Aakriti M

As an experiment, for one continuous month, make the focus of one in every three things you share on social media — wherever you normally share, however regularly or irregularly you do, however many people you reach — something other than yourself or your own work: a friend’s art project, a stranger’s poem, a record by a musician you love, the tree... See more

Avoiding playing pretend during your valuable learning time is important and psychologically difficult. A lot of people’s learning is limited by their insecurities and need for their social status to be reinforced. It often feels amazing to pretend to learn things, and unpleasant to actually learn. People are drawn to activities that make them feel... See more

The second truth is that we are terrible at putting a finger on what it is that makes these people so captivating. Beyond surface-level observations — a nice smile, or the ability to tell a good story — few of us can quantify, in an instant, what makes charismatic people so magnetic.

Perhaps it’s evolutionary. As a species, innate instinctual feelin... See more

Extrapolating from the premise of Aspirational Humanity , I’m proposing that charisma , not taste, may be the most covetable skill in the age of AI. Perhaps your aesthetic sensibility is irrelevant, as long as you can hold a great conversation. AI can style your outfit, but it’s not going to be a helpful wingwoman at the bar. As our external facad... See more

As the ability to hold a conversation or ‘work a room’ becomes less common, it also becomes more desirable. When nobody knows how to have fun at a party, being ‘the life of the party’ is an enviable characteristic. Our desperate desire for genuine human interaction is repositioning interpersonal skills, individuality, and generally ‘charisma,’ as a... See more

Most recently, we’ve seen the repurcussions of this behavioral evolution become meme-ified via the ‘Gen Z stare.’ While this has been overblown into another cross-generational spat, the negativity towards ‘stare’ is related to the valid perception that many young people seem unusually overwhelmed by social interaction. For Gen Z, the effects of tec... See more

I’d contend that the demand for live-ness is also connected to the boom in sports viewership and theater attendance. There is a growing appreciation of those inimitable moments where ‘ you just had to be there ’ because that specific experience can never again be exactly replicated.

How can we explain this? Partly it is because in a world of personalised algorithms and subcultures, sport is one of few glues that bind us together. It helps, too, that it has to be watched live. But Enders also credits broadcasters and leagues “for maintaining sport’s appeal in a changing media landscape”.