This hit a nerve in the best way. I’ve always had a knee-jerk affection for the cozy web (group chats, niche Discords, protected gardens) but your piece helped me recognize the subtle danger in abandoning the open internet entirely—like we’re retreating just when we should be rebuilding. The Graeber quote was a gut-punch: “...we could just as easily make it differently.” Exactly.
Also: your take on Notes as a container totally reframed how I see the app—hadn’t thought of it as an attention-training tool, but that’s exactly how it functions for me too. Like a daily museum sketchbook for stray internet beauty.
Curious: how do you see this “public re-enchantment” happening in practice? Do we need new spaces, or just new rituals?
Thank you for keeping the public internet weird, tender, and alive.
Oh, thank you so much! I like the public re-enchantment. Tbh I don't have the answers for how to come about it, but I feel one important step is to shift the narrative about the internet as a place only for trolls and extremists. And maybe we should be better at inviting peers/family/friends into the corners of the public web?
I appreciate the nod to support of the public "non-cozy" web, and am also grateful that there is a totally public commons of information. For a lot of things this makes sense to me, and for a lot of things I think being somewhere private or semi-private makes sense to (so maybe im not a dark-forest fundamementalist ? but still a cozy-web fan?)
The part about instagram algorithm as a tamagotchi pet got me though -- with meta doing stuff like this (https://bsky.app/profile/jeremymorrell.dev/post/3lm3wzk52wk2f) in the way they think about algorithms, the idea we can train their algorithms maybe seems too generous to me, even if there is some limited way to do that.
I hope I am not being a reply-guy with these opinions, since you asked for comments -- it was a provocative post!
Thank you so much for writing. I very much appreciate your input and you are absolutely right to add nuances to both Meta and online spaces.
Re: Meta - I understand the trigger since there are many reasons to avoid their services. Yet Instagram is the only social media app I have on my phone and admittedly it does a good job at feeding me artist opportunities and events adjacent to this newsletter. I wish there were other ways to surface these things and for artists to release their work, ideally something that looks entirely different.
Re: cozy web - I primarily struggle with the narrative about the internet being left alone to predators and evil forces, especially when used to direct attention and investment away from the public infrastructure and into the gated communities. That said, obviously, people deserve a multitude of digital spaces to interact.
The degree to which we are public or not is a fascinating thing to observe. If anything, it feels like a commons problem. The more we are public with using the internet as a creative medium for expression, connection, discovery vs a derivative of an advertising network, the better it could be.
It’s almost like the cozy web is the privatization of public infrastructure. It’s the gated communities and private mobility. Rather than “retreating from the predators” we ought to insist on the open, decentralized structure of the web.
This hit a nerve in the best way. I’ve always had a knee-jerk affection for the cozy web (group chats, niche Discords, protected gardens) but your piece helped me recognize the subtle danger in abandoning the open internet entirely—like we’re retreating just when we should be rebuilding. The Graeber quote was a gut-punch: “...we could just as easily make it differently.” Exactly.
Also: your take on Notes as a container totally reframed how I see the app—hadn’t thought of it as an attention-training tool, but that’s exactly how it functions for me too. Like a daily museum sketchbook for stray internet beauty.
Curious: how do you see this “public re-enchantment” happening in practice? Do we need new spaces, or just new rituals?
Thank you for keeping the public internet weird, tender, and alive.
Oh, thank you so much! I like the public re-enchantment. Tbh I don't have the answers for how to come about it, but I feel one important step is to shift the narrative about the internet as a place only for trolls and extremists. And maybe we should be better at inviting peers/family/friends into the corners of the public web?
I appreciate the nod to support of the public "non-cozy" web, and am also grateful that there is a totally public commons of information. For a lot of things this makes sense to me, and for a lot of things I think being somewhere private or semi-private makes sense to (so maybe im not a dark-forest fundamementalist ? but still a cozy-web fan?)
The part about instagram algorithm as a tamagotchi pet got me though -- with meta doing stuff like this (https://bsky.app/profile/jeremymorrell.dev/post/3lm3wzk52wk2f) in the way they think about algorithms, the idea we can train their algorithms maybe seems too generous to me, even if there is some limited way to do that.
I hope I am not being a reply-guy with these opinions, since you asked for comments -- it was a provocative post!
Btw. if anyone reads this comment you should check out @notplants lovely lovely newsletter! https://canalswans.substack.com/
Thank you so much for writing. I very much appreciate your input and you are absolutely right to add nuances to both Meta and online spaces.
Re: Meta - I understand the trigger since there are many reasons to avoid their services. Yet Instagram is the only social media app I have on my phone and admittedly it does a good job at feeding me artist opportunities and events adjacent to this newsletter. I wish there were other ways to surface these things and for artists to release their work, ideally something that looks entirely different.
Re: cozy web - I primarily struggle with the narrative about the internet being left alone to predators and evil forces, especially when used to direct attention and investment away from the public infrastructure and into the gated communities. That said, obviously, people deserve a multitude of digital spaces to interact.
The degree to which we are public or not is a fascinating thing to observe. If anything, it feels like a commons problem. The more we are public with using the internet as a creative medium for expression, connection, discovery vs a derivative of an advertising network, the better it could be.
What a timely post given this comment from Venkatesh: https://substack.com/profile/2264734-venkatesh-rao/note/c-106788726
Wow. What a timing for Venkatesh, thanks for sharing. Let’s work to make it ripple and maintain sprawling public/commons internet.
Well said 🌐 Cozy web migration feels like a symptom, not a solution.
It’s almost like the cozy web is the privatization of public infrastructure. It’s the gated communities and private mobility. Rather than “retreating from the predators” we ought to insist on the open, decentralized structure of the web.