Spooky editing vibes

Plus some funny posts from Bluesky

October 13, 2023

Tragedy in Gaza

Social feeds this week have been dominated by information and misinformation about the ongoing conflict in Gaza. I don’t want to spend a lot of time talking about it here because I doubt it’s what you are reading my newsletter for, but there are two points that I think are relevant to the topics we discuss here. 

  1. Be critical of the information you get from social media, especially Twitter. Seek out additional reputable sources and avoid sharing things just because they make you emotional. This is especially true if you are still using Twitter at all, where the company has actively undermined its own previous work to prevent the spread of misinformation. But it’s true across all media, too. 

  2. Support for the people of Israel is not the same as support for the Israeli government’s actions. Support for the people of Palestine is not the same as supporting Hamas’s actions. Leave space for nuance when coming to conclusions about these events and discussing them with others. 

Okay back to the normal light, informative tone of Kinda Brief. 

Index of Aesthetics 

What vibe, -core, or aesthetic are you actually talking about? When people get into 2000s nostalgia looks which terrible fashion trends are they actually revisiting? How are all of these visual signifiers linked? I assume since you read this newsletter, you are as haunted by these questions as I am. Well, last week I found a wonderful project that helps navigate some of these quandaries. 

The Consumer Aesthetics Research Institute (CARI)  is developing a visual index of different aesthetic trends spanning the 1970s to today. It’s amazing! Take for example this entry on Indie Sleaze, which I have been warned is making a comeback (heaven help us). 

The CARI entry for Indie Sleaze which notes it was relevant from the early 2000s through the early 2010s and describes it as “Mid-late 2000s indie, sleazy sexy vibes, post-electroclash vague 70s-80s revival melange. American Apparel, electro-bands & the MySpace music scene, bloghaus, that colorful blocky handrawn lettering, the NYC party scene & photography, shutter shades.”

I love how thoughtful CARI is about documenting the influences and conversations between these different aesthetics. I’ve already sunk so much time into exploring this site and imagine I’ll keep returning to it as a reference guide. 

Platform Updates

Instagram & Threads

The Rest of Meta 

TikTok

YouTube

Google 

Amazon

Twitch

Snap 

Twitter, Sorry X

The Product 

The Dumpster Fire

Twitter Alts 

Culture Movers 

Film & TV

AI 

Molly White (@molly.wiki) on Bluesky sharing two absolutely haunting courtroom drawings from the FTX trial where SBF and Caroline Ellison look like total dog shit captioned “starting to think some of these courtroom sketch artists lost money on FTX” 

In Praise of Editing 

I’ve mostly stopped opening TikTok on my own time. I’ll poke around when doing brand research or watch videos my friends send me, but I’ve not been opening it up to let the For You Page guide me around the app’s content recently. I think that’s partly driven by people abusing the longer video upload times that have slowly crept into all of these video platforms. If platforms aren’t going to force us to be concise, we all need to learn how to edit. 

One of the reasons it hurts watching Twitter slowly transform into a Nazi parade through an abonded strip mall is that old Twitter made me a better writer. 280 characters isn’t a lot of space, but it’s usually more than you need for a solid joke or memorable brand message. It’s not the ideal length for communicating meaningful information about world events, but it’s pretty good for lighter less nuanced topics. Learning how to aggressively edit down my ideas was driven by necessity but gave me, and many other old Twitter users, a valuable skill. 

Yes, some ideas work best in long form. I recently watched an hour and a half on why you end up killing gods so often in Japanese video games. Believe it or not, it was definitely time well spent for me. I can’t say the same about some of the shaggy “short form” video content I’m seeing more and more of. You’ve seen these meandering setups for stories with no real payoff. 

Call me old fashioned, but I like either long, thoughtfully crafted, meaningful artistic experiences or super short, attention spam shredding, blink and you’ll miss the joke content. 

Bluesky user @heatherlorraine.bsky.social sharing a photo of an empty Chucky doll box in a department store captioned “Well that’s not good”

Spooky Treat

I’m in the middle of a Halloween season movie night series I’m hosting for some of my friends. We get together each week to chill and watch a spooky movie. This week, we watched Scream. I also curated a Halloween-themed YouTube playlist that’s a fun mix of spooky songs and funny Halloween videos to have on as people arrive. Thought some of you might enjoy it as well.  

Oh and if you have ideas for spooky videos to add, please let me know in the comments.