Transcript 0:00 [rock music] Welcome back to Hasteland. I am Francis Searer. And I'm Daisy Aliotta. 0:17 And today we're gonna be talking to Greta Rainbow. Daisy, who is Greta? Greta is a writer, researcher, and fact checker who has contributed to Dirt, um, and beyond Dirt. 0:31 She had two excellent pieces in Los Angeles Review of Books in the past 12 months. Um, at least one of them has already come up on this podcast. Mm-hmm. 0:40 We talked about her piece for Dirt last year about Honor Levy's My First Book being voted basically the funniest Dirt piece of 2024. Um, I was trying to remember how I met Greta. We'll have to ask her when she comes on. 0:54 According to my relection, recollection, I met her when she came to a party that I was throwing, um, with somebody else. We had not met before, but... 1:04 And she was like, "Hi," kind of like, "I'm at your party," and I was like, "Yes, you are." Um, but we'll see if she remembers it that way. That's a great meet cute. Yeah. Thank you for telling me that. 1:13 Um- Yeah, you're welcome. One thing I wanna talk about briefly before she arrives here, this has already been discussed in plenty, um, journalists' newsletters and, uh, tweets. 1:24 Uh, but GQ last week publishing the Lindy Man authored piece and then the Cold Healing piece the next day. Both of these people are independent newsletter writers, mainly known for their tweets. 1:34 Um, and clearly we noticed, we talked about it on- Yeah, I mean, everyone who has, like, any sort of sense of editorial strategy noticed. It was like, mm- Yeah... two's a pattern, I see what's happening here. 1:46 Two's a pattern. It's been one week, though none since. Um, a pattern I drew from it too, uh, was that obviously, you know, in December, Eater, Vox, I don't... 1:57 I forget which, it's, like, a, you know, nesting, nesting dolls of companies, but basically Eater, Brillis laid off a bunch of people. 2:03 Eater is rolling up their city verticals into regional verticals, leaner operation, et cetera. They fired Robert Sietsema, who is an amazing food critic, one of the main reasons I read Eater New York. 2:14 Um, so they fired him, and then one thing I noticed is a couple weeks later, um, this, so there's this Instagram account called FoodbabyNY, uh, run by this guy Mike Chow. I looked up, up his LinkedIn actually. 2:25 He's a former, like, Goldman, in- former, I don't know, maybe still current, uh, VP at Goldman, I think, or JP Morgan, one of the two, for the past 20 years according to his LinkedIn. 2:33 Smart LinkedIn- Well, you have to work in finance to be a food influencer. To be a food influencer. Everyone knows that. 'Cause you have to buy all that food. Yeah. 2:38 Anyways, long story short, Eater had- God forbid it was somebody working class or with a background in the service industry... mm, Eater had written about him twice. Um, one as like, you know, "Who is this creator? 2:47 What does it mean to be a food creator?" And then again, uh, like, a couple years ago with t- the rise of TikTok. 2:53 But a week or two ago they published a listicle, like, what Mike Chow from FoodbabyNY says are the best slices of cake in New, New York, something like that. 3:01 That was the first time they'd ever published him, that he had a byline there. So I thought that was not a coincidence, um, that that came shortly after those layoffs and seemed of a piece with the GQ- Mm-hmm... 3:14 editorial strategy, no? Yeah, it does. I mean, I think it's just part of this trend of, like, actors interviewing actors. Mm-hmm. Um- Beyonce writing her own interview or whatever for Rolling Stone, whatever that was. 3:26 Yeah. Somebody suggested, uh... Do you watch the show Traitors? Of course. Okay. Well, um- I'm, I'm caught up. [laughs] Helen Holmes, my friend Helen Holmes has sort of been dogfooding it to me, but, um- Mm-hmm... 3:40 I was actually gonna watch and then Dorinda, whatever. I was only gonna watch for Dorinda, but- It's o- no, it's... Well, it was a pity that Dorinda went out so early. Spoiler alert, sorry. 3:50 Um- I'm just like, if you were gonna manipulate the show to be more interesting, which it already is, it's reality TV, why would you let her- Well, there was-... go... 3:57 there's kind of a, in these first few episodes, I, I, I'm saying too much, but there's a bit of an anti-housewife, um, agenda, which- Mm... you know, loaded, I would say. Very loaded. 4:06 Well, long story short, somebody suggested, um, a, a show like Traitors but for posters. Mm-hmm. And I think every once in a while this strategy sort of surfaces in different media cycles. And it's just Twitter. 4:20 And it's just Twitter, but if you, like, look at everything as about, as, like, the reinvention of magazines, like, this is similar to when celebrities got to be on the cover instead of models. Mm. 4:30 Um, obviously there's, like, a rebellion, and then some people professionalize. Um, or it just goes back to what it always is, which, um, you know, if the readership goes for it, great. If they don't, don't. Yeah. 4:45 I wo- I wonder if they did, 'cause my guess there is, like, that it's, like, a margins decision where it's cheaper to pay an influencer who then will, you know, post it to their 400 some thousand Instagram followers than it is to pay a full-time senior food critic salary, right? 5:01 Like, w- specifically with the Eater situation. Sure, yeah, in the short term, but in the long term, if you're a food magazine, you need a food critic. Mm-hmm. Um, I [laughs] 5:14 I'm reminded of when you did Creator Spotlight a couple weeks ago, and you used your primordial soup metaphor, and I don't know- Oh, I don't even remember. I was crazy back then. You were crazy. You were crazy about... 