Have you ever noticed the content you consume through the screen has your thumb sliding up for hours, but by the time you put down your phone, you’ve absorbed next to nothing? Welcome to the infinite scroll – a cultural deficit that means more content but less value, or so argues David Roth. While it’s our generation’s MO, we’re all getting familiar with it during this time of self isolation.
As every news update or corona meme pops up, our attention flits from adverts to other articles, until we fall down the rabbit hole and arrive far away from what we’d been searching for all along. “We have compressed and corroded and finally collapsed what used to be the core of a publication—its relationship with its readers,” Roth laments, “and the basic notion that one should not make it hard for them to read.”
But reading shouldn’t be complicated (or at least not the practice of it). So as we bury our heads in content, let’s consider moving away from the infinite scroll so we can actually process, examine and evaluate the writing we consume. After all, we’ve got nothing if not time.
“I’ve been re-reading one of my favourite books this past week. I finally understood the statuses of each of the characters. I understood why the son and mum were a certain way, and why the protagonist and their father were a certain way, and why the best friend was the most unlike all of them. I understood how to take apart this, my most significant novel, and reconstitute it in terms of storytelling. I saw the cogs for the first time. And… it made me love it more. One of my students told me recently, it must be hard being you and deconstructing everything so you can understand how it works. And I think, no, it’s not hard. Actually, it helps me think more deeply about my own writing, knowing what makes other people’s books work. Re-read a favourite soon.”
Taken from this week’s newsletter by Nikesh Shukla on how to write a novel (which is what you’re planning to do during quarantine, right?)
In these uncertain times – where isolation is imminent and real life contact is being avoided like… the plague – digital content is thriving. But it’s still ok to have mixed feelings about it, even if you’re happily consuming countless Netflix box sets and having FaceTime drinks parties with your friends. We spoke to former editor-at-large of Refinery 29 Sarah Raphael, about her book Mixed Feelings – co-written with Naomi Shimada – which explores the highs and lows of the digital age.
As a brand, Chanel is more ‘luxury’ than it is ‘sentimental’, but for this Mother’s Day, the fashion house decided that instead of featuring a glossy photo shoot of a celebrity mother, they would opt for a more intimate campaign. They asked children of their employees to draw the bottle of perfume they associate with their mothers. Childlike sketches of Chanel N°5, Chance and Rouge Coco were displayed across the website, social channels and store-front windows telling a story of scent, and the power it has to connect us to our mothers. It was a tender touch on a classic campaign. No need to dream up new words – what could be more iconic than ‘Chanel Nº 5’?
For your weekly writing flex, we’re getting creative – can you take an hour or so to write about a time when you felt connected to someone or something?
Perhaps you’re writing as yourself, or you want to create a character who is living in a strange dystopian world where the streets are empty, pasta is a hot commodity and human touch is nowhere to be seen.
Think about how your sentences and language can evoke this feeling of longing or nostalgia for a different time.
As we're all working from home and frantically searching for hand sanitiser in old suitcases for the foreseeable future, we've decided it was for the best if we cancelled our second How Do You Like Your Copy In The Morning? event with Harry Ashbridge next Wednesday. We're hoping to reschedule and bring it into a digital format soon, but for now we'll be refunding all tickets – let us know if you have any questions!
