🎙️✨The Nexialist #0217
covid lessons | neural media | schizo-fication of the online world | anxiety | anatomy of hype | relationships | dua lipa's questions
welcome to your weekly cyber canapé tray, the nexialist
hey you! i hope this message finds you well and lounging on a sofa like so. this week, sxsw happened and i have to say i’ve been completely out of it this time, but probably things will come up and whatever gives me brainsparks will be here in the next weeks.
also, today marks the start of spring in the northern hemisphere, and it’s just so satisfying to know we’ve made it through the northern european winter (even if i cheated spending a month in brazil). i’m focusing these days at work and the sunny days that make such a difference. also, juan and i celebrated our seven years anniversary which is quite a symbolic milestone, hopefully bringing us good luck, health and prosperity for this year to come. oh well, now i leave you to it, enjoy! 🫀✨
1 year ago » 🛡️✨The Nexialist #0165 : is your job safe from ai? | strategy in the era of ai | creative work | defend your mind against social media | i just wanna lose my phone | truth windows | poor things | starry night
2 years ago » 🧌✨The Nexialist #0113 : increments of global warming | sad and pale paper | [this tech is] killing me | armageddon-granny | solipsism v nonduality | so hard so hot | the stupidity of AI | the age of artificial creativity
3 year ago » 😶🌫️✨The Nexialist #0063 : This is Not America | Planetary Consciousness | Cultural Concept Frameworks: Immersive Experiences | MOTOMAMI | CRASH
4 years ago » 🧠✨The Nexialist #0012 : In Case of Amnesia, Waters of March, Window Swap, Lesbian Gaze, Dyke Camp, Campingdisco, Tesla Things (in Amsterdam), Chronosonder and more...
😷covid lessons
last week, the 5th covid anniversary happened, marking half a decade after the world health organization announced the world was officially living through a pandemic (i know, right? sometimes it feels like it was 10 years ago, other times it feels like it just happened). the way the world stood still gave the scientists the opportunity to observe, experiment and learn about humans. these 15 lessons from nyt are amazing. my favorites (go read and find the studies):
-home-field advantage got less mysterious: having fans at a game make a difference (aka egregore (tn#11) —and i know that, when i dj and the brazilians are there, it’s a whole different thing. also, there is something about being jet-lagged.
-teenagers need to sleep in, but schools won’t let them
-high heels aren’t just uncomfortable — they’re dangerous.
-not even being stuck at home makes men do more housework
-computers are no replacement for classrooms
-there’s no substitute for human contact
brainsparks: laboratory planet (tn#214)
🧠neural media
Media shape identity and subjectivity through feedback loops. Twentieth century broadcasters, in pursuit of accurate advertising targets, used devices like the Audimeter to measure viewer demographics. This information allowed broadcasters to produce content that appealed to, and shaped, specific groups of viewers. In a media environment built with AI, human users are perceived and reflected not through demography but through statistical distributions. In the same way that programmed television shows reinforced demographic aspects of identity, neural media reinforce identities as they are perceived by machines, that is, as locations (or embeddings) in a statistical landscape.
what happens when ourselves are constantly filtered through statistical models? when our models, based on probabilities, flattens things mid? (hyper-optimization (tn#210), the age of average (tn#115), when ai-slop and agents become subliminal? (new aesthetics of slop (tn#215), whisperverse (tn#194)) when earthly systems become big data? the brainsparks are sparking.
We are addressed by neural media platforms as individuals. We log into social networks and AI chatbots as single users, using personal devices. But humans, and individuals, are not the only possible subjects of neural media. An emerging field of remote-sensing and Earth-oriented foundation models are now enabling machine perception at planetary scale. Weather patterns, animal migration, forest fire and flood behavior, and the dynamics of human populations, are converging as linked latent spaces. Systems like these are always ambivalent: a neurally visible Earth could force us to acknowledge the very ecological relations we now ignore. It could also lead to total capture of terrestrial space.