5:23 You were s- you were deep in the soup. Still deep in the soup. Maybe, maybe your head's above water level, soup level now. 5:28 Um, but, uh, I don't know if you read the Creator Spotlight from last week with Lindsay Stanberry, um, who's the creator of this newsletter, The Purse, formerly founding editor of Money Diaries. Mm-hmm. 5:38 But she, uh, unrelated, unprompted- Genius. Thank you for your contribution to the culture. [laughs] Well, I, uh, but so I asked her, like, you know, "Are you a creator, in- a writer, journalist, whatever?" Mm. 5:48 And she said, "I don't really know," blah, blah, blah. "It's a murky stew." Um, so I'm loving these, [laughs] these food metaphors. Anyways, Greta is here. Let's chat. Greta, here. Hello. Hi.How are you guys? Doing good. 6:02 How are you? Oh, we're so good. Good. Welcome to the pod. Welcome to Tasteland, Greta. Thanks so much for having me. Uh, Greta- Um-... 6:10 I was trying to tell Francis how we met, and my recollection was that we met when you came to a party that I was throwing with somebody else. Um, but I don't know if that's true. No, that's definitely true. 6:24 And when I was, you know, thinking about the internet and what it's good for, I was like, "It's for making friends." Like, that's how- Mm... Daisy and I met. Um, yeah, that was a weird time. 6:36 I wanna say it was summer 2021. Yeah. That sounds right to me. But you say the internet is making... Do you have a lot of friends you've made on the internet these days currently at the moment? I think so. 6:47 And even just, like, people who I've gotten- I've been getting better at if I see someone in the real world- Mm... that I'm like, "I know that we follow each other on Twitter. 6:58 I know I'm reading your pieces," and to acknowledge that instead of- Kinda hold space for that... being scared of them. [laughs] Mm-hmm. But Greta, who did you come with? Who brought you? I, I came alone. Wow. 7:12 But how did you know about the party? [laughs] You definitely invited me. Oh. [laughs] Was that the time I, I... There was one summer where one of the invitations, I made it look like a purple PR press release. Mm. 7:27 And, um, for, like, a, an art opening, but some pe- it was, like, too realistic. Some people thought it was real. Mm. And so they were like, "Thanks so much for... But I have to decline." 7:40 So we were internet friends already. Yeah. We were internet friends, but not even that close, and so I was very, like, flattered, and, and I remember distinctly not wanting to bring anyone- Mm... 7:54 'cause I was like- You wanted to be yourself. I wanted to be myself. I felt like- Explore a new possibility-... new... of you. Yeah, a new, like, you know, coming out of the pandemic, like, media girl. 8:08 [laughs] Had you already- Mm... fact-checked one of our, my pieces by then? Because Greta, Francis, I neglected to mention Greta has talked to my mom multiple times. Oh. Fact-checked- For facts... 8:18 things that I've written. Mm. Yeah. Yeah, she's in the contacts. Mm-hmm. Okay, we should talk for a little while about your Glance Back piece in the LA Review of Books- Mm... 8:29 uh, which is the- the- the ostensibly the reason we had you on. Um, tell, for the audience, what is Glance Back, and what did you... why did you write about it? Yeah, so Glance Back is a really cool, um... 8:44 It's, it's a browser extension, um, is what it literally is, but it's also... it's a piece of net art. It's durational art. Um, it was coded in 2018 by the artist Maya Man, um, who is... 9:01 She's doing all kinds of different things. Um, but this is my favorite piece of hers, I think, 'cause it's really simple, and the idea is that at a random time every day that you have, you know, Chrome open, 9:17 when you open a new tab to, like, you know, make a new search, then your webcam will open, and it'll take a surprise photo of you with the prompt, "What are you thinking about?" 9:31 Um, and then you kind of have to respond to that prompt, and then it logs that capture, um, into this archive that's saved, um, stored locally, so only to your computer. Um, and so it's a really lovely... Like, 9:48 the way Maya describes it is great about it being this relationship, um, with your computer, and you're spending all this time together, and it's always looking at you, and this is a way to look back at it. 10:02 Um, and so I've been using it since November 2023, um, I think after I met Maya in person and was like, "This would be kind of a fun, interesting thing to do," and then it did become this ritual that I can't imagine getting rid of. 10:21 You're still doing it? Oh, yeah, for sure. Did you, did you, like, start it thinking, like, "Oh, I'm gonna write about this," or you're just like, "This is cool. I'm gonna do this"? It started, I... 10:30 Yeah, it started with, "This is cool," but definitely any time I, I need to hon- honestly get out of this, of, like, watching a movie, going to an art show and being like, "Well, maybe I'll write about this." 10:42 Um- Isn't that- I don't know. I don't... Yeah, I guess that's how we just work. It's kind of a thing. Writers are always writing, you know? Writers are always writing. Famously. Um, I liked... 10:52 So the, the last maybe, you know, spoiler alert if you haven't read this piece yet, but the la- [laughs] the last sentences are, "My time lapse is documentation of a working woman slowly aging, an accumulation in lockstep with decay, and my screen is a grave marker. 11:10 I'm getting better at writing here. I'm deepening my frown lines here." Um, I don't know. Reading that, I... 11:17 It made me think of, like, the, I guess- I guess more sinister bec- in the way that it is, like, cloud-based, but, you know, the photos. 11:25 I imagine we're all three here iPhone users, but, like, the photos your iPhone will, like, serve you when you accidentally scroll, like, to the left, and it's, like, in review, and somehow it's always, like, the five or six same photos. 