Obsessions: The Pervasive Now

DOPAMINE CULTURE The unstoppable speed of meme culture / language: Slang example, relatability fatigue, micro-nostalgias Reevesy dopamine culture map NIHILISTIC FUTURE Not planning ahead due to pessimism about the future Climate anxiety becoming climate despair in 2024 Not having kids FORGETTING

Andrew Reeves

It’s been endlessly argued that algorithms influence too much of what we watch, listen to, read, and even think. Personal taste erodes while decision-making is outsourced to the platform. This globalization, platform persuasion, and general apathy has spilled over into all types of homogenization: the look of our coffee shops, cars, architecture, l

You could say the same thing is happening on a much larger scale in our culture. There’s a multitude of familiar factors pushing us all into different histories, from misinformation to identity politics, and as a country, there is less and less of a singular timeline that the majority of us can agree on. But a second, and perhaps more important,... See more

Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture a book by Kyle Chayka

bookshop.org

A Time We Never Knew

Freya India afterbabel.com

tiktok.com

NOSTR - decentralised social media

Climate change will manifest as a series of disasters viewed through phones with footage that gets closer and closer to where you live until you're the one filming it.” But you can also swap “climate change” out for anything really — bird flu, cicadas, political extremism, AI-powered drone strikes, Stanley cup riots at Target. Everything that happe

Oh and lastly, as for Skibidi; of course a meme that doesn’t make sense represents a generation who’s growing up in a world which doesn’t make sense. How fitting and somehow unsurprising.

https://zine.kleinkleinklein.com/p/julia-dixon?r=1fmre&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

“Sludge” videos are characterized by the simultaneous playing of multiple clips at once — Family Guy, ASMR slime, and Subway Surfer are some of the most common.

It’s worth calling out the utility of this sludge. The purpose is to offer a more pleasing, dopamine-heavy augmentation to the original content. It’s a sugarcoat to make the “bland” go down.