You are not a commercial for yourself

Kelly’s vision depends on an evolution of the Internet in which the vast tangle of possible one-on-one connections partition into countless small cliques—each one a fandom or a mini community revelling in the discovery of others who share their quirks. Instead, the social-media giants effectively rerouted these connections through a small number of... See more

If blindly adhering to your tribe’s goals or working bullshit jobs at a corporation is about somebody else’s goals (“other”), and the creator economy is about you (“me”), this collectivism I speak of is about a redefinition of “us”.

That labor amounts to constant self-promotion in the form of cheap trend-following, ever-changing posting strategies, and the nagging feeling that what you are really doing with your time is marketing, not art. Under the tyranny of algorithmic media distribution, artists, authors — anyone whose work concerns itself with what it means to be human — ... See more

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