internet culture

They believed, that instead of trying to change the world outside. The new radicalism should try to change what was inside people’s heads. And the way to do this, was through self-expression. Not collective action.

— Hypernormalisation

This idea clearly spread and maintained to the present day. Where putting a graphic on a hat or shirt is “impacting... See more

Coding is a culture of blurters. This can yield fast decisions, but it penalizes people who need to quietly compose their thoughts, rewarding fast-twitch thinkers who harrumph efficiently. Programmer job interviews, which often include abstract and meaningless questions that must be answered immediately on a whiteboard, typify this culture. Regular... See more

For all the hype that surrounds them, neural networks can’t reflect or explain anything deeper about cultural or societal phenomena any more than sharing a favorite character from The Office can predict long-term compatibility with a Tinder match. These systems can only instrumentalize taste; they turn any expression of self into a reductive data p... See more

“The culture” as a phrase, has been unfortunately hijacked by the artistic class to mean the byproducts of their creativity. But this is an incomplete picture of our culture. Culture is the difference between car-centricity and walkable neighborhoods. Culture is the values we place on our food system. Culture is the quality of our public goods and ... See more

Another few decades later, in 2024, it’s difficult to even remember the world that came before this. No Logo feels dated in 2024 because it’s a dispatch from the twilight of the (comparatively) unbranded world that has since been overwritten, the logic of branding having escaped its traditional corporate confines, now internalized by subcultures, i... See more

Nara's meticulously staged domesticity is less an earnest embrace of tradition and more a savvy recognition of the internet's underlying logic: to succeed in the future, one must cloak themselves in remnants of the past.

Nara’s audience loves her nostalgic conservatism because it reorients them away from today’s particular brand of anxieties – clim... See more