Introduction
Let me start with this: I’m not a fan of snack content. If you’re reading this (which would be a miracle in and of itself considering the endless options you face every second of the day), then you are probably reading this on your phone in line for coffee, walking to the bus stop, or in the subway — assuming you’re organized enough to have saved it to Pocket and then refreshed Pocket before the Internet cut out. Or maybe you are in the future already, where the Internet doesn’t cut out.
Anyway, if you’re reading this than you have some appetite for snack content and that is ok. But I do not. So just starting this makes me throw up a little bit in my mouth. I’m one of you now. Maybe I always have been.
Why am I not a fan?
Because I believe in IRL community and engaged experiences — and that means you gotta look up from your phone every once in a while. That means you gotta pause the scroll, put down the device and have a long conversation over a bottle of wine. That means you have to get lost without Google Maps. That means you must turn your phone off every once in a while (wait-has anyone ever done that?).
I also am against headline bait, seo writing, and short form shit, which is more or less what a good chunk of the Internet is now, though I really don’t know as I haven’t looked at an analysis lately, so take that with a grain of salt.
Another thing about snack content — probably my biggest issue with it — is that I always think I’d rather focus on something real, like a book, instead of wasting time writing short musings that are unedited and probably crappy. I’d wake up early every day and long form it out in my pretty blank-page locally-made high-end notebook. And someday I’d put together my masterpiece and someone would edit it and someone would publish it and bam Author! In print! Dream come true.
On the other hand, I believe in online community, too. I’ve made many friends via the Internet and I think it is a pretty cool place when used for good and to seek out hope and love and happiness. I also might as well make the most of the internet while we still can. And let’s face it — I’m an 80s baby so I’m just as comfortable typing with my thumbs as I am writing in a notebook. (For the record, I still write in that fancy notebook, some mornings, though never that early. And maybe, someday, it will come together in those things we call books).
Short doesn’t mean bad. And I’m not Joan Didion.
I also realize short doesn’t mean bad and long doesn’t mean good. And writing doesn’t need to be omg [insert your favorite, smartest, most prolific writer] again! to be worth writing.
Futures are worth writing for…even if we don’t yet know why.
Most of all, I believe — despite recent events — in futures. I say futures (yes, plural) because we don’t really know which one it’s gonna be and this is my little tiny piece of snack content to help myself, and maybe you!, chart the path for the one we want.
Or at the very least, attempt to document what life was like before the robots. Because they are here. Right now. I’m kind of using one to write this.
In conclusion, because 5-paragraph essays taught me something!
My last tweet was ‘Why can’t I do everything. On my phone. On the subway’ so why not just start here, now. Why not prove myself wrong. That’s what futures are all about anyway, am I right?
