I’ve never heard of Sam Kriss but a bit of his writing emerged from substack and it’s glorious! He’s written a fine article that encompasses the internet and damn near everything else. Pour yourself a cup of coffee and go read it.
You’ve earned an article like that! Consider it a way of giving your poor overclocked brain a nice treat. Its been struggling though what I call the “Bidenverse” that happened following the end of the “Before Times”. Kriss nails all those concepts better than I ever will.
I’m pasting a few quotes to entice you to read the whole thing. We’ve all heard the usual “the internet is dead” screed. It’s pretty obvious to all of us that large swaths of what was once called “cyberspace” have hit the wall creatively. Kriss says it better:
A dying animal still makes its last few spastic kicks: hence the recent flurry of strange and stillborn ideas. Remember the Internet of Things? Your own lightbulbs blinking out ads in seizure-inducing Morse code, your own coffee machine calling the police if you try to feed it some unlicensed beans. Remember the Metaverse? The grisly pink avatar of Mark Zuckerberg, bobbing around like the ghost of someone’s foreskin through the scene of the recent genocides. Wow! It’s so cool to immersively experience these bloodmires in VR! More recent attempts to squeeze some kind of profit out of this carcass are, somehow, worse.
Kriss puts plenty of meat on those tired bones. Optimistically, I think he might be onto something. Plus he’s got a sense of humor:
Whatever it is I’m doing here, you should not be part of it. Do not click the button below this paragraph, do not type in your email address to receive new posts straight to your inbox, and for the love of God, if you have any self-respect, do not even think about giving me any money. There is still time for you to do something else. You can still unchain yourself from this world that will soon, very soon, mean absolutely nothing.
About his future on substack:
I’m told that the most successful writing on here is friendly, frequent, and fast. Apparently, readers should know exactly what you’re getting at within the first three sentences. I do not plan on doing any of these things.
Hat tip to Ace of Spades (in Tech News).
Wow!
I’m not crazy!
…or at least I’m not the only one….
For the last 15 years or so (more so in the last 5), I have had this niggling feeling that there is very little point to any of…”this”.
** Hours spent on the internet, looking for that “aha” moment when you can say “Yes! THERE is the point of all of this rabbit-hole searching I’ve been doing!”
** Millions of people posting billions of photos as if it “means” something.
** Videos of concerts where half the audience is more intent on recording the performance on their phone than, you know, enjoying the moment of the performance.
I am almost 60.
I had never taken a vacation. Never.
Four years ago, I spent almost $5000 of hard-earned savings to visit the only place I had ever been interested in. Southeast Asia.
My wife and I spent 3 weeks in Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore.
We drank the same liquor, slept in the same mediocre beds, dealt with the same day-to-day BS. Same as at home.
We met some interesting people and we met A LOT of assholes. Same as at home.
(…could have saved a bunch of money, and stress, just staying at home and having all of our meals catered by a high-end Asian eatery for 3 weeks.)
My take-away was not some exotic experience.
It was that the people there are doing the same daily grind there and wondering if it isn’t magically “nicer” elsewhere. Same as us.
It was different…but not any “nicer”.
I’m not sure what my point is.
I’m just having a difficult time trying to decide if there IS a point…to ANY of “this”.
SQ at Squirrel take.
“How DARE they!”
There you go.
Needed I kick in the ass? Gave you one.
Mr. baseball, etc,
know you
hell I gave you the ideas.