Severin Matusek

brands like Rare Beauty and Poppi reward subscribers with early launches and discounts, while using their communities to gauge new ideas, get feedback and build loyalty. Loyalty driven by sincere participation compounds, creating brand evangelists whose influence can’t be bought.

But mostly they just drop cool pictures and funny memes, and discuss or riff on them. “There’s an understanding that, like, you’re not going to kick each other, you’re not going to judge each other,” he said. “You’re not here to represent your identity; you’re just here to chill.”

I should also reiterate here that my work is absolutely not trying to future-cast a singular vision or offer immediate solutions to the present, which is an impossible and dangerous brand of solutionism that we know well enough already from the technosolutionists in Silicon Valley. Rather, I’m using speculation to expand the atlas of shared... See more

There's a very brief window of time. In this moment, right here and right now, some folks are eagerly starting projects, building assets and creating values. Others, in a pattern we've seen again and again, are waiting, fearfully, ignoring what's happening and hoping for the best.

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

“The hunger for something shared is going to increase,” writes Stratechery’s Ben Thompson about the solipsism of the AI era.

In Mythologies , Roland Barthes discusses how wrestling (and now, politics) uses kayfabe, the convention of presenting staged narratives and spectacles as real to capture attention and elicit a desired response from an audience.

This is an answer to the individualism of the creator economy.