#real life mag

[lantern-hill]

"If the offline, like the wilderness, represents the enlightened, healthy, embodied, free and authentic state, then the large majority of us, who cannot claim to dwell in either category, represent a fallen vision of humanity: disembodied and superficial, zombified and anxious, trapped in virtuality. If “people who can’t live without their cellphones” are the wrong demographic for Yellowstone, then this means essentially anyone who does not have a stable, well-paid job that allows them to put on an out-of-office, with zero caveats, for days at a time; freelancers and gig-workers; anyone with caring responsibilities. In other words, the majority of people today."

-The Great Offline - Lauren Collee

#commonplace book #lauren collee #real life mag

[longreads]

Goodbye to Real Life (2016-2022)

For six years, Real Life Mag (@reallifemagazine​) was an indispensable source of tech commentary and critical thought, publishing essays, arguments, and narratives about living with technology. Real Life invited work from a wide variety of contributors, eschewing the idea that digital thought should belong only to experts and academics. Since its foundation, the magazine has made room for a stranger and more nuanced understanding of the web in all its complexity, covering topics such as identity, power, surveillance, beauty, music, video games, influencers, and body horror, to name just a few. 

On September 6th, Real Life announced its shuttering due to a lack of funding. This is a massive loss for contemporary media criticism, and their contributions will be sorely missed. Editor-in-chief Nathan Jurgenson has announced the magazine’s intention to preserve the website and its archives indefinitely.

In honor of their incredible work, here’s a selection of some of our favorite stories: 

1. Fidelity Angst

"When an audiophile of any gender pursues fidelity, they express a desire for affective, sensory intercourse between creators and listeners, a communication beyond signification."

Mack Hagood on the hopeless pursuit of “the absolute sound” 

2. Taking Stock

“Creativity is now understood first and foremost as a business resource, a component of an employee’s skill set, an ability to sell something, anything.” 

Rob Horning on the emergence of the term “creator” and its cultural implications 

3. The Great Offline

“The problem is, of course, that the boundary between the offline and the online is incredibly hard to situate.” 

Lauren Collee on the supposed “wilderness” of technological disconnection 

4. Screen Memories

“The screen consumes so much of me — time, labor, attention. I screenshot to lay claim to the act of seeing, which remains mine alone.” 

Kelly Pendergrast on preserving memories via the art of the screenshot

5. Clash Rules Everything Around Me

"But more often, video games, in the way they structure our behavior and obtrude into our lives, are less escapes from reality than they are metaphors for it." 

Tony Tulathimutte on wasted time and the capitalist themes encoded in Clash of Clans

Click here for a full list of our Real Life Mag picks over the years.

#longreads #real life #real life mag #reading #journalism #nonfiction #reallifemagazine

[maybuds]

[…]

from “Reality Disappointment” by Alexandra Molotkow for New Feelings, a column devoted to the desires, moods, pathologies, and identifications that rarely had names before digital media.

#might binge read this column #reality disappointment #alexandra molotkow #new feelings #real life mag

[noodledesk]

TikTok is another place where "everything is a genre now." Its algorithm is similarly credited with constituting ad hoc genres on the fly, not necessarily through users' specific requests but through its spontaneous production of mass audiences for emergent content themes...

But the power of that illusion is interconnected with its powers of genre creation, its ability to instantiate trends. TikTok "knows who you really are" in the same way that it "shows what's really happening in the world." These "knowledges" have nothing to do with facticity but with the authority the app earns by holding people's attention.

Drommet Red, from Real Life Magazine

#real life mag #tech #tiktok #social media #algorithms #morningread

[biglisbonnews]

Questioning the Stories We Hold: A Reading List Inspired by Annie Ernaux Five stories that question the stories we hold about ourselves. https://longreads.com/2023/01/19/questioning-the-stories-we-hold-a-reading-list-inspired-by-annie-ernaux/

#Reading List #Alexandra Molotkow #Annie Ernaux #Bekah Waalkes #Elisa Gonzalez #Kate Raphael #Noor Qasim #Real Life Mag #Sarah Chihaya #The Drift #The Overshare #The Point #The Yale Review #Longreads

[clonerightsenthusiast]

i got to the part of new mutants last night where they leave magneto and the school and I already miss headmaster mags and more than that i miss the incredibly funny dynamic where every time the kids sneak out of school for some mission despite being grounded (happens constantly, they can teleport, what's he gonna do), because cerebro is broken and he can't fix it, he has to GO TO THE HELLFIRE CLUB and use their mutant detector to find his kids while shaw and selene make fun of him for being outsmarted by six teenagers. again.

and he's soooooo mad about it

#x-men #new mutants #headmaster magneto era you will always be famous #also not a fan of how their last confrontation tried to reframe him getting really strict and harsher as like a strategic move #when the existing narrative of mags reacting badly to a real and genuine fear for his students #catalyzed by doug being killed after they snuck out of the school while grounded #was much more compelling! and also made more sense #but oh well. gotta make him the bad guy again somehow the plot demands it. such is magnetos lot in life lmao

[meownotgood]

do you like how aki looks in the stage play?

tbh... I didn't really like it at first... but after a while he's kind of grown on me... still, I think the actor looks good as aki, but it's not how I imagine aki would look you feel me?

