This Week’s Reading: Chapters 24-42

We’ll be reading chapters 24-42 this coming week.

Last Week’s Discussion

Brett: Before we get into this week’s discussion, let’s talk about the discussion from last week. I was really impressed with the engagement — people chiming in with what stuck out to them, lines they highlighted, whether they related to Call or Gu…

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Every now and then, I’ll come across an article about a podcaster who’s having a lot of success, which means lots of people listening to their show. Most of the time when I read these articles, I think, “Bully for them.”

But every now and then, I have a different reaction.

Instead of being happy for this podcaster, I feel a pit in my stomach. I feel sad. “Man, what am I doing wrong that’s stopping me from having that level of success? I must be a sorry excuse of a podcaster.” And then sometimes my sadness turns to resentment, and I start making up a story about this person (a person whom I’ve never met): “Oh, I bet he probably gamed the system. I bet he’s a total douche in real life. Probably doesn’t call his mom and has bad breath.”

That’s a rotten thing to think about a person I’ve never even met. But I’ve had those thoughts. I am not proud of this.

And then I feel bad for having these thoughts, because I know I’ve given way to one of the seven deadly sins: envy.

Nobody likes to admit they’re envious. We’ll cop to all sorts of unflattering things. We’ll readily admit to being short-tempered, or disorganized, or wont to eat the whole sleeve of Oreos in one sitting. But envy? We don’t like to admit that. The novelist Herman Melville wrote that there’s something about envy that’s “universally felt to be more shameful than even felonious crime.”

Envy is the emotion we absolutely shudder to confess.

Why is that?

Well, if you admit to envy, you're admitting that you think someone is better than you — that you are, in some way, less than. That itself stings, but it’s also upsetting to acknowledge that someone doing better than you makes you feel so bad; it makes you feel like a small, petty person. For these reasons, disclosing our envy can make us feel pathetic and pitiable, and so we keep it to ourselves.

Today, I want to explore this seemingly rotten emotion, because while we don’t like to talk about it, it has an outsized impact on our lives. The sociologist Helmut Schoeck called envy “an anthropological constant” because it shows up across time and cultures. Kierkegaard said that if we want to understand the nature of being put out, we “must make a study of human envy.”

And as we’ll see, there isn’t just one kind of envy. There are four. Knowing which kind you’re experiencing gives a name to the emotion, and naming an emotion gives you some power over it, the same way knowing Rumpelstiltskin’s name gave the maiden power over that strange little man. And once you get a handle on your envy, it can even be turned into a positive force.

But before any of that, we’ve first got to talk about what envy grows out of: comparing ourselves to other people.

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Picture for a moment a man out running in the cool evening air. He appears to be alone. But he is not.

He once ran cross-country in high school. He runs still as a middle-aged man, though no longer for prizes or for time. Simply for the physicality of it, the visceral enjoyment.

He has run weekly, sometimes daily for most of several decades now.

Running was there for him when it was the activity which best channeled and reflected the heart-racing excitement of first falling in love. Running was also there when it was the activity which best managed his depression when that love imploded.

Running was always available to lend a listening ear, to help him process his exultations and griefs; hopes and disappointments; plans for the future, and for vindication; sketches of what he would say and how he would say it; intimations of opportunities to come.

Running was invariably one of the first to greet him in a new place when he traveled. Running was the first friend he made when he moved across the country, and became his tour guide to getting to know his unfamiliar hometown.

Years have passed away; friends have come and gone; jobs have changed; children have progressed from diapers to blue jeans; even old Fido has gone the way of all the world. But running has been a constant through every season, location, and stage of life. Running has remained by the man’s side through it all.

As it is with running, so it is with every physical practice, be it walking, lifting, biking, swimming, and so on: exercise is our steadfast companion, comrade, sidekick, therapist, and, it wouldn’t be a stretch to say, protector. Always a step away, always ready to bear our joys and burdens, always faithful.

