New Year, Same Doomscroll

Doomscroll 1.4.2025

Jan 05, 2026

Hello and welcome to another edition of Doomscroll - your favorite newsletter covering all things digital on the right! I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and New Year! I, for one, spent it eating too many cookies, corralling too many children, buying too many presents, and stopping my toddler from breaking too many ornaments. And even though we’re 4(!) days into 2026 and it’s time to get back to business (the work never stops!), we’re doing things a tiny bit differently today. Keep scrolling and you’ll see what I mean!

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Thanks to everyone who answered the One Question a couple weeks ago about end-of-year bonuses! Not everyone who answered supplied an actual number - that’s ok. It’s a personal question! But the lowest response was $1,000. Someone said 7% of their yearly salary, and someone else who works at a tech company said they got $125K (um, can I have your job!?!?). Impressive. Everything else fit in between those numbers, so it was a pretty big range. Most commenters said things like bonuses were dependent on performance throughout the year (makes sense) and many of you said something along the lines of you were just happy to get anything at all during an off-year! #Word.

Ok, let’s move on. This week’s One Question is about - what else - our 2026 predictions. I’m really, really bad at this game. So bad, TBH, I thought about instead asking how many of you have decided to quit politics and open a Somali daycare in Minnesota. But I’m gonna save that for another week! Anywho, I hate making predictions, but in the spirit of the New Year and because I’m a benevolent leader that would never ask you to do something I’m not willing to do myself… Here are mine:

We’re going to see more and more AI-created political ads
I mentioned this a while back, but Campaign Influencers are going to become a thing
Democrats will, once again, outspend Republicans on digital ads in 2026

Womp, womp. Ok - your turn! What would you add to the list? Don’t hold back - and if you think my predictions are lame AF, let me know that too!

Answer before midnight!

The above quote comes from Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, in a blog post he published on December 29 about the future of AI in 2026. His post got a lot of reaction online, but honestly this point is pretty straightforward. Nadella is a tech CEO who believes - as every tech CEO does - that AI will revolutionize our human experience as long as we just put on our big boy pants, learn to use it, and stop arguing over slop. Maybe he’s right. But something tells me 2026 just ain’t gonna be the year that we all of a sudden become more mature, sophisticated internet users. Just a thought!

—New Year, Same Newsletter

With this being the first Doomscroll of 2026, I thought it might be fun to give you a quick glimpse behind the curtain. Can’t hurt, right? We’re all in this together, yes? 2025 was a doozy, I think we can all agree on that. A lot happened in the political world, and on the right specifically (remember SURBL? Remember the affectionately-named Republican Bloodbath of 2025?). But my goal has always been to cover, week after week, what we’re doing as an industry while pushing us to be better (with some sarcasm and harmless gossip thrown in for good measure, obvi).

I’m always appreciative of the feedback, the comments, the questions, and the referrals. It warms my heart, for real. None of you has to read this, but you do and for that I’m grateful. I started this in January 2023 (check out my first post here!) and it’s been a labor of love ever since. I get asked a lot how much time I spend putting this thing together each week. The short answer is, it varies. Some weeks there’s so much stuff to cover it all comes together easy peasy lemon squeezy. And then some weeks I feel like I’m stretching a bit for content (it’s true!). The hope is that you can’t tell which week is which. Fingers crossed, anyway. But enough about me - Below is a peak at how 2025 treated Doomscroll.

Best months in terms of total views

March
June

Subscribers gained in 2025:

504

Top Traffic Sources

Roughly half comes directly from the email each Sunday night
14% comes from the Substack network
11% comes from emails that were forwarded to people
9% is Google
The rest is a smattering of other sources. 0.2% came from ChatGPT.

Want to be best friends?

I put a lot of thought each year/quarter/month into what I could be doing to make Doomscroll better. More effective. More helpful. More entertaining. More everything. And as much as people pull me aside and tell me it’s insane that I publish this thing for free every week - I genuinely don’t see that changing anytime soon. I’m not here to gatekeep or make a buck. That’s not why I started this! HOWEVER, that doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy a free latte now and then. If you feel up to helping me fund my caffeine addiction or just showing support for Doomscroll by throwing a dollar or two my way (Just $1 - that’s it! Donate before midnight for the chance to get a 300X match!), then I certainly won’t stop you!

We will keep doing this thing no matter what, but if you feel called by our Lord and Savior to become a paid subscriber today, then just smash this button:

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Google

🤳 Instagram has imposed new limits on hashtag usage.

🖼️ Speaking of Instagram, its CEO Adam Mosseri posted a 20-slide post on the last day of 2025 with his thoughts on Instagram in the age of AI. It’s worth checking out. Long story short: polished posts are out. Unflattering images are in. Yes, you read that right.

Chuck Gray is running for congress in Wyoming.
State Sen. Bryce Reeves dropped out of the Virginia Senate race.

Someone took advantage of the gossip button over the holiday break. Here’s what said anonymous gossiper had to say:

This text was sent from Ronny Jackson this week: Hey amid a technical error, your MAGA membership wasn't accepted. CONFIRM ACCEPT. Could you imagine the outrage from Launchpad if someone else (other than their own client OF COURSE!) sent this? They’d send in a SWAT team. The page is even more egregious.

Here’s my take. Ummmm, I don’t know that the folks at Launchpad would care if another person sent it out? Maybe they’d like to weigh in! The page itself isn’t worse than others I’ve seen, and lots of people send MAGA-membership-type-texts. I just, in general, don’t like fibbing to donors in order to get them to donate. There is no MAGA membership and it wasn’t accidentally NOT ACCEPTED. I think we just need to do better with our messaging in general, which brings me to my next thing. Someone flagged this other text for me a few days ago:

I know if you read that - and the WinRed page that goes with it - it doesn’t explicitly promise a $20,000 refund in exchange for a donation, but it might as well. This text - sent by the Republican Main Street Partnership PAC - is kind of everything that’s wrong with Republican fundraising right now. Sure, you can argue it’s just relying on the president’s own words, but so what? The implication is clear: You won’t get a tax refund if you don’t answer this poll. And oh yeah, in order to answer it you have to donate. Scammy, no?

THE GOSSIP BUTTON IS LIVE

Got a tip for The Grapevine? Job announcement? Job opening? Email ‘em to me at itsthedoomscroll@gmail.com

From the other side of the aisle:

CNN did (yet another) piece on Zohran Mamdani’s “unique digital strategy” for his mayoral campaign. This time, Manu Raju interviewed Debbie Saslaw, co-founder of Melted Solids - the firm that produced Mamdani’s viral videos. I think it’s worth calling this interview out for a couple reasons. First, most campaigns aren’t going to hire a production company to make videos for social media. We could argue all day that they should, but the reality is they won’t. So if you’re comparing your content to Mamdani’s - don’t. He had a large, highly-experienced team to produce his stuff and engineer virality. That said, it doesn’t let us off the hook! Which leads me to my second point.

Mamdani’s halalflation video, for example, is a solid concept that works whether or not you have a professional director and producer behind what you’re posting on Instagram. You can make a version of this video with your iPhone - so go do it!

Finally: I’ve given lots of kudos to Mamdani’s content over the last several months, but he’s not the metric by which I’ll be judging every candidate this year. His videos are slick, but what makes them special is the creative storytelling. And you don’t need a production company for that - just some solid brainpower!

From the other side of the tracks:

For those watching Stranger Things…Fast Company did a little bit of a deep dive into the show’s marketing playbook. Check it out here.