Media & Culture
Using media to think deeply about complex issues
Tara McMullin and
Media & Culture
Your Spotify Wrapped for 2024 is the weight of all these things, whether we want to deal with it or not. AI-powered podcasts are the result of expunging the lives of the real humans who built these ideas, replacing them with a facsimile of human connection. Your data feeds into Google, and it builds you the idea of a friend in return. Artists will... See more
Niko Stratis • Wrapped will never love you back
I suspect the rise of inspiration-sharing platforms might be making me, and everyone else on the collaborative internet, more focused on publicising our taste rather than feeding it. It’s easier to go viral on Twitter (err, X) by posting “vintage design inspiration” than it is by posting your own work. New sites like PI.FYI, a social network from... See more
Elizabeth Goodspeed on the Importance of Taste – And How to Acquire It
n this sense, Labubus do seem to be a defining moment of 2020s culture. For those interested in moving culture away from fads such as these, resistance requires much more than a refusal to consume. If fads are narratives as much as products, they need to be starved of engagement, as well. We haven't figured out how to do this yet.
W. David Marx • Only Fads: A Culture (And Economy) of Labubu
intentionality
the stakes for preserving our relationship to things that cannot immediately be had have never felt higher. After all, yearning is a subset of authenticity––a specific type of authenticity that comes from wanting. It’s the thing that we turn to after too easily “having” causes us to lose our way. Yearning isn’t like wellness in the way Gwyneth Paltrow or Andrew Huberman would sell wellness because it often feels like unwellness, but then it also feels like healing.
The problem, in other words, isn't intermediation – it's power . The thing that distinguishes a useful intermediary from an enshittified bully is power . Intermediaries gain power when our governments stop enforcing competition law. This lets intermediaries buy each other up and corner markets. Once they've formed cozy cartels, they can capture... See more
Cory Doctorow • Pluralistic: Middlemen Without Enshittification; The Bezzle Excerpt
Reaching wide audiences requires all-terrain language, and the urgency of the present moment, amplified by chronological feeds, doesn’t allow for much stylistic variety. Efficiency is key — compressing as much information as possible to the least amount of words is the ideal of all communication.
While I do agree that many areas of interaction, like... See more
While I do agree that many areas of interaction, like... See more
Lana, Taylor and anti-institutional realignment
Recently, I watched the Grammys and learned more about Lana Del Rey. I had no idea she was friendly with Taylor Swift, or that she and Taylor shared the same producer. These women have been pop stars for over a decade: Taylor the establishment good girl; Lana, the anti-establishment shock and awe... See more
Recently, I watched the Grammys and learned more about Lana Del Rey. I had no idea she was friendly with Taylor Swift, or that she and Taylor shared the same producer. These women have been pop stars for over a decade: Taylor the establishment good girl; Lana, the anti-establishment shock and awe... See more
Katherine Boyle • Tweet
Research as a way of life is having the ability and the time to question the world around you and add to its understanding. It’s defined by our access and ability to contribute to production of knowledge and evaluate the information around us.