Optimise for FUN

The internet used to be fun.

It was weird. It was frenzied. People didn’t know what they were doing, so they tried things. They didn’t optimize, because they didn’t know what to optimize for. Good websites got found because they were good. Good tweets went viral because they were good.

Then people learned how to get the results of being good, at le... See more

The question is not whether algorithms can ever foster greatness—they cannot. Their design is fundamentally at odds with the qualities that define great art: depth, complexity, and the capacity to provoke discomfort or transformation. The question is whether we, as creators and consumers, are willing to resist their influence.

Resistance does not me... See more

Play can easily be dismissed as childish, irresponsible and unbecoming of the seriousness required of us modern achievement-subjects. But the demand for playful living is really a demand to reject the conditions of the achievement society. Embracing play is a bold defiance against the relentless productivity mantra of the achievement society. But w

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"Go deeper and weirder and make something that is so human and so strange that it can't be duplicated by an algorithm."

What’s their secret? They focus relentlessly on the quality of their writing and ideas. Because quality never goes out of style. And when you focus on quality, you don’t have to play by the rules of the algorithm at all. You can reject the algorithm altogether and create success in your own way.