Note: This Sunday Fireside was first published on AoM. From time to time, we’ll be reposting previously published firesides to introduce new readers to gems from the SF archives.

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The fact that the birth rate is declining worldwide — having just hit another record low in the U.S. — has hardly wanted for attention.

You can find plenty of think pieces and podcast episodes and social media posts discussing it.

Debates around the “fertility crisis” can often get heated and shrill. The issue is frequently politicized, as different groups interpret its origins and solutions through entirely different moral and ideological frameworks.

I have no desire to further beat a tired-out horse, no desire to point a finger at who and what is responsible or to castigate folks for not having enough babies. I will say that parenting suffers from very poor branding and is way radder than is commonly supposed; I’d encourage those on the fence to jump into the procreating business with gusto — it’s just dang joy-filled and satisfying.

But I’m not interested in interrogating people’s life choices; with only two children myself, I’ve hardly done my part to stem the tide, and I know well that circumstances can often prevent people from having as many kids as they’d even like.

What I do find interesting are the potential effects of the falling birth rate — especially those that don’t get much notice.

There is a typical stable of issues that usually gets talked about regarding the societal or cultural consequences of lower fertility: aging populations, school closures, labor shortages, slower economic growth, strained welfare systems, etc.

But there may be implications of a declining birth rate that are subtler and yet have outsized impacts on who we become as individuals and the society we inhabit.

Here are five lesser-examined ways a world with fewer children could change our culture and our lives:

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Howdy, and welcome to the Dying Breed Cattle Company. That’s what I’m calling the book club.

We’re reading my all-time favorite novel, Lonesome Dove together. I love this book so much. If this is your first time through, I’m envious. I wish I could read this book again for the first time. But it’s still so stinkin’ good after multiple readings. We’ve got over 600 of you riding with us on this outfit, which is a helluva of a turnout for a book club. I’m glad you’re here.

Riding alongside me for this is Jeremy Anderberg. Jeremy’s been with AoM since 2012, writing articles and doing a lot of the behind-the-scenes work that keeps the place humming along. He’s a genuine jack of all trades. He also runs two excellent Substacks — Read More Books and The Big Read. He’s led a Lonesome Dove book club over on The Big Read before, so he knows this trail well. Go check his stuff out and subscribe.

Alright. Time to get down to business. Let’s take a look at the schedule for our trail ride with the Hat Creek Cattle Company.

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Something I think about a lot is how much of what we do is driven by status. We’ve written about this status drive extensively over on AoM.

By status, I don’t just mean the kind of status that shows up in follower counts or corporate titles. I mean it in a broader sense, in the desire to be noticed and needed in a social group. We want to feel like we matter. We want people to think well of us.

This status drive can push us to nobility or vanity. It can nudge us to build businesses, coach our kids’ teams, and hold the door open for strangers. But the drive for status can also make us petty and performative. It can turn us into people who rage-bait on social media for clicks, stretch the truth to look a little more impressive, or secretly root against friends who are doing well.

One unexpected thinker who saw both sides of this drive was Adam Smith. Most people know Smith as the father of economics. He’s the invisible-hand guy you learned about in high school history. But before he wrote The Wealth of Nations, he wrote another book: The Theory of Moral Sentiments. It’s not a book about markets or money. It’s about how to live a good life.

In it, Smith lays out one of the clearest, most human explanations I’ve ever read on why we chase status, why it so easily goes off the rails, and how we can evolve that same desire into something virtuous and ennobling.

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I’m trying something new this summer on Dying Breed: a guided group read of my all-time favorite novel: Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove.

If you’ve followed AoM for a while, you know how much I love this book. It’s the American Odyssey: sprawling, hilarious, and heartbreaking. When you finish it, you feel like the characters are your friends.

If you’ve always wanted to read Lonesome Dove but needed a little push to do it — this is it. If you’ve read it before, this is a great excuse to read it again (it’s not only okay, but beneficial to re-read books!) — this time with fresh insights and a community of fellow readers.

