Sublime

Once you go viral, the temptation is to decipher the formula for how to do it again. Unfortunately, what’s interesting is not always popular. Furthermore, trying to manufacture virality is a surefire way to create saccharine writing and, eventually, cull your own creative vision. Too often, I think we sacrifice slow, chewy art for attention. 

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- "the concrete practices of the tech industry now structure identity and individuality in ways that support its own hegemony. While it presents endless avenues for expression, it sees us as wholly reducible to market logic, where we are real to the degree that our consumption habits are rational. This vision of selfhood promotes uniformity and bou... See more

In the post-hipster era, you listened to what Spotify told you to listen to. If you read a book, it was because the precise pattern of blobby pastel-coloured shapes on its cover contained coded instructions to TikTok’s algorithm that sent it zooming to the top of your feed. Your tastes and preferences were decided for you by vast crystalline machin... See more

Billions use it, including me, but it feels like the dying Rust Belt city of the internet

The trouble with the internet, Mr. Williams says, is that it rewards extremes. Say you’re driving down the road and see a car crash. Of course you look. Everyone looks. The internet interprets behavior like this to mean everyone is asking for car crashes, so it tries to supply them.