Brian Thomas Clark
@btc
Strategist/Producer/Collector
Digital Experience Director @risd
Brian Thomas Clark
Decades ago, friction was what made a subculture. You had to figure out what punk or goth was about, learn its codes, seek out compatriots, and then maybe go to Hot Topic or a hardcore show. Friction is lower online and visibility is higher. We are all constantly performing our preferences in public. “Subcultures,” in the sense of aesthetic niches,... See more
One Thing • 🟧 Does subculture still exist?
What we get instead is what Byung-Chul Hanmhas described as an "overheating of the ego." Pure individuality through momentary identification of yourself with an aesthetic, which exhausts us by depriving us of any real conflict or difference. What we consume online amounts to a cheaply reproducible set of vague designs. There is only an endless hall of shiny standees, of potential versions of yourself you can pop your face into as you go. Take the photo. And move on. The problem with this "aesthetic," as Silcoff so candidly shows, is that it is entirely a product of the internet’s selfie culture. Offline, these relations – the social construction of identity — were once mediated by something with a bit more give and a sense of reality.
Howard Blum, a former staff writer, is the first to declare the Voice “a precursor to the internet,” an idea that recurs, with diminishing shine, throughout the book’s five hundred and thirty pages. Notes of elegy sound throughout, laments for something too good to last, but also for a moment of honest and urgent revolt. When there seemed no such... See more
Michelle Orange • How the Village Voice Met Its Moment
But the curation was never about financial reward. It was “there's a small unscalable business here about taste, that people rely on and really like, and everyone who works on it doesn't make very much money, but they're very cool.” We just don't live in a world where that's an acceptable way to live. There's a lot of economic pressures and again,... See more
Dirt: Complicated Culture
taste and Media & Culture
3. Maintain a standard
Jalen yelled at me a few times for not getting my eyes on coach Jay Wright. We used to have this thing at Villanova: When the coach was talking, we would yell “eyes” so everybody would quiet down and look at him.
I was a freshman, so I didn’t really understand how important it was. Jalen really got on me one time. “Eyes, eyes,... See more
Jalen yelled at me a few times for not getting my eyes on coach Jay Wright. We used to have this thing at Villanova: When the coach was talking, we would yell “eyes” so everybody would quiet down and look at him.
I was a freshman, so I didn’t really understand how important it was. Jalen really got on me one time. “Eyes, eyes,... See more
I played with Jalen Brunson in college. 3 things any young player can learn from him
Part of it is me trying to navigate the external world, and the other side of it is me trying to navigate my internal world. That’s how I view fiction and non-fiction. Non-fiction is really good to help you navigate the mental models of the physical world, so you can understand how the world works, how to gain tactics and strategies to shape things... See more
Anne-Laure Le Cunff • Interview: Using Books to Navigate Life With Juvoni Beckford
Thinking of yourself as an observer is better for your happiness than obsessing over being observed.
Arthur C. Brooks • Don’t Objectify Yourself
While it’s probably one of the corniest things I’ll ever write in this column, I’ve come to believe that developing taste is not so unlike going to therapy; it’s an inefficient, time-consuming process that mostly entails looking inward and identifying whatever already moves you. It’s the product of devouring ideas, images and pieces of culture not... See more
Elizabeth Goodspeed on the Importance of Taste – And How to Acquire It
Real influence is closer to craft than performance. It’s about understanding the system you’re working in—its incentives, fears, histories, and fault lines—and moving through it with eyes open. It’s knowing when to push, when to wait, and when to shut up. Done right, influence is how you avoid brute force. It’s how you make change stick without... See more
Nope, it's not fair.
NOBL 2/10/26