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TLDR 158

Too Long; Didn't Read Issue 158

Published: 2018-07-14 • 📧 Newsletter

Welcome to Issue 158. The scars that make us human.

This week I spent a lot of time behind the scenes working on some online classes, and getting an upcoming publication out of the door.

🔖 Key Takeaways

📺 Watch

Hannah Gadsby on Late Night with Seth Meyers

Hannah Gadsby on Late Night with Seth Meyers talking about the origins of her comedy career.

If you haven't already, and if you have Netflix, I recommend watching her comedy special Nanette. The special has sparked extensive discussion about comedy, trauma, and whether humor serves healing or avoidance. Gadsby challenges the fundamental structure of comedy—setup and punchline—arguing it

forces storytellers to deflect from pain rather than sit with it.

The New York Times discusses how Nanette transcends typical comedy special, becoming meditation on art, gender, trauma, and the stories we tell to survive. Gadsby questions whether she should continue performing comedy that requires her to be the butt of jokes about her own marginalization. The special doesn't just make you laugh—it makes you reconsider what comedy is for and who it serves.

📚 Read

Douglas Rushkoff talking about the future of technology, and the desire of individuals to use this as a means of escape and perhaps enslavement.

Rushkoff examines how technology companies and wealthy elites increasingly view technology as escape route from consequences of their own actions—building bunkers, planning Mars colonies, designing AI to achieve immortality. Rather than addressing climate change, inequality, or social breakdown, they seek individual technological salvation.

This "exit strategy" mentality reveals fundamental misunderstanding of human interdependence and planetary limits. Technology becomes tool for escaping humanity rather than serving it. Meanwhile, for those without resources for technological escape, these same systems often function as new forms of control and surveillance—enslavement rather than liberation.

In the age of despair, find comfort on the "slow web"

Feel like you're trying to ride a tsunami as you search and sift online texts? Not too long ago, we would dip in and dip out when we wanted. But now there is a never-ending desire to continually remain connected.

In this post, they recommend watching the visual equivalent of "white noise" as you work during the day. This could be:

The slow web resists acceleration and outrage that dominate much online experience. These slow-paced, contemplative videos offer ambient presence without demanding constant attention or emotional response. They create space for thinking, working, or simply being without the pressure to react, share, or consume more content.

This countermovement acknowledges that not all online experience needs to be optimized for engagement. Sometimes the most valuable digital content is what helps us slow down rather than speed up.

Each week when I write this newsletter, it is always interesting to me to see stories that suggest that social media is downright bad for us. For people that are hooked, it is like a drug. For people that don't use social media and networks, they don't understand why people care or use these tools.

This post describes the challenges that arise if/when we try to leave Facebook, and if we (as a collective) tried to build something else. Put simply:

"The one thing you can't download from Facebook is the one thing you'd most need if you wanted to move to a competing social network—your friends' contact information, or any other unique information that would help you reconnect with them on another service. Instead, all you get is a list of their names, which isn't very helpful for re-identifying specific individuals, considering how common many names are. Indeed, as was highlighted during the event, Facebook has long treated its possession of your friends' contact information as a key competitive advantage, making it difficult for users to collect or export it."

This network lock-in isn't accidental—it's strategic. Your friends aren't hostages because Facebook is so great but because leaving means losing connection infrastructure. The social graph itself becomes moat preventing migration to alternatives.

True data portability would require not just exporting your own data but ability to maintain connections across platforms. Without interoperability, even technically-savvy users face massive switching costs that have nothing to do with Facebook's features and everything to do with where their friends are.

As the BlackLivesMatter hashtag turns 5 years old, the Pew Research Center takes a look at its evolution on Twitter, and how Americans view social media's impact on political and civic engagement.

The rise of the BlackLivesMatter hashtag—along with others like MeToo and MAGA (Make America Great Again)—has sparked a broader discussion about the effectiveness and viability of using social media for political engagement and social activism.

To that end, a new survey by the Center finds that majorities of Americans do believe these sites are very or somewhat important for accomplishing a range of political goals, such as getting politicians to pay attention to issues (69% of Americans feel these platforms are important for this purpose) or creating sustained movements for social change (67%).

The data reveals interesting tensions: People recognize social media's value for activism while simultaneously worrying about echo chambers, performative activism, and whether online engagement translates to offline change. Hashtag movements have undeniably raised awareness and shifted public discourse, but questions remain about whether awareness converts to policy change and whether movements can sustain momentum beyond viral moments.

Five years of BlackLivesMatter demonstrates both possibilities and limitations of social media activism—rapid mobilization, national visibility for local issues, creation of collective identity—but also challenges of maintaining focus, preventing co-optation, and building institutional power that outlasts trending topics.

Quick question: What would happen if we used social media tools to help individuals express themselves, get support, and show how vulnerable people really are?

What if everything wasn't as perfect as we make it seem to be in our feeds?

Take the time to read through this post for some insight.

The article examines tragic cases where people's social media presented picture of happiness and success while they privately struggled with depression, addiction, or suicidal ideation. The gap between curated online persona and lived reality reveals how platform incentives encourage performative positivity over authentic vulnerability.

This creates double harm: People suffering feel more isolated seeing everyone else's seemingly perfect lives, while simultaneously feeling pressure to maintain their own facade. And those who might offer support don't know it's needed because distress signals are hidden behind carefully composed photos and upbeat captions.

Some communities have started experimenting with vulnerability norms—using specific hashtags to signal when posts are real struggles rather than curated highlights. But platform architectures still reward engagement-driving content over genuine connection, and algorithmic amplification favors extreme emotions (outrage, excitement) over nuanced emotional honesty.

The question remains: Can platforms designed for performance ever truly support vulnerability? Or do we need fundamentally different spaces for authentic emotional expression and mutual support?

🔨 Do

This post in the Vitals section of Lifehacker shares answers to pretty much everything you ever needed to know about sunscreen.

We're in the thick of the summer months here, and sunscreen is a necessary evil in our house. With two kids, it's mandatory that we all lube up before hitting the pool or beach. Given that I shave my head, it's also a daily application (with moisturizer) as I head out the door.

Skin cancer is a real risk. Protect yourself.

The guide covers:

Simple public health information that could prevent significant harm. Not all literacies are digital—sometimes the most important thing is knowing how to protect your actual physical body in physical space.

🤔 Consider

"Children show scars like medals. Lovers use them as secrets to reveal. A scar is what happens when the word is made flesh." — Leonard Cohen

Cohen's meditation on scars connects profoundly to this issue's theme of what we show and what we hide. Children display scars proudly—evidence of adventures, battles survived, badges of growing up. Lovers reveal scars intimately—trusting another with evidence of vulnerability and survival. But on social media, we edit out scars, both literal and metaphorical. We show medals without scars, achievements without struggle, happiness without pain. Hannah Gadsby's Nanette insists on showing scars—not as punchlines but as testimony. The slow web offers space to sit with scarred existence rather than constantly performing invulnerability. Facebook's network lock-in traps us in spaces where we've built identities that may no longer fit, unable to escape with our connections intact. Hashtag activism makes visible collective scars—#BlackLivesMatter, #MeToo—demanding recognition of wounds society would prefer to ignore. The gap between social media facade and hidden pain represents refusal to let word become flesh, keeping experience abstract and curated rather than embodied and real. Cohen reminds us that scars are where word becomes flesh—where lived experience marks us and makes us human. The challenge is creating digital spaces that honor scars rather than demanding their concealment.

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