11:36 But I, like, caught myself going down the, um, rabbit hole of, like, looking at those and then, like, going in and scrolling back to, like, 2018. What was I... 11:46 What did I look l- I was looking for what did I look like, not what was I doing, but, like, what did I look like seven years ago, you know? Um, I don't know. It's... 11:55 I l- I like that, like, this is a lo- like, it's a locally stored thing, um, because the other thing I would, like, randomlyOn Twitter last night as I was preparing for this, I saw this tweet by this woman, Ashley Gjøvik, I think is her name. 12:11 It's a Norwegian O thing in there. Um, but she was this Apple employee who was fired as retaliation against some whistleblowing. 12:19 Um, and then-- And, and it wa- like, related to this, the context I saw it in was, like, she had some... I'm gonna get some of the details wrong. There's some lawsuits, OSHA involved. 12:30 Um, and she had sued them for, like, some photos that were, like, evidence in their lawsuit against her or whatever, and one of them was, like, a nude she'd taken and sent to somebody she was dating on her phone. 12:43 But, like, then reading into it, there's this whole thing where, like, Apple is this company that's very pro-privacy, right? And, like, them introducing, like, ad pixel blocking stuff a couple years ago. 12:52 Um, but for employees, it's so not private. 12:56 Like, they're encouraged to use their personal device and, like, connect their personal Apple ID to their company work, and, like, y- there's this app called Gobbler that they rolled out when they were testing Face ID stuff. 13:10 Um, and it would just take a picture of them at any given time, whenever they open their iPad or their iPhone, um, and then they can't delete that ever. Like, that's all Apple's property. 13:20 Uh, and so I was thinking about that, how this is-- that's kind of the Wario of the Glance Back project. That is terrifying, and I feel like that's, yeah, exactly 13:32 the way to describe it, the CEO full, like your image not belonging to you versus this sort of quaint, like, I want to share it with my laptop. I feel weird talking about... 13:45 I talk about that too, of like, why am I talking about my laptop like it's sort of sentient? The relationship with your laptop. Yeah. [laughs] Like, I... No, I'm not stupid. 13:53 I know it's not, but I do feel very attached to it. [laughs] I take my laptop everywhere. I, you know, I really... I am that half laptop, well travel. [laughs] Like [laughs] Put out your shingle. Like [laughs] I love... 14:09 Like, I love going to a cafe and working for hours, and I feel like maybe with work from home, like, that is less romanticized. Not that we need to romanticize it- Mm-hmm... 14:25 but I, I still, yeah, have that feeling, and so want to kind of have that relationship, um, and not have it be about, you know, Apple stealing my image. Yeah. 14:37 On one side, you have total surveillance, and on the other side, you have total self-knowledge. Um- Mm-hmm... wait, so when you say it's stored locally, does that mean, like, if you got a new laptop, you would lose it? 14:49 Or is it in your iCloud? It is... If I got a new laptop, I would lose it w- because of where it's stored right now on just, like, my downloads. Mm. Mm-hmm. 14:59 Um, but I think that I could just transfer that folder over to iCloud. I've actually... I was-- That actually stood out to me when I read- read this because of, 15:11 I have seen arguments about local storage being better for privacy. Mm-hmm. Mm. 15:16 People basically saying, like, we've all just accepted that, you know, if you wanna use an app or a program or a game or something, you have to give up all this data. 15:25 But like, you know, every program used to be run locally on every device, and then the paradigm shifted. 15:32 Now, everything's in the cloud, and it's like, well, clearly, from a privacy perspective, having the option to run programs locally or, or play... 15:41 use an app locally that we now have to just automatically opt in to being part of the data pool would be great. 15:48 But then you see stuff like the things that have been lost in-- the cultural artifacts that have been lost in the LA fires, and you realize that the risk- Mm... of local storage is one point of destruction. 16:01 Um, and I think, Greta, one of the pieces that you fact-checked for me was, like, one of the pieces where I was talking about storage or a couple pieces where I talked about storage as explaining so much of contemporary life. 16:15 And, you know, it was the book that I am always threatening to write. You're gonna write a book. Um, but- Oh, please, please do it... 16:23 I mean, not-- But I don't talk about it in the sense of like, "Oh, I could have written that book." 16:28 Like, I very much at one point chose not to pursue it, to run Dirt, but I obviously notice everything that feels like it supports this thesis, and it's horrible to hear like, "Oh, Gary Indiana's archive had just arrived- Mm-hmm... 16:46 in Pasadena." And that's not a digital, um, it's not a digital archive. So that was, you know, physical archive-- Physical things have a single point of loss or single point of failure and always have. 16:59 But I think what I liked about Maxwell Neely Cohen's, um, big interactive essay about storage recently was, like, just the acknowledgment that a lot of digital things have a single point of loss as well, um, or 17:16 far fewer, you know, backups than most people assume. 17:22 Well, i- in the context-- Next episode, we're gonna be interviewing Mike Pepe, and I've been reading his new book, Against Platforms, and he makes this point, like, that the original purpose of the internet is so, like, information could survive in the case of nuclear war because it would be this, like, noted system where it's-- th- nothing is stored in one place. 17:41 It's like things are stored in separate places simultaneously. Um, so I'm thinking about that. I wanna... Okay, I want-- One thing I wanna linger on with the, 17:51 with the, uh, Glance Back app is MacBook Apple Photo Booth, which you reference in the piece. Um, and I opened at the coffee shop this morning for the first time in probably seven years. Um, I did not take a picture. 