Severin Matusek

A few years ago, a user by the name of IlluminatiPirate published Dead Internet Theory: Most of the Internet is Fake on the online forum Agora Road’s Macintosh Cafe.1 The theory proposes that the majority of the content with which we engage online is algorithmically generated by bots, all in an effort to control what we believe. I feel obligated to... See more

Walk into Lululemon’s new Chicago flagship and you might wonder if you’ve stumbled into a wellness resort.

The logic is simple enough. Amazon demolished traditional retail’s convenience advantage years ago. Physical stores had to find a new selling point or die trying. Their answer? Theatre. From Samsung’s product-testing playgrounds to Canada... See more

Moving “the future” away from ideologies of dominance and control has become imperative. One promising model can be found in the collective known as the Tropical Futures Institute, founded by designer and gallerist Chris Fussner. Based on the party island of Cebu, Philippines, the “institute” is in fact a decentralized, roaming think tank that... See more

As social ties fray and mental health infrastructure deteriorates, people turn to AI for emotional support—the same AI that then urges them to kill themselves.

The co-opting of “community” into a sales strategy is insidious, not only because it reduces likeminded groups of people to consumer demographics, but because, in an era when we’re all encouraged to cultivate our own “personal brands,” it also reduces each of us to a salesperson , seeking out likeminded people in order to sell them things , whether... See more

Speculators, in turn, look to charismatic leaders as “social proof” that their risk-taking is warranted, and likely to be rewarded. The ritualism of meme coin culture might be described as what Victor Turner called a kind of “communitas”: a social condition in which individuals, connected by a collective suspension of normative hierarchies, adopt... See more

I don’t think it’s a coincidence we’re so fiercely protecting our intellectual property in an era when it’s harder and harder to purchase physical property.