Matt Wolfbridge (read Typebar Magazine)

@wolfbridge.bsky.social

3899 Followers 1230 Following

Founder & Editor of @typebarmagazine.bsky.social

The giant slurry net from the Simpsons where it trawls the ocean floor and then grinds all the wildlife into paste
anyway I came up with a great comedy bit That I called the pissy and shitty Addams family OK and it goes a little something like this. I'll try not to burst out laughing. Oh no Let me compose myself and try to do this So it goes the pissy and shitty Addams family and it goes like this. They did the piss they did the shit they did the piss they did the shit they did the piss they did the piss they did the shit and just that basically to the Addams family theme song right over and over
Sign from a local food truck that says: Please respect the surrounding businesses. Do not urinate on their property . There is a no smoking sign thing over a stick Figure of a guy urinating. There’s also a picture of a store and a building.
a brain emoji labeled "editor's brain" next to a straight red line pointing rightward labeled "submission guidelines next to a full mailbox emoji labeled "your pitch"
A wall with a red star in the center. There is a periodic table of typefaces next to it. Above is a painting of a rural windmill. Next to that is a 20s flapper lady smoking a cigarette and a pitch canker drawing of birds screaming at a skeleton as well as another pitch canker of an Angel.
The London symphony orchestra does Tchaikovsky’s nutcracker but the CD is published by Victoria’s Secret
A white man with brown hair sitting in a restaurant booth that’s wooden. There is light coming from a window next to him on the right side. He is wearing a black shirt and there is an open menu on the table.
A robot with a square head and square body and electricity through antenna on its ears
A black and white cookie from the bakery but the frosting is blue and orange.
Baseball with writing on it: “5-13-11 moms 1st foil catch”
ECW extreme music CD with sandman on the cover shirtless and wrapped in barbed wire smoking a cigarette. A crazy find for a 90s wrestling fan.
TBM: In the book you discuss how the internet's initial disruption to Big Journalism wasn't from Big Tech but was from individuals like Matt Drudge who had less reason to make nice with industry power players and could therefore publish more aggressive stories that grew increasingly appealing to audiences becoming wary of establishment talking points. I feel like we're seeing the same dynamic at play to some degree in 2026. Material conditions have only decayed and establishment outlets have shown themselves to be increasingly out of step with people on a variety of issues. A guy like Hasan Piker gets popular because he's making people feel heard in ways establishment actors don't. Yet what's different is now there exists a mechanism for Big Tech to siphon revenue away from anti-establishment upstarts. People could point to Piker's material wealth (his "infamous" $2.7 million home) as proof that the system is working fine for rewarding news personalities. But like many major streamers, he is probably underpaid relative to what he brings a platform like Twitch, and relative to what someone of his popularity would've been making on TV in the mid-90s. You can see similar dynamics with Substack, a platform trying to seduce all the writers into what Max Read recently called "YouTube-for-words" in his post on moving to Patreon. The media disruptors that could become the establishment by taking on the establishment, and make money in the process, now can't actually make much money or not enough to meaningfully affect change. How accurate of a read do you think this is of our current moment? How can we possibly get out of it without massive government intervention that we know will not come without...uhh..lots of things going differently?
Jason Whittaker speaking: My reframing of your question, then, is that I would prefer to see journalists concentrate on reporting rather than influence. It is not that I’m naïve enough to presume that influence is not important, but that in the post-truth world in which we find ourselves it is more important than ever to have people individuals who care enough about what they see to record it. Truth will not automatically out, but if no one is trying to even discover what it is then we have no chance to find it at all. This often means using platforms that are extractive – even exploitative – but I’m also old enough to remember Robert Maxwell embezzling millions of pounds from the Mirror Group Newspapers pension fund…
A cd player with the lid open with clamper at the center of the frame. Bye Bye Birdie is in the cd player.
Brown and beige smith corona vantage typewriter
5 CDs on top of a CD player: -Glenn Miller and his army Air Force band. -Grease 2 -Recovery (Eminem) -Ludwig Van Beethoven compilation CD -Grammy Nominees 2001
a text graphic that says "pitching (shortform) nonfiction" with like a height chart stick figure next to shortform.
The teenage mutant ninja turtles text but it says "screwworm in the U.S. Cattle" because it's the same syllables as teenage mutant ninja turtles.
Typebar Magazine offers a unique approach not found elsewhere. We encourage the study of older literature. We don't shy away from holding the literary establishment to task. When we discuss new releases our coverage is heavily curated to discuss what's interesting instead of what's hyped, prioritizing academic study, fresh literature, or legitimate genre innovation. We expand the lens of literary criticism to under-analyzed fields like YouTube and tabletop gaming. We do this with a radical transparency compared to other major literary enterprises. And we do it all with a staff of one and charge just $50 a year.
A potato with markings on it that I can’t tell are good or bad
Orange and blue garlic knots at a pizza place with a sign that says “ask about our knicks knots! Our delicious garlic knots in orange and blue to celebrate our New York Knicks!”
