networked worlds

The first recorded use of ‘worldbuilding’ was in an issue of the Edinburgh Review , December 1820.

closed net cultures such as One Direction fandom do produce a lot of creative work, but it’s basically like the inside jokes you come up with at summer camp rather than innovations that will diffuse into the mainstream.

But what if there is no underlying logic? Or, more to the point, what if the logic shifts based on the platform's priorities? If you go down to the midway at your county fair, you'll spot some poor sucker walking around all day with a giant teddy bear that they won by throwing three balls in a peach basket.

Once you understand the enshittification pattern, a lot of the platform mysteries solve themselves. Think of the SEO market, or the whole energetic world of online creators who spend endless hours engaged in useless platform Kremlinology, hoping to locate the algorithmic tripwires, which, if crossed, doom the creative works they pour their money,... See more

The magic of the internet is that it lets us build whole new societies on top of the existing one. These new, internet-led societies have repeatedly shown the power to evolve, push, and even overtake the physical society that created them (for good and for ill).

I love hiking in LA, which is quite ironic when I think that this nature is completely artificial. All the icons of the Angeleno landscape are imported, which creates a paradox, a discomfort: the unconditional love of the locals for an absolutely fake landscape.

It’s only when we establish ourselves on our terms — as Pitchfork , RIP, once did — that we build durable worlds of our own.