digital life
Social media encourages us to think of every thought we have as interesting; it makes everyone else feel accessible, and therefore disposable; it exposes us to endless bad actors, hardening our hearts and compelling us to suspect the worst; it rewards vulnerability, but also incentivizes defensiveness; and, most cogently for the purposes of this... See more
Dirt: What was 'replying'?
What was 'replying'?
Shouting into the void that answers back.
Mariah Kreutter on what it means to “reply” in 2023.
dirt.fyi email
10/9/2023
Thirst and clout-chasiness aside, there’s no question that the ‘modern media brand’ need multi-modal expression through published content, social syndication, IRL experience, consumable goods and active community.
[SIC] 364: Emotional Technology
So which direction are we moving in? Down the same old path – where identity is just content, content is monetised, and monetisation demands a steady drip of oversharing and low-key emotional collapse? Or could we actually start to build new ways of being online? Ones that prioritise people as people, and not just scrolling spectacle?
Until then,... See more
Until then,... See more
Humiliation Rituals
to write about the internet in a post-COVID world, specifically, means that you will have to write about everything because everything is now finally online. It’s not uncommon that I start questioning what the internet even is anymore. Is it the memes we share? Is it the platforms we share them on? Is it the infrastructure that underpins those... See more
Garbage forever
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
We are adrift–a culture of consumers accustomed to buying objects and building collections as the sole means of documenting our cultures–deprived of the infrastructure to do so. But our individual inability to collect and store is one I’ll lament the least.
Yes, we’re drifting, but maybe we can choose to float towards a more collective stewardship... See more
Yes, we’re drifting, but maybe we can choose to float towards a more collective stewardship... See more
Crimes Against Search | Dirt
personal agency vs enshittification
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
Our Cringe = Sublime SEED touched on some of this — simply opting out of performance becomes an act of quiet rebellion. Going for a walk without posting about it. Writing a thought without tweeting it. Wearing an outfit without wondering how it will look on Instagram. These small acts chip away at the scaffolding of digital humiliation culture.
Humiliation Rituals
To correct the state of AI discourse today, we need to channel this same spirit and train our attention on the messy facts of the human, material world in which these technologies play. Only when we’ve stopped fetishizing “realism” will we be able to turn our attention to very real air, water, ecosystems, and people these technologies consume in... See more