iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

👁️ @nathanjurgenson.com · 22/09/2026

like when people get nostalgic for old versions of fast food restaurants lol

👁️ @nathanjurgenson.com · 26/08/2026

the deep quantification of social platforms and the ubiquity of gambling and prediction markets, ironically, only makes us more paranoid of the numbers and what they claim to measure

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👁️ @nathanjurgenson.com · 06/08/2026

took me too long to get to Colquhoun’s Narcissus in Bloom (2023). book tore itself apart, which was fitting given the thesis

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👁️ @nathanjurgenson.com · 21/07/2026

www.blackbirdspyplane.com/p/is-ambient...

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👁️ @nathanjurgenson.com · 16/06/2026

nothing is less "real," authentic," or "in the moment" less than things marketed as such

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👁️ @nathanjurgenson.com · 16/06/2026

fred never misses thebaffler.com/salvos/the-t...

For Lonsdale, as for Dunn and, increasingly, Musk, the high-tech future will have to be built in a way that blends church, state and market, to the benefit of those most able to seize public resources and turn them to private profit.

That fusion is the essence of the Texan Ideology

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👁️ @nathanjurgenson.com · 19/05/2026

let's check in on the UpWorthy guy...oh, lol

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👁️ @nathanjurgenson.com · 18/05/2026

felt like this too neatly linked the feeling of fakeness to the recent pivot to short form video. all metricized and algorithmic media is deceptive. like, what's the "real" way to post content in a system that links attention to profit?

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👁️ @nathanjurgenson.com · 21/04/2026

to me, the more interesting question isnt why highlights are more viewed, of course they are, but what accounts for the enduring popularity of the endlessly long streams the highlights are clipped from?

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👁️ @nathanjurgenson.com · 12/03/2026

also, *wild* example to use for this point lol

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👁️ @nathanjurgenson.com · 10/02/2026

there’s a new edition of The Social Photo (Verso) and i wrote a little preface for it

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👁️ @nathanjurgenson.com · 03/02/2026

modernity is the doom loop of having to describe the same thing with ever new terms

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👁️ @nathanjurgenson.com · 20/12/2025

best place to start for defining "slop" is Weberian theory. one key aspect there, and for slop, is understanding the link between rationalization and irrationality ie "slop" is often used to describe both that which is "fully optimized" *and* chaotic purposeless hallucinations

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👁️ @nathanjurgenson.com · 30/10/2025

hate social media platforms pitching themselves as real an authentic more than any of the fakery happening elsewhere

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👁️ @nathanjurgenson.com · 30/10/2025

"smart" podcasts as a form leverage the feeling of thought and sociality to get people to consume content that, if written, would seem remedial or downright dumb thebaffler.com/outbursts/th...

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👁️ @nathanjurgenson.com · 22/10/2025

"people no longer have a choice but to assume that everything is false" they keep saying this but thats just obviously not what is happening. again, better Q: what accounts for the enduring truth-telling function of images? (fromhttps://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/19/opinion/ai-sora-slop.html)

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👁️ @nathanjurgenson.com · 22/10/2025

i dont think real vs fake is whats at stake here (the political valence of AI is). none of these examples are pitching the AI imagery as real. "fake imagery" is a weird term for this slop bc wouldnt that also encompass most art and memes etc?

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👁️ @nathanjurgenson.com · 16/10/2025

robhorning.substack.com/p/there-are-...

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👁️ @nathanjurgenson.com · 10/10/2025

read this same take every month for years even though there's a constant stream of newsy widely-believed video happening all around us the better question is: what accounts for the enduring truth-telling function of cameras in an age where believable fakes are easy to generate?

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👁️ @nathanjurgenson.com · 09/10/2025

hedgehogreview.com/issues/the-u...

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👁️ @nathanjurgenson.com · 13/09/2025

"the end of social media" takes often need to make a too-clean distinction between public broadcast platforms and private group sharing. a lot of social-media-like energy exists in the gradients in-between

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👁️ @nathanjurgenson.com · 10/09/2025

am also dying at the ad in this video for a scam news app that will give you a fake number for how true articles are lol

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👁️ @nathanjurgenson.com · 06/09/2025

everything, no matter how much it epitomized rational fake empty nothingness in its time, eventually comes to be something remembered as real and felt nostalgic for

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👁️ @nathanjurgenson.com · 31/08/2025

was asked, along with some others, how i approach looking at every photographs everydayphotography.org/journal/eido... the eidolon centre is so cool

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👁️ @nathanjurgenson.com · 20/08/2025

"the looking-glass self", Charles Horton Cooley (1902) lol this "new trend" is just what identity has always been

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👁️ @nathanjurgenson.com · 01/08/2025

good! food delivery slop and AI image slop deserve each other. the fake images dont mislead, they accurately convey the desire for crappy food made and delivered in unethical ways

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👁️ @nathanjurgenson.com · 31/07/2025

fun time at the @404media.co event in LA! i liked the conversation at the end about the dangers of protest surveillance vs people wanting to be filmed

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👁️ @nathanjurgenson.com · 22/07/2025

honestly a good and accurate phrase for algorithmic content, "empathy" as a superficial, consumerist spectacle

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👁️ @nathanjurgenson.com · 04/06/2025

imagine thinking "funny" or any of these are some kind of linear slider this is so Zuck brained, the idea that sociality can be reduced to numbers, then sorted and ranked and made manageable

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👁️ @nathanjurgenson.com · 14/05/2025

the gamification really makes this explicit, where subjectivity is offloaded to scores

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👁️ @nathanjurgenson.com · 14/05/2025

this app asks the users to see the world as a machine does, to not just interact with AI but to develop an AI Vision of your world and your self [learned of it from here: www.phonetime.news/p/i-tried-th...

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👁️ @nathanjurgenson.com · 05/05/2025

interacting with an AI can only seem fulfilling because platforms trained these folks to treat other humans in such an instrumental way people are reduced to numbers when discourse is ranked with metrics and sorted through algorithms, so why not just speak to AI?

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👁️ @nathanjurgenson.com · 04/05/2025

robhorning.substack.com/p/just-for-a...

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👁️ @nathanjurgenson.com · 19/04/2025

hard to think of two people i’ve known that i respect more. last night was fun seeing Malcolm Harris and @mattdpearce.com talks about Mal’s new book What’s Left! which everyone should buy rn

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👁️ @nathanjurgenson.com · 02/03/2025

focuses on how memes are used and not what politically and materially is being done. exactly the wrong approach imo

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👁️ @nathanjurgenson.com · 27/02/2025

drive.google.com/file/d/1O2qk... loving this by @mkirschenbaum.bsky.social

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👁️ @nathanjurgenson.com · 21/01/2025

i always wonder what work "Online" does in these kinds of headlines

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👁️ @nathanjurgenson.com · 11/01/2025

anyways, donate to Watch Duty! and here was the view from my place on wednesday morning near the Eaton fire

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👁️ @nathanjurgenson.com · 04/01/2025

the best answer as to why facebook would want to flood its network with simulated users:

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👁️ @nathanjurgenson.com · 30/12/2024

i always wonder what work "Online" does in these kinds of headlines

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👁️ @nathanjurgenson.com · 20/12/2024

"In a few years, it may no longer seem notable to see a swarm of drones overhead ... But technology changes faster than culture, and initial evidence suggests that drone acceptance won’t be immediate" and of course this is paired with a nytimes podcast that lists one guest...

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