Postmode is a website that covers internet culture and everything else. You can expect interview features, indulgent blogs, reviews, video essays and some actually useful guides. There’s a bunch of video game stuff on here already, but there are no topical limitations, hence why it’s not called Postgame or Gamepost or Postmode Gaming For The Gamers or whatever. Not having a niche is bad for SEO, you might say, and to that, I say yeah, you’re probably right. But does that even matter anymore? Let’s find out together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Howdy. My name is Jordan Oloman, the Postlord of Postmode. I’m from Newcastle, in the UK, and I’m a freelance writer, editor, scriptwriter and consultant. I’ve worked for The Washington Post, The Guardian, The BBC, IGN, NME and many more. You can peep my portfolio here<\/a>. If you want to get in touch, you can email me at olomanjordan (at) gmail (dot) com or DM me on Twitter.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Good question – one that is impossible to answer without sounding pretentious. It’s an ironic neologism, a playful remix of the word Postmodernism, whose definition nobody can agree on. I like reading cultural theory and postmodern literature, and one day, it just came to me, and I thought it sounded pretty cool. It evokes the idea of posting (in a certain mode?), a concept we’re all familiar with. I’d argue we’re dealing with Metamodernism at this point, but calling the site Metamode would have been unbelievably cringe thanks to Silicon Valley semantic drift.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Anyway, enough of that, I think it’s time for a history lesson. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Many moons ago, I ran a site called Quillstreak<\/strong> with my buddy Jared. We launched Quillstreak in 2016 after we met working as voluntary gaming editors for our university newspaper, and it ran until 2019, when we couldn’t afford it anymore. In that time, we were proud to edit and publish heaps of indie crit from an ensemble of exceptional writers. By the end, we were paying competitive freelance rates for features, too. It’s something I’ve always been super proud of, though it was all the things any bright-eyed student project should be – ambitious, naive, and inevitably unsustainable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When I first built Quillstreak, it was in response to the problems I had faced trying to break into the mid-’10s games media. I had no industry connections or journalism experience, so I quickly made the mistake of writing a load of rubbish for abominable pay-per-click rates or, god forbid, exposure to build up a portfolio. My self-deprecating mentality was that I should start at the bottom of the ladder to eventually ‘deserve’ to write for the outlets at the top. I even had a weekly quota at one of these places. What a dumbass. But there was no other option. Editors didn’t take WordPress blogs seriously, and the aforementioned pay-per-click sites weren’t going to publish my esoteric chicken scratch without an incentive. And when they did, they certainly weren’t going to give it an edit pass so I could better my craft.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Eventually, after an endless stream of demoralising but probably fair pitch rejections, I lucked out and hustled my way into some reputable clips. Alas, I still couldn’t get paid to write about the really interesting internet culture stuff that was on my mind. And I hadn’t forgotten about how hard it was for me to break in to this nightmare industry. So, I figured I’d create Quillstreak to help other budding writers get portfolio-ready edited articles they could use to pitch the big dogs who would pay them fairly. I accepted pitches from anyone about pretty much anything. It wasn’t about experience level – if you had an idea that was cool and not hurting anybody, I wanted to help realise it on the page. In return, I’d gain valuable design, web dev and editing experience, as well as a warm fuzzy feeling when writers who I’d worked with would DM me to tell me they had a pitch accepted elsewhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So Quillstreak was born! And then it died. My co-founder left the industry, and I couldn’t juggle the site-running responsibilities alone. My rent-paying writing career had to take responsibility, and I couldn’t make the time for it anymore. So it goes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A lot happened during this time on a personal, geopolitical and institutional level, and a lot of it sucked. The games media landscape was continually decimated. My job as a freelance writer became brutal and thankless. I burnt out and nearly left the industry. I also suffered from an attack of Sudden Sensorineural Hearing Loss.<\/a> It wasn’t fun!<\/p>\n\n\n\n After plenty of deliberation, I decided I once again needed my own corner of the internet – to vent my frustrations about the industry and create the coverage that I wanted to read. With that, the Postmode Substack<\/a> was born. In addition to some cathartic personal blogs, I engaged in some cultural theory, interviewed indie developers, and mused on the enshittification of the internet. The irreverent cultural milieu of Postmode was born. People seemed to like it, but I found it hard to commit to. Substack still feels like a halfway house between a newsletter and an outlet, and its management keeps making questionable choices, which is why many of the platform’s biggest players have fled since its opening boom. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I also don’t think the right people take newsletters seriously as outlets yet – there’s a degree of separation there that makes it awkward to champion and complicates access. It’s the same kind of ‘KPI > writer’ brain rot that regularly allows enthusiast sites access over freelancers, who, if taken seriously, could place a unique story at a mainstream outlet that would dwarf the impact of the former. Why not just have my own site at that point? This would also remove any ownership questions later down the line. With Quillstreak, access wasn’t much of a problem because I could show people the end product on a real website without a domain suffix. This is the one area where I felt that I had to ‘play the game’ to grow. Ultimately, I’d rather not have those same exhausting, desperate conversations I’ve been having throughout my freelance career. And thus, Postmode.org was born. <\/p>\n\n\n\n So here we are! Welcome to Postmode.org. I pay for hosting and the domain, so there’s some overhead, but at least I own everything and can make it look how I want. I’m in Build Mode right now, but I hope to start commissioning freelancers and building a community around the site.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s lovely of you to ask; here\u2019s what I suggest:<\/p>\n\n\n\n There’s also a fifth, other thing…<\/p>\n\n\n\n I feel bad about it, but under guidance from friends, I have set up a Patreon<\/a> for those of you who want to support this endeavour (and, by proxy, me!). It feels evil to ask you to part with your hard-earned, tooth-breaking currency at a time such as this, but if you\u2019re able and you want to see Postmode grow, I\u2019d really appreciate it.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWhy is it called Postmode?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The Pre-Postmode Quillstreak Era (2016 – 2019)<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The Lost Years (2019 – 2023)<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The Substack Era (2023 – 2024)<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The Postmode Era (2024 – ???)<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
How can I support Postmode?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\n
The Postmode Patreon<\/h2>\n\n\n\n