🌺 I Hate The Internet 🌺: December 2024

Less word docs more notebooks!

Dec 23, 2024

Hello friends of the internet,

This month I’ve been thinking about stuffs: collecting trinkets, watching DVDs, arts and crafts sessions. Growing up, I was a collector - though I never saw myself as one. I kept a neatly ordered shelf of magazines, filled notebooks with collages of fashion editorials, random flyers and found images. I saved up money to get CDs and spent hours listening to music while flipping through the accompanying booklets to read lyrics and discover new visuals. I loved seeing my taste in music materialise with each new title. It was a huge privilege to have such a collection and it played a big part in my developing identity (this is how I got into music photography).

When I moved abroad, I left behind a lot of the things I had collected, and never really got back into the habit - I would move pretty much every year for a decade, and for the first few years of my professional life, I struggled to allow myself to buy nice, non essential items for myself. And it wasn’t all that bad, I thought: there’s always streaming! google! My computer doesn’t even have a dvd player anyway!!! My way of cataloguing changed, too, from the physical to the digital - moving from paper to word docs to various apps and screenshots on my camera rolls. My parents significantly downsized when they moved from our childhood home too, giving away many of their things and opting out of getting a TV. Back at theirs this winter, the internet went down over a long week-end, and we were left with empty computer screens, and no music to play - don’t get me wrong, we had books, games and long walks to entertain ourselves, but the silence was … odd. We need to become hoarders again, I thought! Bring back DVD boxsets, borrowing CDs at the library and picking up obscure 1990s movies for €1 at the second hand store! If social media is field research, I can definitively see how we are reaching saturation. We have subscription fatigue! We need a digital detox! To switch off our phones, to lower our screen time! To get a MP3, a walkman, a digital camera! In my expert trend forecaster opinion (TM), 2025 is the year of physical media.

As I started writing this for my own entertainment, I quickly became overwhelmed (I often do) - the topic is a way into many reflections, on how subscription-based models exploit both artists and viewers, on the difference between culture made to be consumed and culture made to be experienced, on what this lack of ownership does to our identity. Those are definitely things friends told me about, things I have read about, things we’ve discussed in both serious and unserious ways. But, this is not meant as topical essays, simply a note of my thoughts, an expression of curiosity - so, I guess, I hope this makes you think, and/or makes you send your thoughts my way (as always). Or you can always send me dvds.

Also, I missed you last month! I had a series of job interviews and missed out on both sharing the October issue and writing the November issue! I am now taking some much needed time off until the new year. I have done nothing but watch movies, sew, and reconsider my ambitions (good times, good times).

In this edition: readings on health, technology, fame, love and art. Vampire movies, bardcore and pearls.

Some housekeeping: I wrote about the UK government planned move to eVisa and how it risks furthering the digital divide for The Skinny. My first article post grad school, which felt like a bigger jump than I expected but I’m glad to be back!

One nice thing

Notebooks! I’ve always kept notebooks, but I’ve been trying to be more diligent with my analog note keeping habit this month, instead of defaulting to my notes app. Seemingly overnight, my youtube homepage began recommending me videos on note-keeping and commonplacing. Am I the target audience for a new trend? Was my algorithm picking up on the self-improvements videos I’d watched the previous week? Maybe, maybe! But after all, if 2025 is to be my year of physical media, why not include pen and papers and cursives.

Read

Print:

Health Communism, Beatrice Adler-Bolton and Artie Vierkant: this has been on my TBR for a while and will now be a personal reference of choice! Would absolutely recommend this if you are interested in the politics of health, illness and disability. The writing is quite academic though, and I read it on and off for about a year.
Arrangements in Blue, Amy Key: a beautiful beautiful read. I’ve definitely reached my quota of memoirs this year (storygraph data tells me it was my main genre this year), but i really enjoyed the structure of Key’s book, with each chapter echoing a song on Joni Mitchell's Blue, and found myself in her writing in the most comforting and tender way.

Online:

Topic - the internet: I enjoyed Polyester’s recent articles on ~ quirky ~ mental health apparel (by Jax Preyer), and spiritualism and mourning on social media (by Isabella Greenwood). Also Dazed here asking the right questions: “Is anyone having sex after their 12-step night time skincare routine?” (by Serena Smith). On fame, this essay by Sihaam Naik for Off Chance echoed a lot of my own thoughts on the appeal of fame: “We're constantly chasing stardom to escape the labour of our lives to no avail. It's not enough to be singular anymore - there has to be a project, a hustle, a standard to aim towards. (…) Two pages of fiction a day, three pages of non fiction squeezing time in between commuting and getting ready for bed. (…) There's a race against time - to be someone - and amount to something.”

Topic - technology: i’ve been making my way through the LA Review of Books Legacies of Eugenics series, reading both The New Artificial Intelligentsia and The “Correlation” Between Statistics and Eugenics. Also, Joan Donovan for The Guardian on social media platform ownership, politics, profits and misinformation: “In short, what we learn from the content strategies of X and Meta is simple: the design of platforms is now inextricable from the politics of the owner.”

Topic - art! I loved this post by Shannon Viola on little dog, and how it artfully describes the sensory experience of art (truly delicious! pun intended!): “for now, the only metric I have to measure a good work versus a bad work is whether or not it looks delicious. It doesn’t take wealth or a degree to salivate. If I look at a work, and it makes me want to lap it, or gnaw it, or peel it off in ribbons and entangle it with my tongue – it’s good.”

Watch

Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person (2023, pictured above): such an enjoyable watch if, like me, you like a little dark humour tale of friendship and belonging.

Other first watch of the month: the 2014’s french Beauty and The Beast (big big yikes! amazing costumes though), The Nice Guys (loved it).

Listen

Music: listened to Olivia Dean’s Messy a lot this month. Also my friend Chloe (hello!) sent me the Hildegard von Blingin’ Pink Pony Club cover, and I’m obsessed!!