iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Matt Klein @kleinkleinklein.bsky.social · 09/10/2025

Despite age check verifications around the world... In a given month, Pornhub is still frequented more than The New York Times, Walmart and CNN combined. More frequented than IMDB, ESPN, Zillow and Etsy combined. More frequented than Netflix .com. Weather .com. Roblox .com.

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Matt Klein @kleinkleinklein.bsky.social · 06/10/2025

If you are not loud, you do not exist culturally, politically, or socially. In the age of the algorithm, cultural value becomes synonymous with measurability. Dashboards don’t give a shit about merit, substance or even truth. zine.kleinkleinklein.com/p/dashboard-...

zine.kleinkleinklein.com

Dashboard Culture vs. Camouflage Culture

How the Attention Economy killed Camp, collapsed distance, and left us unable to critique a UFC fight on the White House lawn.

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Reposted by Matt Klein

Matt Muir @mattmuir.bsky.social · 26/08/2025

A final plug for the 2025 Tiny Awards - voting closes on 1 September, so you have a week left to pick your favourite lovely little website from the past 12 months to win a VERY SMALL prize. Great webstuff made by real people, celebrate it while you still can: tinyawards.net/vote/

tinyawards.net

Tiny Awards

This is the home of the Tiny Awards, which, since 2023, has celebrated the best of the small, poetic, creative, handmade web.

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Matt Muir @mattmuir.bsky.social · 22/08/2025

No Web Curios til 5 September, but if you would like some Excellent Internet to help you while away the afternoon then might I suggest you check out this year's Tiny Awards finalists if you've yet to do so? Eleven brilliant little websites for your consideration here: tinyawards.net/vote/

tinyawards.net

Tiny Awards

This is the home of the Tiny Awards, which, since 2023, has celebrated the best of the small, poetic, creative, handmade web.

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Matt Klein @kleinkleinklein.bsky.social · 14/08/2025

Like the starlets decades ago, today’s bedroom streamers have stars in their eyes. But dreams in the black mirror are not as close as they appear. zine.kleinkleinklein.com/p/creator-ec...

zine.kleinkleinklein.com

The Creator Economy Is a Race to the Bottom for Human Dignity

The hidden costs and house of cards in the age of influence

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Matt Klein @kleinkleinklein.bsky.social · 16/07/2025

What do 5,000 dreams about AI reveal about our relationship to it? Only in ZINE next week: open.substack.com/pub/kleinkle...

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Matt Klein @kleinkleinklein.bsky.social · 30/06/2025

SCOTUS decision on age verification isn't just legal precedent, it's an artifact symbolizing our moment's anxiety about sexuality, paternalism and privacy online. These laws curb traffic to compliant sites and drive users to VPNs and noncompliant sites. zine.kleinkleinklein.com/p/supreme-co...

zine.kleinkleinklein.com

You Didn't Notice Anonymous Internet Browsing Was Just Killed

What a new Supreme Court ruling means for privacy, free speech and the future of the internet

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Matt Klein @kleinkleinklein.bsky.social · 14/06/2025

Got home from the Apple Store with new AirPods and spotted dirt on the ear pieces. When I connect them, they connect as “Michael’s AirPods” with his Apple Care still going. Brought them back. Essentially: “Our b. Nothing to see here. Go home with these new new ones.” So that’s how Apple’s doing.

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Reposted by Matt Klein

Alek Tarkowski @alek.eurosky.social · 07/06/2025

“Making for the web is easy, but most of us have forgotten how – ceding our digital agency to platforms and corporate landlords.” @kleinkleinklein.bsky.social + @sachajudd.com on building the Good Internet, out of the cozy web bits. Good stuff. zine.kleinkleinklein.com/p/good-inter...

zine.kleinkleinklein.com

How to Build the Good Internet

Stepping out of the dark forest and reclaiming a social, handmade and cozy web

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Reposted by Matt Klein

Andy Baio @andy.baio.net · 04/06/2025

The Tiny Awards are back, and so am I! After a year off, I'll be a judge helping to decide "the best of the small, poetic, creative, handmade web" made in the last 12 months. Nominations open until the end of the month, submit anything you love! tinyawards.net

tinyawards.net

Tiny Awards

This is the home of the Tiny Awards, which, since 2023, has celebrated the best of the small, poetic, creative, handmade web.

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Reposted by Matt Klein

Matt Muir @mattmuir.bsky.social · 02/06/2025

For the past few years, me, Kris at Naive and Matt at Reddit have been running the Tiny Awards, celebrating the good bits of the web. THEY ARE BACK IN 2025 AND NOMINATIONS ARE OPEN! Please tell your friends and share the link, as a small act of resistence to everything being shit: tinyawards.net

tinyawards.net

Tiny Awards

This is the home of the Tiny Awards, which, since 2023, has celebrated the best of the small, poetic, creative, handmade web.

