#704: Corporate cringe and ex-texts
A "patron saint of the internet" isn't going to cut it
The best part about going to Catholic school, in my hard-won personal opinion, is the lifelong license to call the church out on its prolific bullshit. Just this week, the Catholic diocese of Buffalo — where, for better or worse, I live — cancelled a choral festival because the Gay Men’s Chorus was scheduled to perform in it. Days earlier, the big man himself uttered a homophobic slur and slapped down the notion that women could be deacons. Meanwhile, the church is hoping to draw young people back to this inspired, contemporary institution by canonizing “God’s influencer,” a 15-year-old “Steve Jobs fan who loved his PlayStation.”
Said Apple fan — otherwise known as Carlo Acutis, who died of leukemia in 2006 — has already/prematurely been dubbed the “the patron saint of the internet.” Acutis coded a website about miracles during his lifetime, then purportedly wracked up two of his own after death. That track record has thrilled Catholic commentators the world over, who hope Acutis might inspire today’s godless youth to turn back to the church again.
I’m not knocking the sainthood play, to be clear. In fact, I love it. It’s macabre as hell. Since 2022, pieces of the late teenager’s disembodied heart have actually been touring Catholic schools and churches, the better to draw youthful worshipers in.
Nothing says “how do you do, fellow kids?” like a desiccated pericardium. Here’s an alternate idea: Let the gay dudes sing (etc., etc.), and maybe attracting young Catholics … won’t take full-blown miracles!
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If you read anything this weekend
Three reads on AI, beauty and reality. That sounds heady, doesn’t it?! But I encountered these three pieces a couple days apart, and I keep drawing little threads and parallels between them.
“What AI Thinks a Beautiful Woman Looks Like,” by Nitasha Tiku and Szu Yu Chen for The Washington Post. You know, without clicking, what these AI-generated women look like: young, white, poreless, thin. And yet, I *would* recommend clicking through for the full/unsettling experience.
“The Eye Of The Beholder Got A Blepharoplasty,” by
for The Review of Beauty. “The physical ideal that we are measured against is not determined by any one individual’s preferences, or any one beholder’s eye, but has been shaped over centuries by oppressive political forces.”“It’s the Real Thing!,” by Leo Kim for The Baffler. Why it’s a problem that AI-generated art assumes that data is the best/truest way to understand the world.
“Blighted Horizons,” by Noelle Bodick for The Point. Sticking to the theme of datafied understanding — also lady stuff, I guess?? — this essay is absolutely unsparing in its appraisal of “Tamagotchified” daycares, Emily Oster and the whole “technocratic” parenting movement. I do not have a child, as you all well know, but I’ve side-eyed Jason over many a friend’s daycare app updates; I also worshiped at the altar of Expecting Better until my experience deviated from the statistical average. The anxieties at play behind these impulses, I think, go far behind child-rearing: “The illusion that every decision can be “justified” with empirical evidence [allows] you to efficiently sidestep the sense of unknowing and failure that are half of parenting.”
“America’s Premier Pronatalists on Having ‘Tons of Kids’ to Save The World: ‘There Are Going to be Countries of Old People Starving to Death,’” by Jenny Kleeman for The Guardian. Ugh I KNOW, I know — I should really look away. Even Malcom and Simone Collins describe themselves and their fast-growing family as “human clickbait.” And yet, I find myself reading every story that profiles these two, who mysteriously appear to be the only public figures in a vaguely tech-adjacent, right-wing “movement” to shore up the demographics of the Western world.1
“The New Generation of Online Culture Curators,” by Kyle Chayka for The New Yorker. Am I sharing an article about the VALUE and IMPORTANCE of online curators solely because … I am one myself?? That’s a subject for me to know, and you to cynically guess at. But please allow me, if you will, a single passive-aggressive pull quote:
“Curation takes work, and like any other kind of labor it is only sustainable if it’s reasonably compensated … The onslaught of online content requires filtering, whether technological or human, and those of us who dislike the idea of A.I. or algorithms doing the filtering for us might think more about how we support the online personalities who do the job well.”
(And a single aggressive-aggressive reminder: This newsletter pays my mortgage!)
In case you missed it
The most-clicked link from last Saturday’s round-up was the novella-length essay on cardboard boxes. Wasn’t sure how that one would hit, so have to say I’m delighted.
Wednesday’s edition announced the forgotten inbox project and navel-gazed a bit re: memory, time and friendship. Links reader
shared a lovely account of sifting through her own inbox last year; David reminded me that, in 2013, Miranda July did something very cool and sorta similar.In other news, Spotify just rolled out a bespoke corporate font — the latest of many platforms to make such a move. Links reader Reena asks what it costs us when visual culture gets so predictable.
Postscripts
Pre-bunking. Bed-rotting. “The height of corporate cringe.” How your internet habits might hurt the planet and how to marry influencer-rich. A plug-in to turn off Google’s AI results. A programmer graphs all her texts with her ex. “Like many people who are warriors online, he is genial in conversation.”
The 17th-century origins of “android.” A taxonomy of texting. Automating IVF. The case against Ticketmaster, sharenting and (need we even say it?) Facetuning your kids. Online wellness culture worsens hypochondria. No one really thought that Rafah image was real. How programmatic ads broke the internet and how the modern workday fuels isolation. I would absolutely watch this movie. “I choose to be heartened by … the willingness of people to watch a single video for hours on end.” Last but not least — never least — the viral Santa Cruz otter is BACK again.
Paid subscriber links and extras under the paywall. Until next week! Warmest virtual regards,
Caitlin
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