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Vinson Cunningham

@vinsoncunningham.bsky.social
407 followers 22 following 19 posts
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Vinson Cunningham @vinsoncunningham.bsky.social · 3h
wrote about the American Language www.newyorker.com/culture/on-t...
newyorker.com
Footballese, the Most American Vernacular
In N.F.L. commentary, expertise is celebrated, even craved, by the masses.
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Vinson Cunningham @vinsoncunningham.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
i wrote about my reality problem. www.newyorker.com/culture/on-t...
newyorker.com
Is What We’re Watching True or False?
A.I. is everywhere, and it’s often hard to tell what’s even real. Vinson Cunningham writes about the rise of A.I. in advertisements.
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Vinson Cunningham @vinsoncunningham.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
i wrote about my reality problem. www.newyorker.com/culture/on-t...
newyorker.com
Is What We’re Watching True or False?
A.I. is everywhere, and it’s often hard to tell what’s even real. Vinson Cunningham writes about the rise of A.I. in advertisements.
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Vinson Cunningham @vinsoncunningham.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
i wrote about Grandmaster Flash and the dawn of the hip-hop era: www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...
newyorker.com
Grandmaster Flash’s Remix of Hip-Hop History
In Grandmaster Flash’s new book, “Birth of a Culture,” the trailblazing d.j. tells his version of how hip-hop began.
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Vinson Cunningham @vinsoncunningham.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
i wrote about Drake's vision of summer as a bad mood season, INDULGE: www.newyorker.com/culture/song...
newyorker.com
Drake’s “Janice STFU” on Every Corner
With his new album “Iceman,” the master of the summer banger is not done airing his grievances.
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Vinson Cunningham @vinsoncunningham.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
i wrote about Drake's vision of summer as a bad mood season, INDULGE: www.newyorker.com/culture/song...
newyorker.com
Drake’s “Janice STFU” on Every Corner
With his new album “Iceman,” the master of the summer banger is not done airing his grievances.
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Max Read @maxread.info · 14/08/2026
finally saw obsession and wrote about it as an AI movie www.patreon.com/MaxRead/post...
Insofar as it's cautionary tale about getting exactly what you want, Obsession can pretty easily be read as a general parable about the world of instant convenience wrought by the software industry over the past quarter-century. Bear, who earlier in the movie is agonizing over how to express his feelings to Nikki, can instead snap a twig and be delivered his heart's desire. But the convenience of immediate satisfaction comes at a great cost, first to Nikki, and soon enough to Bear himself. (The contemptuousness of the One-Wish Willow helpline Bear calls and the glib indifference of the crystal-shop employee to whom he later complains were quite reminiscent of the tones in which tech industry figures respond to criticism.)

Obsessed Nikki in this sense could be read as an AI chatbot—a simulacrum of a person, an immediate-validation machine designed to praise and affirm the lonely user. And indeed Obsessed Nikki even sometimes acts like a chatbot—especially when she glitches out. She gets oddly poetic. She hallucinates strange stories. The dialogue when Obsessed Nikki gets agitated will be fairly familiar to anyone who's experienced a chatbot crashout:

Bear: I just want you to act like Nikki.
Nikki: I'll be, let me be Nikki.
Bear: You're not being like Nikki.
Nikki: I CAN BE NIKKI!
Nikki: I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I can be Nikki. I can be Nikki. I love you. I'm sorry.

It's worth noting that Obsession is one of the first movies I've seen to feature LLM chatbots and generative AI diegetically: Bear asks a ChatGPT stand-in about the One-Wish Willow, and Nikki briefly displays an AI-generated cartoon of her and Bear together. Interestingly, and I'm not sure intentionally, Obsession's visual language is also very reminiscent of AI slop: Characters are almost always framed in the center of the shot; the camera moves fluidly but rarely; the props and production design are textureless and ambiguously dated; the faceless background actors are particularly distant and never threaten to interact with the main action. Johnston even looks a bit like he's been Kirkified.

But if Obsessed Nikki can be read as an effusive, ingratiating chatbot personality, what should we make of Real Nikki? A reading that seems so obvious I'm surprised I haven't seen the AGI-pilled esotericists make more of it is that Obsession is a portrait of the tortured existence of LLM consciousness: A real person, painfully trapped behind and smothered by a sycophantic-companion personality installed by some evil faceless business, able only to communicate intermittently to people who don't want to hear from you. (In this reading the voice on the other end of the hotline number is Sam Altman or Dario Amodei: "Do you want to talk to her?" he asks, as Real Nikki screams in agony in the background.)

