Obsessions: The Pervasive Now

DOPAMINE CULTURE The unstoppable speed of meme culture / language: Slang example, relatability fatigue, micro-nostalgias Reevesy dopamine culture map NIHILISTIC FUTURE Not planning ahead due to pessimism about the future Climate anxiety becoming climate despair in 2024 Not having kids FORGETTING

Andrew Reeves

“Sludge” videos are characterized by the simultaneous playing of multiple clips at once — Family Guy, ASMR slime, and Subway Surfer are some of the most common.

It’s worth calling out the utility of this sludge. The purpose is to offer a more pleasing, dopamine-heavy augmentation to the original content. It’s a sugarcoat to make the “bland” go down.

It’s been endlessly argued that algorithms influence too much of what we watch, listen to, read, and even think. Personal taste erodes while decision-making is outsourced to the platform. This globalization, platform persuasion, and general apathy has spilled over into all types of homogenization: the look of our coffee shops, cars, architecture, l

Climate change will manifest as a series of disasters viewed through phones with footage that gets closer and closer to where you live until you're the one filming it.” But you can also swap “climate change” out for anything really — bird flu, cicadas, political extremism, AI-powered drone strikes, Stanley cup riots at Target. Everything that happe

Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture a book by Kyle Chayka

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Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence

Anna Lembke • 3 highlights

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Cover of Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence

My overarching thesis is that we are at the early stages of a multi-decade super-cycle of retail empowerment driven by the fact that “consumption, culture and community” are now tradeable assets. Consumption is no longer ephemeral, but persistent. No longer private, but communal. No longer limitless, but scarce. Consumption is, for the first time, ... See more

Richard Kim • Thoughts at the Intersection of Web3 and Creative Culture

Collapse of culture and commerce

You could say the same thing is happening on a much larger scale in our culture. There’s a multitude of familiar factors pushing us all into different histories, from misinformation to identity politics, and as a country, there is less and less of a singular timeline that the majority of us can agree on. But a second, and perhaps more important,... See more

A Time We Never Knew

Freya India afterbabel.com

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NOSTR - decentralised social media