aiming for resonance

In early interviews with Whaley, he often talked about the internet being the magic ingredient to MSCHF: “Life is too short and the internet is too big to not make what you want.”

The dream isn’t just to show all of ourselves unfiltered to the world. It’s to find a character that we feel comfortable being, that we deeply resonate with, and if we’re lucky, some part of the world might too.

Resonance is radically non-instrumental, Rosa stresses, so it cannot be used to maximize an outcome. It has no goal. Unlike harmony, it allows space for dissonance. In fact, resonance requires a certain friction. Paradoxically, when two people entirely agree on a point, when their experiences are fully congruent, or when an idea doesn’t encounter a... See more

In a dialogue with fellow scholars Thijs Lijster and Robin Celikates, Rosa imagines resonance as a descendant of Emile Durkheim’s notion of “collective effervescence,” the ecstasy shared by participants in music, sports, dancing, or spirituality. Rosa believes that attuning ourselves to this intense feeling of invigorating camaraderie is a necessar... See more

You can’t try to resonate. Ultimately, resonance is beyond us. Like happiness, it can’t be a goal.

The thing about resonance? It’s unpredictable. A highly anticipated Broadway musical, written by a star composer, can sputter at the box office and become the flop of the season. An obscure single from an unknown artist can top the Billboard chart out of nowhere. A Czech writer who has been dead a century can become the hero of generation TikTok. W... See more

Is it possible that we must be passive to experience resonance? Do we only hear those loud, clear, deep, and continuing sounds—perhaps the heartbeat of the universe—when we forfeit control and let the wind blow us where it may? Does our grammar know more about the world than we do—does it embody wisdom that eludes the modern mind?

I can’t help but think of the I-resonate-with trend as a cry for help dressed up in terrible grammar. As the anthropocene gives way to the life-centered economy, we humans feel thrust from our thrones. We want to return to being the subject of the sentence, the active voice, the element in command. When something resonates with us, we are relegated... See more