MK

A social network is an idle, inactive system—a Rolodex of contacts, a notebook of sales targets, a yearbook of possible soul mates. But social media is active—hyperactive, really—spewing material across those networks instead of leaving them alone until needed.

This was what personal style was to me in 2008: a cipher for something much broader, a glimpse into the lives of others.

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

Compulsion had always plagued computer-facilitated social networking—it was the original sin. Rounding up friends or business contacts into a pen in your online profile for possible future use was never a healthy way to understand social relationships. It was just as common to obsess over having 500-plus connections on LinkedIn in 2003 as it is to

Flat is in essence a process of homogenization. Today it doesn’t matter where an influencer lives, because she dresses like she’s from the internet, and that’s all that counts.

It’s that these reactions are so normalized online that they’re almost boring.