taste
I do not blame anyone but myself for this. This is not something the corporations did to me. This is something I did to myself. But I am looking now for software that insists I make choices rather than whispers that none are needed. I don’t want my digital life to be one shame closet after another. A new metaphor has taken hold for me: I want it to... See more
Ezra Klein • Happy 20th Anniversary, Gmail. I’m Sorry I’m Leaving You.
Ok, here goes: I realized that the quality I value among the most highly—if not the most hightly—in an artistic collaborator is conviction. A lot of words are thrown around when it comes to creative work: trust, community, "gift" in the Lewis Hyde sense, sincerity, etc. But conviction is different—it's belief in what you are doing, being driven to... See more
Weekend Epiphany
Joanne McNeil All My Stars Oct 11, 2022 newsletter
Decades ago, friction was what made a subculture. You had to figure out what punk or goth was about, learn its codes, seek out compatriots, and then maybe go to Hot Topic or a hardcore show. Friction is lower online and visibility is higher. We are all constantly performing our preferences in public. “Subcultures,” in the sense of aesthetic niches,... See more
One Thing • 🟧 Does subculture still exist?
What we get instead is what Byung-Chul Hanmhas described as an "overheating of the ego." Pure individuality through momentary identification of yourself with an aesthetic, which exhausts us by depriving us of any real conflict or difference. What we consume online amounts to a cheaply reproducible set of vague designs. There is only an endless hall of shiny standees, of potential versions of yourself you can pop your face into as you go. Take the photo. And move on. The problem with this "aesthetic," as Silcoff so candidly shows, is that it is entirely a product of the internet’s selfie culture. Offline, these relations – the social construction of identity — were once mediated by something with a bit more give and a sense of reality.
To be clear, some people are great at making things and simply bad at dressing. But what inspires me about the examples above is the running theme of work and talent making you look better . Too often, when we desperately search for “the perfect jeans” “the perfect tee” or “the perfect haircut,” I think that what we are really looking for doesn’t... See more
Do good work and your fits will follow
house dysmorphia vs nostalgia:
social media might be causing a sort of “house dysmorphia”
and it’s finally more noticeable as we become more drawn to nostalgia
your home should be a sincere reflection of yourself, not a copy of someone else’s highly curated design
it has so much more value in your life when the space you spend most of your time is... See more
social media might be causing a sort of “house dysmorphia”
and it’s finally more noticeable as we become more drawn to nostalgia
your home should be a sincere reflection of yourself, not a copy of someone else’s highly curated design
it has so much more value in your life when the space you spend most of your time is... See more
thrift_bee • Link
But the curation was never about financial reward. It was “there's a small unscalable business here about taste, that people rely on and really like, and everyone who works on it doesn't make very much money, but they're very cool.” We just don't live in a world where that's an acceptable way to live. There's a lot of economic pressures and again,... See more
Dirt: Complicated Culture
It’s not just movies and TV, of course — we’re all aghast at how much time we spend on devices, consuming content , whatever that means. Reading and watching and posting and shopping, always shopping for things and ideas and comfort and distraction. Surely this endless marketplace will turn up something that satisfies us at some point! I complained... See more
nytimes.com • Works of Art - The New York Times
We are adrift–a culture of consumers accustomed to buying objects and building collections as the sole means of documenting our cultures–deprived of the infrastructure to do so. But our individual inability to collect and store is one I’ll lament the least.
Yes, we’re drifting, but maybe we can choose to float towards a more collective stewardship... See more
Yes, we’re drifting, but maybe we can choose to float towards a more collective stewardship... See more
Michelle Santiago Cortés • Crimes Against Search | Dirt
personal agency vs enshittification
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