Hi Caitlin, I'm Bob Pohl. The person who wrote the Literary Notes column and curated the weekly poetry page in the Buffalo News for nearly 38 years. Just wanted to tell you, as a boomer (lol!) and someone writing a "deaccelerationist poetics" (poetics in the Aristotelian sense), that this newsletter is my favorite and most useful Substack I subscribe to each week.
That said, have you read this NYT piece by Allie Rowbottom that was published this week? I don't know Allie Rowbottom personally, but she is a friend of a friend, and one of the most prominent literary "It" girls on the Brooklyn/Dime Square scene these days. Here's the link:
I love(d) this newsletter - the Facebook party albums? What a throwback! I was definitely the girl with the digital camera who took all of the pictures, haha. As for the postscripts, the piece on deciphering the ancient scrolls of Pompeii was AWESOME!
"I am at an age and a point in my life where Facebook serves exactly one use: the acquisition of affordable second-hand home goods" this line spoke to me!
Wow, I’d almost forgotten about the party album. Thanks for dusting off that corner of the memory palace.
While facebook party albums were a novel means of distribution for those images, the tradition of drunken photos of friends doing nothing in particular stretches back to pre-internet days. But those pre-digital photos had to be developed on film, which had limiting factors of cost -- in addition to the limitations of audience because no one cared about the pics who wasn’t there, pre-FB.
The other special thing about the facebook party album was not just the means to share, but the intersection with advancements in digital photography that removed the economic limitations of photo development (after the cost of the digital camera itself). It was really the first moments where digital images were good quality and becoming more affordable, esp with improvements in iphone camera, etc. The quality of cell phone cameras pre-‘08 was pretty awful, so the documentation wasn’t appealing until digital cameras removed some obstacles.
What a trip this was! Does an anyone still take candid snaps anymore? Or candid video, I guess? What I’ve loved about looking back at these old photos is how uncurated/unedited they all are. Though I guess this is how we learned to curate. Anyway, great newsletter!
Hi Caitlin, I'm Bob Pohl. The person who wrote the Literary Notes column and curated the weekly poetry page in the Buffalo News for nearly 38 years. Just wanted to tell you, as a boomer (lol!) and someone writing a "deaccelerationist poetics" (poetics in the Aristotelian sense), that this newsletter is my favorite and most useful Substack I subscribe to each week.
That said, have you read this NYT piece by Allie Rowbottom that was published this week? I don't know Allie Rowbottom personally, but she is a friend of a friend, and one of the most prominent literary "It" girls on the Brooklyn/Dime Square scene these days. Here's the link:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/09/style/technology-love-technosexuals.html
I love(d) this newsletter - the Facebook party albums? What a throwback! I was definitely the girl with the digital camera who took all of the pictures, haha. As for the postscripts, the piece on deciphering the ancient scrolls of Pompeii was AWESOME!
"I am at an age and a point in my life where Facebook serves exactly one use: the acquisition of affordable second-hand home goods" this line spoke to me!
Wow, I’d almost forgotten about the party album. Thanks for dusting off that corner of the memory palace.
While facebook party albums were a novel means of distribution for those images, the tradition of drunken photos of friends doing nothing in particular stretches back to pre-internet days. But those pre-digital photos had to be developed on film, which had limiting factors of cost -- in addition to the limitations of audience because no one cared about the pics who wasn’t there, pre-FB.
The other special thing about the facebook party album was not just the means to share, but the intersection with advancements in digital photography that removed the economic limitations of photo development (after the cost of the digital camera itself). It was really the first moments where digital images were good quality and becoming more affordable, esp with improvements in iphone camera, etc. The quality of cell phone cameras pre-‘08 was pretty awful, so the documentation wasn’t appealing until digital cameras removed some obstacles.
What a trip this was! Does an anyone still take candid snaps anymore? Or candid video, I guess? What I’ve loved about looking back at these old photos is how uncurated/unedited they all are. Though I guess this is how we learned to curate. Anyway, great newsletter!