internet culture

Digital platforms are largely devoted to making users consume more, faster—think of TikTok’s frenetic “For You” feed or Spotify’s automated playlists. Curators slow down the unending scroll and provide their followers with a way of savoring culture, rather than just inhaling it, developing a sense of appreciation.

This situation, where more data is the goal, means there is great collection software and terrible decision making software. We are told to star, favorite, and bookmark everything. Yet, like real life hoarders, we cannot say what exactly we collected or why. Nor can we find any of it. How many times have you spent an hour trying to find that one... See more

The vibes are off, but they’re off fundamentally because they focus only on feelings and emotional connections that have already existed. They don’t provide or imagine pathways to new futures; they allow only for an understanding of what feels good or bad based on experiences that have already happened, things that have already been seen.

Once front-running other participants in financial markets or cultural production becomes a common strategy, trends become inefficiencies – temporary blips of difference or spikes in value that are bound for correction. Being early as a meta is replaced by catching people offsides. Betting on the return to the mean.

Such guides go by many names—call them influencers, or content creators, or just “this one guy I follow.” Guided by their own cultivated sense of taste, they bring their audiences news and insights in a particular cultural area, whether it’s fashion, books, music, food, or film.

Perhaps the best way to think of these guides is as curators; like a... See more

What’s coming into focus more gradually is how bad things are getting for those of us in the audience, too . Something that’s long bothered me and Erin about the hegemony of streaming is that if you do away altogether with physical media, you put yourself at the mercy of corporate accountants (who might decide there’s insufficient R.O.I. when it... See more

It is not a critical approach towards values, policy, nor the subsequent consequences of these artifacts. We experience our political landscape through the veneer of our “ discourse interfaces” (that’s a Reggie phrase) .