Things I Like
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A quick post that I think about a lot. I don't want to quote it because I think reading it in its entirety is worth is much more than skimming anything I could quote.
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Zadie Smith is quickly becoming a voice in my generation that I listen to carefully and read carefully and this interview with Ezra Klein shows a lot of the reasons why. The way in which Smith thinks about social media, technology, words, and our current times always makes me think. I especially enjoy the way in this interview that she pushes back on Klein and rejects some of the premises he bases his questions on. Also: I love that she carries a map book instead of using a smart phone.
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False flag operations. Disproportionate cultural panics. Disproportion generally. Censorship. Self-censorship. Conspiracies. Deep dives. Doing your own research. Keeping receipts. Putting you on blast. Registering your deafening silence. Living in bubbles. Living in echo chambers. Let that sink in. #Nuance. Team Fact. Team Feeling. For the past fifteen years we have—all of us—been subjected to a truly monumental network of psychological influence that our governments have failed to regulate in any real way whatsoever. Just as it was in the Thirties, our version of the propaganda megaphone is “subject to no legal or moral restraints.” Maybe it’s time that it is?
More Zadie Smith but this piece is really interesting, taking something written about living in Germany in the 1930s and seeing how that can help us view today. As is usual for Smith, her insights on social media and algorithms and how they are affecting our society and us as people. Something I'm thinking about weeks after reading it.
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Your phone should be used as a tool, not a constant companion. To accomplish this: (1) keep your phone plugged into the same spot when at home (instead of having it with you); and (2) remove all apps from your phone where someone makes more money the more you use it.
I don't love everything Cal Newport posts, mostly because I think in order to live the way he advocates he must have someone doing a lot of the work of life for him (cleaning, cooking, etc), but I did find some of this post making me stop to think. I'll admit that I do treat my phone the way he talks about by leaving it mostly in one spot most days, but I'd not thought of apps in quite the way he put it, about making money off of you.
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Not to sound like a curmudgeon, but when I was a teenager, I took the train to go to the record store to find rare stuff. Spotify is way more convenient, but that wasn’t the point. The point was to get out and to feel like you’re hunting, to feel like you’re living your life. I’m going to the movies, I’m going to this show. What streaming has done—it’s very convenient, but it’s taken the feeling of going hunting and turned it into we’re all just being fed. We’re all farm animals that are just being fed, and we’re being fed content.
There's a lot I really liked in this article, the above quote about how we're not searching things out anymore, or nearly as much. But I also finished it thinking about the loss of commonality because there is so much to watch that it's really rare for me to talk with people who are watching what I'm watching. I think about that a lot, is that a good thing or a bad thing? I'm not sure, but I do miss some of the commonality that I used to experience with folks over a popular show or movie.
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If Substack — and Bluesky, another platform getting a lot of love these days — does not enshittify, that would be a miracle on the order of the loaves and fishes. If you’re a creator who wants to avoid enshittification and remain independent, your best bet is to claim your turf on the open web — that is, where we are right now.
Jacobs nails it in this post with all the ways in which Substack is not indie. I get why people talk about it that way, but you are at the mercy of the platform and you don't have any control over what they do.
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I’ll always be online—that’s never going to change. But I’m done with platforms tethered to the dark cloud of debt to billionaires and those chasing billionaire dreams. There’s no blue sky in that direction.
I'm not on Bluesky so I have no experience with it, but I did find a lot of what Storey had to say here really interesting. I've been thinking about the way in which I've changed and the world has changed and how much that's had an impact on how I view social media.
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As more and more AI gets
marketedshoved down our collective throats, the accompanying benefits are often couched in terms of speed as an unalloyed good: “I did this in X minutes using Copilot.” That tells me nothing about why you chose the shortcut. Was it a tedious task like reformatting data? Or was it something that required experience, and creativity, and that would have required too much of you to acquire through traditional means?A really good piece that takes some great quotes to make a thoughtful piece on AI. I'm with Mark, I'm not sure how I feel about AI, but I do know that most the ways big tech want me to feel aren't it. And I really, really wish that more people were talking about the costs of it, because they are great but hidden—just like getting fast stuff from Amazon has a cost for someone, it just may not be you.
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I’ll read news, not other people’s reactions to news.
This was linked by someone in my RSS feeds, I forget who, but that line hit me like a ton of bricks. I'm not on a lot of social media, but I do check a few feeds of people I like and I realized last week this was not great for me, so I started to do it less frequently. The above line makes me realize why it's not good for me. I'm still figuring out how I'll consume news, I'm not going to get print papers given that in my rural area that's hard and expensive, but I'm starting to see a way forward that works for me, I'll share more at some point, maybe.