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Matt Klein @kleinkleinklein.bsky.social · 24/03/2025

A spot on 2025 experience: Attempting to delete your 23andMe data as the company files for bankruptcy, preventing a new buyer from accessing your DNA, but the site keeps crashing. And this is the most interaction with the brand in 8 years as the experience was truly useless.

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Matt Klein @kleinkleinklein.bsky.social · 20/02/2025

Can understand the concern. Curious what signals this as a playbook for brands to exploit darkness, and not an essay centered on humans, helping them navigating said dark change.

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Matt Klein @kleinkleinklein.bsky.social · 29/01/2025

New working hyp: Employee tenure is not long enough to instill fiduciary duty on brand work. As a result, you get a lot of work chasing the trend because employees want to resonate for now, not build for decades. Brands require an Executive of Stewardship. Chief Legacy Officer.

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Matt Klein @kleinkleinklein.bsky.social · 28/01/2025

Cultural-Singularity: When culture folds back in on itself amidst hyper-optimization and AI. The solution? Friction. zine.kleinkleinklein.com/p/hyper-opti...

zine.kleinkleinklein.com

Cultural Singularity & The Need for Friction: The Business Case for Thinking the Inverse

How "Hyper-Optimization" threatens creativity and how slowness will save us

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Matt Klein @kleinkleinklein.bsky.social · 12/01/2025

Thanks so much! ❤️ So appreciative to have you reading!

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Reposted by Matt Klein

Daphné B. @daphneb.bsky.social · 03/01/2025

sur l'environnement médiatique qui change: lu et aimé zine.kleinkleinklein.com/p/costco-guys

zine.kleinkleinklein.com

The Most Important Image of 2024

What The Costco Guys on Fallon reveal about our media environment

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Matt Klein @kleinkleinklein.bsky.social · 24/12/2024

ZINE is read in 49 states (and 133 countries.) But I’m desperately seeking a reader from: Alaska. For the first Alaskan subscriber, I’m offering Founding Membership for life. If you know any peeps in Alaska interested in decoding social shifts, give ‘em a ping! ZINE.KleinKleinKlein.com

zine.kleinkleinklein.com

ZINE | Matt Klein | Substack

Overlooked cultural trends explained. Webby-winning intel on our media and social shifts to understand tomorrow. Click to read ZINE, by Matt Klein, a Substack publication with tens of thousands of sub...

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Matt Klein @kleinkleinklein.bsky.social · 23/12/2024

The surge in android and animated sit beside a hunger for authenticity, while a deadly tension mounts between public legislation and private browsing. These aren't contradictions — they're constellations. Spots of light revealing the complexities of being human.

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Matt Klein @kleinkleinklein.bsky.social · 23/12/2024

07. Hentai, Anime & Cosplay: Hentai held the top spot as the most searched term for now four years in a row. Data reveals this may not be naivety, but favorability. Interest in hentai (or cosplay) isn’t a flee of reality, but a reinvention of it.

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Matt Klein @kleinkleinklein.bsky.social · 23/12/2024

06. Trans Porn: In '22, the category grew +75%, becoming the 7th most popular category, where it remained in '24. Trans porn is more popular in countries with higher rates of Catholicism and murders of trans people. There's a tension between human sexuality and social politics.

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Matt Klein @kleinkleinklein.bsky.social · 23/12/2024

05. Wellness & Care: Searches for therapy, therapist, massage, trainer and mindful are sweeping as we simultaneously face a wellness crisis. The perceived sacred, gentle safety of disclosure and healing is doing something for us.

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Matt Klein @kleinkleinklein.bsky.social · 23/12/2024

04. Synthetic Seduction: Android, AI, robot, machine, 3D and NPC searches are growing as we witness post-human eroticism. But mechanical fantasies aren't an escape from humanity, but another expression of it.

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Matt Klein @kleinkleinklein.bsky.social · 23/12/2024

03. Size Matters: Searches for big, bigger, biggest, etc. are swelling, perhaps signaling a crave for the physically overwhelming and undeniable as a reaction to our everyday digitally disembodied experiences. Or maybe bigger is just hotter.

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Matt Klein @kleinkleinklein.bsky.social · 23/12/2024

02. Elder Eros: Milf, dilf, daddy, mature, cougar, granny, and gilf searches are soaring but this may not be driven by young people interested in old people, but old people interested in the old people as nearly 1-in-5 Pornhub visitors are now 55+.