18:07 I probably should have, but I was kind of, like, taken aback at how high quality it was because I think the last time I took a Photo BoothPhoto was probably 2016 or '17, um, on a 2012 MacBook. Do either... 18:21 Have either of you used Photo Booth, like, in any time in the past decade? I use it, I use it every time right before we start the podcast to check my makeup. Are you serious? Uh-huh. 18:31 Wait, that's like- Yeah, I used it like 45 minutes ago. I didn't take a picture, I just looked into it. Yeah, Francis, I don't... I cannot believe that you're not taking regular bedroom Photo Booth selfies. 18:41 Well, bed- I don't [laughs] The laptop doesn't go in the bedroom. What? Is that a strict rule? What? It's not even a strict rule. I've never... Like, you know, when I was, when [laughs]... 18:50 In my younger years, laptop in the bedroom all the time, but I think, like, the w- work from home, and I'll be working... I could be working any given hou- you know, maybe I'll take a long break for dinner 19:01 early, and then I'll be working at, like, 8:00 PM, 9:00 PM, but, like, the laptop stays here in the desk. I feel like I already have so little work from work, work-home, work-private life separation. Um, 19:14 yeah, I can't remember the last time. Last time I used my laptop- You are a very strange creature... in my bed was probably... It's been probably half a decade. What the heck? That is incredible restraint. Yeah. 19:26 It's not even restraint. It's just, like, I... 19:29 Okay, well, actually, so when you were talking about, like, your relationship between your laptop and how it's this, like, special thing, uh, I was thinking about, like, how that used to be true for me before the laptop became a work tool for me. 19:41 Like, in college and then for a few years after college when I was working in, um, in, like, kitchens and coffee shops, the laptop was purely, like, a recreation tool, right? 19:52 Like, I was, like, looking up music, reading new music blogs. I was obsessed, obsessed with that, reading articles, reading The Creative Independent, whatever, like, such things. Um, and then once I got... 20:04 Really once I got a full-time laptop job for the first time where the laptop, um, was a company computer, I would say that relationship was severed. Uh, and then my, like, 20:14 my, like, personal relationship probably shifted more to my phone than the, than the computer. Mm. Which I assume you do use in bed. [laughs] Yeah. [laughs] Yeah. You- you're right about that. That's right. 20:31 When I was in, I was in, I think s- it was seventh grade, um, I asked for Christmas, I had, like, a long list of possible things that I could be given. Mm-hmm. Like, cellphone was one of them. 20:45 I think I got a phone, like, the next year. Um, but- Ninth grade for me... phone, like, you know, and we're better for that. But- [laughs]... phone, uh, [laughs] like, a DS, like- Oh, yeah... 20:58 like, a ton of things, um, all- Sixth grade for me... technology based. [laughs] Sorry. And never got one of those. My sister did. And I, and then my parents chose to get me this Dell laptop. Mm. 21:13 And I got it, and I cried, which I'm making myself sound like this horrible child, but I was just like, "Oh, this is not..." It wasn't tears of happiness. 21:22 It was like, "This is not this pretty, shiny Apple product that I asked for." Yeah. And they were like, "But it can do so much more than that. Like, we... 21:32 You're asking for all these different things that will achieve, like, different ends, and this can do everything." Um, and, and I just remember being like, "It's, like, this clunky black thing I don't want." Mm-hmm. Um, 21:47 and they didn't understand. And then, of course, yeah, I had so much fun on that laptop. Um, but it was, it was a different, a different kind of, like... It wasn't this fetishized object. Mm. 22:02 I had that same experience with getting a phone when, like, in ninth grade when I got a phone. That would've been the latter half of 2009 or 2008. Regardless, it was, like... 22:12 W- it wasn't a Motorola Razr but it was some, like, sliding Motorola that ha- you could put MP3s on and listen to music. My parents were like, "Oh, you'll like this one because, like, you know, you, you like music." 22:20 And I w- it was that same feeling of, like, it wasn't the fetish object and, like, it wasn't an iPhone. It wasn't as cool. 22:27 And, like, I'm, I cringe so hard looking back on, like, how, on, like, the feeling of disappointment- [laughs] Yes... and, like, feeling let down. 22:35 Um, which it faded pretty quickly, but, like, on receiving and opening it, I'm like, "Well, this is cool, but this is, like, this, this isn't the point." Like, I don't know. It's pathetic. I was also... 22:45 So last thing about the relationship to the computer that I was thinking about was, like, when it shifts from, like, desktop, like, computer room thing to the laptop. 22:55 Um, like, I think the first time I got a com- I used a computer was in kindergarten, so, like, 1999, 2000 or so, whenever that was. 23:04 Um, and, uh, there was that, and then there was the next one, we, like, moved houses and we were there for, for the rest of my childhood, and we had the computer room there. 23:14 And then there was, like, in eighth grade, my equivalent of, like, getting the laptop, I was, I was a gamer then, so I got, um... 23:21 My parents deal with me, they were like, "If you work this summer, we'll pay for half of a computer." Um, and so I got, like... Then I had it in my room, like, set up in my closet. 23:31 Uh, and then it was, like, really the personal relationship. Like, I [laughs]... 23:35 Uh, this is, okay, this is embarrassing, but there was one time where, like, I've got in some fight with my sister and they, to punish me, they took the keyboard away, and I was, like, so... Like, it, 23:46 I remember being, feeling so, like, aghast. Like, that was, like, part of me. Like, I spent, you know, every second I was home from school and not doing homework on the computer. Anyways, yeah, we'll stop there. 