Severin Matusek
@severinmatusek
Writer and strategist, founder of co—matter
co-matter.comSeverin Matusek
As the rest of the internet gets overtaken by bots and AI-generated content and oligarch-owners livestreaming megalomaniacal presidential candidates, the self-contained publications controlled entirely by professional humans win out.
Kyle Chayka • 🟧 Aggregation theory
If AI is able to suddenly pump slop into our environment it’s only because we already turned on the faucets ourselves.
Slop as a Way of Life | Dirt
Cyberspace is a black hole. It absorbs energy and personality. And then represents it as an emotional spectacle. It is done by businesses that commodify human interaction and emotion. And we are getting lost in the spectacle.
— anonymous internet user
Reggie James • Political Expectations
I argued before that “social media” was an alibi for injecting more TV into people’s lives to take advantage of increased network connectivity — that we had to be persuaded that it was a pro-social thing to do to carry little TVs around and watch them at every possible moment. Conflating friendship and entertainment was part of that campaign. Now... See more
Just for a second I thought I remembered you
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.
Jonah & Erin • What we do and who we do it for
The sense is that in the fairly recent past there were social narratives that were both fulfilling and rewarding to participate in, but that for our generation and seemingly subsequent generations to come, it is becoming harder and harder to find and buy into a compelling shared telos. This is the sense of meaninglessness that prompts some people... See more
Everyone’s Existential Crisis
By volume alone, slop may be the most visible and successful by-product of the generative-AI era to date. It is also a hallmark of what I’ve previously described as a collective delusion around artificial intelligence—where the breathless hype and imagined future of building a godlike superintelligence and curing cancer collides with the dull... See more
archive.ph
The US kept interest rates at near zero from 2009 to 2022. This encouraged business models that promised world-changing outcomes, even if they were completely unrealistic and/or hostile to the public interest (eg the gig economy, self-driving cars, crypto, metaverse, AI). This came at a time of no regulation of tech and an accepted culture in... See more
Carole Cadwalladr • ‘Capitalism is dead. Now we have something much worse’: Yanis Varoufakis on extremism, Starmer, and the tyranny of big tech
The artists take a pragmatic stance—what Herndon calls the “sexy middle ground”—in debates around A.I. and tech. “We’ve been doing this forever,” her husband adds. “And then the culture war emerged on either side of us.” The pair don’t evangelize for godlike silicon intelligence, nor will they be smashing the machines. They also believe that... See more