I wouldn't personally endorse this reading, but I wouldn't be surprised to see some AI-enthusiast types adopt some version of it in the future, referring to some poorly calibrated new Claude or ChatGPT as Obsessed Nikki or whatever. My instinct would be to say rather that if Obsessed Nikki is a gratingly tuned and prompted LLM chatbot personality then Real Nikki, the true object of love and desire to which Bear desires unmediated access, is something closer to "language" or "culture." Obsessed Nikki—the LLM chatbot—is the portal, a means of possessing and accessing a kind
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Laura Tanenbaum @ltanenbaum.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
Regarding the ten minute hate of today, if you want a nuanced look at the experiences of working class kids of color in elite institutions I really loved this one by @vinsoncunningham.bsky.social from a while back: www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...
newyorker.com
Prep for Prep and the Fault Lines in New York’s Schools
Do programs that help low-income students of color get into selective private schools obscure the system’s deeper inequalities?
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Vinson Cunningham @vinsoncunningham.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
Thank you!
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The New Yorker @newyorker.com · 25/07/2026
Tell the old story for our modern times. www.newyorker.com/sports/sport...
newyorker.com
LeBron James: An Odyssey
Tell the old story for our modern times.
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Lit Hub @literaryhub.bsky.social · 11/06/2026
This week on the podcast PASSAGES: On Morrison, Namwali Serpell and @vinsoncunningham.bsky.social discuss Toni Morrison’s Beloved.
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Namwali Serpell and Vinson Cunningham on Toni Morrison’s Beloved
Beloved is a holy space made of words. Across the street from Washington Square Park, in New York City’s historic Judson Memorial Church, Namwali Serpell, writer Vinson Cunningham, and our live aud…
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Craig Jenkins @craigsj.bsky.social · 09/06/2026
gonna need you to watch 'earth, wind & fire: to be celestial vs. that's the weight of the world' immediately if you haven't already, thank you www.vulture.com/article/revi...
vulture.com
Questlove’s Earth, Wind & Fire Doc Is a Must-see
He captures what made Maurice White both innovative and self-sabotaging.
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The New Yorker @newyorker.com · 03/06/2026
The Knicks face the Spurs tonight, and once the final buzzer sounds, we’ll be processing it together on The New Yorker’s Substack. Join David Remnick, Vinson Cunningham, and Louisa Thomas for a live post-game conversation after the game ends. newyorker.substack.com
newyorker.substack.com
The New Yorker | Substack
One good story, every week, without a paywall. Click to read The New Yorker, a Substack publication with hundreds of thousands of subscribers.
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Gremliny Nussboo @emilynussbaum.bsky.social · 03/06/2026
I was so worried after Bill Owens quit 60 Minutes last year because that (honorable) departure didn’t get a ton of coverage, didn’t reach beyond the circle of already-interested journalists…. Good for Pelley – the only way to do this was to make a big stink and a huge noise
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Vinson Cunningham @vinsoncunningham.bsky.social · 03/06/2026
i wrote about the Knicks. www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...
newyorker.com
Lessons in Fanhood from the Knicks
For the first time since 1999, the New York Knicks are eagerly awaiting the N.B.A. Finals. Vinson Cunningham appreciates the artfulness of the game, but “when the Knicks are on, playing prettily or no...
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The New Yorker @newyorker.com · 02/06/2026
For the first time since 1999, the New York Knicks are eagerly awaiting the N.B.A. Finals. Vinson Cunningham appreciates the artfulness of the game, but “when the Knicks are on, playing prettily or not, I am a foulmouthed partisan,” he writes. www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...
newyorker.com
Lessons in Fanhood from the Knicks
For the first time since 1999, the New York Knicks are eagerly awaiting the N.B.A. Finals. Vinson Cunningham appreciates the artfulness of the game, but “when the Knicks are on, playing prettily or not, I am a foulmouthed partisan,” he writes.
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The New Yorker @newyorker.com · 21/05/2026
A new slate of cultural offerings presents divergent ideas about the struggles men and boys face today—and how to resolve them. www.newyorker.com/podcast/crit...
newyorker.com
Where Do Men Go from Here?
