#718: Punk libraries and American dreams
#718: Punk libraries and American dreams
Plus the most-complete account I've yet read of abusive mommy-vlogger Ruby Franke
Hi, hello!, and happy weekend. You’re reading the Saturday edition of Links I Would Gchat You If We Were Friends: a lovingly curated collection of brand-new writing on internet culture and technology, culled from the hundreds of RSS feeds I read each week for this ~express~ purpose.
Earlier this week, I recorded a podcast with Francis Zierer from Creator Spotlight (… NOT my strong suit, so thanks Francis; it’ll be out in a couple weeks), in which he asked me about the proliferation of “link recommendation” newsletters and what, if anything!, is special about Links. The answer here is pretty straightforward: I approach the compilation of these weekend emails like a whole-ass research project. I don’t just round-up things that tickle my personal fancy or that I come across in passing via algorithmic feed; instead, like a crazy person, I review every single headline published by hundreds of conventional and independent media outlets every single week. I then read some portion of those stories in their entirety, generally totaling between eight and 10 hours of work, and recommend the best ones in this newsletter.
If that work is at all valuable to you, please consider upgrading your subscription. And thank you, as always, to the beloved paid subscribers who have already made this work possible. <3
If you read anything this weekend
“The Collapse of Self-Worth in the Digital Age,” by Thea Lim for The Walrus. Thea Lim’s debut novel, An Ocean of Minutes, was widely praised by mainstream critics and listed for big awards. Yet Lim remembers the period after its publication as one of insecurity and distraction. She scrutinized the “stats” that writers are now judged by; she wondered at the accolades she didn’t get. And she found her faith in her own work eroding under the cold and hyper-quantified logic of the digital market. It’s a crisis long familiar to anyone who works in public — but also, increasingly, to anyone in any line of work. We’re all expected to perform online now, and that performance is forever measured and monetized and scored.
“Drowning in Slop,” by Max Read for New York. Low-quality, AI-generated content has thoroughly colonized the internet (… and, in some very uncanny cases, actually tip-toed off of it). It’s on your Kindle’s lock screen, probably. It’s clogging up Facebook and Twitter. It’s appearing on subway ads, media sites and in public library catalogs. There is no real solution to “slop”: It is, as Max discovers, an economy unto itself. But it’s also an extension of the obsession with growth that has arguably tainted mainstream social networks since they were founded.
“Some Country for Some Women,” by Kim Hew-Low for The New Inquiry. I have read … quite a lot about tradwives. (Lmao. You all know.) But this piece, which considers the phenomenon through the lens of homesteading, represented something of an “aha” moment. Homesteading has a long and loaded history in America: It’s a pillar of our bootstrapping, go-West-young-man fantasy. And that fantasy is appealing to lots of people, including women who wouldn’t otherwise dream of quitting their jobs to raise sheep and babies. Reading this, I was reminded of a cultural oddity I often saw when I reported on ag: People romanticize the fuck out of farms, even when they have no idea what farming entails. Placing tradwives in that tradition — a tradition that, in theory, offers independence, self-sufficiency, fulfillment and a ticket out of the capitalist rat race — goes a long way toward explaining the universal fascination with Ballerina Farm and her whole brigade.
“The Internet Archive’s Fight to Save Itself,” by Kate Knibbs for Wired. The Internet Archive is an “unparalleled record of the internet,” a “safety valve against digital oblivion” and possibly the world’s most punk library — a library now endangered by its own rebel ethic. In September, the archive (which hosts the Wayback Machine, in addition to millions of books, movies, songs and other media) lost an appeal in a lawsuit brought by several major book publishers. Now, it faces an even larger threat from a coalition of record labels. Reasonable people can disagree about the Archive’s methods — does all information really want to be free? — but the end of the Archive would represent an unthinkable loss for journalism, law, historical research and public accountability.
“The Truths and Distortions of Ruby Franke,” by Caitlin Moscatello for The Cut. This is the most complete account I’ve yet read of Ruby Franke, the popular Mormon mommy vlogger who last year plead guilty to abusing several of her six children in horrifically imaginative and bizarre ways. It’s a lurid, shocking story — coming soon to Hulu!, no great surprise there — but I’m far more interested in the subtler questions it raises about family vlogs and child exploitation. Franke’s ex-husband, Kevin, seems particularly eager to frame his wife and her culty life coach as the sole architects of his children’s abuse. But he and his in-laws, like untold family influencers before and after them, were also pretty down to leverage their kids’ private lives for profit and fame and those all-important views.
In case you missed it
The most-clicked link from our last edition was this Rolling Stone story on 9/11 memes. Apologies for missing last weekend’s mailing; one of these days, I will finally admit to myself that I cannot reliably get these out while business-traveling.
On Wednesday, I wrote about the subject (object?) of my recent travels: the Online News Association’s annual conference in Atlanta. While there, I was forced to confront my disillusionment about the state of internet media, and also perhaps my own mortality?? … but in good news, I made some new newsletter friends (!) and collected several pieces of vendor-branded swag that I’ll inevitably post to Buy Nothing in 10 weeks.
Also, this was cool: A version of our September 11 edition — “Celebrity Number Six and the unreal power of crowdsourced investigations” ended up in the Wall Street Journal last weekend.
Postscripts
“Mythical reel pulls.” Porn-site comments. The lost isle of Moo Dengs. Creed is the new Nickelback and confusion is the new clickbait. A serious study of main character syndrome. The travelers crowdfunding their vacations. Raise your hand if you’re a straight woman who’s sent a Zach Watson post to your husband. 🙋♀️
The Shade Room is pivoting to “positivity.” Mark Zuckerberg is pivoting away from politics. A Siberian bot army conquered online poker, but maybe online poker is okay with that. Offices before the internet. Research before Google. “To this day, Jinjin still feels that her AI boyfriend’s cheating was very sudden” (… via the great Web Curios). Dating apps yield more diverse couples — except when it comes to income. “The show mounts a constant assault on his stomach lining and intestines.” Howdidyoufind.me is surprisingly lovely. “Microsoft Word for sheet music” is surprisingly shutting down. My only/final link on Nuzzigate will be this v. good Defector column. Last/not at all least: “Our lives, our dead, and their data are becoming a kind of digital compost … our information is now totally beyond our control.”
BELOW the paywall you’ll also find:
Unlocked links from the The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Atlantic
A multi-generational dystopian epic, an eclectic and deeply binge-able crime show and the newsletter I wish I were writing (… if ANYONE would read it, which they won’t)
That’s it for this week! Until the next one. Warmest virtual regards,
Caitlin
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