Derek Thompson ✓

@DKThomp · Washington, D.C. · joined 04 May 2009

Substack author. Plain English podcast host. Abundance co-author. Contributing writer at The Atlantic.

261 035Followers

2 118Following

22 689Posts total

2.7MViews on collected posts

Against accounts of the same size

5 posts from the last 90 days, next to the 100K–1M follower range. shown widely, but few of those viewers react.

Median views129 436this account12 273median for 100K–1M

Reach, %49.59%this account3.89%median for 100K–1M

Engagement, %0.78%this account1.25%median for 100K–1M

Metric	This account	Median for 100K–1M	Ratio
Median views per post	129 436	12 273	10.6×
Reach (views ÷ followers)	49.59%	3.89%	12.8×
Engagement rate	0.78%	1.25%	0.62×

Others in this range → Compare with another account → How these benchmarks are built →

Growth & engagement

How the posts we collected actually performed: views and reaction rate post by post, what the audience did with them, and where the follower count goes.

Views per post

1.6M20 Jun

59.2K

28K

129.4K19 Aug

479K21 Aug

282.4K

60.7K31 Aug

27.8K1 Sep

Last 8 collected posts, oldest on the left. The scale is logarithmic: one post can outrun the rest a hundred times over.

Engagement rate per post

0.46%20 Jun

0.38%

0.28%

1.44%19 Aug

0.09%21 Aug

0.31%

0.83%31 Aug

0.78%1 Sep

Reactions — likes, reposts, replies and quotes — divided by views. Median for 100K–1M accounts is 1.25%.

What the audience does

Likes81.8%10 321 in total

Reposts4.4%555 in total

Replies4.0%503 in total

Quotes1.2%152 in total

Bookmarks8.6%1 084 in total

Share of every reaction we collected for this account. Replies mean argument, reposts mean endorsement, bookmarks mean the post was worth keeping.

The follower curve appears once this account has two daily snapshots — we take one a day, and this one is on its first.

Latest posts

New pod/transcript: PANGRAM VS THE MACHINE Since 2022, the share of English-language webpages that are partly or entirely written by AI has increased from roughly 1 percent to nearly 40 percent. Like a tsunami of sludge, AI writing is inundating everything from high school 27.8K views · 170 likes · 28 reposts · 10 replies 01 Sep 2026 White women with a college degree were a +17 demo for Kamala Harris. https://t.co/Z7tsjRBEnU 60.7K views · 476 likes · 9 reposts · 14 replies 31 Aug 2026 I went on the BS Podcast to talk about - why billionaire sports ownership is a moral scandal - the connection between the Lakers, Mark Walter, insurance float, private equity, and AI - the “derivatives market” theory of modern media (the decline of reporting and how “nobody 282.4K views · 788 likes · 25 reposts · 60 replies 21 Aug 2026 New BS Podcast w/ @DKThomp — the Sports Plutocracy, Mark Walter’s tricks, Vegas’s 9b NBA team, Denver screws Jokic, biggest 2020s Legacy rings, the NBA’s 2016 Black Swan event, and the WNBA’s avoidable growing pains. Spotify ⬇️ https://t.co/XlPWdDseNx 479K views · 333 likes · 18 reposts · 51 replies 21 Aug 2026 Really cool at the top of the WSJ homepage today: "An experimental mRNA-based vaccine succeeded in preventing cancer from coming back or spreading in a study of high-risk melanoma patients, Moderna and its partner Merck said Wednesday" Last year, an mRNA cancer vaccine was also 129.4K views · 1.6K likes · 203 reposts · 35 replies 19 Aug 2026 @DKThomp Congrats and good luck Derek! 28K views · 78 likes · 0 reposts · 1 replies 20 Jun 2025 Subscribe here! https://t.co/6Gtje6eqLu 59.2K views · 210 likes · 8 reposts · 7 replies 20 Jun 2025 Some personal news. Today, I’m leaving The Atlantic after almost 17 years and moving my writing to Substack. It would be convenient, for the purposes of crafting an exciting departure announcement, to have a dramatic exit story: a fight, a grievance, a shouting match with an 1.6M views · 6.7K likes · 264 reposts · 325 replies 20 Jun 2025