Recommended Reading on Social Media, Authenticity, and Sense of Self
“I’m curious how people are using social media platforms, and how we’re influenced, or even conditioned, by algorithms today. How is this shaping our sense of selves, and how, ultimately, are we willfully turning into products?” she asked over Zoom. “The notion of what’s ‘natural’ or ‘authentic’ has been copied so many times, it’s completely detached from any reference that could be thought of as an original. Maybe we’re all just wild mutants at this point.”
-Anna Uddenberg
I was immediately struck by the above quote while reading about Anna Uddenberg’s sculptures and approach to her art, by Devorah Lauter in ArtNet. This resonates with what I’ve brought up in previous readings and writings - about how one presents oneself online, performs oneself online, perceives oneself online, and catalogues that self and other (as with Mindy Seu’s Cyberfeminism Index). But what I found myself reading about a lot this month was also how the algorithm has come to play an outsized role in flattening culture, amplifying trends, both responding to and shaping users’ behavior.
In the article, Lauter explains that, “For an early performance work on what it means to be a so-called “It Girl,” Uddenberg learned the 1920s Hollywood-coined term was rooted in “being effortlessly cool and sexy,” a concept Uddenberg said was key. “If you’re doing something effortless, it comes off as authentic, or ‘real,’ but the moment this effort starts to show a little, that’s when people say the person is fake or ‘trying too hard.’” Today, I think that influencers on social media want everyone to believe that they have reversed that definition: being your authentic self (that buzzword) comes off as being effortlessly cool and sexy.
You can read the full article about her work here: Anna Uddenberg’s Body-Twisting Sculptures Probe—and Breach—the Limits of Femininity and Reality. Uddenberg's creations skewer our smart-phone-obsessed lives, while capturing elements of their fascination.
Being authentic is now the thing to aspire to. When does that authenticity become the performance?
I read a number of interviews and reviews this month with Kyle Chayka, the New Yorker writer and author of Filterworld. In The Atlantic, Megan Garber explains,
Algorithms can be teasingly tautological, responding to users’ behavior and shaping it at the same time. That can make them particularly challenging to talk about. “The algorithm showed me,” people commonly say when explaining how they found the TikTok they just shared. “The algorithm knows me so well,” they might add. That language is wrong, of course, and only in part because an algorithm processes everything while knowing nothing. The formulas that determine users’ digital experiences, and that decide what users are and are not exposed to, are elusively fluid, constantly updated, and ever-changing. They are also notoriously opaque, guarded like the trade secrets they are. This is the magic Clarke was talking about. But it hints, too, at a paradox of life in an age of digital mediation: Technology is at its best when it is mysterious. And it is also at its worst.
Furthermore, in The Guardian, in an excerpt from his book, Chayka brings up the business consequences of the algorithm meddling:
The effect May observed could be called “follower inflation”. High follower numbers correlate less and less to actual engagement over time, as the platform’s priorities change or the same content tricks stop working. It’s a familiar feeling for all of us who have been on Instagram over the past decade. While it might hurt your ego to receive fewer likes on a selfie, it’s a real financial problem when that follower footprint is how a business makes money, whether it’s a cafe attracting visitors or an influencer selling sponsored content.
Or whether it’s a museum offering a special exhibition? I took a day trip to Philly in early January with my friend M. and we saw the fantastic Marie Laurencin Exhibition at the Barnes Foundation!
IN PRINT:
Look: Travel Photographer of the Year 2023 Winners
Listen: Our Lives are ruled by The illusion of time! Short Wave Podcast - NPR
RECOMMENDED READING - Top of Mind
The tyranny of the algorithm: why every coffee shop looks the same
From the generic hipster cafe to the ‘Instagram wall’, the internet has pushed us towards a kind of global ubiquity – and this phenomenon is only going to intensify
Kyle Chayka (Jan 2024)
THE UNCANNIEST INFLUENCERS ON THE INTERNET
A new book brings stark clarity to the formulas that guide our behavior online. Megan Garber (Jan 2024)
How social media algorithms 'flatten' our culture by making decisions for us
Tonya Mosley as heard on Fresh Air interview of Kyle Chayka, New Yorker writer and author of Filterwold (Jan 2024)
Anna Uddenberg’s Body-Twisting Sculptures Probe—and Breach—the Limits of Femininity and Reality
Uddenberg's creations skewer our smart-phone-obsessed lives, while capturing elements of their fascination. Devorah Lauter (Jan 2024)
Op-ed: Why do VCs fund founders like Sam Bankman-Fried and Elizabeth Holmes but not Black entrepreneurs? The founder of SoLo Funds lays out the experience of many underrepresented founders who are put through the paces while other shadier founders get millions. Rodney Williams (Jan 2024)
How a Millennial Estée Lauder Built a Widely Popular Beauty Brand
Karissa Bodnar played on her customers’ desire to belong to something bigger than … well, beauty. Sheila Yasmin Marikar (Jan 2024)
Altered States Self-experiments in chemistry. Oliver Sacks (Aug 2012) Always lovely to revisit!