Here’s what this summer book club will include:

• A simple 8-week reading schedule (just 20-30 minutes a day)

• Weekly posts from me and Jeremy Anderberg with reflections and discussion prompts

• Occasional Lonesome Dove-themed prizes for participants who make the best comments

• A Q&A with Larry McMurtry scholar Steven Frye

How to Join In

The book club is only open to paying subscribers of Dying Breed. If you’re already a paying subscriber, you automatically have access.

If you want to participate, you can access the book club posts by clicking “Book Club” in the menu on the DB site.

You can also opt in to a separate newsletter just for book club content. This consists of a single email each week that has reading assignments and discussion prompts.

Here’s how to opt into the book club newsletter:

• Click the button below or visit your account settings.

• Under the “Notifications” section, opt in to receive “Book Club” updates. You’ll now receive a book club email once a week.

Manage Subscription

If you DO NOT want to receive book club emails, you don’t have to do anything. You will continue to receive just our two regular weekly DB emails. You can always check out the book club conversation by clicking on Book Club in the menu on the DB site.

Again, if you’re a paying subscriber, book club access comes with your subscription.

If you’re not a paying subscriber yet, now’s a great time to become one! For $5/month or $50/year, you’ll get access to this summer book club and all the regular Dying Breed perks — full access to articles, Sunday Firesides, comment threads, and our growing archive.

The Reading Schedule Drops Saturday, May 30th.

Grab your copy of Lonesome Dove, opt in to book club emails, and saddle up.

I’ll see you on the trail!

P.S. Quick tip from Jeremy Anderberg. If you get the most recent edition of Lonesome Dove and this is your first time reading it, DO NOT READ THE FOREWORD!!! There are spoilers in there.

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In the last installment, I walked you through our experience with banner ads and how the online ad ecosystem changed in ways that pretty much eliminated them as a significant source of revenue.

Today, I want to talk about another major source of revenue for AoM over the years: affiliate links.

So much has changed about the world of affiliate links over the years that I had trouble remembering how, why, and when things went down. To jog my memory and help me flesh out the history of the affiliate link in online publishing, I chatted with fellow men’s lifestyle publisher Brandon Wenerd. Brandon co-founded BroBible back in 2009, a year after I started AoM, and like me, he’s spent the past 17 years navigating the online arena as an indie operator.

AoM’s history with affiliate revenue pretty much mirrors BroBible’s: started off as a great source of revenue, then stopped working. Brandon and I also observed how the affiliate model got abused along the way and made the online experience worse for everyone.

How Affiliate Links Work 101

Publishers can sign up to be an affiliate for all sorts of brands out there. Amazon is the big one, but you can also be an affiliate for Target, Bass Pro Shop, or one of the many hundreds of direct-to-consumer brands that exist like HelloFresh and the like. When a publisher signs up to be an affiliate for a company, they can start linking to different products or services that the company provides.

When you, the reader, click an affiliate link on a website (which usually just looks like a regular link to a product), a little piece of code called a cookie gets dropped into your browser. That cookie tags you as having come from the website that gave you the link. If you go on to buy that product within a certain timeframe, the website that referred you gets a small commission on the sale.

The price of the product doesn’t go up for you. The retailer just pays the publisher a percentage of the sale because the publisher sent the customer their way. It’s basically a form of advertising for the seller: pay-for-performance marketing. The retailer only pays out when somebody actually buys something.

The timeframe in which you have to buy the product for the publisher to get credit is called the “cookie window.” Different retailers have different cookie windows. Amazon’s is 24 hours, which is pretty dang short. Other retailers might have a 30-day window, or a two-week window, or a 7-day window. As we’ll see, the cookie window matters a lot.

The other thing that matters a lot is something called “last-click attribution.” If you click an affiliate link from one website, then click an affiliate link for that same brand on another website, and then make the purchase, the second website gets the commission. Last click wins. The first website gets nothing, even if its content is what convinced you to buy the thing in the first place.

That’s the basic mechanics. Now let me tell you our story.

