The case against authenticity


Refuse digital voyeurism, carve it out of you with grace and repulsion.

How 2 disgrace social media


Find music through websites like archive.org by exploring image folders of album covers or archived radio show recordings (album cover collections r by far the easier start)

Get out of ur language. pick up spanish or russian or whatever language the cool 2$ book from bizarre baazar is in. use this language to write or translate, as the intention in this suggestion is not to be perfectly articulate or fluent, but to expose u to a new creative medium. the rules of language are made by its users, always.

Read without expectation of showing u read the book, read for the sake of respect & admiration for the craft of writing.

Do everything, really, without the expectation of being seen. there is no main character, there is no audience. do not go to a coffee shop with a book and a charming button-down expecting someone to come save you or praise you for the effortless air of aesthetic mastery you possess. Cut this digital voyeurism out of you like any other tumour.

Once u kno how to proceed in public without the expectation of being seen, notice the pleasure and details you have grown more keen to. become the person who engages with strangers. i like that book, i love your patches, are those handmade? engage, because as there is no audience we are all equal participants of a scene much larger than any modern individual. engage, because we're all begging somebody else to do so.

Embrace movements like the indie/slow/personal web movement; code simple html&css sites & maybe even toy w java. if u must have a presence online, it must be entirely yours. you have to be doing it all for yourself, not for the eyes of another. consider it then a different way of laying out a photo album.... or just buy a photo album from a thrift and let your archives be material, entirely intimate to your physical life.

Know entirely that your name is not a brand. your name is an a word used to identity the body and collection of youism that you are. do not ever allow so-called leaders to make you believe your name is a stable, presentable, explanable, definable self. this is something i need you to deeply reflect on. at first it is painfully obvious, especially if you read fagpoetry... but i tried to avoid what everybody seems to know. this is here for a reason.

Sources that helped me pull this together


The Disappearance of Rituals, Byung-Chul Han
Innumerable slow web manifestos
Why I Fucking Hate Weblogs! by Donald Brook