A revolution that won't be quantified

Hello friends new and old. After the first two weeks of a creative listening tour, a string of thoughts about the state of the creative internet on a Monday morning.

A new book that teaches you how to see#

This past week Antimemetics: Why Some Ideas Resist Spreading, a book by Nadia Asparouhova that I helped edit and publish through the Dark Forest Collective, made its digital debut (physical editions will ship soon).

Amazingly, the book’s release was greeted with an excellent, in-depth New Yorker review by Gideon Lewis-Kraus that takes the work and its broader context very seriously (non-paywall link). About the book he writes: “Antimemetics is gestural and shaggy, which makes it a generative and fun read... It has the texture of thought, or of a group chat.” From Henrik Karlsson of Escaping Flatland: “It is, among other things, the best history I've read about the last decade of the internet.”

I’m proud to have helped bring this into the world — congratulations to Nadia, and excited to see more responses in the wild.

Indexing the internet#

Lately I’ve found myself appreciating the many creative networks I now belong to. Many of these connections began online. Largely thanks to Metalabel, some are becoming IRL too. Nadia is one of those people (we saw each other in LA). Last week it was Toby Shorin from Other Internet (we already know each other IRL — this was a reunion).

In celebration of Other Intenet's new anthology, Index Space and Metalabel co-hosted a NYC workshop where Toby and an audience mapped the past decade of the internet together. Fifty very-online people in their 20s and 30s gathered to chart a shared history while Toby jotted their observations on a whiteboard. It became a growing timeline of the past ten years of the internet and the motivations and emotions that drove it.

Photo courtesy of Toby Shorin

Together we landed on three distinct eras:

• Collective Defection (2017-2020). Defined by people leaving the mainstream for Substack, Patreon, OnlyFans, and Dark Forests.
• The Big Grift (2020-2023). Defined by the COVID-crypto nexus. 
• $Believe (2023-current). Defined by AI, hype, and scamming. 

The scam era#

Hearing strangers speak IRL about how the internet changed them was striking.

One woman described the world today as “scam or be scammed” — a phrase that got murmurs of agreement. As people talked about their jobs, school, AI, and clout-chasing, the scam or be scammed idea kept returning. Toby told me later that he’s held this workshop three times. In each the phrase has come up.

I even saw an echo in my own life a few days later. 

I needed to schedule a 90-minute Zoom session but didn't have a paid account. Neither did my collaborators. I signed up for a monthly Pro account, scheduled the meeting, then set a reminder to cancel after. If I didn’t cancel first, Zoom would auto-renew me for something I didn’t want.

Wasn't this a version of scam or be scammed?

This is where a decade of SAAS pricing, streaming bifurcation, auto-renewal dark patterns, and crypto scams have left us. Scam or be scammed is a growing part of the operating system of modern life.

Freedom is unquantifiable#

This past week Metalabel co-hosted another event, this one with MadRealities, a TikTok studio that’s made a name for its interactive shows.

We brought together thirty short-film vertical-video makers, artists, and creators to discuss the state of their creative universe. Like the Other Internet event, it was exciting to hear people speak honestly IRL about how they saw the world. Some things I heard:

“If it’s not on TikTok it didn’t happen.”

“Movies and TV were both viewed as lowbrow until someone made something unexpected that changed that. We’re doing the same with the internet.”

“I’m a creator but am I an artist?”

What they shared felt deeply familiar.

What most struck me was the focus on metrics not just as a topic, but an assumed condition of creative life. People were deeply aware of what worked and what didn’t and had pre-set their compasses to what the algorithms wanted.

When people were invited to dream about what they wished they could do, multiple people said to make something because they wanted to. Not to juice the algorithm or perform for others. This was the essence of freedom people were yearning for: a revolution that won't be quantified.

Images of post-its written by the attendees

Stuck between two forces#

Over the past year I’ve been in constant conversation with creative people about where they are personally and where we are as a community. There's a clear dynamic we're all living within.

On the one hand there’s demand for creative output like never before. Whatever you make, it never feels like enough. With AI, you probably can make more. The answer is always more. 

On the other hand the systems of support for creative people are crumbling or nonexistent. It was already tough. Then last month millions of dollars in artist grants were rescinded across America without any financial infrastructure to replace them. 

This vice-like pressure is a microcosm of the wider condition of contemporary life. Produce or perish. Perform or be replaced. Maybe even get replaced anyway. Hence: scam or be scammed.

Our beliefs are not born in a vacuum. We’re a mixture of our surroundings and some deeper essence. We wish to change the world, but even more rapidly the world changes us. Before we know it we can find ourselves unmoored from what we believed and knew. 

When we tie ourselves to external signals like memetic ideologies, metric maxxing, and the pump-and-dump lifestyle, this is especially the case. But when we’re anchored to an internal compass and loyal relationships, the world’s movements feel more like gusts of wind we can brace for, help protect others, and even appreciate.

Fulfilling that goal is the one journey that can't be quantified. A lifetime quest filled with infinite rewards. A process that can only happen within. This is always where it begins.

Links#

• Antimemetics by Nadia Asparouhova
• The Other Internet Anthology
• A video I made explaining the idea of scenius
• A great piece I often think about from Charles Broskoski of Are.na on how he learned to understand how he sees
• Calling Detroit-based artists and creators: on Monday June 9 at 11am I’m hosting an experimental workshop in your city. If you're interested in joining, reply or reach out. Seats are limited.