Since I am trying to feel out the contours of my huge ambivalence about marketing/publicity/self-promotion, lots of things in Elan Ullendorff's interview with the artist Hallie Bateman resonate with me:
escapethealgorithm.substack.com/p/anti-viral...
The cover of a book (my book): THE INTERNET WILL DIE, AND SO WILL YOU.
Just one more byte It’s possible that to store is entirely the wrong verb. Maybe it ought to be to attend, to give our digital lives the same attention we are called to give our physical ones. Attention, as a noun, comes to us through Latin and French, and, from those languages, carries the sense of to stretch toward, as though my brain, pinned behind my skull, might reach out, feel the tight restriction of muscle as it grasps at the world. But, by and large, attention words point in- ward, not out. We attract it and call it. We can gather it like wheat in a field or draw it up like water from a well. Always, though, attention moves from the world into us—except when it’s to be minted and spent. “Pay attention,” we say, as though it is a com- modity, bought, sold, and traded by brokers. The digital world both beleaguers and demands our attention. The quality of our focus and the metaphors we surround it with have diminished even as we’re asked to spend more of it. I’ve felt it, lately, in the very medium of the book, which rests ever more uneasily in my hands, though I’ve published two, including this one. I’ve read, I would guess, a couple thousand books in my life. It’s harder now, harder than ever. And as it’s grown harder, it’s grown more meaningful, those acts of attentional resistance, as straightforward as reading a book for pleasure—a refutation of market logic, a proletarian revolution in even the word attention, not something I pay for and sell on an open market but, instead, something I stretch toward.
“Whole strata of reality are lost to us at the speed at which we live, our ability to perceive them is lost,” Garth Greenwell writes in his novel Small Rain, “and maybe that’s the value of poetry, there are aspects of the world that are only visible at the frequency of certain poems.” Greenwell advances an argument best advanced in literature, in fiction or poetry, buttressed as it is by the logic of allusion. This logic stands in stark contrast to the totalizing, seductive logic of instrumentalism, which would have us see everything, every act and artifact, as for something else. Reading under instrumentalism is pointless at worst and a form of self- betterment at best—merely a way to refill the coffers of attention before spending it again. Greenwell argues for poetry, for reading, for all those many varied noninstrumental activities that demand this “unmixed attention,” to use the philosopher Simone Weil’s language, which are a species of prayer. I mean this in the same way Weil does—in the best and truest sense of the word: prayer not as an attempt to change the world, but as a chance to attune ourselves to a greater will, one that asks of us, Be more human.
The logo of Here Below: Books for the Subversive Work of Being Human
Presenting THE INTERNET WILL DIE, AND SO WILL YOU, out in September from @herebelow.bsky.social, a new imprint doing awesome things.
Here's the cover, a lil' excerpt, and the tagline of the press: "Books for the subversive work of being human."
herebelowbooks.com/978080288542...
I couldn't be more excited to announce something I've been working on for a long time -
Please welcome Belltower House Artist Residency, a multidisciplinary gift of time in my erstwhile home in southern New Mexico, now accepting applications for 2026.
belltowerhouse.org
reupping with a link!
lenyx.neocities.org
The students tremble-walk this curve like a tightrope, trying not to look down for fear that they will catch sight of the world they are setting aflame. Meanwhile, the university is erecting a 116,000-square-foot, six-story, energy-efficient building to further advancements in artificial intelligence. April was just declared AI Month.
The Student AI Trap
escapethealgorithm.substack.com/p/the-studen...
in honor of Meta shutting down the metaverse, resharing this short strange piece I wrote as an homage to avatars gaining legs (legs legs legs)
escapethealgorithm.substack.com/p/the-day-th...
I wrote about the mixed messages universities are sending about AI.
escapethealgorithm.substack.com/p/the-studen...
the wonderful @halliebateman.bsky.social is an artist and a human being and following her work is a gift and a treasure, so this interview with her by @elan.place was appropriately also a gift and a treasure
We’re launching Redemption Songs, a limited-run newsletter that spotlights one song each week by incarcerated artists. Starting March 22, we’ll tell the story of mass incarceration over almost a century, one song at a time.
Sign up now to get a new song each Sunday afternoon over 25 weeks:
A Google Sheet that is a six-week syllabus for getting you into Bad Bunny
adding to my Doc Web repository
docs.google.com/spreadsheets...
Anti-viral with Hallie Bateman
A screenshot of a colorful, quirky webshop
Hand-drawn figures walking in various directions on crayon-textured paths. In the center is the text "it's a miracle we ever met."
I spoke with @halliebateman.bsky.social about how the internet can trick you into being static, the miracle of anyone connecting with literally anything online, and why people don’t want to pay $75 for a museum-quality print from “commercial artists.”
escapethealgorithm.substack.com/p/anti-viral...
Saw an Instagram reel in which the CEO of McDonalds answers the question "how do you use AI" by eagerly explaining that he no longer needs to get his family together to take holiday photos because he can just generate them instead.
