seeds

What we can try to do—and what only human curation, so far, can make possible—is to find creative ways out of our house of mirrors. “Leave the door open on your way out” is one of our commandments, and it is an invitation to bring parallel worlds and universes, antagonists and dissidents, renegades and rebels into our beautiful bubble, and to engag... See more

Maybe the only thing worse than being paid off to have an opinion, is guessing and adopting others’ opinions out of fear of being “wrong” about your own.

In an era of personal brands and monetizable reputations, every single one of our posts is a performance. If you exist online, there is no such thing as authenticity. This only becomes more true, ... See more

Consider the difference between Trader Joe’s (a beloved grocery store with a wide variety of goods, all of which you can trust) and whatever new CPG goods are popular on TikTok. Hype is a flash in the pan. Narrative network effects are durable, long-lasting, and broadly applicable.

The basis for any approach to self-transformation is an ever-increasing awareness of reality and the shedding of illusions,” writes Erich Fromm in The Art of Being. He refers often to awakeness, to making conscious what is repressed. To not just hearing, but listening. Not just seeing, but looking, watching. You can do this anywhere, with anything.... See more

“To live externally is to live more dangerously,” Moskowitz writes, of giving up the constant inward gaze. “It is to live a life that takes up public space, a life that is messy and confusing and thus a life that is often frowned upon, especially in an era in which everyone is accustomed to control and curation over social space and affect.”

To paraphrase Marx, we might hunt for jobs on LinkedIn in the morning, fish for compliments on Instagram in the afternoon, criticize each other on Twitter after dinner, and be as lascivious as we like on Tinder in the late evening, without letting any of these identities define us...  Nevertheless, something is lost in this fractionalization o... See more

One of my (many) contrarian beliefs is that we do not have strong enough preferences. We often blame social media or the speed of information as the reason why we’re easily distracted, but the real reason behind our inability to focus has less to do with the sheer quantity of media and more to do with our laziness when it comes to distinguishing wh... See more

One of the benefits of producing consistent creative work is that it comes with a narrative network effect: The more people who know and love the story of an object, the stronger the tie to that object becomes. For a brand like MSCHF, success might not always come from money—sometimes, it comes from products that reinforce how they want to articula... See more

1.4. The largest cultural segment in any society is the “mainstream,” although it may represent a plurality rather than a majority.

1.4.1 The “average” person in any society belongs to this taste world as it requires no specialized knowledge, nor has very high barriers to participation. Tastes can be acquired through ambient absorption — e.g. heari... See more