culture

In tech, I’ve met a lot of people who are motivated by the idea that they’ll get rich. And some of them, to be clear, absolutely do get rich. There’s probably more of a chance of that than in many industries, although to be clear, the people who already have wealth and power will generate more than you in the process. But leaving inequitous power laws aside, when you get a big, fat check at the tail end of an acquisition or IPO, what happens then? Do you suddenly become happy? Is your life worthwhile? Or do you find yourself trapped on that treadmill, either in order to maintain that lifestyle or to quieten the internal voice you’ve developed that tells you to keep working? I’ve noticed that of all the millionaires and billionaires I’ve met – and I’ve met quite a few now – none has radically changed their life. Even the billionaires, who have more means than any of us will ever see, go back to the office day after day. Despite their unfathomable wealth, they’re as trapped as anyone else.

Ben Werdmüller on the grind.

What I think is interesting about both systems and lucid dreaming resurfacing on TikTok is that, unlike the otherkin headmate mod drama of Tumblr or the brony tulpa psychosis of 4chan, younger internet users now are adapting these ideas to fit a platform that is much more closely tied to who you are irl. Ten years ago, it was much easier to play with these kinds of ideas because the internet was still a mostly faceless place. If you wanted to run an otherkin blog with six other personalities you believe are living in your body, there was really nothing at stake. Same with talking to other anonymous people on Reddit about trying to manifest a cartoon girlfriend with your mind.

In 2021, however, we’re seeing young people experiment with the same ideas, but with a lot more at stake socially. And the fact that they’re willing to endure harassment and film themselves doing so, in my opinion, speaks to something larger about how the internet affects how we both see ourselves and the world around us. This isn’t to say this is good or bad, but I think it’s notable that these ideas are becoming less fringe. I, also, don’t think it’s an accident that a lot of these ideas are appearing on a platform like TikTok that has augmented reality filters built into it. The internet has always allowed us to imagine different identities and realities and as technology becomes better, those alternate digital identities and realities will only become more real to us. Until, perhaps, they won’t feel like alternate realities at all anymore.

Ryan Broderick on the post-otherkin future.

Yet even this promise of community and self-criticism offered by fandoms is deceptively unsatisfying. Online fan spaces look like collaborative communities only because social media platforms show us a distorted image where everyone is popular and active and engaged. But the vast majority of people on social networks — perhaps 90 percent — are lurkers who rarely contribute anything to the conversation. What look like thriving fan communities are, in reality, parasocial relations within parasocial relations: Most people participate by passively consuming the performed enjoyment of a select few. Lurkers passively consume super-fans’ fan-art, fan-criticism, and love, just as they consume the creator’s personality.

This isn’t the democratic paradise that social media once seemed to promise, an open-ended and unpredictable set of conversations among peers who would grow through free debate. Instead it has turned out to be more like looking through a window at a group of friends having a conversation, who can’t hear you as you laugh along with their jokes.

On fans within fans.

Two frustrating things here: the first is the constant tiptoeing around the “but parasocial media can’t be bad because I enjoy it . . . right?” through-line that all of these articles seem to have, and the other is yet again another thinkpiece about parasocial social media that fails to mention Shannon Strucci, who started talking about this stuff way back in 2017, and really does deserve to be credited with re-popularizing the topic with regards to modern web-based media.

The concept struck other users as profound. It resonated in particular with college-educated but downwardly mobile young people who have spent their whole lives endeavoring to get good grades and a good job, only to find themselves either boxed out of the white-collar labor market or miserably overworked in it.

What would it be like to admit defeat, to drop out, to stop striving and simply exist?

Lying flat has since become an internet phenomenon and a media buzzword. Online communities of “lying flatists” have cropped up, trading advice about how to survive outside the traditional workforce. Memes have appeared across the web, mostly showing cute cats in prostrate poses.

The lying flatists’ declaration that they will no longer follow the script, including buying a house and car and starting a family, has alarmed some older people who view the trend as fatalistic and antisocial. Adherents say it beats sustaining or feigning optimism in pursuit of elusive success.

In late May, a poem published online titled “Lie Flat, Young Man!” distilled the essence of the idea. “Come, let’s lie down together, please don’t be depressed,” wrote the poet, who goes by the name Xiaopan. “Everyone has an ideal that is hard to let go. Work hard without complaint and get no reward. When the ideal becomes a trap designed by those in power, lying down is a good medicine for struggle.”

On the new nihilism.

It’s “turn on, tune in, drop out” 2.0: Darker and Edgier Edition.