Note by Gurwinder on Substack

Many things in modernity are brain dead, but I can’t think of anything worse than the short form dystopias of TikTok and Instagram. They’re materially making people dumber, breeding addict behavior (particularly in the young) and ultimately ruining the lives of normies. It’s depressing to think about the countless kids who might have started garage... See more

What’s amazing is how chronological feeds — essentially accidental experiments of digital architecture — have rewired our brains. In the feed, everything is fleeting. This design property means you’re either always on and connected, or you’re off and wondering if you’re missing something important.

This allows us to pop the algorithmic bubbles—the weapons of math destruction—used by the Twitters, Facebooks, Googles of the world to lull us to sleep. It shuts off the intermittent dopamine drip to which we have become tethered and addicted.Though I do not lead a life so interesting to write about each and every day (partly why this newsletter go... See more

Once upon a time, the Internet was predicated on user-generated content. The hope was that ordinary people would take advantage of the Web’s low barrier for publishing to post great things, motivated simply by the joy of open communication. But then ad sales came into play.

That business model is still what most of the Internet relies on today. Rev... See more

“We write to the machine, it collects and aggregates our desires and fantasies, segments them by market and demographic and sells them back to us as a commodity experience.”

Caufield's main argument was that we have become swept away by streams – the collapse of information into single-track timelines of events. The conversational feed design of email inboxes, group chats, and InstaTwitBook is fleeting – they're only concerned with self-assertive immediate thoughts that rush by us in a few moments.