brainsparks: ontological design (tn#3), digiphrenia (tn#191), addictive intelligence (tn#186), super industry of the imaginary (tn#28), hyperindustry of the artificial imaginary (tn#118), the moodboard effect (tn#81), the vanishing designer (tn#81), technologies of convenience (tn#122), synthetic media (tn#18), a blurry jpeg of the web (tn#111), self-outsourcing age (tn#17), centaur mindset (tn#116)
🤯schizo-fication of the online world
machines using brain mechanisms as inspiration (i.e. neural networks), and now we use human mental health diagnosis for the web. remember when non-playable characters (tn#132) were peaking and tiktokkers were mechanomorphizing (tn#118)? well, now the world-wibe-web, or our swarm network, is anthropomorphising, in the image of a brain (or brain rot (tn#202)). sophie randell describes it very well in “the schizo-fication of the online world”
There was a time— until let’s say, six months ago —when the dominant internet self-diagnosis was anxiety, depression, or ADHD.
Okay, yeah everyone was overstimulated exhausted, and constantly self-analysing through the lens of a WebMD symptom list. But lately, the discourse has shifted. The new digital state of being? Schizoposting. Mania narratives. Hyper-symbolism. Basically, the internet is having a psychotic break, and we’re all in the group chat.
We used to talk about the internet as an attention-destroying machine. Everything was about dopamine cycles, constant tab-switching, the inability to read a full article without drifting away. But the newer, more acute internet disorder isn’t just about fractured attention—it’s about fractured reality.
brainsparks: the great chiasmus (tn#216), mechanomorphism (tn#118), non-playable characters (tn#132), escape economy (tn#212)
🫠anxiety
doechii is one of these artists who is punching a whole through the zeitgeist and i’m crushing on her. the video above was recorded in may 2020, pandemic era, but only now got picked up on tiktok. it was also sampled in 2023 with sleepy hallow (which is quite a bang). i’m also biased because somebody that i used to know is a sample of brazilian guitarist luiz bonfá’s seville, from 1967.
i love artists singing about mental health, and it must be quite liberating and sublimating to write a song about your “monsters,” and people finding solace in it. juan recently told me doechii did julia cameron’s artist’s way and shared the whole process in her youtube channel, which makes me appreciate even more her artistry.
brainsparks: somebody that i used to know (tn#203), doechii (tn#203), artistry + world building (tn#192), alter ego (tn#168)
🏀anatomy of hype
This article explores the pervasive role of hype across industries, focusing on four key areas drawn from our main research questions:
The Duality of Hype: Hype inflates expectations, often leading to excitement but also disappointment. We blame people in positions of power for wielding it as a tool for influence, yet we all have the choice in how we engage with it.
Emotional Impact of Hype: Hype generates energy and innovation but can also lead to stress, distraction, and poor decision-making.
Navigating The Hype Cycle: Engaging with hype is necessary to stay relevant, you need to practise critical thinking and never lose sight of your personal values in order to navigate it effectively.
The Future of Hype: As hype cycles accelerate, there is an increasing need for sustainability, authenticity, and deeper, more meaningful connections.
brainsparks: ai: hype or the real deal? (tn#149), prophecies of the flood (tn#209), 25 meta trending trends 2025 (tn#211), trends are bullsh*t. long live the trends (tn#190), rebranding trends research (tn#193)
🫀relationships
haim is back and it makes me happy. to me, they are one of the coolest bands we have, and it’s impressive how they’ve been making great music for so many years. this song feels fresh and fun and the video and the styling are pure eyecandy. it’s funny how they tap into how heavy the word relationship has become and everything it entails. for that, i would recommend them to listen to esther perel 😜
brainsparks: heteropessimism (tn#174), erotic intelligence (tn#1), paradoxical relationships (tn#44), relationship anarchy (tn#6), conscious relationships (tn#1)
🎙️dua lipa’s questions
i don’t know why but i was not paying much attention to what dua lipa has been up to. i know she seems to be always on vacation, but she’s also running a lifestyle newsletter and book club, service95, and interviewing amazing authors.
juan shared this with me and it’s mindblowing.
brainsparks: good conversations have lots of doorknobs (tn#207), fuel a conversation (tn#178), how to speak so that people want to listen (tn#61)
see you next week, nexialists 🫀✨
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