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Matt Klein @kleinkleinklein.bsky.social · 23/12/2024

01. Get Real: Searches for authentic, real, ethical, amateur, homemade, respectful, BTS and vertical video are spiking as we seek authenticity through the very mechanisms (screens), which perhaps drive us to crave it.

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Matt Klein @kleinkleinklein.bsky.social · 23/12/2024

🍆 NSFW 💦 Pornhub's Year in Review Data Report could be one of the most insightful and overlooked glimpses into the collective psyche. If we're to better understand our moment, we've got to be curious, respectful and comfortable with the uncomfortable. The emerging trends:

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Matt Klein @kleinkleinklein.bsky.social · 20/12/2024

TL;DR: Shrek is searched more frequently on Pornhub than Superman, Batgirl and Star Trek. zine.kleinkleinklein.com/p/pornhub-tr...

zine.kleinkleinklein.com

Arousal Quantified: 7 Trends Revealed via Pornhub's Data

What millions of searches and clicks say about sexual desire

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Matt Klein @kleinkleinklein.bsky.social · 07/12/2024

I don’t understand how a +$1B global communications and business consulting org lays off +5% of its workforce two weeks before the holidays and still thinks they signal: “We know how to do good communications strategy.”

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Matt Klein @kleinkleinklein.bsky.social · 04/12/2024

I don’t think this is the same as having a calculator do long division for us. It’s more like losing a sense of direction with Google Maps, or losing a sense of purpose after being laid off.

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Matt Klein @kleinkleinklein.bsky.social · 04/12/2024

After a couple of weeks of extensively using Claude I’m increasingly concerned by the (inevitable) atrophying of our creative, critical and menial thinking. The thinking that feels like a weight rep.

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Matt Klein @kleinkleinklein.bsky.social · 03/12/2024

I’m taking Qs, hot takes and curiosities via ZINE Office Hours (Substack Chat) over the next couple of days. Drop in and let’s chat… open.substack.com/chat/posts/f...

open.substack.com

Matt Klein in ZINE

ZINE Office Hours: Now - Thursday Drop in any questions or observations, big or small, and let's chat. What's on your mind and how can I lend mine?

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Matt Klein @kleinkleinklein.bsky.social · 02/12/2024

An expertly succinct explanation of this phenomenon by @kirbyferguson.bsky.social

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Matt Klein @kleinkleinklein.bsky.social · 02/12/2024

Creativity can't die. But metrics, fear of risk and poor discovery prevent the novel from seeing the light. This isn’t an issue of creativity, but an issue of permitting talent to graduate beyond the niche and accepting news mediums of creativity. www.youtube.com/watch?v=aToM...

youtube.com

The Algorithm Has Been Hiding Something From You | NYT Opinion

YouTube video by The New York Times

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nick susi @nicksusi.bsky.social · 25/11/2024

Dear strategists, if you’re not an active participant in the culture, your frameworks won’t save you

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Matt Klein @kleinkleinklein.bsky.social · 19/11/2024

"The easiest thing to get to conform is the technology... Understand the technology well enough to use it in a way that's compatible with you and your creative cycle, rather than trying to conform your humanity to it." - @rushkoff.bsky.social zine.kleinkleinklein.com/p/douglas-ru...

zine.kleinkleinklein.com

Interview with Douglas Rushkoff: Program or Be Programmed

🎧 Listen now | Rushkoff on how to reject what our platforms want and embrace our humanity

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Matt Klein @kleinkleinklein.bsky.social · 19/11/2024

People don’t love the “vibe” of a new platform as much as they love the flattening and equalizing of status and the ability to start from scratch.

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Matt Klein @kleinkleinklein.bsky.social · 19/11/2024

Posting the same short message on X, Threads, Blue Sky and Substack Notes to ensure max coverage and ultimately determine which platform to one day invest heavily in based upon growth and engagement, is not what anyone of us signed up for and it’s okay to refuse to partake in this ridiculous game.

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Matt Klein @kleinkleinklein.bsky.social · 18/11/2024

Our platforms perpetuate demand for “magazine.”

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Matt Klein @kleinkleinklein.bsky.social · 18/11/2024

For a lot of smart people who want to “participate” in culture, the path of least resistance is rounding up links and lightly commenting on them vs. forming net-new, fully fleshed out ideas. The latter approach offloads the labor of originality. I empathize.

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Matt Klein @kleinkleinklein.bsky.social · 15/11/2024

I’d like to propose… Klein’s Law: The Internet is actually smaller than we think — the more networked we become, the easier it is to come across conversations about yourself and others, and therefore we should always be respectful. Presume the person you’re talking about will discover that content.

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