Something you hear about a lot when you start an independent media site, particularly one that makes its money via paid subscriptions, is "subscription fatigue." It's the idea that consumers get sick of recurring expenses for every little thing — your streaming services, your news, your laundry detergent that arrives like clockwork each month.
I worried about it a lot before Maddy and I launched Mothership. I thought, Well, these folks may already be paying for other sites, so will they really be willing to pay for another? How can we justify asking folks to spend an extra $7 a month when basically everyone's pockets are leaner than they were a year ago?
Then I learned that this concept of subscription fatigue has really only been researched in the context of mass market consumer goods. I have a hunch that readers of independent media think of their subscriptions to indie sites differently than they do their Netflix subscriptions or even their New York Times subs. I hope I'm right, because the subscriptions you purchase here are different. Here, your cash goes directly into the hands of the people doing the work — there's no secret other priority, no board of directors, no IPO.
It is true, however, that there are a lot of indie media sites that you might want to subscribe to right now. Anecdotally, what we hear most from readers is not that they have subscription fatigue, but that if anything, they have convenience fatigue. They wish they could subscribe to several sites at once, and maybe get a small discount for grabbing all those subs at the same time.
Good news: you can! It's the final weekend of our first-ever bundle with feminist sites Autonomy News and The Flytrap. Here's how it works: you purchase the bundle for $32.49, minus the cost of any of the subscriptions you may already have. That purchase gives you three months of all three sites in full — all our subscriber benefits, access to every article — the works! If you were to purchase all three separately, it'd cost you around $65, meaning the bundle represents a 50% discount on each site.
We chose to bundle with Autonomy and The Flytrap because we know our readers love feminist writing about topics beyond gaming.
At Autonomy, founders Garnet Henderson and Susan Rinkunas report on reproductive justice in the U.S., breaking several stories in the site's first year of existence. Autonomy publishes imperative reporting on trans healthcare, abortion access, birth control, and so much more.
The Flytrap was founded by an all-star team of feminist writers who publish cultural criticism, from meditations on celebrating Juneteenth in 2026 to musings on why commerce sites like Wirecutter feel so bad to read in an AI world (one of my personal favorites). The site also republishes out-of-print Bitch Media articles that previously didn't have a home online.
Our hope is that this bundle makes subscribing to all three of these important sites a bit more convenient and affordable for you, or maybe that you'll find a new site you hadn't heard of before. If you're new here, give us a try for three months — if you're anything like us, you won't regret spending money on independent journalism.
Managing editor Zoë Hannah has a decade of experience writing, reporting, and editing. She's previously served as games editor at Vox Media's Polygon.com and deputy editor of reviews at Hearst Magazines.
