Articles.

Fandoms, Tech, and the Internet Mess We Love.

These articles dive into everything from wild online fandoms to the drama of tech culture and sports obsessions. Whether it’s about fans building and tearing down internet empires, finding safe spaces online, or just geeking out over something you love, there’s a lot of good stuff to unpack about how we connect and clash in the digital world.

Browse articles.

How we lost the ‘good internet’

Why the Internet Keeps Getting Worse (And How We Can Fight Back). Uncomfortable Conversations podcast, April 2025.

The RPF Question

How real person fiction evolved from forbidden to mainstream and back again. Fansplaining, April 2025

Emma Thompson told me she’s never wearing heels again. Me neither.

Life is too short to care about being tall. Culture Vulture, January 2025

The Hierarchy of Cool

On ACOTAR and being allowed to love what we love. Culture Vulture, February 2024

A Long Time Coming

Taylor Swift brings fandom (and selfies) into cinemas. Letterboxd Boxd Office, October 2023

Fans Built Her an Internet Empire. Now They’re Tearing It Down

Former fans of Colleen Ballinger talk to Rolling Stone, June 2023

Public Passions / Private Spaces

Reflects on the spaces we inhabit online, and how to create safe communities in the midst of the internet hellscape, Pantograph Punch, February 2023

Killing our darlings

A fandom expert on why we urgently need to get to grips with the hate engine, Letterboxd, September 2022

Embracing the Meme

Conversation with Gemma Gracewood (editor-in-chief at Letterboxd) about fans, merch, cosplay, conventions, and the power of audience, June 2021

Puck this year

How 2020 turned a sports hater into an ice hockey superfan - The Spinoff, October 2020

I made partner at 32. By 40 I’d left the law behind

Auckland University Law Review Alumni Dinner - The Spinoff, September 2018

Business is Boring

What the tech sector can learn from pop culture - December 2017

Harry Styles and the uninhibited joy of being a fan

Internet fandom, groupchats, and the joy of being all in - The Spinoff, October 2017

Kicked in the shins

How to stop tech's toxic bro culture - A Women's Thing, August 2017

The Google Manifestbro

How some things aren't up for 'debate' - The Spinoff, August 2017

What we love matters

A unifying cultural theory to fix tech's diversity problem - The Spinoff, July 2017

Cold toast and indecipherable notes

On working remotely and the myth of productivity - The Human in the Machine, July 2017

Why the tech industry needs to fix its gender problem

New Zealand Herald, May 2017

Rei Kawakubo is my Harry Styles

The importance of fandom - Teen Vogue, May 2017

Eat Sleep Work Repeat

Fresh thinking on diversity issues - April 2017

Absolutely, delete Uber. Then go to work and start changing things there

On Uber, hashtag activism, and real change - The Spinoff, February 2017

Going from start-up to stay-up

The startup landscape in New Zealand - The Wireless, May 2014

NZX or NZ8? The startup money scramble

Raising capital - National Business Review, September 2013

Avoid common startup mistakes

Legal issues for startups - National Business Review, September 2012
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Sacha was the very first person whose work I read that made me feel understood as a fangirl. It was like – yes! I spent a lot of my time reading fan fiction, building online communities and learning how to Photoshop, but actually, these were valuable skills and ones that have led me to build a successful business! I’m incredibly lucky that Sacha now writes for Shit You Should Care About (as our number one Harry Styles correspondent, among other things), and our audience simply adores her.”

Lucy Blakiston, founder of Shit You Should Care About and author of Make It Make Sense.