New Media IRL: "New Release" by Yacht

METALABEL: You made a short video for the album that has a line I can’t stop thinking about: “Sometimes it feels like your house is a store and your life is a job.” Can you talk about that feeling?

CLAIRE : It's something we talk about a lot. The more you notice it in the world around you, the more real it feels. It speaks to the fact that as indiv... See more

Email today is now less a communications medium than a communications compile target. It’s a clearinghouse technology. It’s where conversations-of-record go, where identity verification happens, where service alerts accumulate, and perhaps most importantly for publishers, where push-delivered longform content goes by default. It is distributed and ... See more

But yesterday is not today. Social media grants access, and with access comes voice. Platforms now frame even the smallest curiosities into billboard-worthy pursuits. The outcome of this unique recalibration is an unnerving reality: The age of Everything Culture has arrived. In this new world, everything essentially becomes A Thing.

It’s impressive that in 2022, when it feels like everything we’re doing is being mined, lumped into categories, catapulted back at us in the form of ads and content, the world is being NFT-ified, yada yada yada—that you can still fall down rabbit holes on the internet and discover something no algorithm has found. A sound and scene that’s still lea... See more

Media, and arguably most of culture, is oriented around the new. (Dad-voice: "That's why it's called 'the news!'") The VC dollars swirl like dust devils. Social media platforms rise and fall. Magazines are founded and folded. While I, the wizened crone of the newsletter world, remain happily focused on my next step.

Human expression was perfected into pithy thought-capsules (Twitter, LinkedIn), glamour shots (Instagram), and performative soundbites (TikTok), all perfect carriers for human emotions and — most importantly — ADVERTISING, which we were also now expected to do, newly equipped with our “personal brands.”

The dominance of these formats and mindset mad... See more