July 16, 2025 48:42 S6:E114

🤳 Put Down Your Phone & Abandon Your Brand — with Casey Johnston

Casey Johnston is a weight-lifting memoirist and former editor at Vice, Ars Technica & the New York Times’ Wirecutter.

She’s been reporting on social media and smart phones for over a decade, and in that time, she built her career on Twitter then left it behind in favorite of a paid newsletter and a phone with fewer than ten apps on it.

In this conversation, we dig into the the major shifts that Casey’s witnessed in digital media since 2010, as well as how she created a “DIY Dumb Phone” to help her kick her phone addiction last year.

Specifically, we explore:

How Twitter helped Casey start her writing career
Why Casey launched a newsletter & how it’s become her primary income stream
Virality, memes & how they push us to always be online
The difference between a Beat, a Brand, and a Business
The successes & failures of journalists on Substack
Casey’s “DIY Dumb Phone” method
How algorithms convince us we have problems
Why Casey quit being a defender of social media

RESOURCES + LINKS
👋 Download the FREE Leaving Social Media Toolkit
🌐 Join the Interweb for courses + community
🌸 Peep the Clubhouse for bonus episodes + emails

📘 A more joyful business is within reach. Get your copy of Free Time: Lose the Busywork, Love Your Business by Jenny Blake today at itsfreetime.com/book (sponsored)

📲 Want to step away from Instagram without disappearing entirely? The (free!) Static Grid Planner from web designer & copywriter Ellen Brown helps you design your Instagram like a mini website that keeps working long after you've deleted the app. Get it at newshapesstudio.com/static-grid-planner

Creators and Guests