Boom times for boredom
I haven’t been sleeping a lot lately. I know lots of you haven’t either. It’s an insomnia I attribute to rage, anxiety … and the supernova-level amounts of blue light I’m mainlining from my iPhone and computer.
See, I actually like the internet right now. To me, this feels familiar. Not because we’ve ever lived a time like this before, of course, but because I think this — *gestures wildly* — rebooted us back to an earlier era.
There was a time, once, when our abundant, ambient, virtual connections felt astounding and precious. Then they became background. Annoying, sometimes. Omnipresent and forgotten. But give it a couple years and a global pandemic … and it’s cool to Skype again! (Personally, I haven’t been this pumped about iPhone games since the dawn of Words With Friends.)
Maybe we shouldn’t lean on Facebook “disaster” groups … since Facebook is often a disaster, itself. In the past few weeks, hundreds of groups have sprung up in response to the Covid-19 crisis. But in the aftermath of the Camp Fire in Paradise, Calif., one wildly well-funded and popular group got … wildly out of hand. Consider it a very timely (too timely??) lesson.
I realize we all have quite enough stress without the pending election. But now more than ever, politics are digital — and Democrats have historically struggled with that. They, and the whole campaign apparatus, are now scrambling to adjust to this new reality. One in which you can only reach voters via their various screens.
SOMEONE amongst my subscribers better appreciate this: It is **14,000 words** on the legacy of Myspace music. That’s it! That’s the pitch.
^^ Me after two weeks in quarantine ^^
Postscripts: You don’t need to be productive now. Or, heaven help us … THIN. These are strange times, so take your joys whenever and wherever you find them.
The history of loneliness and the future (?) of libraries. Boom times for boredom, battlestations and Minecraft. This pandemic is not your vacation, but unfortunately nobody told the influencers that. We did live in public once. Now we’re bored inna house. I too wish I were quarantined with Ina Garten … but I’ll take her huge cosmos for now!
I will always click a link about doomsday preppers. I will never do an Instagram challenge. Inside the anxiety of teaching remotely when many kids don’t have broadband. Seven workarounds for your crappy internet. A whole lot of movies you can stream soon. PSA: You can get married — though you cannot pick berries — through the newly troubled chat app Zoom. Meditations on net art in a pandemic; meditations on introversion when everybody’s home. Last but not least: It turns out the TP hoarding narrative was … completely wrong.
That’s it for now. Stay safe & sane out (in?) there. And as always, if you liked this, please forward to a friend.
— caitlin