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Large parasocial platforms transformed the internet into a hostile and impersonal place. They feed our FOMO to keep us clicking. They exaggerate our differences for "engagement". They create engines for stardom to keep us creeping. They bait us into nutritionless and sensationalist content. Humanity cannot subsist on hype alone.

Small and sincere co... See more

Despite the popularity of analogies comparing social networks to casinos, the best metaphor for our current cultural anomie, or at least the part that’s shaped by the internet, may be the shopping mall. A core principle of 20th-century mall design, which has since spread to a much wider variety of spaces, was a type of environmentally-induced diso

Drew Austin • #196: I Care Because You Do

Chesky said that Airbnb was focused on solving this problem of "travel redistribution." Since tech platforms rarely address the enormity of the social changes they have caused, preferring to deem-phasize their own power, it surprised me that he admitted Airbnb had an effect not just on how people travel, but on where they go, actively influencing t

platforms have risen to become the monolithic, centrally-managed household names that we are so familiar with—where we comfortably upload our memories and fantasies, our arguments and aspirations.

Eileen Isagon Skyers • Dirt: Are we post-platform?

Digital spaces are an urban geography in their own right. The trouble is, most of our online spaces are monopolized by entities ultimately trying to sell us a product. As a result, those spaces similarly embody the same Orwellian doublespeak that characterized the Soviet era. We are told we can use them for building connection and community, but we... See more

Rebecca • Architecting digital spaces

Kids will not believe me when I say this, but people didn’t always absorb their “content” by way of mysterious algorithmic black magic on endlessly-scrolling crack feeds. We used to type web addresses into our browsers, and actually visit our favorite sites. This, going to “www dot college shitpost dot com” or whatever, was itself considered a radi

Today it feels like we’re living through another important cultural shift—the decline of Twitter—and a new generation of networks is experimenting with new structures to try and capitalize on it. If we want to understand what’s next, it helps to ask: what caused the culture shift? What new structures would be better? And what will it feel like to u... See more

Nathan Baschez • Twitter Is Fragmenting

How to Live in a Digital CityWhat we can learn from real-life urbanization to improve online livingBy Megan Garber and Andrea ValdezIllustration by The Atlantic. Source: Corbis / Getty.May 20, 2024 ShareSave While the vibrance, innovation, and cacophony of online life can feel completely unlike anything humanity has ever created before, its newness... See more

How to Live in a Digital City

The de-centralization of timekeeping brought about by digital media harkens back to a much older style of measuring time. Before the invention of the telegraph, there was no way to instantaneously synchronize timekeeping devices across long distances. No time zones, no universal standard against which clock towers could be evaluated for accuracy. T... See more

Sublime

Drew Austin • #196: I Care Because You Do

Eileen Isagon Skyers • Dirt: Are we post-platform?

Rebecca • Architecting digital spaces

Nathan Baschez • Twitter Is Fragmenting

How to Live in a Digital City

Aaron Z. Lewis • The garden of forking memes: how digital media distorts our sense of time