MK

Cultural production is ever more finely attuned to attention, which is ever more pervasively measured and monetized. Commerce and culture are locked in an ever-tighter embrace.

Twitter was for talking to everyone —which is perhaps one of the reasons journalists have flocked to it.

Truly democratizing cultural creativity, one might argue, would promote the development of skills and capacities rather than minimize the need for them.

Welcome to the flat era of fashion. Flat is what happens when consumers buy clothing on the basis of how it looks in two dimensions, in an image to be shared on social media.

The flip side of that coin also shines. On social media, everyone believes that anyone to whom they have access owes them an audience...

But connection as a primary purpose has declined. Think of the change like this: In the social-networking era, the connections were essential, driving both content creation and consumption. But the social-media era seeks the thinnest, most soluble connections possible, just enough to allow the content to flow.

It’s a genre of content I like to call “Type of Guy” syndrome, where people on the internet create a mostly fictional straw man to represent a certain kind of person they dislike and then project it onto the one in front of them.