You'll be shocked to hear I wrote a thing, and doubly shocked that it is not nice about Silicon Valley. www.theguardian.com/society/2024... - ThreadSky

rebeccasolnit.bsky.social • 102 days ago

You'll be shocked to hear I wrote a thing, and doubly shocked that it is not nice about Silicon Valley. https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/nov/16/zombie-apocalypse-dangerously-disconnected-world-rebecca-solnit?fbclid=IwY2xjawGmTgRleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHfWM3dEZZtM7lgO7LEysjlQHs-GSMJ_eBmFdEYCq_LPgQvez9tsBy2EUJA_aem_f_1df66BMvn7-CWp421V2A

Comments

caesar-ink.bsky.social•102 days ago

I read this article twice today - your words really hit home. Then this skeet popped up on my timeline and I just wanted to drop a comment saying how much I enjoyed it.

elpisinthejar.bsky.social•102 days ago

Particularly enjoyed this bit: "The detectives in classic film noir movies are masterful because they know cops, cabbies, bartenders, reporters, crooks, nightclub hat-check girls and everyone in between. They’re love songs to cities that are made out of connections and circulation."

rebeccasolnit.bsky.social•102 days ago

Big noir/Thin Man series fan here, and thank you!

zoonie.bsky.social•102 days ago

The big question as far as I'm concerned is: why does that zombie look like Kevin Eldon?

harehunterfield.bsky.social•102 days ago

This is exceptional.

daverino.bsky.social•102 days ago

Printed it out so I could read it properly. Terrific stuff. The supermarket scene from Dawn of the Dead kept popping into my head.

artist-at-law.bsky.social•102 days ago

When I lived in the Bay my friends and I did a weekly “neighborGood” walk, exploring a new area. We lived in different places over the years, so we took turns being the guide. And we enjoyed interacting with people along the way. A fun solution if anyone is looking. I’m excited to do it again.

labylady.bsky.social•102 days ago

Thanks for this article

jposf.bsky.social•102 days ago

I live in San Francisco, and plenty of people talk to strangers here. Please don’t give us a new bad reputation.

olla24.bsky.social•98 days ago

@zetland.bsky.social da jeg læste denne, tænkte jeg, det kunne være en Zetland artikel 😊 Mon ikke I har lyst at tage emnet op? Super relevant, også herovre i Europa og ikke mindst Danmark. 📵

wellonwheels.bsky.social•102 days ago

Despite being an introvert, I will gladly show off my Sunday finery on the boulevard in order to resist the fascist agenda.

shaktinah.bsky.social•99 days ago

I grew up in SF, moved to L.A., NY, & DC, before moving back to SF. The SF habit of not making eye-contact/saying hello to people we pass by is not new. When I moved to DC people took offense by my not greeting them, so I learned to do so. Now back in SF people look at me weird. Maybe it's worse now

rebeccasolnit.bsky.social•95 days ago

Been in SF since 1980, and it did used to be more lively. But of course in my early years, I was living in a Black neighborhood and around the Castro a lot, which were more convivial than some other parts....

eeps24.bsky.social•102 days ago

I've moved The Guardian to the spot on my home screen most recently occupied by WaPo. Now I'm seeing your work before you post about it! Things are looking up.

julmm.bsky.social•101 days ago

Will be reading.

lcla.bsky.social•101 days ago

great read!

gpfriend.bsky.social•102 days ago

I am!

tomwaits666.bsky.social•101 days ago

Thanks for a great article.
The evil of Steve’s Job genius is the “I” in Apple’s product nomenclature. It helped us forget our communality, the we. Now our loneliness is profit for tech corps. Technology despite its benefits destroys the social fabric of community by coddling our ego, the “I”.

lisarokusek.bsky.social•100 days ago

📌

moderndaybartleby.bsky.social•102 days ago

📌

jmochacapp.bsky.social•101 days ago

Great piece! Quite dark but true in my ways to my own experience living in SF, especially this line: “…and I feel like a ghost myself in the lack of acknowledgment, in others’ blank reluctance to utter even those tiny ‘excuse me’ negotiations to get around someone or warn someone.”

jmochacapp.bsky.social•101 days ago

P.S. That said, this absence of acknowledgment of my corporeal presence is something that — take that, neighbors in my building! — I’ve always complained about way before the pandemic about SF. I find New York and much less indifferent place overall.

dianelindsay.bsky.social•102 days ago

Very thoughtful. I live in a small village in the English Midlands but my son lives and works in Sillicon Valley. Every time we have visited it seems less happy and friendly and this is a clear analysis of why . It’s a worldwide problem .

specificpix.bsky.social•102 days ago

Spot on

fireproof.bsky.social•102 days ago

Great piece, with strong echos of Jane Jacobs' seminal work – particularly in regard to the safety created by "eyes on the street" at the neighbourhood level.

rebeccasolnit.bsky.social•102 days ago

I didn't cite her because I did in my last piece about Silicon Valley, but she was present!

fireproof.bsky.social•101 days ago

Pretty sure I first came across her via your writing - I referenced two of your books in my PhD dissertation :) (Read your memoir a few months ago and it still resonates. Thanks for giving us so much of your inner world, in such moving prose.) #fangirl lol

sarahgibbs.bsky.social•102 days ago

You prob don't need me to tell you that your piece is a brilliant encapsulation of these issues but I'm about to teach a 1-credit class on friendship and loneliness epidemics next semester and I'm totally using this for that class. It is, in fact, exactly what I need to kick things off. Thank you!

rebeccasolnit.bsky.social•102 days ago

Oh my! Thank you and I would love to see the reading list!