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Back in the early days of Art of Manliness — probably 2010 or 2011 — I got really into memento mori. Stoicism was coming back into fashion, and memento mori was one of the centerpieces of that neo-Stoic revival. “Remember you will die.” Marcus Aurelius wrote about it in his journal. Supposedly, Roman generals riding in a triumphal parade would have a slave stand beside them, murmuring in their ear: respice post te, hominem te memento, memento mori — look behind you, remember you are but a man, remember you will die.

The idea is that thinking about your mortality — the fact that you’ll die one day — is supposed to change how you approach the world. Instead of wasting your time on the internet, go out and play basketball with your kids, because you could be hit by a bus tomorrow. It’s supposed to check your hubris because whether you’re an Amazon warehouse worker or Jeff Bezos, death comes for us all.

I bought into the whole memento mori thing hard. We wrote articles about memento mori art over on AoM. We sold a cardboard skull in the AoM store that you could assemble and set on your desk as a memento mori reminder. I carried a bronze memento mori coin in my pocket for a stretch. For a while, part of my daily routine consisted of staring at memento mori art and meditating on my death like a good Stoic or monk.

Remember, you will die! Vanities of vanities!

Skulls are cool, but I gotta be honest, as a tool for actually changing my behavior, memento mori never cashed out the way I hoped it would. I’d look at the cardboard skull on my desk, go to a funeral, or walk through a cemetery and just think, “Yep, that’ll be me someday. A noseless skull. Yup, I’m gonna die.” Then I’d go and waste an hour dicking around on the internet or still be grumpy with my family as we’re about to leave on vacation.

What gives?

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Tales of dystopian futures offer an incomparable way to consider where our own society might end up. 1984 continues to sharpen our lens on the subtle creep of surveillance and the manipulation of truth. Brave New World has helped us see how comfort, pleasure, and distraction can pacify a population more effectively than force.

But for my money, there’s no narrative more prescient — and insight-generating — than a short story (really more of a novella) penned by E.M. Forster in 1909: “The Machine Stops.”

“The Machine Stops” paints a picture of a future society that, because the earth’s surface has become uninhabitable, lives in a honeycomb of “cells” beneath it. Technological advancements, controlled and mediated by an all-encompassing system called “the Machine,” allow individuals to summon food, medicine, entertainment, and worldwide communication channels at the flip of a switch. The citizens of this push-button civilization rarely have reason to leave their chairs — or their rooms.

A decade before radios became mainstream, “The Machine Stops” predicted the rise of on-demand music and broadcasts.

Fifty years before air travel became common, it foresaw a time when it would be easy to hopscotch the globe.

A century before Skype debuted, it envisioned the idea of video calls.

But it’s not its prescience around technological developments that makes “The Machine Stops” so striking. It’s the story’s discernment of what those developments would do to people that’s both disturbing, and illuminating.

What Forster imagined, we’ve begun to live out.

Today, I’ll dig into seven insights from his fiction that allow us to see our own reality afresh.

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I’ve been following David Coggins’ work for years, have had him on the AoM podcast three times, and have always appreciated his approach to life.

David is a Renaissance Man. Based in NYC and a world-traveler, he’s authored numerous books on style, etiquette, and fly fishing, including Men and Style, Men and Manners, and The Optimist. He publishes regularly at his Substack, The Contender, where he writes about style, fly fishing, travel, and enjoying life’s pleasures. He also co-hosts the podcast Central Division with Michael Williams, and recently launched a print newspaper called The Print Edition.

When I look at the whole body of his work, a big theme emerges: taking your leisure seriously (but not too seriously) is essential to the good life. As I discussed in my recent article about Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle’s conception of the flourishing life requires a certain amount of external goods like money, health, and friends. It also requires enjoyment of edifying leisure. Reading good books, enjoying good art, eating good food. External goods can also include stylish clothing and hobbies like fly fishing.

In this Dying Breed Dialogue, I talk to David about his approach to leisure and how it can add to your life and connect you with others. We also get into the fun nitty-gritty of some of his passions like style, fly fishing, and collecting art.

