Profile avatar
robhorning.bsky.social
robhorning.substack.com
230 posts 4,206 followers 237 following
Regular Contributor
Active Commenter
Posts 20 Comments 30

this piece makes similar point about genAI art: acting as though it's an adequate replacement for art is also a loyalty test for aspiring sycophants newsocialist.org.uk/transmission...

submitted 11 days ago • 5 comments

this line of thought raises questions of what drives the supposed turn to "postliteracy"; to what degree a media-saturated culture differs from pure oral culture; how despotic ambitions of genAI companies fits in etc.

submitted 16 days ago • 0 comments

ads for AI are frequently incoherent because the threat of "AI" is being depicted as a promise, and the companies that will impose it on us can't be bothered to mask their coercive vision of the future defector.com/salesforce-i...

submitted 16 days ago • 0 comments

"vibes" believe so you don't have to—another way of saying that is that "vibes" are reified belief, belief as something consumed rather than practiced [quoted in www.unpopularfront.news/p/vibes-cartel ]

submitted 21 days ago • 2 comments

about fake reviews robhorning.substack.com/p/then-were-...

submitted 23 days ago • 1 comment

the more that algorithms recommend things to us, the less they can matter to us; but algorithmic systems also undermine our capacity and capability to find recommendations any other way. So our use of algorithmic systems becomes more intensive with less and less reward

submitted 35 days ago • 3 comments

replacing cultural gatekeepers with algorithms can seem to rationalize the "discovery" problem and make it solvable through optimization; it also changes "cultural interest" into a matter of crude maximization across inchoate ad hoc "communities" at scale

submitted 35 days ago • 1 comment

part of the appeal of big platforms is that they offer a chance to cede control; they seem to dignify passivity for users under the auspices of "interactivity"

submitted 35 days ago • 1 comment

"Social media creates a universe of angry suckers" www.unpopularfront.news/p/mob-rule reminds me of Healy and Fourcade's "Ordinal Society," which argues that the internet exists to facilitate constant comparison and ranking

submitted 38 days ago • 3 comments

other people aren't "real"; all that is real is the chemicals inside your brain www.nytimes.com/2025/01/15/t...

submitted 39 days ago • 2 comments

"convenience is the site of our deepest alienation" is a fundamental tenet for me, but it also seems impossible to convince efficiency zealots or utilitarians that it can possibly be correct www.wired.com/story/ai-age...

submitted 40 days ago • 1 comment

A great post by @robhorning.bsky.social in praise of phone books: robhorning.substack.com/p/phone-books

submitted 43 days ago • 3 comments

AI as unending allegory machine, producing its own realities that it then allegorizes

submitted 44 days ago • 0 comments

the assumptions built in to the idea of a "low-quality substitute for attention that's easier to produce" (that "attention" can be produced like any other commodity and consumed individually) seem to only intensify the problem — it's like drinking seawater backofmind.substack.com/p/building-a...

submitted 47 days ago • 0 comments

rolling this "feature" out with generated posts that place the appropriated identity of unsuspecting users in a "mirror maze" is a bit on the nose

submitted 47 days ago • 1 comment

streaming in a nutshell: deskill media consumption to disempower media creators

submitted 65 days ago • 2 comments

streaming companies are incentivized to create indifferent consumers harpers.org/archive/2025...

submitted 65 days ago • 1 comment

important context

submitted 66 days ago • 3 comments

much of the gen AI discourse (mine included) tends toward "persuading people that they are ‘not persons, not human’" and that there is some great relief available from "becoming automata" or merging with automata or learning how to function from them

submitted 68 days ago • 2 comments

looking at what netflix offers, seems like the goal is to optimize for "couples content": something neither will love but both can tolerate, likely while looking at their phones

submitted 69 days ago • 2 comments