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That’s all I have to say to myself tonight: How can I be with what is arising? This is a radically different response than martyrdom, classism, blame, hate, revenge, sanctimony, resignation, denial, or numbing. And it makes rooms for emotions—grief, fear, sadness, confusion, anger, disappointment. I’m not talking about toxic positivity or spiritual bypassing here. I am talking about facing all of it, which is only possible when we have community and spiritual practices to hold us up. Strong individual values won’t do it. Reading the news won’t do it. Self-care won’t do it. Not even moral outrage by itself will help us face what is arising. There is a place for all those things, of course. But they will not bring the healing, understanding, and yes, change, that we long for.
Sarah Murphy-Kangas has been a favorite in my feeds for a while now, it's not all my cup of tea, but often she speaks so well about what is happening in the world. I found this piece helpful in light of world events.
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The antidote to all of this, in the broadest terms, is more reality, more immersion in the finite here and now: more writing on paper; more gathering in person and in public; more looking strangers in the eye; more scruffy hospitality; more queueing for the supermarket checkout that’s staffed by a human, if there even is one; more feeling the weather on your face and staring into fires; more living as creatures, not machines.
This is probably the most helpful thing I've read since the election. Your mileage may vary, of course, but I do think getting outside and being around other people and using my paper journal and making things out of yarn and fabric are helpful. I'm thinking through how I can consume media in a way that keeps me somewhat in the loop but doesn't damage my mental health. I'm still not sure of all the things I'll be doing going forward but I am following a lot of Burkeman's advice here.
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In my last sustained period on Twitter, six or seven years ago I guess, when I was still promoting my published writings, I remember often — quite often — getting replies or quote-tweets from people who had no idea what I was saying but wanted to comment on it in a way that corroborated or reinforced their sense of themselves, their social self-presentation, a social self-presentation that typically took the form of performative partisan self-righteousness.
Jacobs response to Mandy's post caught my attention and I've been thinking about both posts since originally reading them. I'm with Jacobs here, but my reasoning for not doing syndication is dramatically different. I have no idea how many people read my site as I have no analytics on here, but I don't want the words traveling anywhere else because I would feel obligated to then be on those sites more and checking replies and responding to people so as not to be rude. Weird, but it's the way I'm wired. I really can't do social media, it does things to my brain that are really not good for me.
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I’m not interested in paternalistic nudges or vapid prompts to think twice, but rather, something like the way a well-designed park creates space both to gather and to wander—quiet benches tucked under trees alongside open fields fit for games, pathways for walking in ones and twos, blooms and birdhouses that invite a moment of rest. What if our social spaces had more ways to get lost? More places to sit a spell? What if we brought more intention to the way we contribute to these patterns? To the way our own choices overflow the container, and push on what’s possible.
Another thoughtful post from Mandy on social media and again, it makes me think of the way things were and they way they will likely never be again. I can also see how our own human nature somewhat drives these things and it makes me think a lot about the writing of Sara Hendren.
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I read to escape. I read to find myself. I read because I like facts. I read because I like fiction. I read for entertainment. I read to fall asleep. I listen to books to help me finish mundane tasks like doing the dishes every night. And I listen to books because there’s a slight communistic thrill of getting them from the library.
The only thing I'd add to what Dave has said is: if you aren't enjoying what you're reading, don't finish it. It's taken me way too long to give myself permission to do that.
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To step into the stream of any social network, to become immersed in the news, reactions, rage and hopes, the marketing and psyops, the funny jokes and clever memes, the earnest requests for mutual aid, for sign ups, for jobs, the clap backs and the call outs, the warnings and invitations—it can feel like a kind of madness. It’s unsettling, in the way that sediment is unsettled by water, lifted up and tossed around, scattered about. A pebble goes wherever the river sends it, worn down and smoothed day after day until all that’s left is sand.
I read this piece by Mandy yesterday and I've been thinking about it ever since because of the analogies and way in which she talks about social media is so good. I had a hard time choosing a quote as there was another paragraph that hit me hard, about the nostalgia of the old Twitter and what it was. I'm no longer on a computer all day like I was in prior years, so I post a lot less frequently here than I'd like. But I use a journal and all the things that used to go into social media end up there. I have no where to syndicate my thoughts to and that has been very good for me and keeping my mind clear and my thoughts on what is important rather than the muck.