The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

First order of business: How often do you get confused for David Goggins, the Navy SEAL motivational guru guy?

Confused with Goggins all the time. People start following me expecting workout advice — they are quickly disappointed.

When I look at the body of your writing, a big theme in it is the idea of taking leisure seriously, but not too seriously. You write about fly fishing, art, traveling, style, food, and drinks. Why do you think leisure is an important part of the good life?

I think we’re talking about the art of living. That’s sort of a grand title, but we’re also talking about time. How do we want to spend our time? One of the great balances everyone’s going to have to decide is how much of their time they wanna spend doing work, and how much of their time they wanna spend playing, so to speak, whatever that is.

I think it’s worth considering how we spend our time, especially our free time, and not give it away or spend it unreflectively. I like people who learn things, even things I don’t do. If someone knows how to sail or they make a real point to go skiing with their brothers every year — I don’t do either of those things, but I understand that, and I like that. Maybe ritual has something to do with it. You do the same thing. You go to the Masters every year if you’re lucky, or you go on a fly fishing trip. I like those things. I like that you create that weekend with your friends, maybe go to a college football game, and tailgate. I like that, and I like people who make the time to do that. That seems fairly fundamental to enjoying yourself.

Yeah, the activities you described aren’t passive. It’s not just sitting on your phone scrolling. It’s intentional.

Completely. I went to a matinee to see this French film on a Monday afternoon at two at the Film Forum, and it was full, and it was so great. Everyone wanted to see this film. You felt close to the people around you who cared about this thing that you cared about. That’s very different than kind of reflexively scrolling through your phone and very different than watching even something you like for the 50th time.

I think the phone is always gonna make us passive. I’m infinitely happy that I grew up without one for many reasons. I think it’s good to kind of go out there and go to a museum or go hiking or whatever it is and have an experience yourself. You’re the one who’s understanding it. You’re the one who’s interpreting it. You’re the one who’s living and not just swiping on a screen.

One of the things I love about your writing is that the things you write about, someone might look at from a distance and think, “That’s kind of elitist, highfalutin stuff.” You’re talking about art, French film, and style. But the way you write about it, it’s very approachable, it’s very democratic. With the way you present it to people, it’s like, “Oh wow, I could do this too. I could enjoy French movies even though I might not be the kind of guy that you typically think would enjoy French movies.” How do you do that? What’s your approach?

Thanks for the kind words. I think in one sense I was very lucky. I grew up in an artistic household. My parents cared about the arts. We went to museums, and we went to Europe. It wasn’t fancy, but it felt very natural for us. We knew my parents were involved in a theater group. We knew actors, and these things were not uncommon for us — to go to a play, even to go to see classical music performed, or to see the opera.

I think in a perfect world people would be exposed to those things. Doesn’t mean they have to like them. But they’d be exposed to them.

I think the way I write is that I try to focus on the pleasure of these things. There’s a very specific male quality that many men have. If they don’t know about something, they’re a little bit suspicious of it. Or they might say, “I definitely don’t know enough about an opera to have an opinion.” And I’m like, well, let’s try to learn about it, but first let’s experience it.

If you can go to see an opera, it can have a very powerful effect on you, whether you know anything about it or not. It’s just an emotion. Same goes with great novels. People might be surprised, but if you read War and Peace, that thing has action. It’s much more alive than you think.

I think it’s a mistake for people to say, “Well, I don’t wanna see a movie with subtitles.” You might surprise yourself. I try to bring people along to say, “Think of it like this. You like Quentin Tarantino? Tarantino was obsessed with Jean-Luc Godard. Try it out.” And I think a lot of people would surprise themselves that they actually enjoy movies with subtitles. If I can help people expose themselves to new things in a very small way, I’m happy to do that.

Yeah, and the other thing you do is you talk about opera, art, great film, but then in the same newsletter, you might talk about going to a college football game. You don’t differentiate between the two too much. You can get the same sort of satisfaction going to an OU-Texas football game as you could going to the opera.

