As we enter a period of unmitigated crassness in public life, I find myself guiltily dreaming of frivolity and luxury.
Tina Browntinabrown.substack.com
As we enter a period of unmitigated crassness in public life, I find myself guiltily dreaming of frivolity and luxury.
When the figure of the buffoon becomes central to public life, the problem is not only that they say foolish things but also that everything they touch becomes foolish, including—especially—the powerful language we need to talk about them and what they are doing.
Naomi Klein • Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World
Rather than prestige, this cultural moment is dominated by metrics, as George S. Trow predicted in a 1980 New Yorker essay called “Within the context of no context”:
“That movement... from wonder that a country should be so big, to the wonder that a building could be so big, to the last, small wonder, that a marketplace could be so big—that was the... See more
The prestige recession
A crowded world, then, has a dangerous opacity, providing cover for cruelty and corruption.
Elisa Gabbert • The Unreality of Memory: And Other Essays
A 2023 Look-back: the internet dies, etc.
culture.ghost.io
The internet is also in large part inextricable from life’s pleasures: our friends, our families, our communities, our pursuits of happiness, and—sometimes, if we’re lucky—our work. In part out of a desire to preserve what’s worthwhile from the decay that surrounds it, I’ve been thinking about five intersecting problems: first, how the internet is
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