An old typewriter with a deep yellow hue possibly due to nicotine stains
Discarded, empty, and trampled box of Gas-X on the sidewalk
But then at least I wouldn’t be Granta’s even more embarrassing statement about it which says: “We showed Claude.ai the story and asked whether it was AI-generated,” and then goes on to quote Claude’s “analysis” at some length. Bro. Bro. What are we doing? What’s going on? We certainly don’t need A.I. to create award-winning literary short fiction in a world where John Paul Brammer can win the Brammer Prize for Excellence in Landlocked Literature with the excellent landlocked literary short story “Regionally-Specific Award-Winning Short Story,” not to even mention RS Benedict’s “Tiddies.”
the meme of the guy in a brown jacket and blue shirt standing up in the town meeting while people look on.
On one side, Romanoff said, some women encounter advice to accept only expensive first dates as proof of value or interest. On the other, she said, some men are being told not to spend money on dates at all. "The echo chambers, they're villainizing the opposite sex, and they're framing dating as this financial power struggle, rather than this relational process in which we're both kind of meeting in the middle and getting to know each other," Romanoff said. "We're really watching love shrink to fit people's budget," she added.
typebar magazine 2026 all referral sources. donut graph. direct has 43.8% of traffic bluesky has 25.7% of traffic assorted newsletters have 16.4% of traffic hacker news has 7.8% of traffic The rest are secondary social (x, fb, ig) reddit, duckduckgo, substack, and bing all occupying small slivers of traffic.
graph of typebar magazine 2026 social referral sources. Bluesky has the most at 83.1%, with the next highest as Reddit (if you consider it "social media") at 5.2%. X, Facebook, Instagram, Substack, LinkedIn, and Tumblr are all present but minimal.
A hockey player in a New York islanders jersey shaped like a duck with a duck bill.
Saunders casts himself as lecturer from his place on high as much as someone presenting his portraits of horrifying dystopian life. This much is clear in “Love Letter,” an anti-Trump essay in the guise of a grandfather writing to his grandson about their repressive fascist dictatorship and the legal troubles his grandson’s friend faces that reads like a New Yorker-fied version of Vox’s Leslie Knope letter.
Matt Wolfbridge. I am the founder and editor of Typebar Magazine. I am also a writer of fiction and nonfiction. I have an MFA from the University of Southern Maine's "Stonecoast" MFA program. Then the site lists my fiction clips and conducted interviews.
C1970 lucite toilet seat with playing cards. It’s a clear toilet seat with playing cards embedded inside.
A weather module on the phone where the temperature graph is oriented in such a way that it vaguely looks like a silhouette of the middle finger
A photo of two Keystone LB-6/LB-7 biplanes.
A package of Biscotello cookies (it’s red and blue and the text is white) strawberry flavored.
A dog with wavy orange-brown fur I don’t know the breed.
The scene from terminator 2 where the t 1000 tortures Sarah Connor in an attempt to get her to call to John Connor .
The scene from terminator 2 where the t 1000 imitates the cop at the asylum and executes him.
Spirit deluxe digital joystick box. Says “for IBM” and the packaging and logo looks super old.
A BuzzFeed listicles game at the thrift store for $5.99
A compact disc from 1996 reading “1996 sampler gift certificate” from circuit city. The picture is sunglasses and headphones.
Horrible cgi of thanks in space and he’s proportioned like a space jam monster
Speaking of bad things, Syracuse University recently announced it’s shuttering several humanities programs: classics, Russian, fine arts, classical civilization, modern Jewish studies, Middle Eastern studies, German, and others. About six months ago, they launched an “academic center for the creator economy”—whatever that is. Teaching people to edit TikToks or whatever. In this assault against the humanities, while the economic outlook for so many worsens, why does the history of a gesture matter? To me, it’s fascinating—a gesture everybody makes every day, a debate people are having constantly on social media. I can see the relevance immediately, but there are people for whom the question means nothing. Why does it matter? they ask.
All covers of Typebar Magazine issues 1-8 in a collage.
Sign that says drink squirt and then has a bottle of it and there’s a mascot that says “just call me squirt.”
A medal that says spartan 2026. It’s silver with a golden silhouette of Citi Field.
A frozen piece of focaccia bread on a planet earth plate
A rack of CDs at a used media store where the one in center of the frame says Doug Kwartler- Halfway House
Krusty the clown wearing oversized ears and holding an oversized q-tip looking to the audience expectantly for applause and laughter
Cooked (?) turkey bacon on a napkin on an earth image
A top of a mantle that has scrapes and damage.
A black dry erase board that says “edit!!!” Five times in white text.
Scorecard displays 43.93/50 which says “genuinely unsettling accuracy. Please find a hobby.” This ranks 3,388 out of 9,708
donut graf with social sources on it. Bluesky is 67.1% Twitter is 15.7% Reddit is 7.9% Instagram is 5.8% Facebook, LinkedIn, and Tumblr are too small a slice to have a percentage value on the chart.
A 2026 calendar that says 2026 monthly calendar classic but the brand is blue sky written in blue script
Get to know my game taste, for every like I will post one game I love
A fridge bottom shelf thing but there’s no glass and I’m storing a box of Coke cans in there now
Lemongrab from adventure time pointing to a trash can saying get in ente please let’s hurry it along no time to waste hop in this is where you belong forever now
Two people on military camp vests touching each other’s backs in a terribly lit seemingly CGI nightmare world