martin luther's wordle starter

The game (Wordle) seems designed to slow you down. And that slowing down, I think, is really its secret thrill.

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.

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.

for most of human history, those things were invisible to us. They were there if you wanted to look, but for the most part, people just went about their lives, being acted upon by systems and forces, not really thinking about it, just vibing.

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

everything has these kinds of convergent aesthetics.

one way to preserve the capacity of a symbol to signify is to limit its quantity or access to the symbol. Things only have meaning if not everyone has access to them, or so the logic goes. It’s an old idea. The heart of all emulation, really.

Peak saturation can be accomplished so easily, so readily on social media.

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.