sarahgibbs.bsky.social•102 days ago

Still building it (I've still got a few weeks to prep, or so I keep telling myself!) but definitely using the 2024 NYT piece from Matthew Shaer and some of the key studies from 2023. He comes at it from a different angle but it's a good dive in if you haven't seen it:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/27/magazine/loneliness-epidemic-cure.html?unlocked_article_code=1.ak4.Dzik._EEl_7r9oNRS&smid=url-share

sarahgibbs.bsky.social•102 days ago

Definitely want my students to consider multiple perspectives on how and why we use tech as a vehicle and/or substitute for interaction and what that means for human connection now and going forward.

aaronzlatkin.bsky.social•102 days ago

This piece should be the start of every college course, including my media productions courses! "Merchants of withdrawal" is a fantastic way to re-frame the so-called "attention economy," but it only gets to the socio-economic aspect; the way screens affect brain development is equally terrifying.

bbny.bsky.social•102 days ago

Good read. Very insightful

upticks.bsky.social•100 days ago

I can tell this was Made by Human™️

huge-jackedman.bsky.social•102 days ago

Good stuff. Id also suggest that suburbia & car culture contribute a lot this as well. People living in an online reality they think they chose and never being exposed to anything they don't think they want as they drive from hermetically sealed home to sealed strip mall on the phone all the while.

anthrodiva.bsky.social•102 days ago

💯

jennylinford.bsky.social•102 days ago

What an excellent, thoughtful unsettling article. I shop at my little local food market for those human interactions - a smile, a chat - which we're losing so rapidly.

billcrandall.bsky.social•102 days ago

This is a powerful piece. For a couple of years I went to a flip phone - keeping my iPhone but mostly leaving it at home as a WiFi-only device. It was a real pleasure, despite - or because of - the little frictions it created in life.

billcrandall.bsky.social•102 days ago

It created such a sense of freedom. I’ve deferred the dream for now as I live abroad but hope to get back to it. Even here in Nairobi it’s hard to function without a smartphone. Maybe harder than in the US.

dphodgson.bsky.social•100 days ago

I keep going to use the checkouts where there are staff and explaining why I do so : and choose cafés usually independent ones where you can order by talking to a person. Some - a few- stores in UK appear to be rowing back from self auto systems etc.

ramanfrey.bsky.social•102 days ago

Have you read this essay?

http://airshipdaily.com/the-political-economy-of-zombies

michm.bsky.social•102 days ago

100%. Thank you for writing this, for saying out loud and capturing so much of our current experience. Disturbing. I have often thought my discomfort with what you describe was because I am of an age where I can remember something else, before this.

mikethemadbiol.bsky.social•102 days ago

📌

andrebruwer.bsky.social•102 days ago

Thanks, as some one who cycled and walked everywhere we lived and always get blanks stares back when I tell people that it's safer outside their walls than they think it is, this resonated. Anyway here is my zombie sighting from a couple of years back, while taking the train here in South Africa.

carynmf.bsky.social•102 days ago

Thank you. This is outstanding.

melp-busch.bsky.social•102 days ago

"Democracy itself is based in trust in strangers and a sense of having something in common with them (which is part of why xenophobia and fear of crime serve fascist agendas so well)." Brillant. Thank you for this great piece. It's given me so much to think about.

efitzgerald.bsky.social•101 days ago

Thank you for writing this. I feel for those who I witness everyday in my small town who mirror your observations. So many are now growing up not even knowing what it can be like to be aware and connected.

maximummary.bsky.social•100 days ago

📌

saffship.bsky.social•102 days ago

remote work isn’t helping. ppl in their 30s working in pjs not making the incidental, in person connections that lead to growth & mentorship. as a retired exec recruiter can’t tell you how many ppl are successful due to serendipity & proximity to folks who could mentor them. isolation not helping

rebeccasolnit.bsky.social•102 days ago

I loved that scientist's praise of coffee breaks as the essential part of work life....

onlyindevon.co.uk•102 days ago

Brilliant piece - thank you.

I've made some profound connections and good friends through social media - but that doesn't make me any less scared of the harm that the technology has done to society, communities and the way in which we interact with each other in the real world.

mirjananc.bsky.social•102 days ago

Very well written. It's quite scary to think about where this new social alienation could take us.

samanthayi.bsky.social•102 days ago

Adding this to my grad course reading list. On campus, I see this in students every day. They are afraid to answer the phone, make appointments, come to an event. The preference for asynchronous online classes is especially alarming…. Campus life isn’t gone yet but I can see the fissures.

eestorm.bsky.social•102 days ago

You really know how to look outside the box, but what about with respect to the automobile? Murderous metal traps have turned our communities into a war zone of high speed missiles that have shredded terrafirma into something akin to Battle Of The Bulge.

calmerthanyou.bsky.social•102 days ago

I’m not even joking when I say this article will stay with me forever. Aces.

rowanfair.bsky.social•102 days ago

Hmm. I resonate with some of this (I'm actually down in Silicon Valley, not the City), but I do think it discounts the very real caution that we disabled and immune compromised folks feel about crowds and the unmasked multitudes. Yes, my world has shrunk in many ways. Times change.

rebeccasolnit.bsky.social•102 days ago

Nothing can be about everything, but also this is not just about crowds and multitudes but the many points of human contact that have withered and been devalued or just removed altogether.

minafon.bsky.social•102 days ago

This is great thank you for writing it. I'm a middle aged salmon (to use your analogy). For me, volunteering to do stuff (like parkrun, community meals) helps me be more present and means I chat to random people. Small acts of connection are important.

Comments

Posting Rules

Reply