#I like how tall he is compared to everyone else tho........ lol #canon aki height #also everyone's clothes look so good and so accurate and definitely aki too #his sword looks awesome #and his cutie shoes hehe #we need to get this topknot pointier though!!! #perhaps the topknot is impossible to create in real life....... #I don't think I'll collect any of the merch from the stage play just because I'm not all that into it #I'd really like to watch some of it though if there happens to be a recording #ask mags

[coconut530]

THE THREE G’S

#The Magnus Protocol #6 #sorry we do be late #but that’s fine Thursday ATTACKED ME LIKE MALEVOLENT TMP NEVERMORE HOZIER PERSONALLY CAME FOR ME #but this was an interesting ep #Liked the essay format of the statement and the architecture was cool #Cannibalism was not #But interesting #Hearing Alice so not animated this episode was so sad #There has been so many changes and it’s only been like 7 weeks since we started #TMA it was just Jon reading statements until like Jane became a real threat #But GERRY GERTRUDE GEORGIE OMGGGGGGGG #SO SO HAPPY GERRY’S BACK HE WAS ONE OF MY TMA FAVES #I REALLY WANNA ANIMATE THE LAST 11 MINUTES OF THIM IN MAG 111 HE’S SO FUN #I’M SO HAPPY HE’S LIVING HIS BEST LIFE BAKING AND DRAWING AND LIVING WITH HIS GRANDMA #WHAT THE HECK MAGNUS INSTITUTE GIFTED KID PROGRAM WHAT WOULD YOU DO FOR THAT #GEORGIE MENTION GIRL WHERE ARE YOU #HOPEFULLY WITH YOUR GF MELANIE #CELIA AND SAM BONDING SO CUTE #WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE IDKKKKKKK #malevolent doodles tomorrow #OH YEAH EP RANKING 4 1 6 8 5 2 7 3

[mag200]

i love reblogging that post about “do you know what the person before you’s url means” bc half of you are like NOPE NO IVE NEVER HEARD OF A CERTAIN GAY HORROR PODCAST NO IDEA!!! IVE NEVER EVEN HEARD OF A CEASELESS WATCHER and then one person just like “maybe its their name?”

#you can all call me mag 200 in real life i’ll respond to it

[buttercupart]

[OC-tober prompts by spiral89art]

day 7 - enemies

you want me so bad it makes you look stupid

#oc stuff #my art #hooooohoho #ok so when undertale first released i made a magenta soul fallen human #twist (oc) #<- that fella. and so mags on the left here is twist's mage ancestor from before the monster/human war #mags literally just stands for MAGenta Soul btw. but anyways mags is one of the 8 heads of the soul council #(the soul council is the rest of the soul traits you see ingame. determination bravery justice kindness patience integrity perseverance etc) #magenta soul trait is endurance and its knowledge was lost to time yadda yadda #anyways first of all: imagine the human mage soul council like the coven heads from TOH. like right on brand #and second of all: reada on the right is the determination head and also the head honcho in general (or head poncho technically) #they're the poncho human from the UT opening sequence and they CANNOT STAND mags. those two are at eachothers THROATS day in and day out #the rest of the human mages never experience this. mags is a little darling to them. he just REALLY likes being combative to reada #which doesnt help bc reada gets real worked up over minor infractions and mags KNOWS and starts shit on purpose cause she thinks its funny #and maybe it is. but they make life harder for the rest of the mages by getting into it w/ their leader. its a whole thing #poncho human #magadhi (OC)

[lantern-hill]

temporal belonging - real life

#org #commonplace book #november 2022 #real life mag #lauren collee

[chonideno]

heyyy on the topic of your writing and krbk, your writing got me into krbk right around the end of high school and having them around has brought a lot of happiness and nice things into my life through all the years since then! and pulled a lot of urge to write out of me as well! i always find your thoughts on the pursuit of happiness interesting and really resonate w the idea of chasing what brings you joy at the time and accepting that the past is the past. i'll always be happy to have found your writing when i did (honestly a lot of krbk i read back then doesn't resonate the same anymore but yours somehow doesn't get old) and hope you keep finding things that bring you joy! :)

good for you! yeah some characters and ships become inevitably weaved into periods of our life for a lot of chronically online people (including us apparently) and that's fine! it's like everything else - it's good and then it ends. doesn't mean it didn't happen. doesn't mean it shouldn't matter. it was there! what more could we possibly ask for!

I'm on a similar page, most of what I've re-read doesn't ring the same bell as it used to, and that's fine. the intensity I remember feeling is still out there, I can still find it (in me, in others, in places and moments). I've also re-read some of my own work and I look on it fondly, even though now I can see through it more clearly. it's so corny and often not deep enough and almost always unbalanced but I loved writing it at the time and that's the important part.

