you thought was gonna be more divisive than it ended up being?
I thought people would be more upset about defending Berlin's honor. I'm looking at the list now. The American Fiction one was probably the meanest of the bunch, but we put that up second and I almost wonder if that was too early. Because now a lot of the feedback I'm getting is like, “This isn't controversial. These are easy takes.” And I'm just like, “Okay. Did you read all of them?” My whole thing about this project is I feel most indignant when people have been taking it too seriously. It's a joke. It's for fun.
I think it was Luke Winkie who tweeted that the reason this could never actually come back is because of exactly how people are acting right now. They were so mad about, like, media parties.
It's a joke, your honor!
Have you thought about keeping it going? What are your thoughts now that you've seen how successful it's been?
I love the popup nature of it. Otherwise shooting someone an email every day is a lot. It would get so old very fast if this was ongoing. It should feel like any fun moment on Twitter where it's like, "This is just for now." But I would love a dream scenario where like Today in Tabs, the newsletter, they do seasons. I would love to do a second season, another month of this in the summer. But I would really love to get a sponsor, and then that way I actually pay the writers who would do that and the writers who have contributed to this first season. Passion projects are fun, but it's the most fun when you can get your friends paid and have a budget to buy a Getty image.
Hate Read brought to you by...something, would be funny.
Right. Like who's the perfect sponsor? Hate Read from BetterHelp.
My last question, and you don't have to get specific, but: Did you write a Hate Read?
No. I was going to, but then I ended up just getting such a good response from writers and I didn't wanna stretch it on longer than it needed to be. Because also, a lot of the writers who contributed are also in this Condé Nast limbo with me or they're freelancers looking for work. And so I've gotten to connect behind the scenes. People were like, “I'm an agent. Can you connect me with the person who wrote this if they're interested?” And so it's been a fun showcase, too. I've gotten enough out of this where I just wanted to make something fun with people and try my hand at editing again.
I feel like you could just slip one in there now and no one would even blink.
The one I would do, the one I was thinking about doing, was gonna be like, “Men don't need to travel. I hate when men travel.” Like, where are you going? Stay home. Really absurd and funny like that.