Mentally I am here
In this week's edition: oracles, evangelicals, reaction videos, white sage, high-end houseplants and beagles playing piano
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Most of you have likely never been to Buffalo, the booming Rust Belt metropolis from which I type this newsletter. Allow me to thus summarize a key part of the city’s dual charm and vexation: It is 20 years behind the world on everything, forever. That is bad when you want to, say, go out for Spanish food. It is good when the country descends into delusion. But I fear the pipeline is at last speeding up, because this week marked … our first major QAnon demonstration!
It’s not that I thought it couldn’t happen here. I guess I just thought it … would take longer. But as a growing library of truly soul-crushing articles have made clear in the past month, QAnon has officially made the jump from risible 4chan oddity to mainstream politics and culture. Buffalo’s protest, which took place last weekend, came as part of a national wave in towns from Scranton to Peoria. Local media took a lot of heat for covering the events credulously. (They’re disguised as rallies against child traffickers.)
But while I think that criticism is valid, and this coverage needs to catch up with the reality we live in, I also blame it less on complicity or journalistic negligence than I do, like … run-of-the-mill optimism bias. How many otherwise well-informed, well-meaning people don’t realize how pervasive this cult’s become? And doesn’t everyone want to believe it won’t happen in their town?
Alas, if it’s happened in Buffalo, it’s probably happened where you are, too. A calming thought as we head into the weekend. 🙃 Onward!
If you read anything this weekend
This v. personal interview with Taylor Lorenz, noted oracle of internet stuff. I’ve followed Lorenz and her work for years, but was floored by some of these revelations. Among other things, Lorenz, a reporter at the New York Times, says she broke off an engagement over online harassment and has ended friendships to protect her privacy. I’m struggling to imagine a more casually savage indictment of journalism *or* the tech industry. [The.Ink]
This biography of Breonna Taylor, in the words of her mom. If you read one piece from Vanity Fair’s big guest-edited issue, let it be this one. Ta-Nehisi Coates, who wrote this as-told-to, captures so much grief and celebration at once. (… I’m also working on some “as-told-tos” for a project right now, so am extra fascinated by the genre.) [Vanity Fair]
This profile of Jaron Lanier, the eccentric, dreadlocked prophet of Silicon Valley. This is not your typical techno-optimist flattery, in part because Lanier is the type of guy who owns “exotic” flutes and a rainbow house in Berkeley. He was also one of the first people to recognize the true promise of digital connection — and the peril in how it actually turned out. A very apt perspective to check in with now! [GQ]
This essay on the landscape of our newly quiet cities, written by an author who is partially deaf. I looked up this guy’s novel as soon as I finished reading; his style is that evocative. “Do you remember what April sounded like? Do you remember those rare moments where you ventured from the safety of home, your breath hot inside the cloth of the mask that didn’t yet feel normal? … We were all removed, all separate … It felt to me like we were not here at all.” [The Local]
This sensitive, illuminating exploration of why so many evangelicals are into QAnon. Only my friend and former coworker Abby Ohlheiser could write this article, which draws from her deep/random expertise in both evangelical religious movements and internet dumpster fires. [Technology Review]
And now for something completely different
Postscripts
The racial anxiety of reaction videos. The black market behind white sage products. Why pop songs are so sexy this summer and what happens to shuttered Pizza Huts. Inside the market for high-end houseplants. How “rumor clinics” fought fake news 80 years ago. No one comes off looking cool OR sane in the battle of the Instagram diet influencers.
How Covid messed up Instacart shoppers. AOC’s beauty routine. How to smile when you’re wearing a mask. (It’s all in the smizing!) Pitfluencers. Goldman Sans. “Mentally I am here.” Last but not least: Pour one out for the TV commercial’s long-lost golden years.
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I am delighted that anyone trusts my judgment, because I often don’t! I am extra-delighted that person is Cathy Lanski, a writer and member of ye olde boomer set with a rare good sense of generational humor. THANK YOU to Cathy & everyone else who shares this newsletter. Your referrals are the main way it finds new readers!!
— Caitlin