Student looking at a zine called cyberpunk apocalypse with a grainy photo of shadowed people and recreating it as a website
Student on a computer next do a bunch of zines splayed on a table
Student looking at a zine in front of a shelf full of zines
Student drawing on a computer at a table with other students
My favorite annual tradition is taking my Escape the Algorithm students to a local zine library called The Soapbox to talk about radical publishing + expressive design. While we’re there, the students each pick a zine and recreate it as a website.
This year’s web zines: leaflet.pub/aed57e9a-d7d...
“The media represents world that is more real than reality that we can experience. People lose the ability to distinguish between reality and fantasy. They also begin to engage with the fantasy without realizing what it really is. They seek happiness and fulfilment through the simulacra of reality, e.g. media and avoid the contact/interaction with the real world. (Note: This quote is fake and does not appear in Simulacra and Simulation. I tried to delete it, but the system doesn't allow that because this quote has "too many fans" lol.)” — Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation
Thinking once again about this comment under a Simulacra and Simulation quote on Goodreads that’s the best illustration of a simulacrum I've ever seen.
Screenshot of New York Times story with a banner ad that reads "(1) View PDF" and has a download button
normal ad seems safe
"It’s hard to imagine getting back to a time [when] discoverability of people’s work and ideas was possible in a way that I don’t think it is anymore... I find more new stuff in actual magazines now... The internet is no longer a way for me to find new stuff, it’s just a place where stuff is."
For the first installment, a conversation with the wonderful @aliciadkennedy.bsky.social about…why nobody wants her to have conversations.
escapethealgorithm.substack.com/p/anti-viral...
Today I’m excited to launch Anti-viral, a series where I talk to creatives about projects that struggle to find an audience—not to label these projects as failures, but to explore the meaningful, essential work our platforms and economies overlook.
escapethealgorithm.substack.com/p/anti-viral...
Accepting "I loved his brain. I hated the idea of an intruder therein." into the canon of captions that would work on any New Yorker cartoon.
flyer for a course at penn called escape the algorithm. praise from past students: "this class was unlike any other one i've taken. it felt real and personal." "I'd enthusiastically recommend this course to anyone interested in platform design, media studies, or just figuring out how to move through the web more intentionally." "Escape the Algorithm taught me how to unsee the internet I thought I knew, and begin imagining what a more human, slower, stranger digital future could look like." "This class really reshaped how I think, create, and collaborate." "This course has been one of the most creatively liberating and intellectually stimulating experiences I've had at Penn."
teaching my escape the algorithm course again and it’s such a joy to be able to put such kind testimonials on the flyer 🥺
The Internet Phone book lying on a page being colored on by a child
spread of the Internet Phone Book
spread of the Internet Phone Book
Internet phone book carried in a pocketbook
I’m honored to have my essay The New Turing Test published in the Internet Phone Book, now in its second reprint through @metalabel.bsky.social
Revenue is split between contributors and the Living Web Institute, which has the goal of cultivating a better web
livingweb.metalabel.com/internetphon...
Instagram screenshot, post by 404mediaco: freelance developers and entire companies are making a business out of fixing shoddy vibe coded software
whoever said AI won’t create jobs can eat their hat now
Exploring the concept of gifting through experimental design — this is the beauty of the internet when it’s totally free from engagement-maxing algorithms and corporations.
Highly recommend diving into this collection from @spencer.place and @elan.place's Gifting Interfaces class.
It was an honor to talk to Willa Paskin about artisanal white noise for @slate.com’s excellent Decoder Ring podcast
slate.com/podcasts/dec...
In late March, @spencer.place and I wrapped up our Gift Interfaces class at @sfpc-study.bsky.social. On our last day, we threw a gift wrapping party. Then we opened them together. The resulting website represents the archive of our work together:
gifting-interfaces.pages.dev
upside down picture of victoria from white lotus with her thumb up. caption reads "(sighs, chuckles)"
the economy
🌳 new work
> Over the past couple of years, I’ve been marking the seasons by the inhale and exhale of this tree.
tree.kayserifserif.place/
substack feed post 1: I don't care if you have 0 subscribers or 10,000. I want to read your work. Drop your Substack below. I will read as many as I can and subscribe to those that resonate. I will support the voices that need to be heard. And if a writer speaks to your soul, lift them up. Share their work. Pass it on. Your voice matters. Your words have power. Let's grow and rise together. post 2: Writers, let's grow together! Great newsletters deserve more eyes. Whether you have 0 or 100K subscribers, drop your Substack below and let people discover your work. See something interesting? Subscribe, share, or comment. Let's support each other! Drop your link & spread the word.
substack post: i'm looking for non-viral substack essays. i keep seeing the same ones on my feed (and they're great!) but i want to read from smaller writers, the ones with fewer likes and views. so many people deserve to be read, but i feel like the algorithm is not vibing with me lately. anyway, drop your latest/favourite piece, and i'll read as many as i can:)
one day maybe i'll write my snarky hyperbolic essay about how substack is three different pyramid schemes in a trench coat, but in the meantime i'll just point out that this is the most tried and true way to get engagement in the app 🥲