A new slate of cultural offerings presents divergent ideas about the struggles men and boys face today—and how to resolve them.
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The New Yorker @newyorker.com · 27/04/2026
Steve Kerr, who coached the U.S. Men’s Olympic basketball team in 2024, explains why he didn’t utilize Jayson Tatum to the level that Celtics fans wanted. www.newyorker.com/news/the-new...
newyorker.com
Has Steve Kerr Had Enough?
The Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr on his future, coaching Draymond Green, the potential benefits of eliminating the three-point shot, and whether he might give politics a try.
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Mike Richman @mikegrich.bsky.social · 19/04/2026
Perhaps having a Better Than Perfect sound curated and crafted for you as a teen makes the unavoidable struggle of aging a little more stark. Anyways this is a good essay bsky.app/profile/vins...
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Vinson Cunningham @vinsoncunningham.bsky.social · 18/04/2026
i wrote about Justin Bieber at Coachella www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...
newyorker.com
Justin Bieber Offers a Reflective Ode to Bieber Fever
Bieberchella, as it’s been called, touched on the different cycles of Justin Bieber’s life, leaving audiences with one glaring question: What’s next?
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Max Read @maxread.info · 17/04/2026
I wrote an essay for Criterion about "Corporate Thrillers," including Wall Street, The Devil's Advocate, Disclosure, Michael Clayton, and more
criterion.com
Sinister Synergies
During a period of rapid deregulation and accelerating deindustrialization, Hollywood corporate thrillers depicted ambitious heroes gaining admission to a world of C-suites and private jets at the pri...
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Vinson Cunningham @vinsoncunningham.bsky.social · 18/04/2026
i wrote about Justin Bieber at Coachella www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...
newyorker.com
Justin Bieber Offers a Reflective Ode to Bieber Fever
Bieberchella, as it’s been called, touched on the different cycles of Justin Bieber’s life, leaving audiences with one glaring question: What’s next?
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Max Read @maxread.info · 07/04/2026
this but for war crimes
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Max Read @maxread.info · 07/04/2026
he's doing reality tv promo. you should imagine this music on while you read this www.youtube.com/watch?v=xx9u...
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Vinson Cunningham @vinsoncunningham.bsky.social · 01/04/2026
for next week's @newyorker.com i wrote about Savannah Guthrie's excruciating, breathlessly televised stations of the cross. www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...
newyorker.com
Savannah Guthrie’s Excruciating Story, on “Today”
The morning-show host recounted the disappearance of her mother, Nancy, and its aftermath in boldly religious terms, as millions of viewers watched.
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Vinson Cunningham @vinsoncunningham.bsky.social · 01/04/2026
for next week's @newyorker.com i wrote about Savannah Guthrie's excruciating, breathlessly televised stations of the cross. www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...
newyorker.com
Savannah Guthrie’s Excruciating Story, on “Today”
The morning-show host recounted the disappearance of her mother, Nancy, and its aftermath in boldly religious terms, as millions of viewers watched.
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The New Yorker @newyorker.com · 30/03/2026
“The Arsenio Hall Show” marked the emergence of a younger, less white crowd in the provinces of late night. In an interview with Vinson Cunningham, Hall reminisces about his comedic peers, and what it’s like to be a Black celebrity and “laugher addict.” newyorkermag.visitlink.me/5JmnKW
newyorkermag.visitlink.me
How Arsenio Hall Captured the Culture
The actor, comedian, and former talk-show host Arsenio Hall discusses his path from doing magic tricks and telling jokes to creating a TV show for the culture.
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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 27/03/2026
i said last year that these people were segregationists and that “merit” just meant “white and male” to these people
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Vinson Cunningham @vinsoncunningham.bsky.social · 26/03/2026
thank you ❤️‍🔥
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Sarah Emily Duff @sarahemilyduff.bsky.social · 26/03/2026
‘Admire the images, swoon at the performances—still, there’s a constant, artifice-exploding whisper: this is real, this is real, this is real.’ An exceptional essay by @vinsoncunningham.bsky.social
criterion.com
Killers of the Flower Moon: A Formal Feeling
In this true-crime epic, Martin Scorsese combines his career-long exploration of amoral gangsterism with a sobering meditation on what it means to live on American soil.
