sari
- Platforms like TikTok and Instagram are engines of distraction and cultural rot. They stand in front of the more difficult but more rewarding aspects of life: deep work, intimate connections with friends and loved ones, focused attention for hobbies with intrinsic rewards. By training users to crave constant novelty and the immediate approval of an... See more
from TikTok and Instagram are intellectual poison by Adam Singer
"Irony is the song of a bird that has come to love its cage." - David Foster Wallace
- I have thousands of photos of my children but few that I’ve set aside to revisit. I have records of virtually every text I’ve sent since I was in college but no idea how to find the ones that meant something. I spent years blasting my thoughts to millions of people on X and Facebook even as I fell behind on correspondence with dear friends. I have ... See more
from Happy 20th Anniversary, Gmail. I’m Sorry I’m Leaving You. by Ezra Klein
- The widespread TikTok-ification of all social apps is quite striking (and sad!) Literally, all apps (Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, etc) have become one click away to an infinite stream of viral videos, playing non-stop. The ratio of mindless consumption to building something meaningful on computing devices now likely exceeds 10:1, and ma... See more
- The internet doesn’t have to demand our presence the way it currently does. It shouldn’t be something we have to look at all time. If it wasn’t, maybe we’d finally be free to hang out. The first time I ever heard about Facebook, back in 2004, was from someone proudly declaring that she had just spent four hours using it. At the time, it was outrage... See more
from It's Time to Lie Down and Be Counted by Drew Austin
- Our modest goal with Substack is to help accelerate and amplify the advent of the culture future through a better media system. Culture is not just about getting what you want; it is about learning what to want. It shapes our values, beliefs, identity, taste, and how we relate to other people. And in turn, we shape it, when we choose what to pay at... See more
from The Two Futures of Media by Chris Best
the world is a surprisingly malleable place and has reconfigured itself around compelling visions many times before
- Search engines — the window into the web for many people — top their results with pages containing thousands of words of auto-generated nothingness, perfectly optimized for search engine prominence and to pull in money via ads and affiliate links while simultaneously devoid of any useful information.
Social networks have become “the web” for many pe... See morevis Molly White
- instead of seeking to maximize status — which some of us still do — more of us find ourselves seeking safety and context online instead.
from The Dark Forest and the Post-Individual by Yancey Strickler
the next era of the Internet
- for nearly fourteen years afterwards, I stared at a smartphone every single day. Five thousand days, all in all. I can’t think of anything else I’ve done with the same level of commitment. There have been days where I’ve had nothing to eat or drink and there have been nights when I didn’t sleep. But until very recently, I never once went twenty-fou... See more
via Sam Kriss
a little easter egg. if you find this card, here’s your free digital version of Sublime’s first zine:
Can you Imagine? A library of possibilities for reimagining the Internet