Months ago, my feed was full of those "Meaningful-media-to-consume-instead-of-doomscrolling" Tiktoks. If you are unfamiliar with the format, they consist on a list (a swipeful would be more accurate) of content that the creator deemed interesting and meaningful. They seem to have become less popular lately, but the idea has stuck with me. There is something about a curated selection of media that I find very appealing, kind of like booktube but for all sorts of media. So I've decided to create my own list of meaningful media that I've consumed this month (I've had my fair share of scrolling too, don't be fooled). I'm quite late to the train, but hopefully it's tastefully late. It's never easy to keep track of Tiktok trends, they die so easily.
-The Internet used to be a place: This Youtube video explores how the Internet has changed in the last decades. We used to think about the web in a different way back then, the computer used to be in a room in the house and you logged in for a specific amount of time. Even the vocabulary surrounding the Internet was related to a phisical space: homepage, website, email address... Now, it's more like an endless pit, an infinite scroll from which you can't ever log off.
-The walking man - Taniguchi: I deeply enjoy Taniguchi's graphic novels (I struggle to call them manga since they are so close to french comic books). They are beautifully illustrated, that is a given. The artist excells at drawing landscapes and architecture, his full colour works are a joy to look at. The stories too, are very calm and meditative. Unlike action shounen that makes you speed through the pages, they are meant to be enjoyed slowly. This is a series of short stories, some of them silent, in which the main character goes on different walks.
-The unreliable narrator substack - Allie Marie Evans: I've followed Allie Marie Evans from her early Youtube days, when she was a teenager and I was not much older. It has been quite special to witness Allie grow up, turn into an adult, change, evolve, overcome obstacles and turn into such a successful and inspiring woman. Her content has never been dull, always refreshing and original. Her last endeavour is her substack, short essays in which she gives insight and advice on different topics and is extremely honest and vulnerable about her life and experiences. It might sound generic, but it is trully special. She reads the essays out loud and brings them to life.
-The Age of the Assassination meme is here: I take Nathan Shuherk's recommendations very seriously, so I saved this article when he talked about it a couple months ago. It takes a poigniant and multifaceted look at activism and social media radicalization and censorship. It is still very current in the aftermath of Trump and Musk falling out.
Lately I have been trying to consume better quality content by attempting to train the algorithm and by spending less time mindlessly scrolling, but it is still a work in progress. I've been exploring RSS feeds too, I might document how that goes in a couple of weeks, when I get the hang of it. Maybe you'll peep in for that.