martin luther's wordle starter

so much of our lives are dictated by this kind of algorithmic convergence, so that I don’t even trust it anymore. We’re all being herded.

Peak saturation can be accomplished so easily, so readily on social media.

The point of the haul is novelty, abundance, proliferation. We all love to watch acquisition and permutation. Mix and match. I personally am very susceptible to an unboxing! I can’t help it! They are so engrossing! The stuff! The abundance!

So we’re all chasing novelty. The pulse of something new, something brilliant by which we can distinguish ourselves. The irony is that we don’t know it until someone else shows it to us and then we all copy them and the thing ceases to be novel or particular.

more and more every day that once people decide you have clout or social capital, they want to synchronize with you. They begin to want to converge with you. And that sounds fine, right? Like, people want your opinions. They trust your taste. But the problem becomes then that once you are someone that other people set their watches by, you cease to... See more

one way to preserve the capacity of a symbol to signify is to limit its quantity or access to the symbol. Things only have meaning if not everyone has access to them, or so the logic goes. It’s an old idea. The heart of all emulation, really.

I thought the real pleasure of mass experience was disappearing into a crowd and blending in.

The game (Wordle) seems designed to slow you down. And that slowing down, I think, is really its secret thrill.

for most of human history, those things were invisible to us. They were there if you wanted to look, but for the most part, people just went about their lives, being acted upon by systems and forces, not really thinking about it, just vibing.