24:00 Our computer, our family computer was, like, in the living room so that my parents could, like, monitor- Yeah... our usage. 24:08 And I remember, like, uh, I saw, like, a [laughs] I saw this picture on Twitter the other day of, like, this woman, I don't know, being like, "Why does my son have, like, a spoon taped to the side of his computer?" 24:18 It's 'cause, like, with the, um, convex... back, you could see your parents coming from any direction Oh, did you do that? I feel like I could just tell any noise in the house- Yeah... 24:30 if it was the beginning of an approach. Not that I was doing anything crazy on there. 24:33 And I will say, like, I never got really into trouble online, so I think my mom maybe, like, has been vindicated, but there was definitely a surveillance aspect of our desktop placement. Mm. Yeah. 24:46 I remem- yeah, the computer room is definitely, like, this memory. Um, I remember, yeah, like, going into other kids' houses, watching, like, Weird Al YouTube videos. Um, and then I 25:04 spent a ton of time on my laptop, like, really late at night in high school on Tumblr. Um, and I do think about, yeah, sort of like what that did to [chuckles] my brain and how that was... 25:22 There was just this, like, this total influx of content that, how do you even monitor that as a parent? Like, um, it's so kind of, like, temporal and amorphous. Um, and I wouldn't... Like, I don't regret anything. 25:38 It definitely, uh, that made me who I am- Mm-hmm... um, was being on there, but it was a lot. Were you guys Tumblr kids? Sort of. 25:50 [sighs] I wasn't on Tumblr until I was in college, which is around the time that I would have also been reading stuff like Thought Catalog, and it, that opened up a whole other world to me because I'm sure 26:09 I came in to read more of the, like, BuzzFeedy stuff, but then that's how I, how I found out about, like, Alt Lit. Um- Mm... 26:20 and I remember, um, Sam Hein, who is, you know, we know Sam Hein at GQ now. I met Sam Hein on the internet. Hm. Mm. Um, I had this college blog which was inter- it was an inter NESCAC blog. 26:37 Sam went to a different college from me, and he took over the blog when I graduated. Um, but I went to visit him one time, and in his dorm room he had these Tao Lin stickers that were like, um [smacks lips] 26:51 they were something like, "End the war on America by bath salts," or hold on. I have to look this up. Was it in, like, that shiny Taipei Tao Lin period? "I support the war on America by bath salts." 27:06 And he, he, s- uh, Sam had these, like, stickers, like, on his dorm room. And I was like, "Oh, you know about Tao Lin?" Um, anyway, like, long story short- We'll get to this sometime... 27:16 um, I associate those two eras together, and I'm curious, like, while I was preparing for the podcast and reading the stuff, and I reread the piece that you wrote for us about Honor Levy's My First Book, where you talk about the difference between, or the sort of, like, spectrum between earnestness and irony. 27:33 Um, like, what, what do you think is going to happen to Alt Lit as the internet kind of becomes worse and worse? These platforms are degrading. Are... 27:47 We should have said this up top, but, like, our loose theme for this episode was, like, is the internet bad now? Can it be good again? 27:53 I feel like a lot of the stuff that we're talking about is nostalgia for things that felt- Mm. Mm. Yeah... seem better in retrospect. Nostalgia. 27:59 Maybe they didn't feel as good at the time as we remember, but I wanted to ask, like, whether the fate of Alt Lit is actually tied to the internet, or is that just an illusion? [chuckles] I... 28:15 Yeah, hard question, and I love the idea of it not being tied to the internet, and that that is sort of the tunnel out. Mm. 28:23 Um, because the worst Alt Lit is the stuff that sounds like someone trying to replicate early Tao Lin. Mm. 28:34 Um, and it has this feeling of plugging into ChatGPT, like, um, you know, please scan Shoplifting from American Apparel and now write me a passage about, like, waiting for my girlfriend to show up at Clandestino and being sad. 28:56 And, like, and, and, and so I think there's something about, um, AI and going on the internet and reading so much AI. Um, for me, that's, like- Mm... a big... 29:12 When I think about the internet being bad now, I think about googling something and just, and being hit with that AI response, um, up top. And 29:25 so I'm wondering if writing that is inspired by the internet and derived from the internet, um, like, how can we, how can it be interesting to read if it has the AI voice? 29:40 Which I do think there is, like, a weird distinct voice that's being created. Well, going back though to the earnestness and irony thing, I actually pulled the quote. 29:47 This is, like, the first line in your piece, or your review, of Honor Levy's My First Book, where we get into, like, what is post-post Alt Lit, basically. 29:56 "One time, really late at night, I tried to draw the definitive scale of irony versus earnestness in the Notes app on my phone." Um, Notes app being mentioned, very funny for reasons that will become clear, uh, shortly. 30:08 In the coming weeks. [chuckles] In the coming weeks. But, um, I'm like, if we take Alt Lit to be the sort of like, uh, or, like, parallel to irony as maybe, like, internet speak, right? 30:19 Which basically sounds the same once replicated, which is why, it's like, does everyone sound like Tao Lin, or is Tao Lin just the first to use internet speak?Um, and then earnestness, maybe the parallel there is like MFA speak. 