In a recent newsletter I referred to Mark Zuckerberg as a digital narcotics dealer, which readers seemed to enjoy. I briefly wondered if I was overstating the matter until I read about how schools are worried students will skip meals in order to use their phones.  Some context: Oregon, like many states, is prohibiting students […]

The dumbest trade war in world history is underway and Canadians are responding to the idiocy by changing their spending habits. American liquors have been pulled from store shelves and Canadians are trying to replace American products with Canadian equivalents at the grocery store. This is a great example of patriotic unity during a time […]

This is the second article in a series about how to function as a human person online in this clusterfuck of an era. You can read part one, about rejecting anxiety bait, here.  A curated social media account can expose you to new ideas, help you keep in touch with friends, and maybe even help you […]

The past month has been the longest year of my life. I’m sure I’m not alone on this. It is impossible to ignore the onslaught of bad news, which I’m not going to highlight here. What I am going to do is recommend that you take care of yourself. If the world is going to […]

You’re a person—I hope this is obvious to you. It’s not obvious to tech companies. No, tech companies see you as a number.I used to work inside a tech company that was obsessed with metrics—design decisions were evaluated based on whether they made the right numbers go up. This philosophy, taken to its extreme, can […]

Living online can feel…numbing. Bo Burnham perhaps captured that best with That Funny Feeling, a song made up of various unrelated phrases that simulate the feeling of scrolling. deadpool’s self-awareness/loving parents/harmless fun/the backlash to the backlash to the thing that’s just begun On and on it goes, and on and on you scroll, until your thumbs (and soul) […]

I have no idea how many people read my articles. I love it. This hasn’t always been true. When I worked at a culty tech company, I was forced to obsess over metrics. I was told I’m not data-driven enough, that I needed to improve. My manager set up a dashboard I was supposed to check […]

Many current social problems—not all, but many—can be traced back to our collective decision to prioritize #engagement in the systems we use to communicate with each other. Facebook’s newsfeed is the most prominent example of this. Here you see not the most recent posts from your friends but the posts Facebook’s mysterious algorithm deems most […]

All these years later I still think about house hippos once a month or so. Confused? So was I, as a kid, seeing this PSA for the first time. The footage looked so…real. I couldn’t help but wonder, halfway through, whether there really were tiny hippos in my kitchen. There aren’t, of course. This was […]

Facebook killed local newspapers by sucking up all the revenue that used to pay for the person who’d sit in on council meetings and spell your nephews’ name incorrectly. Now they’re starting to feel bad about that, so they’re throwing a tiny percentage of their revenue toward appearing to do something about the problem. Mathew […]