Severin Matusek

It’s actually a pretty good time to be a solo operator in media in general, though — there’s a lot of opportunities to build a business with self-publishing and subscriptions, while audiences have adapted to a media diet built around relatable individuals rather than old institutions. Add on the usual revenue streams of speaking engagements,... See more

Looking at memes from the outside, we see an ever-evolving meta-language dynamic hypercontextual structure, but at its core, it simply operates on a single energy source: empathy.

“It’s unsurprising that ketamine has taken over as the ‘drug of choice’ for young people, because of its disassociating effects, which allow you to be close to one another, while being isolated in your individual k-holes. It also makes it harder to look at your phone.” Plus, let’s face it, it’s hard to look all cool and serious while K-holing.

The debate over “is it real or fake” is somewhat ironic, because so much of what we experience as reality even within our own bodies is actually simulation.

Something that troubles me is the idea that maybe everything is becoming financialized because financial markets are the last remaining system capable of aggregating distributed information and enabling coordination at scale.

Influencer culture, self-enhancement medicine, cheatware, min/maxing... the signs were coming for a while, but now we have legit, permanent systems at the heart of everyday life that force the decoupling on all of us.

The internet is what allows what’s inside — our minds, our souls, our many selves — to interact with the insides of others. The internet is where our alts come alive, our internal monologues become dialogues, and a stray thought becomes a globally resonant meme. This is its miracle.

That for me is the poetics of encryption. Artists are already using generative AI as a tool to reimagine our relation to the perennial big ideas. Like: What is identity? What is spirituality? What is cultural heritage? How can the human resist the fast-moving disruption to our lives and to our long-standing imaginaries? These are the questions that... See more