Severin Matusek

We are not undergoing a crisis of culture but rather a crisis of epistemology.

The fundamental tension of narrative control in the networked era is that most companies impose a hierarchical brand management model onto what has effectively become a distributed, permissionless process. And when the emergent meme-space of networked media meets censorship-resistant infrastructures, brands take on a life of their own.

By the end, I think I was the only one arguing that Europe should build an AI Stack (or something even better) rather than insisting that, in essence, AI is superproblematic and thus Europe should resist doing this superproblematic thing.

Dank memes, deep-fried memes, shitposting, feralposting, goblin mode, doomscrolling, or whatever insinuates seemingly senseless online content consumption were all essentially describing brainrot. The term, however, is iconic because it marks a significant turning point. It aptly describes the beginning of our biological coalescence with the... See more

All these points in AI’s favor prompt some nervous reappraisals. Essays that began in bafflement or dismay wind up convinced that the technology marks an epochal shift in reading and writing.

I think everything you write has a purpose, and if you understand the purpose and the audience, you shouldn’t veer too far from what its intention is. I would like to be good at writing ad copy, writing press releases and writing articles in all their correct ways, but then also be able to experiment and expand the form.

But cognitive atrophy - that can happen instantly. Someone can start reflexively outsourcing their thinking today, and the degradation begins immediately. No approval process required. No implementation timeline. No procurement cycle. Just a quiet erosion of capability, person by person, decision by decision. And it compounds. Every month of... See more