Hi all.
My mind is swimming, partially because it's past 11 when I start to think in my room alone for fun when everyone around me has gone to sleep (except for the person in the apartment next to me, who is definitely having sex rn). Partially because I've only been sleeping 4-5 hours each day this week.
Tomorrow (4/26/24) if you are free and are in/around New York, we have a treat for you. But first, some thinking --
Today, I was listening to the Ezra Klein show. The episode on how AI could break the internet. Internet decay also happens to be one of my obsessions. What we made, what it's done to us, etc etc. The commodification of everything. But the commodification of everything online so it's really the commodification of nothing if the device dies.
I remember my childhood pre internet. I remember who I was. I had this American girl doll catalogue that I'd circle things in. I had this American Girl doll book that taught me how to host my own book club, but by then the type of America where you could just run over to the neighbors' was already beginning to disintegrate. I don't want to write about the internet. I'm sick of writing about social media, the next big social app that is going to make a few people rich and the rest of us soully sedated.
Ezra Klein or his guest was talking about how AI and SEO have kind of ruined the internet because everything is a lead trying to generate a sale. Everything is trying to be optimized. When does "hacking the algorithm" become lying. Lying to someone about the intention of your content in order to get them to purchase something. Lying to yourself about why you're making it in the first place. Is it really your dream in life to be a lifestyle influencer? To document the act of living through the hyperreality of prettily packaged consumption?
What is the internet good for then??? This takes me back to the question of a blog. I used to love this one blog when I was about 12 or 13. Right around when I got Instagram. I'd check this blog everyday to check the articles on hair and makeup and beauty and I'd refresh them on my carpet, waiting for them to update. And I knew when I went to this blog, I'd get beauty or fashion pieces that would scratch that girlish part of my adolescent brain. No garden path anything. No attention hacking. Honesty. I loved the content.
But I was still trying out the tips alone most of the time. In My Mother, Myself Nancy Friday writes about this childhood of experimentation with others. Actually with them. A girl can dream. Could've?
I think I'd like this site to become something like that blog but for art and philosophy and like-minded people. A singular destination of some sort. Obviously there's no algorithm and I like the idea of the only social components being the comments on each post and/or discord. But I'm not really sure how to do that and I'm so open to suggestions and feedback. I'm not trying to sell you anything. I'm just trying to figure out how to exist in the world we've made and I think if you're reading this, you probably are too.
And this (in a big logical jump, I know) brings me to Dostoevsky.
I read Crime and Punishment at 20. In my childhood bedroom during the pandemic. A 60s copy that is falling apart. I'm 99% sure sitting with it each night helped me combat the brain rot of having downloaded TikTok. I read The Brothers Karamazov at 21 right as I was graduating from college. Taking his words in earnest stopped me from selling out for money. Encouraged me to pursue what I really wanted to do.
There's a lot of bullshit content about Dostoevsky out there. AI generated voices swearing that he would tell you life is about suffering. And sure, perhaps Notes from Underground Dostoevsky might, but by TBK, at the end of his life, he knew that life was special. That you should cling to who you know you are and find love at the center of that. (and don't let anyone force their interpretation of yourself or art that you love onto you, including me).
So what do you love. Me? I love music. I love thinking. I love books. I love people. I've always wanted to have a book club. With snacks and friends. Sitting in a circle. Ever since I was a little girl.
One of the reasons why I love partying is because it helps people come back to their core, even if they have to escape themselves through substances or dark lighting in order to do so. To move their body. To cry out. To say what they mean.
That's why we're having this event. I want people to be in a room feeling human. To dance. To think about things that are worth thinking about. We are more than money making machines. We are more than data and views and projecting earnings. Money is representative of value. When did we start valuing the representation of something more than the thing itself? When did we start valuing things more than people? Every fable, every great story will tell you the same thing -- a rich man alone in a giant empty house is still a man alone. Bahumbug. Rosebud. Your misery with no one to help you bear it.
Mark 8:36 always stuck out to me.
The only way to build the relationships that make life worth living is to go out and find them.
Come dance with us.
xo
Hailo