30:32 Like to me, internet speak and MFA speak are sort of two sides of the same coin because the result is, um, everything sounds the same. Nobody really has a distinct voice. The conventions are very easy to predict. Um, 30:49 and when the conventions are predictable, that's when it starts to feel like more artificial. Well, wait. Let, uh, let me jump in for a second. W- thinking about Tao Lin, when I... 30:59 I have-- I never read Shoplifting from American Apparel, but I read Taipei in like 2013 or '14, I remember, and told all my friends like, "Oh, you have to read this. Like, this is so good. 31:09 Like, I haven't read anything that makes me like-- that has ever made me think about the internet in this way or seen the internet externalized like in a book this way." 31:17 Um, and at that time, like, that was still so novel, right? Like, I'd been on Instagram for... That was the year I got on Instagram. Um, I'd been on Facebook for a few years obviously. 31:28 I was on Twitter, but only as like a lurker. Um, I d- couldn't figure out how to post. Like, the point being is like it all still felt so new, and so articulating it was new and novel, and putting it in a book was novel. 31:40 Um, whereas now it's like, it's all, it's all tired. Like, we've, we've-- we're stuck in like the big flat now, as, as I've heard said. Like, we-- There's nothing new to tread there, right? 31:53 Like, there's n- Like, maybe there's some new thing that's like somehow about the experience of like interacting with AI writing on the internet, but I don't even know if that would be in... 32:03 Maybe there's an interesting way to write that in like a novel form, but I don't know. I think back then it was like this was still all so new. 32:10 The internet was like, the social internet was like not even a decade old really. 32:15 Maybe it was a decade old, we could say, and now it's like two decades old, and it's accelerated, and it's TikTok, and TikTok's about to be banned, and I don't know. I think it's just like it's become too rote. 32:27 So where do you see the opportunities for actual novelty? I mean, Greta, you're saying like the tunnel out is Outlet that does not mimic the former distribution of the internet. 32:39 Um, can such an outlet actually support people financially? [chuckles] Not that it was ever that lucrative to begin with. Well, I wonder if 32:52 another way out is not being as so concerned about how the writing will be received by a really specific group of people. 33:03 I think that, like, a lot of Outlet was speaking to this, like, small, incestuous community that was so fun to look into from, as we all did, um, like not yet- From a laptop in wherever... living in New York. Mm-hmm. 33:18 Exactly. Um, and I remember seeing, I remember going to see Tao Lin when he was on a book tour, um, in Seattle and like having to be, you know, dropped off at the bookstore. 33:33 Like, it, it was, I was not yet at that point, um, and so it was fun to look in on, and it felt like this close community of people talking to each other. Um, and earnestness for me [sighs] 33:50 is something about, like, getting out of the 33:54 small circles of people who you want to impress or mimic, um, and start talking about things beyond ourselves, um, just, like, caring about the world more than our 34:11 little, like, the people we're talking to on Twitter. Um, and so that could be exciting, and I think, yeah, maybe why, why not, like, be profitable in that way? 34:25 Um, but is Outlet also, is, is it by definition about, you know, being othered from, like, a larger audience? I don't know. 34:34 Wait, Daisy, wasn't it you who's, who've, who have, who has been on record multiple times as being against scenes? Yeah. Am I correct? That was me. I feel like that's applicable here, right? Um, yes. It, yes. 34:46 What do you mean by that? Well, because [chuckles] well, I think my most recent criticism of scenes is that they're shortcuts for attention. Mm-hmm. So if you are trying to figure out, 34:58 like, if I'm an editor at a publishing house, a big five publishing house, and I feel like my job is to find the next hot young novelist, 35:09 and I don't look outside of a group of 20 people that interact with each other online and go to the same parties because I'm a lazy piece of shit, 35:19 and I consider that talent scouting, then, like, that's an example of using a scene as like, it's lazy. But for the people who are in the scene or adjacent to the scene, it also becomes like 35:34 an creative inhibitor because people are more concerned with the social dynamics around it than they are actual cultural production. 35:42 Um, I think what I originally said in my piece against scenes is, is like when a group of people becomes more concerned with proximity to cultural production than the production itself. 35:52 Um, and the thing that is so infuriating for anyone inside is everyone-- nobody ever feels like they're at the center. Like, it's like the, the principle in physics where you can't actually observe, um, certain types of, 36:08 like, particles or whatever. Like, as soon as you get, feel like you're getting the closest to the center, like, it shifts again. Mm-hmm. 36:16 Um, and I, well, I don't consider myself part of a scene, but it's very hard to, like, see ourselves for what we are. And, like, I got drinks or dinner with my roommate recently at this, like, um-Always empty, 36:34 never a wait, like never cool, has been there forever Italian place near w- where we used to live in Clinton Hill. Um, I was like, "Let's go for old time's sake," and she made a reservation. 36:45 I was like, "You're crazy for making a reservation. Remember, there's never anyone there." It was packed. No, there's no... No. Yeah. There was nobody there. It was exactly- [laughs]... as I remembered it. 36:54 And anyway, um, so like decidedly un-sceny restaurant. Um, and she was like, "Well, you're so, you're so..." She kept saying, "You're so cool," or like, you know, "You're... But you're cool." 37:08 And I'm like, "What are you talking about?" Uh-huh. Like, we used to share a bathroom. I used to go into your bedroom and like steal your Q-tips when you were at work. 37:16 Um, we lived together when she wrote for The Cut, and I was a freelancer. I had like barely any bylines, nothing that would impress anyone. And, um, she's like, "Well, you- you're in The New York Times." 