Agalia Tan

Starter pack memes reverse engineer the demographic profile: people are composites of products they and similar people have purchased, identified through credit card data and internet browsing behavior tracked across the web.

this is not about anti-technology or anti-ambition. It is pro-focus, pro-intention, and pro-discernment in how we understand broader historical contexts and apply the affordances of modern technology and media to our own ambitions. This is a call to reclaim our attention as a finite, precious resource.

How can we reclaim data as a tool for clarity instead of submitting to its chaos?

Just because we can measure everything doesn't mean we should. Digital media gave way to instant metrics which led to instant expectations on results but a CTR, a bounce rate, or even a conversion doesn’t always tell the whole story. The obsession with short-term,

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Life is modular, not linear. You don't choose a career at twenty-two and stick with it for forty years like some kind of professional arranged marriage. Instead of hunting for the mythical perfect tree, follow your curiosity. What ideas make you pause while scrolling? What conversations do you find yourself returning to days later? When a friend... See more

She quotes Viktor Shklovsky: “habitualization devours work, clothes, furniture, one's wife, and the fear of war... and art exists so that one may recover the sensation of life.” Then she goes on: “ the trick in writing/life... is to figure out how to import a chunk of the past into the present, so your present self can feel all the things you’ve... See more

Echo chambers lack that friction. So do “filter bubbles,” which are essentially the digital incarnation of echo chambers. In his book Filterworld , Kyle Chayka explores how personalized searching, algorithms, and online behavior flatten our culture by continually offering us more of what we’ve already consumed, shrinking our digital worlds.

THIS is the kind of information I want from the internet. The sharing of unpolished “here’s what worked for me” anecdotes and napkin sketches.

The brand should be more living, the world lives on social, the brand needs to fit within that world and that world is made up of real people and real interesting stuff. It's not made up of brands and it doesn't have these rigid rules. It's less of a brand and more of a character and a writers room.”