Severin Matusek

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.

Right now AI is fun parlor trick; it’s closer to personal tool than anything that will be deployed reliably enough to do the kind of economic shifting that its investors are betting it will.

This is not a rewriting of history as much as a DDoS-ing of it—flooding the zone with so much synthetic crap that engaging with reality and humanity becomes just one of many content experiences to choose from.

The startup was called Tlon, a name I later learned came from a short story by Jorge Luis Borges. “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius” tells of a secret society that conjures a new world by describing it.

Last month, trailblazing Chinese rapper Jackzebra told Dazed that China’s youth “don’t fuck with techno anymore” and are instead gravitating towards the “freedom and chaos” of hardstyle and hyperpop.

In other words, instruments can surprise you with what they offer, but they are not automatic. In the end, they require a touch. You use a tool, but you play an instrument.