martin luther's wordle starter

I thought the real pleasure of mass experience was disappearing into a crowd and blending in.

Social media seems to have this intrinsic character of convergence. I talked about that in a previous newsletter. The idea that once you become a part of a digital community, your very participation in that community further optimizes the platform’s convergence upon a single set of ideas, idioms, modes, or what have you.

I think that at this point in life—after ten or so years of a proliferative mode in the online idiom—there is a craving to return to an earlier, slower internet. Before real chronology and temporal relationships were replaced with sped-up simulations of real-time.

So we’re all chasing novelty. The pulse of something new, something brilliant by which we can distinguish ourselves. The irony is that we don’t know it until someone else shows it to us and then we all copy them and the thing ceases to be novel or particular.

There must be some way to partake in shared online experiences in a way that does not feel totally beholden to the convergence and optimization of digital life. Like, there must be some way to share what I am thinking and feeling and watching and enjoying with everyone in a way that does not attempt to replicate my preferences into a trend.

The point of the haul is novelty, abundance, proliferation. We all love to watch acquisition and permutation. Mix and match. I personally am very susceptible to an unboxing! I can’t help it! They are so engrossing! The stuff! The abundance!

It used to mean something, finding your people, your herd, your crowd, your familiar souls. It used to mean something to stumble upon people who cared about what you cared about. But now, even amid the internet’s turn back toward the notion of scarcity, it feels like all of our symbols have lost their capacity to signify.

so much of our lives are dictated by this kind of algorithmic convergence, so that I don’t even trust it anymore. We’re all being herded.

more and more every day that once people decide you have clout or social capital, they want to synchronize with you. They begin to want to converge with you. And that sounds fine, right? Like, people want your opinions. They trust your taste. But the problem becomes then that once you are someone that other people set their watches by, you cease to... See more