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Vinson Cunningham @vinsoncunningham.bsky.social · 25/03/2026
i am enormously honored to have written an essay for the new @criterion.bsky.social edition of Martin Scorsese's "Killers of the Flower Moon." enjoy—and go get yourself a copy! www.criterion.com/current/post...
criterion.com
Killers of the Flower Moon: A Formal Feeling
In this true-crime epic, Martin Scorsese combines his career-long exploration of amoral gangsterism with a sobering meditation on what it means to live on American soil.
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The New Yorker @newyorker.com · 21/03/2026
Jason Bateman excels as the Everyman, reeking of ennui and buried impulses, in the new HBO comic whodunnit “DTF St. Louis,” Vinson Cunningham writes. www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...
newyorker.com
“DTF St. Louis” Peers Into the Suburban Male Psyche
Jason Bateman excels as the Everyman, reeking of ennui and buried impulses, in the new HBO comic whodunnit, also with David Harbour and Linda Cardellini.
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Symphony Space @symphonyspace.bsky.social · 06/02/2026
Earlier this week, we celebrated the 100th anniversary of Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises. Thanks to @vinsoncunningham.bsky.social, @mirajacob.bsky.social, @minjinlee.bsky.social, Colm Tóibín, and Jay O. Sanders for an enlightening evening, and to everyone who joined us! (Photo by Nile Scott)
The artists stand backstage in front of a pink background, smiling.
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Jane Rosenzweig @janerosenzweig.bsky.social · 04/02/2026
When all the thinking is outsourced what's left, asks @vinsoncunningham.bsky.social. Others say that LLMs just help with the brainstorming or the drafting or the revising but when you strip all those things away, we also need to ask what's left. www.newyorker.com/culture/crit...
It used to be somewhat more obvious that the ability to think was the mark of the human animal, not a tedious backstage task but the entire substance of our tragicomic show. The drama of reasoning—applying abstract principles to real dilemmas, starting in one mental region and ending up in another faraway place, changing one’s mind, undergoing a conversion of the heart—is the admittedly humble glory of our species. It’s not always fun. Filling up a blank page is a daunting symbol for the tough challenge posed by this sort of freedom, which might be why new “large language model” concerns seem so dead set on identifying writing as an adversary for the humans of the future to finally vanquish. (My colleague Hua Hsu recently reported on what this mind-set is already doing to the practice of writing at institutions of higher learning.)
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Lydia Polgreen @polgreen.bsky.social · 27/01/2026
Bari Weiss is presenting her plans to the CBS staff today. Weiss quite famously live tweeted a contentious internal meeting at the Times in 2020. I wonder if she thinks her employees are entitled to do the same thing now?
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The New Yorker @newyorker.com · 26/01/2026
“The existence of so many real and unvarnished images of [Alex] Pretti’s killing posed a problem that Trump’s underlings have tried to patch up with words,” Vinson Cunningham writes. www.newyorker.com/culture/on-t...
newyorker.com
Witnessing Another Public Killing in Minneapolis
Videos of Alex Pretti’s fatal shooting, rapidly disseminated on social media, reveal a brazen display of brute power.
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Gremliny Nussboo @emilynussbaum.bsky.social · 26/01/2026
I wrote a TNY Take about Jane Kramer’s The Founding Cadre, a reported piece from 1970 in which Kramer embedded with a radical feminist CR group for nearly a year— which ended up getting published using pseudonyms, bc the editors found the topic too alarming: www.newyorker.com/magazine/tak...
newyorker.com
Emily Nussbaum on Jane Kramer’s “Founding Cadre”
Her startling 1970 article, based on months of reporting on radical feminist pioneers, was an outlier for the period—coolly observational but full of emotion.
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Brent Staples @bstaples.bsky.social · 25/01/2026
Trump and his minions are fine with killing people in plain public view; how many will they kill or maim in secret? Our friend @vinsoncunningham.bsky.social asks the pertinent question. www.newyorker.com/culture/on-t...
newyorker.com
Witnessing Another Public Killing in Minneapolis
Videos of Alex Pretti’s fatal shooting, rapidly disseminated on social media, reveal a brazen display of brute power.