37:30 And I was like, "Yeah, but like, what- what is this like you're cool thing? Like, it's me, right?" Like, it was, it was very eye-opening 'cause it... 37:40 I think like that is why so many seemingly successful people or people who seem to be at the center of a scene are so miserable. It's because nobody can see themselves for what they are. Um- Mm. 37:52 And their primary social experience becomes the envy of others or envying others. Um, there was nothing about this interaction with my old roommate that felt like envy, um, we're like sisters. Um- Yeah... but that's... 38:08 I don't know. It, it was, [sighs] it was funny. Well, so one thing I'm thinking about- It stood out... the idea of a scene, like a labeled scene, because I think that's really relevant here. 38:17 There was this book I read in my freshman year culture anthropology class called Number Our Days, uh, which is, uh, like the anth- the, the woman Barbara Myerhoff, I think she wrote it, published in 1980. 38:28 She was this anthropologist who'd like, you know, done the anthropology thing, gone to cultures around the world, whatever. 38:34 Um, and she was trying to work on a project, and I think she was somewhere down in Mexico, and they were like, "What are you doing?" Like, "Go write about your own people. Like, why are you here? Go away." 38:43 And she wa- she was like, "Oh, I should do that." So she, she's Jewish, she went to a retirement home in Venice Beach and did this book on them. 38:51 And so the subtitle is A Triumph of Continuity and Culture Among Jewish Old People in an Urban Ghetto. 38:56 It's a great book, but the reason I'm bringing it up is there's this one character, person, not a character, I guess, um, who's like protesting against her interviewing him and writing about him and he says something like, "I don't want you to, to write about me 'cause it's, it'll be like sticking a pin in me, and then like, then I, I won't be able to roll." 39:15 Right? Like, you put the definition in something, and it's like, it gets caught there- Mm... at least in the perception of other people, and he wa- he didn't, he didn't want that. 39:23 He wanted to be able to like roll on unperceived, um, which I think about a lot, like the idea of not wanting to have a pin stuck in you or sticking a pin in something like on purpose to stop it from rolling and get it caught there, right? 39:36 And that's kinda what a scene is, like alt lit or something like that, it begin... 39:40 Anything that's named begins collapsing in on itself because it's hard for a thing once named and defined to change if the impression associated with that initial naming becomes too widespread. 39:53 Number Our Days makes me think of that Annie Dillard quote that was in your Glance Back piece. Greta, um, I don't know if you wanna talk about that quote and why it stands out to you. Oh, yeah. Of course. 40:04 The classic, um, how we spend our days is how we spend our lives. Mm-hmm. Um, and I don't know, have you guys encountered that like out in the world? Yeah. I've defini- Yeah. Definitely. Like, it's- 40:19 I remember so clearly it used to be my friend Tori's, um, Instagram bio. Oh. She probably doesn't even remember. It does. 40:26 I feel like I should text her now and be like, "Do you remember when that Annie Dillard quote was your Instagram bio?" It does have a bit of like a Rupi Kaur vibe to it. It's such an aphorism. Oh, yeah. But it is lovely. 40:37 Yeah. Um, and I do like draw on it and think about it. 40:45 I almost, I feel like I'll almost do it as sort of like a, like a bashing thing of if I've, you know, woken up and I've just been on my phone for an hour, and I'm like, "Greta, how we spend our days is how we spend our lives." 40:57 [laughs] Um [laughs] It's like an intellectual, like bonk. [laughs] Um, but her... But then, like reading more about, you know, the book that that came from and her whole philosophy, and it's not supposed to be scolding. 41:12 Um, it's really supposed to be just thoughtful. Um, and I 41:20 was reading her at the same time that I was reading On the Calculation of Volume, um, which is this hot new septology. Um, only the first two- I've seen it on the shelves at Topos. It is good. It is worth it. 41:35 Amazon's trying to sell it to me right now. Mm-hmm. Um, you guys can buy my copies. If you're cute, you'll like this. Don't buy it. You'll like this. [laughs] You will. You will. Um- [laughs] And it's a really... 41:46 It's, yeah, strange and slow and beautiful, um, about a woman who is trapped in the 18th of November, and she's very alone in this. Like, a- and I, I describe it to people, and everyone's like, "Okay, so Groundhog Day." 42:02 Yeah. And I'm like, "Yes, but no, but ugh." She's trapped in this day and she's alone in this. Like, everyone else experiences a new 18th of November, um, while for her it's been going on for over a year. 42:14 It starts to take this turn where you're sort of trying to figure out the mystery of it, um, and you're like, "Is this sci-fi or..." It's, it's speculative fiction ultimately. Mm. But 42:27 and then you realize like, "Oh, that's not what it's about. I'm not trying to figure it out. Um, I am with the character trying to figure out, like how could I make the most of a day?" 42:37 Um, and, and that ends up being-Really beautiful and yeah Um, I, I did find your Goodreads and look at it. Oh my gosh. So I know that you also just read- I apologize for him. Scary. I know. [laughs] Berlin Atomized. 42:52 Speaking about privacy and Apple and such. No, well, I read your article last- like a year ago or so about Goodreads, and I was like, "Oh, she's gotta have a public Goodreads." Anyways, um, I found it. 43:03 Berlin Atomized, I'm ask- I've seen it, I've considered buying it. I'm asking you for an impromptu book review. Okay, so I'm actually writing a review right now. Okay. So you can get the full thing soon. But- Damn it. 43:19 Yeah. [laughs] This is really- It's gonna be good. [laughs] And truly, yeah, everything... It is hard to not spin everything I consume into- Mm-hmm... a review. Um, but also- I started-... 