This makes me think of surrealism, but without the call to our unconscious. It suggests that the concept of a shared unconscious metanarrative no longer exists. That could in itself be a good thing
As Terrence McKenna prophesized around the 1980's, "technology will become more like drugs and drugs will become more like technology". The first part of his statement is becoming increasingly true. The addictiveness has been here for a while at this point, but the more psychedelic reality bending aspect has finally hit us. Technology is becoming so drug-like that what's left is pure impact on the senses. There is no inherent meaning, just some change in consciousness.
I enjoyed this piece, and was about to comment on the similarity between the ever-changing and ultimately meaningless stream of stimuli and psychedelic animations that show rapid shape-shifting, but then saw another commenter had already touched on this.
Reading your whole article, formulating a response, and also looking at the current comments all require time and effort (to a degree) and has me wondering: is there any way to incentive thoughtful, motivated behavior over frictionless consumption? I don’t know the answer, but I do know that in nature, our bodies have visceral responses to too much garbage.
I observed the other day that “LLMs can’t schizopost” — that is, that LLMs’ functional drive to seek semantic coherence makes them fundamentally bad at the sort of improvisatory fragmentation and delight in non sequiturs which often characterise Gen-Z memeing. The schizopost itself references a state of mind — in thrall to a private world of sense that manifests as public nonsense — that may not actually be the poster’s: it’s staged cognitive disorder, a performance of distress. That is how one says “oh my gawwwd” to the world nowadays. But it’s also how one signals that one is not an NPC, a bearer of affectively flat signal without interiority or real worldly stakes. Today it is dissonance — not shock-value, but semantic incongruity and gnomic inaccessibility — that signifies depth.
> We can call this the post-legible: a condition in which content no longer transmits meaning—such as through narrative, logic, or shared signs—but instead transmits affect as its primary mode of communication. It doesn’t tell you anything, but it does something to you.
Loved this description. I've come to call it "tone media" in the same that pop music evolved away from melody and more into its tone.
> These kinds of vibes media encapsulates a feeling. In trad, longer-form media you might feel this tone/vibe in small doses throughout it. Instead of media that focuses on elements like plot, arcs, and themes, it elevates tone/vibes as the primary form factor.
Very nice! I think you have made a great contribution here, drawing a critical line between "content" and art, "communicat[ing], just not through meaning." This is timely.
This makes me think of surrealism, but without the call to our unconscious. It suggests that the concept of a shared unconscious metanarrative no longer exists. That could in itself be a good thing
As Terrence McKenna prophesized around the 1980's, "technology will become more like drugs and drugs will become more like technology". The first part of his statement is becoming increasingly true. The addictiveness has been here for a while at this point, but the more psychedelic reality bending aspect has finally hit us. Technology is becoming so drug-like that what's left is pure impact on the senses. There is no inherent meaning, just some change in consciousness.
Great short article, I'll subscribe
I enjoyed this piece, and was about to comment on the similarity between the ever-changing and ultimately meaningless stream of stimuli and psychedelic animations that show rapid shape-shifting, but then saw another commenter had already touched on this.
Reading your whole article, formulating a response, and also looking at the current comments all require time and effort (to a degree) and has me wondering: is there any way to incentive thoughtful, motivated behavior over frictionless consumption? I don’t know the answer, but I do know that in nature, our bodies have visceral responses to too much garbage.
This dovetails interestingly with something I wrote yesterday - https://codepoetics.substack.com/p/slopvestigation - especially the closing paragraph:
I observed the other day that “LLMs can’t schizopost” — that is, that LLMs’ functional drive to seek semantic coherence makes them fundamentally bad at the sort of improvisatory fragmentation and delight in non sequiturs which often characterise Gen-Z memeing. The schizopost itself references a state of mind — in thrall to a private world of sense that manifests as public nonsense — that may not actually be the poster’s: it’s staged cognitive disorder, a performance of distress. That is how one says “oh my gawwwd” to the world nowadays. But it’s also how one signals that one is not an NPC, a bearer of affectively flat signal without interiority or real worldly stakes. Today it is dissonance — not shock-value, but semantic incongruity and gnomic inaccessibility — that signifies depth.
> We can call this the post-legible: a condition in which content no longer transmits meaning—such as through narrative, logic, or shared signs—but instead transmits affect as its primary mode of communication. It doesn’t tell you anything, but it does something to you.
Loved this description. I've come to call it "tone media" in the same that pop music evolved away from melody and more into its tone.
https://sceneswithsimon.com/p/the-ai-dreamcore-meme-extended-universe
> These kinds of vibes media encapsulates a feeling. In trad, longer-form media you might feel this tone/vibe in small doses throughout it. Instead of media that focuses on elements like plot, arcs, and themes, it elevates tone/vibes as the primary form factor.
Love that
really enjoyed how you put words to this !!
thank you!
Very nice! I think you have made a great contribution here, drawing a critical line between "content" and art, "communicat[ing], just not through meaning." This is timely.