Marko Ayling is the American born, Mexico City based writer of the Substack newsletter The Missive. It’s a dispatch of his life in Mexico and world travels. He is a former Youtuber, who built up a following of more than a million subscribers to his channel Vagabrothers, which he created with his brother more than a decade ago. He talks about what that life was like, how exhausting it was, the ups and downs of YouTube, and what he is trying to do on Substack. He has a lot to say about making a living as a creator within this world of the internet and social media. Before YouTube fame he studied economics and worked in development in India, and sine the pandemic he has been living in Mexico City, where media reports about remote workers intensifying gentrification are frequent.


I think a lot of everything we speak about and what I have been writing about in the newsletter is related to some degree. Globalization and the issues surrounding it, increasing inequality, division driven by algorithms. I personally have been trying to make sense of the economics of being a writer, which have been disastrous since content began moving towards to the internet, which basically began within a couple of years after I started making a living as a writer. Yet, it’s more than just my own economics. How we live, where we live, and why we are living there and doing the things we are doing. We are all trying to make sense of this changing world.

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