The Weekly Roundup (week of 3.27)
How many more takes about AI will it take for us to feel whole...
1. You Are You. We Live Here. This is Now.
A refreshing take from Freddie deBoer on technology’s impact on social behavior in the United States. We’ve all seen countless articles on loneliness, plummeting marriage rates, and the decreasing birth rate, but what I like about this one is that there’s an actual message to take away from it. “All across our culture, you’ll find people eager to abandon the fundamental task of our lives, fostering and maintaining human connection…” Technology, social media, and increasingly AI have given people a reliable escape from the banality and pain of human existence, but that escape itself lacks the fundamental substance which gives people the rich experiences life has to offer. My TL is plagued with trite bullshit about AI, full of unsubstantiated doomer predictions about something that frankly no one can predict. If you’re looking for something that gives you a better snapshot of the human condition impacted by current technological trends, read more here.
2. Perfectly Imperfect
This is my new favorite newsletter, and it’s 100% free! It’s a simple concept really: cool people like cool things. Every week they interview 2 people who give their recommendations of anything from books to fragrances, to cigarette brands or even life advice. Check it out!
3. This article is long ah hell
Contrary to what the title suggests this article is actually really short. But that also serves the purpose of the content of the piece which is that people’s attention spans are so fucking short that we need to stitch together clips of tv shows with gameplay from temple run or some other thing to keep us fixated on one video.
“While there are similar clips online featuring adjacent shows like The Simpsons and Rick and Morty, Family Guy’s cutaway gag format is tailored for a quick dopamine hit, like TikTok, and provides a perfectly slurried amalgamation of information for our pattern-seeking brains. When paired with something like Subway Surfers, it creates a jumbled mess of visual stimulation, which is sensorially rich yet devoid of any meaning. Call it the iPad-ification of online content, or Gen Alpha’s growing influence on popular culture, but something weird is happening to our brains – and it’s not so much smoothing, but a full-on mind-flattening.”
4. The Anatomy of a Vibe Shift.
If you don’t know who Sean Monohan is, you’ve probably heard of the more popular terms he’s coined such as norm-core or “the vibe shift” (which is basically the revival of hipsterdom). I really like this diagram that he made because it’s not only simple but can also be applied to future trends that one sees emerging. The death of the millennial aesthetic is something I’m very happy about, if I have to see another one of those Red Antler DTC brands on my TL I’m gonna snap. Read more about the vibe shift here.