I did a pretty good job avoiding news for most of the year, but I started looking at social media again during the NBA Summer League (July). After that wrapped up, I mostly slipped back into ignorance for another few months until the preseason started (October), but by then the algorithms figured me out and knew I wasn’t really just interested in basketball. Suddenly, I was getting headlines about the election, memes about the Cybertruck, and reading lengthy postmortems on ‘brat summer.’
It was nice not being fed thousands of micro-outrages for a while, but I knew it couldn’t last. I feel a little guilty about ignoring the war in Gaza, but I’m glad to have missed all the social media hot takes. Being disconnected from the world makes it glaringly clear how much of our discourse is just the constant memefication of one outrageous news event to the next, with little delineation between politics, science, and popular culture. To quote Time’s Person of the Year, “Sad.”
So, I’m going to try a slightly different approach in 2025. I’m going to keep up with basketball (Go Grizz) but commit to logging off the first time I get a story about politics, or Elon, or crypto, or AI (more about that in a moment). To keep myself occupied, I’ll be writing a monthly serial, The Rearden, which will pick up about eight months after Modern Problems. I’ll post them here.
As for AI, I figure it won’t be much longer before most books test positive for it at some point in their development—especially the case for self-published stuff. My children’s generation will be raised to use AI tools, and by the time they reach adulthood it’ll probably be something we utilize daily for various functions with little or no concern. That genie isn’t going back into the bottle.
This is why I like to draw on paper still, and develop and edit books on my own, because I like stuff that wasn’t optimized for mass consumption. Or at least that’s how I rationalize making stuff that receives minimal consumption. Hopefully there’ll be a whole artistic renaissance of luddite folk art at some point, kind of like how cassettes made a comeback, but I wouldn’t even know how to find stuff like that on the “dead internet” of the near future. Maybe people can meet up in the park and exchange stuff? Assuming it’s not too hot out, of course.
Anyway, I hope everyone has a great 2025, even those of you who might kind of suck or be otherwise deficient of reason or empathy. Don’t forget that existential panic is an affliction that can be shared by all classes and political or religious affiliations, and it can often be treated with pharmaceuticals. We’re all hurtling toward oblivion together, so y’all be good to each other! Go Grizz!