43:32 I feel lucky to be able to do that. Yeah. I started tracking, I've never used Goodreads, but I started tracking, like, writing down all the books I've read in a note one year ago. 43:41 So like, I know I read 18 books last year, and here's what they were, and only like two of them were fiction, et cetera, et cetera. 43:48 But I've, I've avoided Goodreads probably for like, the exact same reason that I don't want... I don't want another way to be known online, right? There's enough ways. 43:57 I don't want somebody to be able to look, look [laughs] at- You don't want somebody to stick a pin in you? Exactly. Anyways. 44:01 Well, I kind of feel that way about, like, writing my Crisis of Language essay, where I'm like, "This happened," and then I finish it and I was like, "Oh, I guess that's over now." Your crisis over? 44:10 Yeah, I guess it's not ongoing- Oh... 'cause I wrote about it. And it's good, so it's like, well, you're still gonna write it. Thank you. Isn't that kind of famously one of the reasons to write? What? 44:19 To, to [laughs] process, to put a pin in something and move on. Well, one hopes. One... [laughs] Okay. Did you see The Brutalist, Greta? Something about the... I still haven't. Okay. Me either. 44:30 I feel like I've seen everything else except for that. Mm-hmm. It's all right. Maybe I'll go today. I, I am intimidated by the long runtime, but I'm excited to see it. 44:42 Well, apparently the women's bathroom doesn't have an issue with the line- Right. Right... so maybe- Was it actually women? Why is everyone tweeting about that? I don't know. 44:48 Oh, just 'cause- 'Cause we live in a mono culture... people wanna get a joke, yeah. [laughs] Um, oh, one more thing I wanna ask about from the, the piece. 44:55 Um, you m- referenced this woman, Brooke Erin Duffy, and I clicked on it, the link, and looked her up, and she's this, like, social media creator scholar. 45:03 Um, and I'm glad that you mentioned her 'cause now I wanna buy her books. Can you, can you say anything about her work? Yeah, she is really cool and also, like, really nice. 45:15 I think that I, early into freelancing, um, I was finding all the different personalities of people who you reach out to for interviews. Um, and she was really kind when I, like, was just getting into it. 45:32 Um, and she has... It kind of marries, like, feminist theory and thought with deep research and knowledge about technology and the internet. 45:48 Um, and I love her theory of the visibility bind, which is- Mm-hmm... pretty simple. It's basically like, okay, you need to be seen. 46:00 Yeah, you need, you need to have a public Goodreads if you want people to ask you about your thoughts on books. Mm-hmm. But then that also opens up the possibility, um, for people to criticize you and to say- Yeah... 46:16 "You have horrible taste in books. Like, why are you acting like an authority?" Um, and she talks about it more in the context of, like, w- female influencers and showing their faces. Um- Yeah... 46:30 and then all these different ways that, you know, if you are racialized, like, the... You know, it's tenfold worse. Um, but I highly recommend her. And I will... 46:41 Oh, I did wanna go and answer Berlin Atomized a little bit, that I do recommend it. Okay. Um, [laughs] shout out to Julia, the author. Another person who is, um, 46:54 cool on the internet and then genuinely very kind, and it's an interesting book. What I'm- Great theory. Nobody is cool on the internet. Nobody's... I like that. Mm. Yeah. We can print T-shirts. 47:07 Well, we can argue about that. [laughs] But then they can be cool in real life. Mm. Or there's no cool. I need to think about it some more. I mean, when I was, you know, on the, uh- [laughs]... 47:19 on the old desktop computer in my closet in high school, I thought, I thought, I thought a lot of people were very cool on the internet. But that's also 'cause I was so isolated. Name three. Name three? 47:30 Fuck, I don't know. Probably, it's probably all musicians, 'cause that was, like, what I was obsessed with at the time. Mm. 47:36 Um, I will reveal myself here and say at the same time, um, I, that I read The Talwin, that I read Taipei, um, I was obsessed with Yung Lean, and similarly, you know, putting the good word out [laughs] about him. 47:49 I was like, "This is so, it's so, like, such a product of, like, right now and the internet," and he's this, like, Swedish kid who's, like, doing rap because it's this, like, American export, and he's exporting it back to us, and now it's, um... 48:01 So, [laughs] so yeah, I thought Yung Lean was really cool. Um, I still do, but I thought he w- I really thought he was cool when I was n- 19 years old. I also thought he was really cool. 48:12 And for Halloween one year in high school, my best friend- You were him... and I were [laughs]... I wouldn't... This is, like, kind of a, we were Yung Lean hoes. Okay. And so we, like, wore bucket hats. 48:22 [laughs] You can say hoes on this podcast. [laughs] Okay, good. [laughs] Okay. What were you? And, 48:29 uh, it was just, like, wearing a bucket hat and then, um, we had like- You had Arizona that you poured some, like, vodka into... of course. Mm-hmm. 48:37 And then T-shirts that we'd, like, embroidered something on related to his lyrics. Um, and we were, like, supposed to go to his concert, but we were grounded or something. [laughs] But yeah, big, like, big fans of him. 48:50 Um- We didn't really finish your thought about Berlin Atomized. Maybe the real Berlin Atomized is that we're never gonna let you- Tasteland Atomized... say a full sentence about this book. Should we end it? 49:00 Should we end it right here? Should we really atomize? That is performance art, and it does feel like the future of alt-lit. This has been Tasteland. Thanks for coming on. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. 49:11 See you next week. [rock music] It tastes just like it costs. Honey. 49:26 It tastes just like it costs
