I’m extremely wary of the cult of contemporary self-making, and the fact that it’s become an expected part of life in the attention economy for middle-class workers.

From the college essay – the first time many of us are required to tell a selling story of ourselves in the service of social capital – to the dating website to Twitter or Instagram,... See more

One of the big losses I see in the vibe shift is the opportunity for writers to loose themselves from the chains of personality and just write interesting things.

That’s my big learning of the year: understanding the way someone’s interior life translates to what they make. When I first started writing this Substack, I was possessed by the sense that I had to figure out “how to do it.” Which other Substacks do I like, which other Substacks are popular, what do they write about, how do they make it work. It’s... See more

O’Rourke is among a growing group of literary writers who have tried to answer the question in the first person, scoping out artificial intelligence’s encroachments from within the domains it most imperils. Their writing asks what AI-generated writing can or (much less often) can’t do, and how human writers can or (much more often) can’t respond.... See more