Never News: cutting corners
Hello one and all and welcome to Never News, the every-two-weekly newsletter I, Producer Georgia, bring to you with great reverence and sincerity. It's smack dab in the middle of summer in my neck of the woods, which means it's also time to begin panicking about not taking advantage of the joys of the season before it's over. Have I gone swimming enough? Eaten enough ice cream? Almost every year, the answer is the same: never!
Onto the news:
THE CUT: the great tech flop of the Meta Glasses
Meta Glasses were something that always seemed equal parts disgusting and corny to me. Whatever alleged benefits that could be gleaned from these glasses – recording stuff hands free, for example – are vastly outweighed by the glaringly obvious fact that these are glasses built with a camera so subtle that you could easily tape over the recording light with a piece of tape. In other words, they're a tool of surveillance, and as such are undeniably creepy. I have a feeling many of you may feel the same. But I include this piece in The Cut because it points to the way that the more old school playbook of tech "advancement" isn't really working this time. Sure, Meta has been able to get the glasses onto the faces of people like Teyana Taylor and, notably, their now-chief spokesmodel Kylie Jenner. But that has done nothing to repair the pervert-friendly reputation of the glasses. As this piece in Wired wrote earlier this year, the glasses have helped establish a new type of guy: The Ray Ban Meta Glasses Creep. And as this Cut article shows, Meta's attempts to court women as a consumer base...isn't working. Bulldozing over the criticism for the sake of tech "optimization" isn't cutting the mustard this time around. How refreshing!
SHOW NEWS: member drive stream week cometh on August 17th!!!
Yes indeed, it's true – for the second year in a row, we are spending a week livestreaming on our Twitch channel (twitch.tv/theneverpost) as a glorious, exciting member drive! There will be Wikipedia races, a return to my closet (with a twist 🤫 ), gaming streams, special guests, and so much more! Things kick off at 9 AM EST on August 17th, and continue on every day until we will bid thee farewell on Friday, August 21st. Tune in, won't you?
ITSNICETHAT: celebrities, put down the paintbrush
I've been thinking a lot about the fine art world as it relates to the internet and the culture we build online. And that is what brought me to this piece, which examines why, exactly, celebrities often fail to become well-respected visual artists. The ur-example is Adrien Brody, the multi-Academy Award-winning actor whose work you see above this text block. He is undeniably a talented actor (the disastrous SNL performance notwithstanding). But outside of the bounds of a movie set...the man just doesn't make good art. It's derivative, it's tired, it's the reheated nachos of Banksy and Andy Warhol and even (I shudder to include him on this list but here we are) Basquiat. And, listen. Outsider art is its own entire category of art making, populated by artists who make work without any formal education or training in fine art. But that's not what this is. To me, this hubristic art practice betrays a privilege that comes from the kind of comfortable celebrity that people like fellow actor-turned-bad-artist Johnny Depp have: the belief that their pre-existing status excuses them from having any real relationship with art, art history, or art making beyond "hey, this will probably make me a lot of money because I'm me." The NFT mindset, if you will. I've lots more to say about this – and about prestige fine art galleries which often encourage this nonsense, a la James Franco's horrific foray into Cindy Sherman copycatting – but that's for another time.
WIRED: writers are changing their language to prove they're human
If you're a regular reader of the newsletter, you know that I am someone who does genuinely love an em dash. And no, this article shall not convince me to stop using them. But! It does present an interesting and, in my opinion, inevitable data point in the endless battle between humans and AI: that many writers are starting to change the way they write to prove to readers that they are, in fact, a real person. And it's no surprise that a huge focus of this piece – and this problem – sits squarely on novels. As another piece in Wired points out, fiction is rife with AI slop. In this very newsletter I wrote about that whole kerfuffle about Shy Girl, the book (allegedly) by Mia Ballard that was pulled from shelves because of suspected AI use. It's no wonder that for many, the quickest solution is to write in a way that goes against the polished-yet-vague, metaphor-heavy style that LLM's always write with. (Also, a note from my personal experience: nowhere else in my digital life do I see more AI writing than on Depop. God forbid anyone put together a couple of sentences about a pair of jeans!!)
Alright folks, that's all from me. May we all fight the summer scaries and enjoy this beautiful season while it lasts. Ciao!