#760: Gambling the future into existence
Plus: Cosmo for conservatives, AI;DR and being "agentic"
I look forward to the day when a Substack product update doesn’t make me want to throw my phone into traffic. Until then, however, let’s chat ever-so-briefly about the site’s expanded partnership with Polymarket.
Polymarket, for the blissfully uninitiated, is what’s known as a “prediction market” — a place where people trade shares (i.e., make bets) on the probability of real-world events. And Substack is, like a growing number of media companies, looking to juice its bottom line by embracing gambling. Ahem, excuse me: live prediction markets.
You’ll find Polymarket data in the Wall Street Journal and Kalshi probabilities on CNN. “Journalism is better when it’s backed by live markets,” Polymarket tweeted, of the Substack partnership.
Many journalists have tried to parse this curious phrasing, which has that vacuous, plasticine sheen particular to AI slop. My parsing, if I’m being charitable, is that Polymarket thinks that media becomes more accurate or more representative when journalists incorporate prediction-market probabilities into their reporting on future events, much as they might cite expert opinion or historical precedent.
Prediction markets, whatever their flaws, are often pretty good at forecasting the future. So in a news story about the military buildup in the Middle East, for instance … maybe there’s some value in including not only troop movements and diplomatic statements, but also the fact that traders currently assign a 35% chance to the US bombing Iran by March 7.
Lots of critics have already pointed out the obvious flaws in this model: the risks of insider trading and market manipulation; the bad incentives for journalists. I’m personally most concerned with how this degrades the wider information environment.
Predictions aren’t made in a vacuum. Even in Polymarket’s platonic ideal — which is, I guess, a perfectly sincere and rational trader placing bets based on his best assessment of available information — that information is drawn from the news. Markets and media coexist in the same ecosystem.
So traders consume news reporting and analysis. They price probabilities (place bets) according to what they’ve read. Journalists then cite those probabilities as meaningful signals about what the future will bring next. Those citations shape public perception. Public perception influences trades. The trades influence reporting. Again and again and again and again.
I’m simplifying here, for the sake of argument, but I think anyone can see that this particular snake is eating its own tail. The discourse becomes reflexive and self-reinforcing; the narrative shrinks away from conventional signals of ground truth in order to reorient around the markets.
We actually have a recent corollary for this phenomenon in Twitter, which profoundly shaped the international news agenda throughout the 2010s. Prior to Elon Musk’s purchase of the platform, mainstream journalists not only habitually used Twitter for work, but relied on it to gauge coverage priorities and newsworthiness.
As a result, the topics trending on Twitter — within a narrow, extremely online user base — arguably got over-represented in mainstream coverage. And actors who understood Twitter dynamics could, and did, manipulate the media. “When political campaigns wanted to shift a story or to have something become a story, they would go to Twitter for that,” the media scholar Shannon McGregor said in 2022. “They’re trying to use Twitter … because they know that journalists rely on it for what is going to become the news.”
Polymarket is like Twitter, except worse — because money, obviously. And because the people who run Polymarket tweet vapid, blob-shaped boilerplate like “journalism is better when it’s backed by live markets” … whatever the hell that means.
But, hey — some percent of traders on Polymarket are probably willing to bet that it’s the future of media. And someone on Subsack is probably willing to post to that effect.
What a time to be alive, truly: You gamble the future into existence.
If you read anything this week
The links look a bit different this week! I’m trying out a different format. Please hit the ❤ heart button if you like this.
The new hot commodity in Silicon Valley is “agency” or “being highly agentic” — essentially, the quality of feeling empowered to do whatever the hell you want, without shame and regardless of consequences. San Francisco sounds terrifying to me. Are you guys okay? A good follow-up to that piece from last year. [Harper’s]
Evie Magazine, the so-called “Cosmo for Conservatives,” hosted a party in New York last week. In attendance: a number of conservative commentators, some models who were bribed to show up, and side-eyeing scene reporters from several mainstream magazine and style sections. [Wired / The Cut / WSJ]
“One of the most creative, nonviolent and effective acts of resistance” against Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign is a fake ICE tip line created for a comedy routine. [Washington Post]
“Digital blackface” has seen a resurgence under Trump, from that doctored image of Nekima Levy Armstrong that the White House tweeted to the fake videos of scamming SNAP recipients that circulated on TikTok last fall. [The Guardian]
Standard clothing sizes are too small for 50% of women. A genuinely fascinating interactive piece, like everything The Pudding produces. [The Pudding]
“Burnout feminism” and tradwifery feel like two sides of the same coin: a reaction to the 2010s #girlboss mania. [Businessweek]
The Pitt neither hypes nor condemns artificial intelligence, instead “highlighting the reality that there are some critical workplace issues that can’t be fixed simply by throwing new kinds of technology at them.” [The Verge]
Pinterest is drowning in AI slop. Pity the cake decorators, hair stylists and home remodelers of the world, who have to contend with all this impossible AI “inspo.” [404 Media]
American Girl is producing novels for adults. [The Cut]
The side part is officially back. [NYT]
AI;DR. [Futurism]
In case you missed it
The most-clicked link from last week’s edition concerned the football YouTubers who serve as therapists for troubled fans.
Below the paywall, paid subscribers can find unlocked articles from The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, Vox and The Verge.
That’s it for this week! Until the next one. Warmest virtual regards,
Caitlin
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