Completely. I’ve drunk as much Miller Lite as anybody outside the state of Wisconsin, probably. I like a person who’s open to a rarefied experience, but also the ordinary. I fish a lot, and that takes me to places that can be very rarefied and other places that are totally not that way. And I think you want to connect and be open to even those less rarefied experiences because there might be something there that brings you joy.

My family has a cabin on a lake in Wisconsin, and I go there every year. It’s a huge part of my life. I’m very far away from New York when I’m there. I like to be around people who maybe don’t care about the same things that my neighbors in New York care about. I think that grounds me, or at least provides some sort of balance that I try to bring through in my writing.

Let’s talk about style. Your approach to style is great. One thing you talk about a lot is the beauty of a suit, a jacket, a bag that’s a bit battered. Whenever I look at how you look, it looks good, but it doesn’t look stuffy. What’s your overall approach to style?

I love tailored clothing — sport coats, suits. I think it’s nice when you have something, and you wear it a lot. I feel like this is another issue that maybe guys have where they only have this suit, they kind of hate it, they only wear it when they’re forced to. I would say, well, let’s get something, find something that you like, and then maybe something you actually wear a lot.

I like a tweed jacket — that’s kind of a bulletproof thing. You can wear it forever. I just wear the same jacket every day, not for a week, but most days of the week. And it’s nice to have that. The jacket kind of becomes you in a way. I like clothes that serve the person, that explain who the person is.

I think when something is worn in, it shows a commitment to that thing. When you see someone with an old, really fancy leather bag, but he’s had it for so long, it’s kind of a little bit worn in or something, even patched or taped — I love that stuff. It could be a pair of cowboy boots, too. When you can tell that someone loves something, that’s pretty good.

You mentioned finding something that’s you, that you wear all the time. This goes to an idea we talked about on the AoM podcast— the personal uniform. Tell us about that.

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Usually, the question comes from people who are interested in making a go at being a full-time creative or curious friends with traditional 9-to-5 jobs who find it hard to believe you can make enough money putting stuff up on the internet (for free even!) to pay for a mortgage.

It’s an understandable question. The online economy is still so new in the sweep of human history that people wonder how it works.

And it has to work not only for Kate and me to support ourselves and our family, and to make each of us investing 60 hours a week in our jobs worthwhile, but also simply to keep our endeavors — the Art of Manliness, The Strenuous Life, and Dying Breed — going. Each of the prongs in that ecosystem — what you could call McKay Inc. — costs money just to keep running. With AoM, we have to pay for a server to host the website, a service to send out our free newsletter, an audio engineer to fine-tune the podcast episodes, and more. TSL has been pretty expensive to run, with costs for web development, shipping and fulfillment, and so on. And for work across our platforms, we pay Ted Slampyak for his illustrations and Jeremy Anderberg as our lone part-time employee. It all adds up.

So the revenue-generating side of things has to work for our endeavors to continue, and how that’s worked has changed a lot over our almost 20-year publishing career.

In a new series, I’m going to unpack the history of those changes and explain how we make money online, while also endeavoring to keep the creative passion and value-imparting mission central — and not selling our souls. My aim is not only to satisfy people’s curiosity as to how the online economy has and does hum, but also to offer what I think is a fascinating window into how and why the internet looks the way it does today. Changes in how online content generates revenue don’t just affect the finances of its creators, but also alter the internet as a whole — and how the average user experiences it. The history of revenue models on the internet is the history of the internet itself.

So consider this an in-depth insider’s look at the online publishing biz. From the perspective of a completely bootstrapped, mom-and-pop operation running out of a house in Tulsa, OK (not exactly a hotbed of online publishing!).

To kick things off, I’m going to walk you through how we first started generating revenue with AoM — the granddaddy of online monetization and what some have even called the original sin of the internet.

I’m talking, of course, about the humble website banner ad.

Banner Ads and AoM

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