I noticed Meet Me in the Bathroom by Lizzy Goodman on the reading list (sooo good!), and thought I’d plug what some are saying could be today’s real-time equivalent to Goodman’s early-aught epic – the newsletter Perfectly Imperfect, which similarly memorializes contemporary popular/online culture. With each guest sharing what they are currently into, the newsletter’s founder, Tyler Bainbridge, says it “will probably be the most sprawling cultural document of who and what was cool during the time we’re in right now. It’s like a big artifact of all the personalities from this era.” The newsletter itself is a reflection of our class discussion about how we are “holograms” of all the little pieces of “text” that we carry with us, as each newsletter creates a character portrait of the guest’s interests. I’ll link the newsletter here in case :) https://substack.com/@perfectlyimperfect?r=ytpcb&utm_campaign=profile&utm_medium=profile-page (or on instagram: @perfectlyimperfect.newsletter)
Last year the founder also programmed a social platform (called PI.FYI) built on the same premise of recommendations. Here’s a link to the NYT article about it if you’re interested! https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/21/style/perfectly-imperfect-newsletter.html
“This is the internet as a medium coming full circle,” said Zizi Papacharissi, a professor of communications at the University of Illinois Chicago and the editor of the academic journal Social Media & Society. “It was built around small communities structured around niche markets and niche tastes.”
In this context, PI.FYI is an attempt to build a social network that rediscovers the internet’s early promise of connection, without the creeping sense of homogeneity that has resulted from years of algorithm-driven growth.
The newsletter and the app feel like snapshots of this moment in online culture, full of “text” that reflect both today’s focus on esoteric individuality and the community found in online subcultures.