Deez Links is a culture and online fixation report by yours truly, Delia Cai. You may have read about us* in The New York Times, New York magazine, Vanity Fair and ELLE, or perhaps you’ve been subjected to the tweeting. Welcome!

me contorting myself into new and available modes of expression

I started Deez Links in 2016, back when I was an intern at Atlantic Media, where I was always trawling Twitter and eavesdropping jealously on all the editorial interns who actually got to like, write. This was right after I’d graduated from journalism school, right before the 2020s newsletter renaissance: I’d spend countless billable hours the O.G.s like The Ann Friedman Weekly, Ruster Foster’s Today in Tabs, and Caitlin Dewey’s Links I Would Gchat You If We Were Friends, who became my personal guides to the media landscape and the internet at large. So Deez Links began as a self-induced, post-grad-esque project to scout out cool things and practice what the elders call “blogging;” along the way, it blossomed into IRL friendships, a beautiful community, a heavenly run at BuzzFeed, enough confidence to finally write and publish my debut novel, and even the dream job at Vanity Fair.** We had tote bags! We threw a party at The Ludlow! We had a very nice classifieds section!

Alas, as I’d learned even back in those halcyon days when I tried to drink an extra salary’s worth of Sprite at the Watergate cafeteria, media is a lot like Antarctic glaciers: pretty to look at, yet constantly in meltdown. The layoff stork got slotted my way, which honestly coincided right with a sense of burnout from the constant chum of onlineness. Like, wait, what is all this crap for? WHAT IS IT ALL FOR? What are we doing here???? Is anyone having fun???????? yOu kNoW iT’S FUNNY THAT IT’S CALLED “CONTENT” WHEN REALLY WE ALL FEEL VERY DIS—---etc.

Deez Links 2.0 is an attempt to figure that out—it’s a return to shooting off spry, chaotic takes and links into the metaphorical group chat, of course. But it’s also a broadening from media criticism/gossip/the esteemed thoughts of a 22-year-old into a greater project for considering culture at large and the particular conditions of online-ified life—as reviewed from at least the lens of a much wiser and haggard but still precocious, I think 30-year-old writer and critic living in New York. The original premise is the same: I will send you cool and worthy links—links that make the daily dredge feel worth it—and we will observe the passage of time and art and algorithmic ridiculousness together. 

ARCHIVAL: me editing Deez Links December 2016 in an Uber….she COOKED

*It’s just me, officiál lit it girl (lol) Delia Cai, but the royal “we” helped sell Classified Ads for a couple of years, and I’m not not into revisiting that…

**You might say it’s kind of a Emily in Paris-level trajectory. Would YOU binge-watch Delia Cai in Bed-Stuy if the outfits were 5% as good?? Hmm. Might be onto something here. 

Subscribe to Deez Links

the original fixations report: recs, reviews, & ruminations on our online quality of life

People

President of Deez Links