Party tricks

The Future Is Like Pie #43

Author

Lisa Maria Marquis
June 04, 2024

❝

I try & reinvent

new spin. It’s a table with too
many hands in it. It’s communal

as plague. It’s that you were invented,
but came first. The wheel who’ll originate

the hands that spin it.

Every time I sit down to write about the ongoing fight I’m having with LinkedIn, I just end up writing in circles.

First, I can’t help but feel like it’s boring. Everyone, come quick! A major tech company is making a decision that’s bad for users! Girl, it’s been bad decisions all the way down for several years running. Complaining about how they’re deprioritizing links and wheatpasting AI bullshit to the bottom of posts is such a yawn.

Second, it’s the smallest of potatoes. It’s trivial as hell. We are in the midst of seemingly endless, algorithmically assisted atrocities of historic proportion—genocides, pandemics, widespread mental health crises, massive wealth inequality—and I’m whining about a website.

And third, everything I want to say is already being said better by someone else. I don’t mean I shouldn’t add my voice to the mix (we all should! Remember, ABC, Always Be Complaining about tech companies, out loud and in public and on purpose), but I’m having trouble right now finding a narrative thread that feels additive. Or maybe just coherent, at least for this channel. I have no problem shitposting about LinkedIn on LinkedIn (personal brand 2024), but every time I try to write a newsletter essay on the same topic, I devolve into keysmashing.

Because the endpoint of every essay I want to write about tech right now is simply: I AM SO FUCKING TIRED. WHY IS IT LIKE THIS. WHY HAVE WE DONE THIS. HOW DO WE UNDO IT. WHEN WILL WE REGULATE IT. WHERE IS MY GUILLOTINE

So here I am, doing what I usually do when I’m in this bind: I’m writing about the writing. And I’m sharing the good tech writing down below. And I’m wishing fervently for the death of the algorithm. (That last one’s not really about my writing process. It’s more of a lifestyle.)

“Oh, Whatever, Everything Is Totally Great For Writers Right Now”

Here’s an essay that halted an earlier version of this newsletter in its tracks, because it said everything I was trying to say, but funnier and sadder and sharper. Thank you, Chuck Wendig:

But whoa, here’s the real corker, right — so the people, the humans, they’re having a harder and harder time seeing you, right? And you, the also human author, are having a harder and harder time reaching them, yeah? What’s cool is, though, you still get to reach the robots. And the robots, they’re fucking everywhere, man, they’re crawling the internet like bugs, and they’re just gobbling up content left and right, just chewing it up like termites. Then everything the robots chew up gets turned into this paste, yeah? Like, a spackle? A content spackle? And they fuckin’ barf it back up in different places, so that’s cool because I guess they call that exposure or something. The molecular material of your writing and art is kind of in everything, then, like how we’re all made of stardust and shit? Yeah. Yeah. It’s cool, it’s great, and no, no, there’s no attribution or anything and no, nobody is paying us for that — ha ha, yeah, they’re just stealing it.

“Expectations Versus Reality”

Ed Zitron is one of the few clear-eyed tech journalists writing right now, correctly criticizing both the tech industry for its snake oil and tech journalism for its fawning. While he’s released several excellent essays this past month, I have to share this one because it makes me want to scream from the nearest rooftop (complimentary):

People aren’t tired of looking at their phones — they’re tired of their phones being stuffed full of notifications and spam texts and their inboxes being filled with marketing emails from companies that forced them to hand over their email address to read an article or get an offer. Nobody wants a second device to “use their phones less” and “be more present,” they want the shit they already bought to work better. 

And also (more screaming):

The tech industry needs to start building things for real people again. Solve real problems. Help regular consumers, not the shadowy morass of Small-To-Medium Enterprises. If artificial intelligence is truly the future, build something that makes somebody who doesn’t give a shit about technology sit up and listen instead of creating increasingly-more-complex party tricks in the hopes that it’ll show Wall Street you’re still growing.

Lightning round

Throwback read

From issue #13

“Trans-inclusive Design” by Erin White: a thorough, thoughtful, and practical exploration of some of the many ways we can make space for trans folks in our design and content:

We are web professionals; we can do better […]. The choices we make impact the online and offline experiences of real people who are trans, non-binary, or gender-variant—choices that can affirm or exclude, uplift or annoy, help or harm. […] How you choose to create space for trans folks is going to be up to you.

June’s cause

Happy Pride! Let’s all send money to the Transgender Law Center, which works to “change law, policy, and attitudes so that all people can live safely, authentically, and free from discrimination regardless of their gender identity or expression.”

Register for my workshop

There are still some spots available for the last FIX YOUR SITEMAP workshop of the season, happening Thursday, June 13, 2–5 pm eastern. Student tickets are sold out, but there are tickets left at corporate, nonprofit, and self-employed rates. Remember, newsletter subscribers get 15% off with code NEWSLETTER15—I’d love to see you or your colleagues there!