taste

The New Generation of Online Culture Curators | The New Yorker

In fact, Chayka treats the concept of “taste” throughout with a preciousness I doubt he actually is unsophisticated enough to hold. He cites contradictory definitions, mobilizing Voltaire one moment to say that taste must be cultivated and effortful, and then Montesquieu and Agamben the next to say that taste works by rules we do not (cannot?)... See more

bookforum.com • Kyle Chayka Looks at Our Supposedly Flat New World

I stand alongside Chayka in looking for strategies to pushing in the other direction. But I can’t help rolling my eyes when he talks as if it’s any kind of novelty for artists (much less “influencers”) to find their visions stymied by commercial demand. Again, one advantage of the algorithmic version may be that it’s externalized in ways that become easier to spot and critique.

Logging off

It’s easy to forget that we used to find music, movies, photography, and books entirely offline. You’re more likely to discover something truly serendipitous and surprising flipping through vintage magazines at your local public library than endlessly scrolling an Instagram feed that’s already tailored to your taste. Stroll through an... See more

Escape the algorithm | Dirt

Collecting is an exercise in creating a framework, the logic of what is in or out. But then there are decisions that seem associative or intuitive.

The Organizing Edition

Educated people feel a duty to know these trends as part of cultural literacy. They don't buy Labubus, yet they join the "we" and descend into introspective angst about what Labubus mean for the state of "our" collective psychology.

As a general strategy for cultural consumption, omnivorism was very smart: Erecting artificial barriers against “low”... See more

The New Yorker Roundup

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

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

Michelle Santiago Cortés • Crimes Against Search | Dirt

personal agency vs enshittification

Philosophy begins in wonder, and the art of it is to keep this wonder with you. Many questions are worth asking, re-asking, revisiting, rethinking. One must seek Knowledge, but be a little wary of finding it. Perhaps excessive, but one could say the idea of possessing knowledge represents a kind of complacency. This is what Socrates meant: Once you... See more

Simon Sarris • Long Distance Thinking

The question of our time is how do you artistically rebel — and win — against a totally flat cultural landscape? And before my readers, who I assume are all approximately 36 years old and very tired, say, “so what, who cares?” This does matter. I mean, just look around right now lol. You know things are bad when even OpenAI President Greg Brockman... See more

Link

And the most dangerous thing for platforms is not racist garbage. It’s unmonetizeable content. The “metric” that will matter most going forward will not be the numbers at the bottom of a post or video, but the human beings in a room that left their house to experience something.