James Cooper

Porn is what you get when the act matters more than the intimacy.

And now everything’s porn.

Food porn. Design porn. Storytelling porn.

Slick. Stimulating. Shallow.

We celebrate virality but forget the virus.

We crave engagement but avoid connection.

Jobs are a great example: Particularly if you’re early in your career, you should aim to get rejected from most things you apply for. If you have not yet learned the skill of absorbing rejection, court it deliberately: Apply for some jobs you really don’t think you’ll get so you can learn to decouple “no” from surprise and dejection.

Not using a phone taught me what a phone is really for. It’s not for communicating with other people, getting directions, reading articles, looking at pictures, shopping for products, or playing games. A phone is a device for muting the anxieties proper to being alive .

The kids can’t read . They can sound out the letters and recognise words, but they find it impossible to sit in one place and ingest a single extended linear piece of prose for more than five minutes. The kids don’t go outside. They don’t feel the sun on their skins. They spend whole summers locked in their rooms, alone, experiencing the world... See more

When it comes to AI, we need to aim higher than the question: “What if you could press a button to generate an essay?” AI can produce infinite amounts of content; quantity is its game. Quality, intention, taste, originality, vision—that’s where we come in.