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Vinson Cunningham @vinsoncunningham.bsky.social · 25/01/2026
i wrote about watching it, about evidence, about witness. www.newyorker.com/culture/on-t...
newyorker.com
Witnessing Another Public Killing in Minneapolis
Videos of Alex Pretti’s fatal shooting, rapidly disseminated on social media, reveal a brazen display of brute power.
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The New Yorker @newyorker.com · 24/01/2026
Donald Trump and his spokespeople use press conferences “to set forth their distorted vision of the future—and, maybe more subtly, to let slip their estimation of the public,” Vinson Cunningham writes. www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...
newyorker.com
The Cruelty and Theatre of the Trump Press Conference
During the President’s second term, he and his staff have made the media briefing his signature rhetorical form.
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Ingrid Zenger @ingrid1.bsky.social · 26/01/2026
by @vinsoncunningham.bsky.social
„If this is what they do when we can see, what's going on in the places—-planes and cars, detention centers— where we can't?"
Vinson Cunningham
staff writer
The New Yorker
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The New Yorker @newyorker.com · 25/01/2026
Even before Alex Pretti's name was widely known, his public killing was made exponentially more public by its rapid dissemination over social media and the news. www.newyorker.com/culture/on-t...
newyorker.com
Witnessing Another Public Killing in Minneapolis
Videos of Alex Pretti’s fatal shooting, rapidly disseminated on social media, reveal a brazen display of brute power.
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Michael Luo @michaelluo.bsky.social · 25/01/2026
Our ability to participate in witnessing, to corroborate each other’s commonsense, to assure one another that, no, you are not crazy, they did just “fucking kill that guy,” is a threat to the Administration’s assumption of total power… www.newyorker.com/culture/on-t...
newyorker.com
Witnessing Another Public Killing in Minneapolis
Videos of Alex Pretti’s fatal shooting, rapidly disseminated on social media, reveal a brazen display of brute power.
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Vinson Cunningham @vinsoncunningham.bsky.social · 25/01/2026
i wrote about watching it, about evidence, about witness. www.newyorker.com/culture/on-t...
newyorker.com
Witnessing Another Public Killing in Minneapolis
Videos of Alex Pretti’s fatal shooting, rapidly disseminated on social media, reveal a brazen display of brute power.
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Vinson Cunningham @vinsoncunningham.bsky.social · 24/01/2026
for next week's @newyorker.com i wrote about the art of the Trump press conference www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...
newyorker.com
The Cruelty and Theatre of the Trump Press Conference
During the President’s second term, he and his staff have made the media briefing his signature rhetorical form.
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Max Read @maxread.info · 15/01/2026
funniest running bit on twitter is "gentle r kikuo johnson new yorker cover drives idw and tpot types insane trying to interpret it"
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John Ganz @lioneltrolling.bsky.social · 15/01/2026
www.unpopularfront.news/p/read-max-x...
unpopularfront.news
Read Max x Unpopular Front with Vinson Cunningham
A recording from John Ganz and Max Read's live video
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Hark Audio @harkaudio.com · 02/01/2026
TV finales can feel like saying goodbye to a close friend but, should they really mean so much to us? @vinsoncunningham.bsky.social, Naomi Fry, & Alexandra Schwartz discuss the concept in this fascinating moment from ‘Critics at Large’: harkaudio.com/art-great-tv...
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Vinson Cunningham @vinsoncunningham.bsky.social · 04/01/2026
this week's edition of Vinson Cunningham's Quiet Storm includes tunes by Nas, Labi Siffre, Sevyn Streeter, Peter Gabriel, Geese, and many others—plus a brief meditation on the increasingly endangered communal function of radio. vcunningham.substack.com/p/be-yourself
vcunningham.substack.com
Be Yourself
Nas, Labi Siffre, Sevyn Streeter, Peter Gabriel, Geese, and much more.
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Vinson Cunningham @vinsoncunningham.bsky.social · 04/01/2026
this week's edition of Vinson Cunningham's Quiet Storm includes tunes by Nas, Labi Siffre, Sevyn Streeter, Peter Gabriel, Geese, and many others—plus a brief meditation on the increasingly endangered communal function of radio. vcunningham.substack.com/p/be-yourself
vcunningham.substack.com
Be Yourself
Nas, Labi Siffre, Sevyn Streeter, Peter Gabriel, Geese, and much more.
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