Kate Zambreno Collects Herself The autofictionist has made the drama of finding and losing the self central to her work. Raising two children during the pandemic prompted a change in focus. Katy Waldman (Jan 2024)
Americans Can’t Decide What It Means to Grow Up Living alone tends to be idolized as a sign of maturity. But maybe that’s misguided. Faith Hill (Jan 2024)
How Google’s Search Generative Experience Will Change Digital Marketing
John Hall (Jan 2024)
NEWS / LONG-FORM JOURNALISM
The Juror Who Found Herself Guilty She was pressured into convicting a man she believed was innocent—and was haunted by remorse. Three decades later, she did something about it.
Michael Hall (Jan 2024)
The Birth of My Daughter, the Death of My Marriage Now that I was doing little besides keeping this tiny creature alive, it was impossible to ignore my desire to wander the streets with our baby, in ever-widening loops away from home. Leslie Jamison (Jan 2024)
BUSINESS / STARTUPS / INVESTING
Fortune 500 companies are eliminating chief marketing officer roles as the position loses C-suite clout Fewer Fortune 500 companies have a standalone chief marketing officer as the role becomes more data-driven. Phil Wahba (Jan 2024)
They Started in a Garage with a $100 Damaged Bathtub. Now These Founders Run a $100 Million Cold Plunge Business. Plunge co-founders Michael Garrett and Ryan Duey detail the launch and exponential growth of their game-changing cold plunge company. Dan Bova (Jan 2024)
"Brands that build up their identity will be the winners": Why branding should be at the centre of your marketing strategy in 2024 Dmytro Spilka (Jan 2024)
4 Ways Stanley 10x'd Its Revenue in Just Four Years Rebranding a Failing Product
Propelled by the popular Stanley tumbler, the brand has taken its revenue to $750 million from $70 million in just a few short years. Here's how. Kai Ravariere (Jan 24)
The search for better unit economics prompts consumer tech investors to shift focus
Christine Hall (Jan 2024)
How TikTok created a new accent – and why it might be the future of English
Sophia Smith Galer (Jan 2024)
Feel the burn(out): Millennials are aging from bright-eyed ‘hustle culture’ workers into exhausted middle managers The employees are not all right, and millennials especially feel the sting of recessions, responsibilities, existentialism—and a lack of workplace innovation. Chloe Berger (Feb 2024)
The ‘beauty bubble’ is real. Just ask the man who’s been studying the link between being hot and making more money for 30 years
Hamermish says beauty isn't just skin deep, and this study of a clearly advantageous and family-linked trait can teach us something about creating a fairer and more just society. “Intergenerational opportunity,” he says, is “the most important question in the social sciences.” Irina Ivanova (Feb. 2024)
Gen Z and the Art of Incentivized Self-Actualization Stepping off the hedonistic treadmill, younger workers are demanding a more authentic employment experience. Michele Lamont (Jan 2024)
Startups: Stop Waiting for the Return of 2021 and Get Real
Early-stage investments are way down in 2023. What you need to do if you want investment.
DC Palter Entrepreneur's Handbook (Dec 2023)
AI / WEB 3 / CRYPTO
AI Loses Its Mind After Being Trained on AI-Generated Data
As the use of generative models continues to grow rapidly, this situation will only accelerate. Maggie Harrison (July 2023)
Andy Warhol’s Factory made a fortune off other people’s work. Now desperate artists are accusing generative AI of supercharging that model Warhol once said "Art is anything you can get away with.” Will Midjourney get away with training its image-generating AI on thousands of artworks? Irina Ivanova (Jan 2024)
From the ‘Forbes’ list to the abyss: The end of the line for three cryptocurrency visionaries Do Kwon (TerraLuna), Sam Bankman-Fried (FTX) and Changpeng Zhao (Binance) — once rising stars in the crypto sector — have left their leadership positions amid accusations of illegal practices Alvaro Sanchez (Dec 2023)
BRAIN / MIND / HEALTH
The consciousness wars: can scientists ever agree on how the mind works?