I keep finding things that bring me joy yes!! and I cherish all of it. one day it'll be gone and on that day I'll be glad it happened.

#i hope you get to find these things too #and then other ones #and then other ones after that #and maybe it loops! #and maybe sometimes it's not that good and a bit messy #that's life #the question is always 'is there love here?' #and if yes then it matters #i found that in the past i tried real hard to convince myself that whatever was gone didn't matter #after all if it never mattered the whole time then grief had no point #now i find it more liberating and fullfulling to admit i love things while they're here #out loud and often #that's happiness to me rn #anonymous #mag answers

[cylonbarnes]

now that i'm at The College I'm Getting My Degree From i'm like ooooooh it's all real now! i'm actively working on a international literary journal and shit!

#it's the same university as last year but a campus on the exact opposite side of the state #and last year i published a literary magazine of student submissions. and now i'm reading poems submitted from writers across the world #and i get to go 'eh. didn't like the vibe' and like that's IT we're not publishing their poem that's how this is decided!!!!! oh my GOD #i mean oh my god like how terrifying and weighty for this to mean nothing to me other than i read a crappy poem but to them it's a big deal #we give them very nice rejections apparently. #anyway. so much pressure but also none at all. life is weird #i'm ALSO working on a new student lit mag here so like. writing is actually my life now. for the first time in my life. #almost all of my classes are about writing.... this is REAL #also my single assignment for the lit journal course (1 credit course) is just. #read a literary journal. find an author. email them to get them to submit to us.

[noodledesk]

What pretenses aren't ultimately false from some angle? With billions of cameras in the world, there is always an angle.

Scene Partners, Real Life Mag

#capitalism #the rehearsal #nathan fielder #real life mag #articles #morningread #im curious abt this show...

[earlyspringtranscendence]

Smth that I always come back to in the pee Nureyev experience is like. My view on Peter and Mags relationship and how I disagree with like 99% of the fanon interpretation of it (and also perhaps the canon starting in S4) (and so will ignore it henceforth) like Mag is . Nice. He's nice. I fucking know he lied to peets ok but he also like killed Mag so it evens out but it's heart wrenching to hear the audio when they're duping that New Kinshasa woman and they laugh so raucously (AND FREELY!!!! WHEN HAVE U EVER HEARD PEE SO FREE...) and well it's like. They love eachother . Kinda all I even have to say about that. I refuse to believe that Mag was a bad parent beyond the usual bad parenting of someone who isn't by any means ready or even nec willing to be a parent beforehand, but like anything that extends beyond that is so depressing to me... There's strength in numbers, even on Brahma, and pee used to have that with Mag. and anyway you cant take that away from me im putting my fingers in my ears and yelling if u try to reason w me GOODNIGHT & GOODBYE

#penumb #i desperately am in the minority here i completely understand that this is a controversial opinion #and i even understand why to a certain extent its just. that i dont fink its right ... #anyway i basically said all this last time i was talking abt penumb already i still have the screenshot that i put on my insta stories #but it remains so important to me... in one of the brahma alts juno says smth along the lines of #'mag was one of the bad ones because he was one you might start to like' #and that was so real. because you cant live without liking people. not even juno steel can do that #so why and how would 16 yr old pete ransom know how to do that... #and its not even about being able to its about wanting to too. loneliness is exhausting #being persecuted by an evil govmt 24/7 is exhausting #why cant we allow pee to have this one nice thing in his previous life #<- basically what it boils down to its the same reason i ignore the way juno treats mick in the show #like imo it goes too far into genuine scolding and almost dislike and i dont think thats fair #like mick holds a position of great value in juno's life so (AGAIN!) why cant we allow them both to have that #(obv that latter opinion is widely accepted as being the correct opinion but yk)

[violet-dragongirl]

Yep I need to take a break, eat, drink, maybe get tipsy, watch some Lupin III Series 5 and chill for second

#irrelevant babble #...survival simulators are... #I don't regret the addon I have for this Standalone Mod for an old Trilogy... #but jesu fucking texas toast hell christ... #it really made me remember how ammo and mags are two separate systems that work together... #and not a whole lot of games actually like...separate that for immersion like this addon has it #the tedious unloading of drum and large mags is...jfc I forgot how tedious it is #*sigh* I have the discipline for what this game simulates #but also it feels so different from reality...and I haven't done it in real life in ages... #probably why the length of it feels so odd and off in a game #like it's interesting as a game mechanic #then to have each loaded mag as part of an outfit loadout #then reloading gets more complicated that most games lack #which in total makes it worth while in the sense of a survival sim. Just gotta practice the rhythm of it all.... #and not frantically reload after 2 kills with 5 shots gone #I'm still learning the survival ropes of this game and like...it's fun but also REALLY FUCKING FRUSTRATING HOW IS THIS LIKE THIS JESU #Sisyphus laughs at my own self inflicted torment with this game