Molly Snowden

“I have one aim – the grotesque,” he declared. “If I am not grotesque I am nothing.”

In the early days of the internet, the Web’s surface was relatively smooth and its “gravitational force” was weak. You could random walk without getting sucked into any black holes. During the 2010s, social media platforms “dug into the Web surface, dragging activities down their slopes … As a result of this magnetic-like attraction, caused by the ... See more

The marketplace of attention was supposed to solve this problem; we were told that the good channels would be elevated by the platforms and that people would stop watching the bad channels. But the marketplace of attention cares only about attention

Attention is what creates value. Artworks are made as well by how people interact with them — and therefore by what quality of interaction they can inspire. So how do we assess an artist who we suspect is dreadful but who manages to inspire the right storm of attention, and whose audience seems to swoon in the appropriate way? We say, ‘Well done.’

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In New York, people speak fast. In the American South, they speak slowly. Both of them are a form of politeness, understood in a different way. In New York, you speak quickly because you respect the value of the other person’s time and you don’t want to take up too much of it. In the South, you speak slowly because you want to respect the person by... See more