No permission needed

The long game is the real game

Yancey Strickler

and

Rayna Holmes

Feb 26, 2025

The faster something grows, the faster it can also die.

That’s a lesson from a book I constantly return to, The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing, a readable and enlightening guide to how to make something stand out.

One of their laws is “The Law of Fads and Trends.” It goes like this:

There are two types of success: fads and trends.
A trend is a fad whose demand is slowly satisfied.
A fad is a trend whose demand is satisfied too quickly.
When you experience success, focus on intentionally growing slowly rather than satisfying every request.
What could have been a fad becomes a trend.

The underlying lesson: slow growth is worth more than fast growth.

As creative people, the people and projects we most often compare ourselves to are the most visible ones. The ones that tend to succeed from fast growth and viral posts.

In our weaker moments we find ourselves looking at their socials with jealously, wondering why their success can’t be ours.

But where does that path lead? How quickly will it be over?

The modern rush toward immediacy causes us to forget an obvious truth: real things grow slowly.

Cultural movements aren't manufactured overnight. They accumulate and gather force through dedicated effort and persistent vision.

The current systems aren't designed for patient building. They extract more than they nurture. They isolate more than they connect. They reward performance over substance.

But we need the current systems less each day. With the right infrastructure that lets us band together, we can make a new system of our own.

No permission needed.

NEW RELEASES

“First Light”
By WTTDOTM
Physical edition, $30

You’ve wished upon a star, but have you ever discovered one? That’s the unexpected invitation of this new release from artist and technologist WTTDOTM that allows someone to be the first person to glimpse a new star. The release uses a piece of software that reads daily feeds from computerized telescopes and identifies stars that haven’t yet been discovered. Kolman then seals a printout of the star with a certificate of authenticity and ships it to the collector. Cosmic!

Collect First Light

Alta — A Human Atlas of a City of Angels
By Marcus Lyon
Digital + physical, Free+

Marcus Lyon is a photographer and artist from London who operates an inspired project where he explores the ancestry of notable and regular people from specific places, then reveals the interconnections and common bonds they share. Alta is a slice from this larger project, giving collectors a chance to experience the project digitally through a free app or podcast download, or a limited edition art book that’s both digital and physical. Be still our new media hearts.

Collect Alta

“Temporary Candle”
By Basic Needs
Physical, $35

Who among us doesn’t need a good kick in the gratitude to remind us how little time we have on this rock? Temporary Candle, the first Metalabel release by the studio Basic Needs, is there to remind you. Light the wick, enjoy the passage of time, and try making up definitions for some of the weird words that gradually emerge: EMPORARY, MPORARY, PORARY, ORARY (our favorite), etc.

Collect Temporary Candle

New Creative Era Episode 02: Finding your hook

This week’s episode of New Creative Era is a conversation about how to have a conversation about what you make.

Joshua Citarella

and

Yancey Strickler

explore how to talk about your creative work, how Josh frames his Doomscroll series (now at more than a million views!), why Yancey released an essay as a limited-edition zip file, and how context makes the ordinary interesting.

Listen here, Apple, Spotify, and other podcast places.

New Creative Era episode 002