Videos

John Taking a Year Off

How various social internet sites occupy our brains has been a recurring topic on here, and I think he summarizes it all pretty well. These sites are working as intended, but I don’t like that intention, and I don’t like how they work for me, personally.

My own experiences with taking time off have had limited success. I still find myself on Facebook or Tumblr or Instagram (or… or… or…) more than I would like, though I’m interacting with it less and have less expectation of interaction on them (which I think is still a net win, but not as much as I’d like). I’m not sure I’m at the point of going cold-turkey (and what shape that would take — where do I want to spend my time?) like John, but it definitely continues to be on my mind.

Tracy Ullman’s Woke Support Group

It’s true. It’s super easy to start overthinking everything. Being “woke” is a good thing, but like she says, it’s a slippery slope. (To be clear, intersectional awareness is valuable, as is being aware of the consequences of your actions. But you can take it too far, where you’re actually causing more harm than the thing you’re calling out. Don’t @-me.) It also reminds me of a CollegeHumor bit:

Link: The Boho’s Lament

Via Kottke. This is about New York and the Village, but I feel like it’s about more than that. It’s about the homogenization, pacification, and gentrification of the places that were previously the havens of the freaks and weirdos who struggled to fit in anywhere else. It’s about society (and how we interact with it) becoming performative, and anything that deviates from the norm becoming a spectacle for others. You can sense some anger and frustration in this video, and I definitely get why. People who have been outcast, or are considered weird or a freak are people, and shouldn’t be treated as a spectacle or a tourist destination.