Watching the new Miyazaki documentary ("Miyazaki and the Heron" on Max) and just getting hit by haymaker after haymaker

The ‘90s version of not selling out meant refusing to play certain spaces or not letting your song be in a beer commercial. The ‘20s version of selling out means making things in limited quantities to play against mass culture. Though different, the responses come from a similar place. They’re both sensing a culture where, to quote Claire L. Evans ... See more

For creative people this hits especially hard as social media’s invention of “personal brands,” “influencers,” and the “Creator Economy” turned the few remaining aspects of life that hadn’t yet been marketized into the last ways we could make a living without working for somebody else. Gradually and then suddenly creative people found themselves do... See more

Enjoying a newfound creative energy by approaching my output in a "New Media" spirit:

- Breaking platform and category boundaries

- Inviting the public to interact

- Designing limited edition experiences

More interesting, more fulfilling, and more fun

Author Cory Doctorow coined the term "enshittification" to describe the gradual decline of services as they prioritize value extraction over value creation for users, a process he views as an inevitable consequence of platform capitalism.

But at least one thing has always felt clear to us: If you want to try and do something fun, strange and special on the internet, it helps to owe nothing to anyone but your readers.

METALABEL: The feeling I have looking at your universe is you’re people with an incredible amount of self confidence. You have a vision that you're not afraid to pursue. Looking at it as a creative person, it’s inspiring. What I want to be when I grow up.

CLAIRE : There's a certain Rubicon that gets crossed in an artist's life where there's no goin... See more

It used to feel really chaotic to me. I used to be like, how do we make sense of all this stuff? There's so much stuff. There's so many different moods, tones, attitudes, no cohesive narrative. But then once you get enough distance and look in the rearview you realize: that's a body of work.

Our information system has split into an endless number of micro communities, from group chats to online fandoms, all learning about news and major events through increasingly bizarre digital formats.

When I polled a group of friends, one person heard the news in the comment section of a bird's Instagram account, another learned of it in a Discord ... See more