digital life
It’s not that anyone is forcing us to humiliate ourselves; it’s that we’ve come to equate being known with being exposed.
Humiliation Rituals
And on the internet in 2025, true transgression means making something algorithms can’t promote.
Tumblr users did something unhinged again
We have been an essentially colonial civilization since the first enclosed farm, since agriculture, really, but definitely since territorial wars, slavery, and resource extraction. It’s what we do - not just with imperial armies, but with basic capitalism. This is our average. Our normal. A digital media environment with algorithms and AIs... See more
Douglas Rushkoff • Pockets of Weird: The Fight Over Reality
Practically speaking, desktop experiences represent a past when the online world was driven from workstations, less devices , and intended to be curated, not consumed. So, as you might piece together your day again after 20 minutes needlessly refreshing a feed, let's remember what it felt like when we were surfing the internet, as opposed to it... See more
Dirt: Desktop was the place
Desktop was the place
Looking back through Bliss-colored glasses.
Patrick McKemey on the lost joys of the desktop internet.
dirt.fyi email
1/30/24
If AI is able to suddenly pump slop into our environment it’s only because we already turned on the faucets ourselves. Just think about all the garbage content that people you actually know send you via text, or the DMs that feel like they’re from bots but are actually from real people driven by platform incentives (Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook,... See more
Slop as a Way of Life | Dirt
I feel alienated from people that believe technology can solve loneliness. To me, effective accelerationism is doomerism disguised as optimism. The belief that things won’t change and the belief that if they do change, through technology, it will be for the better are both sides of the same coin. In fact, just as entropy is an arrow of time, I... See more
Daisy Alioto • The Loneliness Economy
The Loneliness Economy
Griffin Moss is missing.
Daisy Alioto on the power of refusal in human and bot relations.
Oct 16, 2023
This all isn’t to say that there was nothing novel about TikTok. It obviously did give Americans genuinely new ways to communicate and create culture, but the culture we created with it was always there. Thanks to TikTok, America finally saw itself and it scared us. It turns out Americans don’t talk the way we think they should, don’t dress the way... See more
Holding up a mirror to America
The smartphone turns us into fragmented actors in a perpetual now.
You’re in a War You Can’t See: McLuhan, Media, and the Machinery of Perception
During the Romantic era, keepsakes were albums of fine engravings, often given as gifts, that sealed an emotion or celebrated a special occasion. This word, which combines to keep (to keep, preserve) and sake (a mark of friendship or consideration), takes on a particular resonance in our digital culture. At its core, it holds tensions related to... See more
The promises of digital keepsakes
Dec 03, 2024