sari

Facebook is trying to do everything, but in the process, it risks becoming nothing.

We have been co-evolving with ravenous attention predators forever. This is not a fight we can, or should want to, opt out of. We already live in a universe with church, slot machines, and Rhianna. The Sorrows of Young Werther. The Beatles. The bigger and more successful they get, the more boring they become, and the easier they are to ignore.

One of the biggest storytelling “lessons” in the 20th and early 21th century was that audiences have an unending desire for “more” of the stories they already love.

We are not against algorithms. We’ll enthusiastically use algorithms, or AI, or any other technology we can get our hands on, as long as we can use them to serve the human ends that we care about.

The usual antonym for the word “spiritual” is “material.” That at least is what I believed when I began this inquiry—that the whole issue with spirituality turned on a question of metaphysics. Now I’m inclined to think a much better and certainly more useful antonym for “spiritual” might be “egotistical.” Self and Spirit define the opposite ends of... See more

Under the pressure of our higher standards, we’ve learned to compress the coal of social media into diamonds of micro-entertainment.

Once a community is established with enough moderators in place, influencers also don’t have to do tons of work to keep it going. Fans can bond with one another, which ultimately solidifies their bond with the influencer as the creator of that community. Many of the top YouTuber Discord servers include dozens of channels that have nothing to do... See more

Podcasts are another example. There, meaning isn’t just expressed through language, but also through intonation and interaction. Podcasts are where a bad joke can still be followed by a self-aware and self-deprecating save. It’s a more forgiving space for communication than the internet at large.