People I would hate if seated near them at a party
This week: crypto art, OnlyFans, utopias, literal superpowers, Britney Spears, Ikea bookshelves and advice columns
Happy Friday, friends.
As if we weren’t already sufficiently alienated from the proverbial means of production, the cryptorati keep inventing new and ever-more-mind-bendy ways to convince me the economy is, in fact, an elaborate fiction.
Exhibit A: Gamestop. “Huh!” I thought. “The value of a thing truly does have no basis in objective reality!!”
Exhibit B: NFTs. “Shit, an acronym!” I thought. “Am I expected to read an explainer on these things?”
I did read an explainer. I read several, in fact, since it seems every art and tech writer in possession of a keyboard was instructed to write one this week. (This one is the most illuminating, for my real/fungible/boring money, in part because its author has *really* drunk the Kool-Aid.)
I still don’t get this notion of zeitgeisty blockchained art, though, much the same way I still don’t get Clubhouse or Elon Musk. Who the hell is paying thousands of dollars to only-sort-of-own a digital image of Santa Claus jerking off (?) … to a pile of hamburgers (??) … in a graveyard (?????).
The answer, of course, is “people I would hate if seated near them at a dinner party,” but those events are blessedly a long way off. In the meantime, I highly recommend this Esquire profile of the apparently v. kinky suburban dad responsible in large part for this week’s NFT mania. And if you’re left wondering: “sure — maybe artistic value, like money, is a construct — but is this art actually any good?” … then I submit the cropped crypto art in my header, described by its creator as “questioning the legitimacy of NFT art while using the art as a valuable test to test people’s perception of value.” 🙃
P.S. What happened to the usual essay intros? You mean, *besides* my short-staffed local newsroom and seasonal depression? I’m working on a couple special editions for later this month and giving myself extra time for those. Rest-assured, they will be awesome. Or if not awesome, passable.
P.P.S. Do you have a newsletter, podcast, business or birthday shoutout that Links readers might be interested in? I’m trialing a short classified section. For a limited time — extra limited if it doesn’t work?? lol — a mere ✨$35✨ gets you two lines of text in front of 11,200 readers who are probably desperate to click out of here. Reply for more information.
If you read anything this weekend
“7 Performers on How OnlyFans Changed Their Lives,” by Jenna Sauers in GQ. This, I think, is one of the best pieces I’ve read on OnlyFans — but also on the dual risks/rewards of platform work. Sub out OnlyFans for any patronage site (with the obvious understanding that sex work entails unique violence, prejudice, etc) and I think you’d find similar tensions w/r/t the amazing daily precarity many “creators” face in pursuit of a potential, eventual payoff.
“Amazon’s Great Labor Awakening,” by Erika Hayasaki in NYT Mag. While we’re on the subject of precarity, this dispatch from an Amazon company town felt like the flip side of the coin to me — I’m struck by how enmeshed Amazon is in *every* bit of life in this part of California: It’s the boss, and the school, and the place you buy groceries.
“Britney Spears was Never in Control,” by Tavi Gevinson in The Cut. The Britney documentary was innnnteresting, but I’m not sure it said anything coherent about the media norms it claimed to critique. (*Especially* since its primary narrators were New York Times critics who … somehow never address their paper’s own complicity.) Anyway — Tavi Gevinson, who has been there, does a much better job taking on the young-women-media-industrial-complex, as does former child star Mara Wilson, ironically in the Times again.
“The Buzzfeed-ification of Mental Health,” by P.E. Moskowitz in Mental Hellth. I was a little hesitant to share this one, because I’m not literate enough in the science of ADHD, etc., to understand if all its claims are true. But I do think there’s something sharp in the observation that Buzzfeed et al gradually sold us on a series of “micro-identities” — I’m a depressed person, I’m a cusper, I’m an upstate New Yorker, etc. — so that they could sell us actual stuff later.
“The Age of Peak Advice,” by Jamie Fisher in The New Yorker. So many faves new and old in this piece, which traces the transformation of the advice column from MLK to panel podcasts.
“Martha Stewart is the Original Influencer,” by Jada Yuan in Harper’s Bazaar. Photos alone (she’s 79???) are well worth the price of admission.
Postscripts
Amazon ruined the name “Alexa.” Tech moguls are obsessed with utopias. How to have better arguments online. (Or not! You know, your funeral.) The politics of your Ikea bookshelf. The influencers backing vaccines. TikTok censored an academic who studies how TikTok censors women. (“A video of my ass gets demoted quicker than … extremism or trolling.”)
For fans of that trippy infinite-zoom I shared last week: a kinda amoebic visualization of the internet as it grew. The group offering cash prizes for concrete proof of superpowers. The future of QAnon, according to eight experts. In praise of cold-calling your friends. Last/not least: “Americans are inhabiting a world in which one of the cushiest rewards for doing politics is to get into content creation.”
That’s it for this week! Until the next one. Warmest virtual regards.
— Caitlin