There are dozens of theories of how the brain produces conscious experience, and a new type of study is testing some of them head-to-head. Mariana Lenharo (Jan 2024)
A Psychotic Experience can Help to Process Difficult Memories The patient is talking, if sometimes more or less metaphorically, about real experiences. Hallucinations and delusions are not meaningless. Heidi Tommila (Jan 2024)
How Margaret Mead's research into utopias helped usher in the psychedelic era
Terry Gross (Jan 2024)
The Ozempic Plateau Everyone hits a weight-loss plateau, but the race is on for next-generation drugs that can help patients lose even more weight. Sarah Zhang (Jan 2024)
My Unraveling: I had my health. I had a job. And then, abruptly, I didn’t. Tom Scocca (Jan 2024)
Cells Across the Body Talk to Each Other About Aging Biologists discovered that mitochondria in different tissues talk to each other to repair injured cells. When their signal fails, the biological clock starts winding down. Viviane Callier (Jan 2024)
Jamais vu: the science behind eerie opposite of déjà vu Akira O'Connor, Christopher Moulin (Sept 2023)
I’ve spent a decade studying gender and I can tell you: as a woman, ageing sets you free
Angela Saini A figurine from one of the world’s oldest known human settlements reveals much about the history and potential of female power. Angela Saini (Dec 2023)
Ayahuasca: WTF is up with DMT? Science Vs podcast (Dec 2023)
ART / LITERATURE
A Marie Laurencin Exhibition Offers a View into the Lesbian Circles of 1920s Paris Karen Chernick (Jan 2024)
The 1920s painter who hid sapphic symbols in her portraits Jacqui Palumbo (Jan 2024)
Autofiction Without the Auto: On Javier Cercas’ Outward-Looking, Self-Centered Fiction Bécquer Seguín Considers the Emergence of a New Type of Literature in Post-Franco Spain (Jan 2024)
Baudelaire Would Be Run Over in New York City Today Shawn Sachdev (Jan 2024)
I Brought My Kids On Tour For A Book About Motherhood. Having my children in the room transformed my events into live enactments of the main ideas in “Mom Rage”
Minna Dubin (Jan 2024)
Curious Mutations and Scenarios Occupy Martin Jarrie’s Stylized Acrylic Illustrations
Grace Ebert (Jan 2024)
FILM / SCIENCE / OTHER / PERSONAL INTEREST / RANDOM
Abbott Elementary Gave Me My Greatest Success, Four Decades Into My Career William Stanford Davis (Feb 2024)
‘There are different ways of being a woman’: Jodie Foster on beauty, bravery, and raising feminist sons For a long time, the actor was the most visible lesbian in Hollywood (not that she really wanted to talk about it). Now the True Detective star feels liberated – and is helping the younger generation follow suit Emma Brockes (Jan 2024)
Jodie Foster Called Out Hollywood in 1991 for Not Being ‘Kind to Women’ Directors: I ‘Never Thought’ a Film Like ‘Barbie’ Was ‘Going to Happen’ Zack Sharf (Jan 2024)
A Dark Omen for the Future of Music Pitchfork challenged a generation of music listeners. Is there still a place for it? Spencer Kornhaber (Jan 2024)
Ask Ethan: What explains the Fibonacci sequence? The pattern 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, etc., is the Fibonacci sequence. It shows up all over nature. But what's the full explanation behind it? Ethan Seigel (Jan 2024)
‘Ibelin’ Review: A Family Learns About Their Son’s Remarkable Online Life in This Emotionally Resonant Doc Lex Briscuso Jan 2024
How a forgotten physicist’s discovery broke the symmetry of the Universe When Rosemary Brown identified a strange particle decay 75 years ago, it set events in motion that would rewrite the laws of physics. Suzie Sheehy (Jan 2024)
Fountains of diamonds that erupt from Earth's center are revealing the lost history of supercontinents Diamonds seem to reach Earth's surface in massive volcanic eruptions when supercontinents break up, and they form when continents come together. Stephanie Pappas (Jan 2024)
Happily Ever Divorced After my Instagrammable marriage fell apart, I finally found peace with my ex-husband — off the grid. Molly Rosen (Nov 2023)
It’s Time We Acknowledge That Older Sisters Are The Backbone Of Society
Finally, there’s an “eldest daughter revolution” happening. Brittany Wong (Jan 2024)
How a Polyamorous Mom Had ‘a Big Sexual Adventure’ and Found Herself
Alexandra Alter (Jan 2024)
Wicked Little Letters’ Review: Olivia Colman and Jessie Buckley Play Sworn Enemies in Saucy Libel-Case Satire Based on a juicy true story from 1920s England about two neighbors caught up in a literal war of words, Thea Sharrock's irreverent arthouse movie tweaks a traditionally over-polite genre. Peter Debruge (Jan 2024)
Stop Asking If the Universe Is a Computer Simulation We will never know if we live in a computer simulation; here is a more interesting question. Simon Duan (Jan 2024)
Get ready to hear more about "pre-internet" times Jennifer A. Kingson Jan 2024
New Clues for What Will Happen When the Sun Eats the Earth Recent observations of an aging, alien planetary system are helping to answer the question: What will happen to our planet when the sun dies? Jonathan O’Callaghan (Dec 2023)