A Party for the Haters

“What’s Hate Reads?” a patron at The River, a bar on Bayard Street in Manhattan’s Chinatown, asked early on Wednesday evening. She and a friend had no idea they had wandered into the beginning of a party.

It was perhaps the perfect question to kick off the evening’s event: a reading to celebrate the limited run of Hate Reads, a pop-up newsletter within a newsletter and the brainchild of Delia Cai, a writer for Vanity Fair. (Hate Reads was published as a limited-run on Ms. Cai’s regular newsletter, Deez Links, which she publishes on Substack, the sponsor of the evening’s fete.)

In a call back to the juicy blogging style of a bygone era (2010), contributing writers anonymously wrote essays railing against their least favorite things. They hated on things like Taylor Swift’s outfits, goldendoodles, media parties and, in a meta-commentary, the Hate Reads themselves. Some of the essays, particularly one about the state of men’s wear, went moderately viral in certain online circles.

Chipper Substack employees roamed the bar with a roll of stick-on name tags and a Sharpie, encouraging people to label themselves not only with their names but with something they hated. Natural wines, roommates eating your groceries, loud chewing and “cops” were spotted on chests throughout the evening.

“I hate myself,” Mi-Anne Chan, creator of the Condé Nast newsletter Mixed Feelings, wrote on hers.

About 75 people crammed into The River’s dark corners, sitting on chairs, stools and even the floor to watch several of the essayists unmask themselves and read excerpts from their work. (“Unmask” being a loose term here as several of the writers revealed themselves via social media shortly after publication, seemingly unable to resist the siren song of a quick dopamine hit.)